Andy In China

Hiatus

2008-07-13T23:12:00.002+08:00

As you've probably noticed, the frequency of my posts here has dropped off since getting back to the States. Its title, after all, is "Andy In China," and I'm not! So at least until I head back to the Middle Kingdom, this blog is going to take a break. Whether or not I revive it next time I'm over there, we shall see.

In the mean time...

It's been good to be home but, of course, I'm looking for the next thing! I'm in the process of arranging a 2-month internship with a company called HCD Global in Shanghai, that should run from mid-August to mid-October. After that, we shall see! It's possible that either they or a related company will make me an offer, or that my networking in Shanghai will turn up something else, or that I'll come back to the States to take an opportunity here. Whatever ends up happening, it'll be an adventure!

So until/unless this blog gets reopened (maybe in just a month or two, if all goes well), I'll leave you with one final piece of China-related wisdom: An amusing Times blog has announced that the Chinese government has officially released its very long list of suggested translations for Chinese dishes in preparation for the Olympics! Ever wonder what those "three fresh things" or "eight treasures" are? Wonder no more. This should be required reading for everybody studying abroad in China. It almost (almost) makes me want to break out the ol' index cards right now!

Well, I think that pretty much completes my Fulbright blogging duties! So 再见 for now - I'll be sure to put the word out if I take up blogging here again!

Stateside!

2008-07-02T12:26:00.000+08:00

5:00AM - 7:30, China Time: Head to the Chengdu airport and wait for my flight (2.5 hours of travel thus far)
7:30 - 9:30: Fly from Chengdu to Beijing (4.5 hours)
9:30 - 3:00: Layover in Beijing (10 hours)
3:00 China time - 5:00pm EDT: Fly from Beijing to Newark (24 hours)
5:00 - 8:00: Layover in Newark (27 hours)
8:00 - 10:00: Flight from Newark to Cleveland (29 hours)

But I made it! I'm now officially Home... for a few weeks, at least! More on my post-August plans soon!

Smoked Salmon in Sichuan

2008-06-23T14:12:00.000+08:00

For Christmas, my parents gave me a whole lot of wonderful food to bring back to China and enjoy here. One thing they gave me was a no-refrigeration-needed smoked salmon fillet. I'd been saving it since Christmas, but today was the day! Whole wheet bagals from this awesome little pizza parlor run by the wife of a consulate employee, cream cheese from the import store, onions, and tomatos.

Bourgeois breakfast bliss.

Finally Finalized

2008-06-20T11:12:00.000+08:00

Remember that whole "My visa expires a day before my flight home" thing? Well, it's finally resolved! I went to the PSB today and applied for a tourist visa that will cover me through July 3 (in case my flight is delayed, or whatever). So now I finally know for sure when I'll be returning!

Tuesday, July 1: Continental flight 88, departing Beijing at 3:45 PM, arriving Newark 5:30 PM
Tuesday, July 1 (still): Continental flight 425, departing Newark 8:10 PM, arriving Cleveland 10:01 PM

Definitely glad that's finally settled!

Anybody home?

2008-06-14T10:42:00.002+08:00

I have no idea how many roommates I currently have. I'm pretty sure that at least one of them is moved out, and I'm pretty sure that at least one of them is still here, but I really have no idea about the third one! I hadn't heard he was leaving, but I haven't seen him in days.

One interesting thing about renting in China is that there's apparently no expectation that you'll leave the place in good condition - or even clean! When I was looking for a place back in September, every apartment I saw had debris left over from its previous occupants - even to the point of unemptied waste bins! (The point of this Interesting Fact being that I can't tell how many roommates I have by the amount of detritus left in their rooms, because that's just kinda how you roll in China!)

Ahh, well. Doesn't really matter, I guess! Everybody's paid up and free to go. Our landlord, for some unimaginable reason, let us use our security deposit as the last month's rent, so there's really no reason that any of us can't just wander off whenever we feel like it. Strange, though!

Good Idea/Bad Idea?

2008-06-12T10:01:00.000+08:00

It's been a month since the earthquake, today, and I'm happy to report that life in Chengdu is pretty much back to normal. Shops are no longer sold out of water, the tent villages have shrunken to a fraction of their former sizes, and I haven't felt an aftershock in days. Of course, that's not to say that there isn't still some goofy stuff!

This is the car of a person who is afraid that, if he parks his car in his underground parking lot, it will be crushed when an aftershock collapses his building:

In the days and weeks after the earthquake, there were thousands of cars parked on the sidewalks, but the police have finally been going around and issuing tickets and getting them cleaned up. This is not just important because all the sidewalks were blocked; it's important because parking your car in places like this is a terrible idea. Let's take another look at that sign above the car, shall we?

For your safety, please keep away from the wall!

That's right. This man has, in fact, parked his car in the least safe place in the entire city. He's parked next to what I call a "Five Minute Wall." (So called because that amount of time is both approximately how long it takes to build them, and about how long they're expected to stand.) On top of the fact that unreinforced masonry is the least safe building material in an earthquake, these particular specimens are slapped together in an afternoon with broken bricks and adulterated concrete that's mixed by hand on the sidewalk. Let's take a quick trip through a broken part of this wall to see it from behind:

Some craftsmanship, eh? Sooner or later, these things collapse with or without an earthquake. When I went around the city looking for damage on the day of the earthquake, a couple of collapsed Five Minute Walls were all I found.

And yet – despite the sign clearly announcing that it's not safe to be near the wall, this guy is just one of a dozen or so people still parked under it. *shakes head in bemused disbelief*

I kinda wonder how long he'll stay there!

Scholarship Diplomacy

2008-06-06T14:31:00.001+08:00

The Fulbright Program aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.
-- Senator J. William Fulbright

And, every once in a while, it even works. And that's pretty cool.

In addition to the U.S. Student Grants like the one I'm on, there are also Foreign Students Grants, that invite students from around the world to conduct advanced study in the States. Last week, there was a bit of a diplomatic uproar when the Department of State revoked seven Fulbright Grants awarded to Palestinians living in Gaza because it didn't look like Israel was going to let the students out to pursue their studies.

Apparently, this was a decision made at a fairly low level, by people who didn't want the funding to be wasted if the recipients couldn't use it. When word got out, however, muckety-mucks in both the Department of State and the Israeli government were all pretty alarmed. Fulbright has a great reputation worldwide, and the prospect of the retractions was bad press for everybody. Now, a week later, not only are the grants to Gaza Fulbrighters reinstated, but now Israel is reconsidering its policies regarding students from Gaza studying abroad, not just for Fulbright grantees, but for all students who have received prestigious foreign scholarships around the world.

In my opinion, giving Gaza's best and brightest access to the world-class educational opportunities that they've earned is absolutely essential to developing a generation of Palestinian leaders with the international experience and advanced education necessary to have a positive impact on their situation in the future. And it's pretty cool to see a program that I'm a part of being a part of that.

Witt Press Release

2008-06-05T14:52:00.002+08:00

Wittenberg Alumnus Blogs About Historic
Chinese Earthquake

Springfield, Ohio — Living through one of the most devastating earthquakes in Chinese history has made Andrew Scarponi, Wittenberg University Class of 2007, even more of a believer in the merits of a quality liberal arts education.

Read more...

Oh, China!

2008-06-02T16:11:00.001+08:00

One of the (many) things I love about China are the signs that say crazy things. I bought this today:

I think I'm gonna donate it to the frat house.

Information is King

2008-05-30T13:33:00.002+08:00

"…information is poor, scarce, maldistributed, inefficiently communicated, and intensely valued." --Clifford Geertz, The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Marketing

Or, put another way:

"Information is King." -- Participant B1022.B1

That, if anything, is what I've learned over the past weeks and months. Information is King. When I first set out on my Fulbright research, I wanted to see whether asymmetrical information created a situation resembling Akerlof's Market for Lemons, and what strategies were used by both buyers and sellers to collect, conceal, analyze, and employ information to their own advantage. Since then, I've realized that it's much, much bigger. Information is not a part of the game; it is the game – and not just in markets for tourist kitsch.

I've now gone through the Harbin Water Crisis of 2005 and the Sichuan Earthquake of 2008. In both of those situations, one realization stands out from all the rest: Information is King. In both disasters, nothing except physical safety trumped the need for reliable information. What's going on? Why is this happening? Is the government telling the truth? Are my loved ones safe? Even while the earthquake was still going on, I saw people who had fled from their homes barely dressed, clinging to what had suddenly become their most prized possession: their cell phones. Within minutes, the grid had been brought to its knees by hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of people, all trying desperately to find and distribute information.

It has become a truism that we live in the Information Age. But I wonder whether, in a Pythagorean sort of way, we always have. Information about who is trustworthy and who is not has formed a foundation for social systems from kinship tribes to feudal kingdoms to modern business networks. From an understanding of the seasons that tells you when to plant, to an understanding of macroeconomic indicators that warn of a subprime mortgage crisis in the making, the ability to collect, conceal, analyze, and employ information is not merely essential to survive and thrive in this age, but it has been in every age.

What has changed about information that make this the Information Age are three things: Richness, Reach, and Speed. Today, rumors about pollution in the water supply can spread to thousands of people within seconds, limited only by the bandwidth capacity of the cell phone infrastructure. Fishermen can learn about current market prices at different ports while still out to sea. My musings on information can (though of course won't!) be read by potentially millions of people around the globe, at no cost to either them or me. But it's more than that.

According to an excellent NY Times article, "as a family’s income grows — from $1 per day to $4, for example — their spending on I.C.T. increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing. 'It’s really quite striking,' Hammond [the principal author of a study on how poor people living in developing countries spend their money] says. 'What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.' " The ability to share information – both in a crisis situation and in daily life – may be one of the most important tools for insuring the safety and prosperity of yourself and your family. How many lives would be saved in Africa if every single person had access to accurate and trusted information about HIV transmission?

So yes, we are living in an Information Age, and yes, information has a tremendous impact on how people bargain for fake antiques. But that's a tiny piece of the puzzle. In an earthquake, in a water crisis, in a marketplace and in a rural fishing village, information truly is king. Working to improve the flow of information – its richness and its reach; its complexity and its comprehensibility – this is perhaps the defining characteristic of our times, and it has the potential to remake our world in ways every bit as disruptive and unpredictable as information revolutions of the past like the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. I, for one, can't wait to see how it plays out.

Compassion, logistics, and nerves begin to fray in Chengdu

2008-05-29T14:38:00.002+08:00

My friend and fellow Fulbrighter Pete Sweeney just got an essay about the earthquake recovery effort published on Danwei, one of the big China blogs:

Jiao Na had come a long way to help the people of Sichuan. A Chinese teacher living in Kunming, she had seen the pictures and heard the cries for help. Not content to mail supplies, she contacted a local health bureau in Chengdu and arranged to purchase the supplies they said they needed to prevent a looming medical disaster: medical supplies, mosquito repellent, dry biscuits. She solicited donations from her friends in Kunming, some $700 worth, and booked plane tickets along with several companions.

Keep Reading...

Details at Eleven

2008-05-28T15:17:00.000+08:00

Laws, as we all know, are like sausages. What's becoming increasingly clear to me, however, is that news is too.

I was at The Bookworm when the earthquake hit, playing Scrabble with my friends Bill and Chris. This, apparently, qualified us as experts. Within minutes, the LA Times had called the Worm, and interviewed Chris, apparently because he was the closest person to Daisy (a manager at the Worm) when they asked her to put on a native English speaker. A few hours later, I was contacted by the U.S. Consulate because Anderson Cooper 360 and NPR had asked for a spokesman, and (because of rules about State Department employees talking to the press) apparently I was the closest thing the Consulate could offer them. Fortunately, Anderson Cooper thought better of it. Bill's pictures, of course, got onto BBC.com and from there Wikipedia, but that's different – at least he did something more than just happen to be sitting there!

Since then, I've seen my friend Maryanne quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and (as a spokesperson of Zoo Atlanta) on CNN.com. I've also been in The Shamrock when Irish-language publications have called, desperate for someone – anyone – who speaks Irish to give an on-air interview.

We, it turns out, were the early sources of information – the people presumably in the know, who the news media turned to for fast facts in an evolving situation. Seriously? I mean, hell, what do we know? We're here and we speak English; apparently that qualifies us for something.

Kinda makes you think twice about where your news is coming from, and which random expat happened to be sitting next to a phone when things went down!

Success in Beijing (?)

2008-05-28T12:41:00.000+08:00

Beijing was awesome! The AVCJ Conference wasn't always easy (early mornings of panel discussions and late nights of networking cocktails that were even more painful!), but it was a great opportunity. I learned a whole lot about private equity and venture capital, and maybe even more about how the business world works (and how to collect other people's cards in one pocket so you don't confuse them with your own in a different pocket!).

The reason I went, of course, was to look for employment opportunities, particularly with the company that invited me there. I had a discussion/interview with two of their partners over lunch the second day, and I think it went pretty well! I don't know much of anything for sure yet, but it sounds like they might be willing to take me on in a temporary, internship-type position so that they and I can get used to each other and figure out if I'd be a good fit there. Really, given my complete and total lack of experience of any kind, I think this is about the best I could (reasonably) hope for!

I'm a couple more email exchanges away from knowing… really anything at all! So, before you even ask, lemmie go ahead and answer some of the questions I know you're going to have:

I'd rather not say on a public blog until it's a done deal.
I dunno.
I dunno.
Shanghai, I think.
Yeah, I do, but I'll deal. Living there should be different from touristing, you know?
I dunno.
I dunno.
umm… yeah, I don't know that either. I'll get back to you when I do, though!

Hopefully, that clears it right up! lol You now know approximately as much about this opportunity as I do! haha

After the conference, I stuck around in Beijing a couple days and hung out. That turned out a bit differently than I'd expected (a couple people on my "Friends to Visit" list didn't get crossed off!) but I had a great time.

And, finally, the Times has published an excellent article about the way the earthquake and fear of aftershocks has effected Chengdu: Amid Tremors, a City Trembles With Dread. Very good article – captures the mood of the past few weeks here better than I could! I think things are calming down, though. Slowly.

2:28

2008-05-20T01:29:00.000+08:00

At 2:28 this afternoon, China stopped. Exactly one week after the earthquake began, the entire country observed three minutes of mourning.

Rather than a moment of silence, however, the country commemorated the occasion with three minutes of cacophony. Cars stopped on the street and honked. For long minutes, cars blared long, overpowering honks, in discordant chords and shifting harmonies as some cars stopped and others started. In places with air raid or tornado sirens, those sounded too.

*****

gnah. So, literally as I finished that last paragraph, the phone in our apartment (which connects us to the management office only) rang. I answered:

Me: 喂，你好？(Hello?)
Them: Emergency! Get out!
Me: 什么事？有什么问题？(What's going on? What's the matter?)
Them: Emergency! Get out!
Me: 好的！(Ok!)

Assuming that, for the caller to suddenly become unable to speak Chinese, the building must be on fire or something, I got my roommates out of bed and we ran like bats outta hell down 21 flights of stairs.

When we got to the bottom, I asked what was going on. "The government predicted an earthquake!" I was told, over the din of honking on the streets gridlocked with people trying to flee town. Apparently, the China Earthquake Administration (who have been consistently wrong in their aftershock predictions) has predicted another quake of nearly 8.0 magnitude in the next 24 hours. We were told to join all 4 million of Chengdu's residents and sleep on the streets tonight.

Great article about earthquake prediction here. On a related note, I wonder if there's gonna be a spike in mosquito borne diseases from all these people sleeping outside without cover lately.

*****

Anyway, so what I was saying before was about the official period of mourning. Apparently, the government is also carrying it well beyond the realm of respectful observance, and has taken this opportunity to remind you that it's still an authoritarian state. Shanghaiist (a great blog) has a translation of the directive, which has decreed that: " all gaming websites and gaming channels of major portals are to shut down; Cover all entertainment channels on websites and programmes with a message of mourning, and none of the other pages within these channels should be accessible; All entertainment BBS's are to be shut; All music and video search functions at search engine portals to be shut; All entertainment advertisements should be offline." Additionally, all bars, karaoke places, and possibly also movie theaters have to be closed for three days.

So that's awesome. Just making sure you don't get too carried away with your excitement at how transparently and efficiently Beijing's been dealing with the quake. Thanks.

P.S. Not sorry I'm leaving for Beijing in a day and a half! haha

Conference in Beijing

2008-05-19T10:45:00.001+08:00

On somewhat short notice, I've discovered that I'm going to Beijing this week!

One of the companies that I've been in contact with regarding employment opportunities has invited me to the AVCJ Private Equity & Venture Forum. Pretty exciting! The conference runs Wednesday evening to Friday, though I'll probably stay in Beijing through the weekend.

Could be a great opportunity!

Not quite business as usual

2008-05-15T15:46:00.000+08:00

I went back to the market for the first time since the earthquake today.

As I'd expected, it was all but deserted. Probably a quarter to a third of the stalls were open, and none of the "blanket" vendors (who rent a patch of ground by the day) were there. I asked one of the vendors who was open about it. "There's no customers, no business," she told me, "There's nothing to be done. Méi bànfǎ." I asked her why she was opened when so many others were closed. She laughed and said "I don't have anything else to do. Méi bànfǎ."

I did, however, see one transaction in the market today. An old man in an ill-fitting suit was at what I classify as a "Coins & Currency" stall, buying a bundle of paper money. The anthropologist in me knew that ghost money has long been a part of funerary rites in Chinese Buddhism and folk religions. The economist in me knew that the recent earthquake had probably sharply reduced his price elasticity of demand, and that the closure of many other stalls had given this vendor a greater than usual degree of monopoly power.

But nothing in me could bear to wonder how much he'd paid. Méi bànfǎ.

Bill on the BBC

2008-05-15T12:42:00.001+08:00

I found the BBC's posting of the best of Bill's pictures!

Bill's Story

2008-05-15T00:23:00.000+08:00

It looked for a while like I might be giving a few interviews for CNN and/or NPR. That seems to have fallen through, and that's fine by me. Frankly, my story isn't that interesting. I was playing Scrabble when the earthquake hit, and I spent most of the several hours afterwards people-watching. I never felt like I was in any danger after the initial shaking, and there was no destruction around me.

My friend Bill, however, has a much more interesting story! He's an aspiring journalist and, just minutes after the (first!) earthquake finished, he and a few others decided go to by bus and by foot directly into the disaster zone. Below is his story, copy/pasted directly from his blog. He's also posted a lot of photos of his journey into the destruction on his Flickr account. Since notifying the BBC of his expedition, they've interviewed him several times, and are planning to post a few of his pictures with captions on their webpage. I'll put up the link for that when it's up (and I find it!).

So, without further ado, Bill's story:

16 Tons
The nature of the journey I was taking first struck me under the dim parking lot lights. We’d been waiting for nearly an hour to get a bus up to Dujiangyan, a city that was ravaged by the quake just hours before. When our bus finally pulled into the station, it dropped off people fleeing from Dujiangyan.
“Don’t go. Don’t go,” one woman said, “There’s dead bodies everywhere.”

We arrived in the dark. Three others accompanied me, Ian a student from Seattle, Ronen a student and aspiring journalist from Israel, and Qiqi a friend from Chengdu. While on the bus, we became acquainted with a group of seven heading into the mountainous areas surrounding Dujiangyan. They were going to look for their families who lived in the outer lying villages and were willing to let us tag along.

Our first impression of Dujiangyan was lit by headlights and the flashes of our cameras. People huddled beneath makeshift tents. Crumbled buildings. Shattered Glass. Save for the sound of sirens, the whole city was silent.

At the end of the city was a police blockade meant to stop people from going up towards the dangers of the disrupted mountains. We put our heads down and ran. Behind us, their calls were fizzled to silence:
“Laowai, Laowai,” “Foreigner, Foreigner”
“Hello! Laowai, Guolai!” “Hello Foreigner, Come Here!”
We kept running and they did not chase us.

The road to the mountains was pitch black. The only light came from cell phone displays being used as flashlights. We moved quickly to keep warm from the rain, stopping occasionally for cigarettes that glowed like fireflies before they we’re smashed to the pavement.

In the dark and in our ignorance, Ian, Ronen and I sang to lighten the mood, and to perhaps add a sense of glory to our adventure.

“The say a man is made out of mud,
a poor mans made of muscle and blood
muscle and blood and skin and bones
a mind that’s week and a back that’s strong.”

I wonder now, how our friends and guides must have felt as we sang in jest to the mountains that destroyed their homes.

As we pushed deeper, we soon came upon two men combing the side of the road with a flashlight. They’re target was a footpath that climbed up higher and more directly into the mountains. We followed.

Beneath our feet were running water, loose stone and mud. To our left, the rising slopes, and to our right the steeply descending ones. We climbed by the light of cell phone and flashlight.

Right around midnight, the path spat us all out safe and uninjured though wet and weary at the entrance of tunnel. In the distance at the far end of the tunnel, we could see a flickering orange light. We entered the archway happy to be out of the rain though half worried about the tunnels integrity.

The light was from the fire of a group of roadside campers. They had hitched a tarp to the side of a truck and pinned it down at the other end, and used a large stick to prop up the center. There were six of them, but they were glad to make room for us. There was now nineteen people huddled there, warming by the fire.

The mood was surprisingly light. The men around the fire had pilfered a giant bag of garlic cloves from one of the abandoned cars. We chatted and even laughed. Though squeezed tight, knee-to-knee, the thought of spending the night there seemed to be a good idea. And then the military showed up. But instead of escorting us out, they pushed us deeper into the mountains.

With the soldiers at our backs, the pace quickened. Everything became amplified. It rained harder, the damage increased; the aftershocks quaked beneath our feet. In the distance was the sound of deep rumbling, like constant thunder or water rushing through a broken dam.

We passed smashed and battered cars, scaled landslides and sprinted through sections of street turned to boulder fields due to falling rocks. During this race, I fell by stepping into a concrete drainage ditch and gashed knee. We pushed on, over fissures and past the rocks until we came to another tunnel.
And there we stopped.
“Its too dangerous ahead,” our escorts said, “You must stay here.”

Empty vehicles and a coach bus filled with people escaping the rain surrounded the entrance to the tunnel. There was no shelter open to us except for the abandoned coals of a fire beneath a pair of umbrellas hitched to a truck. At this point, our numbers were thirteen, the clock struck 3 am, and there we huddled cold and wet in the wind and rain.

It was then, beneath the umbrellas that the danger of our situation hit me. We have now been wet for 7 hours, we hadn’t eaten, no adequate shelter, and no sign of improvement. No one dared enter the tunnel for fear of collapse, we huddled there for as long as we could before some of us left the covering and broke into a car. Their act brought them the insulating and dry interior of the car. It brought us the car alarm and flashing lights to add to the commotion of the disgruntled earth surrounding us.

The people in the bus took pity on us and granted us entry. There we sat knee to chin in the aisle. Our saviors, the people of the bus were truly the people in need of saving. They were neither tourist nor travelers bound for somewhere else when the quake struck. Those people had long fled. The people on the bus were the people of the mountain villages who had lost their homes just sixteen hours prior.

We may have slept a little. I’m not sure. At 8:15, we left the bus. It was still raining but at least there was sunlight. We made our way back the way came, observing the damage that we sped over the night before. The mountains were green and misty. The sounds of thunder continued. But, in the light we could see that a nearly constant landslide pouring stone and debris into the river below caused all of the commotion.

Our walk back to Dujiangyan was a minor exodus. The streets were lined with people coming and going. Yet somehow, despite the disaster, they were smiling; they were still willing to toss out the cheeky “hello” to us as though the disaster had never struck.

They said the earthquake fell a mountain. But the true damage was in the city. Our saviors on the bus had felt the force and lost their homes, but their families and friends survived. While we waited for the sun, they chatted and passed the time. But in Dujiangyan, the city was as quiet as the night before.

It was still raining when we entered the city. The people, afraid to enter their homes, lived on the streets, in tents, cars, pieces of awning from fallen buildings, or whatever else they could find. There was no running water, no electricity, yet somehow, there were smiles.

Somewhere in the city, a school collapsed and killed hundreds of students. As we walked the streets ready to return home, we passed by crumpled buildings and corpses covered in white sheets. We passed by girls smiling and waving from their cars. We passed by the cheeky “hellos” and the stares as though a foreigner in their city were more unique than the quake itself. As we moved through the city, I saw only one person in tears.

I wonder about these smiles. They must have felt lucky and happy to survive. They must not be aware that the true impact of the earthquake has not yet hit them. The aftershocks will not be the rumbling earth but the death of friends and ways of life. There was no coordinated aid. No one was helping. Like my friends and me, everyone stood in the rain and looked on with awe at the impossible reality that has befallen them.

All clear

2008-05-14T23:35:00.000+08:00

Fortunately, this morning's rumors of widespread water pollution and a long-term water stoppage turned out to be unfounded. Of course, as anyone who's ever been in a city-wide panic before can tell you, a rumor doesn't have to be true to have a power of its own. This morning was pretty crazy! Stores were positively mobbed by people panic-buying bottled water, ramen noodles, and whatever else they could get their hands on that seemed like it'd be good "survival" food.

The water was off for much of the day today, but it came back on in mid-afternoon, which pretty well validates the theory (and the official line) that the stoppages were just to check and repair the system. Lending even more credence to that explanation, the water came back on in different parts of the city at different times, as different parts of the grid were repaired or approved and brought back online.

By this evening, the streets felt normal, except for the shanty-towns of tents and makeshift shelters where people are spending a third night outdoors for fear of aftershocks. Speaking of which, I haven't noticed any aftershocks since an unusually long one early this afternoon. The rain's also stopped, so hopefully the relief efforts can kick into high gear now.

Things have calmed down, and I'm pretty confident there's no reason to leave the city. On the other hand, there's fairly little reason to stay. I'll go tomorrow to check out the situation, but I can't imagine that there's anybody going to the antiques market to buy things right now! I just got word that I'll be heading to Beijing for a few days next week to meet with a potential employer. Part of me wants to head there early, do some observations at the antique market there, and just unwind a bit. Another part of me is pestering my friends with Red Cross contacts to see if there's anything I could be doing in Dujiangyan to be useful (thus far, the answer is clearly no). We shall see.

ah, damnit.

2008-05-14T12:09:00.002+08:00

The municipal water supply has been contaminated. The water's been turned off. People are panic-buying water.

again.

What is it with me?? haha

I may be booking it out of here. We shall see.

No trouble in the Du

2008-05-13T21:25:00.000+08:00

Things are settling down here, but not quite back to normal yet. I haven't felt any aftershocks in a few hours, and the city's almost back to business as usual. Almost. Probably about half of the shops and restaurants were closed still today, and I'd guess that about 5 – 10% of the population is sleeping another night on the streets in the driving rain, afraid to go back in their apartment buildings.

Fortunately, a fear of building collapse in Chengdu has proved unfounded thus far. I've only seen a handful of cracked windows and a few collapsed minute-walls (but those'll fall down with or without an earthquake!). All those pictures of deviation in the press are from other cities. The people out in the streets are the only thing to see in Chengdu that even suggest something's up.

If you want a map showing the epicenter, Chengdu, and some of the cities that have been hit worse, the NY Times has a great one here. As you can see from the map, we're a solid 30 miles from anywhere with real damage. It'd be like living in Cleveland when Akron got hit by a tornado. It stormed pretty hard here, but we're worlds away from the actual damage.

Speaking of storms, though, it's been raining steadily all day and very hard for the past few hours. I really hope that the rain doesn't trigger major earth slides in the mountains with all the rock and debris that's been broken loose in the last day and a half. That's just about the last thing the mountain cities need now…

Earthquake!

2008-05-12T17:36:00.001+08:00

Earthquake measuring 7.8 Richter scale hits SW China

I'm fine, not much damage in my area, nobody hurt that I know of! Lots of pics and stories later. In the mean time, I'm one of the only people here with an internet connection right now, so I'm gonna turn over my machine so other folks can reassure their families!

So... wanna go to Xi'an?

2008-05-11T13:22:00.000+08:00

...well, that was unexpected! Somewhat to my own surprise, and on just enough notice to grab tickets in time, my friend Maryanne and I went to Xi'an! Overnight train in, a day of checking out the city, overnight train back out. done.

It was a lot of fun! On the way out, the train was nearly empty, and Maryanne and I had a great time playing cards, hanging out, and eating awesome food, both from my stash of Christmas goodies and from the import store in Chengdu. When we got to Xi'an, we hopped a bus out to the Terracotta Warriors. VERY impressive. I'll post pics when I get them from Maryanne (I'm not so much a picture person, really. I prefer to mooch).

Back in town, we bumbled around a good bit before finally finding the Muslim quarter with its awesome market and delicious street food. While we were eating our way though the market, I found something that I've been trying to find for a while: a pill box. (My meds have to be taken on a full stomach, so I sometimes want to bring one with me to a meal. Heretofore, I've been using a floss container! haha) There were a lot of them in the market (nearly every stall had some - so interesting to see the kinds of inventory that are widely available in different cities), but there was just one of these:

So cool! It's hand-carved out of bone, and I was happy with the price I got it for. Nice to see that research paying off! haha

Then, as soon as we'd just about eaten our fill of the market and its food, it was time to go! crazy. Still, I think it's good to leave a place wishing you'd spent more time there, rather than less! I'll post pics when I have 'em!

Chinarule

2008-05-09T09:31:00.000+08:00

Never look in the buckets. Never ever look in the buckets.

This is one of the cardinal Chinarules, and it's essential to remaining healthy, happy, and willfully ignorant of some of this country's more… repugnant aspects. This is a bucket truck:

They're often three-wheeled like this – sorta a cross between a pickup truck and a tricycle – and you can usually smell them a block away. Every evening, they go around to restaurants collecting… gross. I'm not even sure what exactly they collect, because (after just a few naïve mistakes) I've learned an important lesson: Never look in the buckets.

The thing that disturbs me most about the bucket trucks is not the tear-jerking stench as men in camo carry buckets out of restaurants through the dining room as you're having dinner – it's that there's a market for whatever's in those buckets. These guys go around and collect buckets full of nasty… and then sell it in bulk to somebody who wants a whole lot of nasty. What wholesome use could there possibly be for that stuff? I've been told that it's often sold to pig farms, which makes me less happy about the amount of pork I eat in this country. I've also heard that sometimes the used cooking oil finds itself filtered out of the gross and resold to divvy little restaurants, which I really wish weren't so easy to believe. lol

But yes, so the lesson of today's posting? That's right: Never look in the buckets. Never ever look in the buckets.

is it wierd that I love public speaking?

2008-05-08T14:51:00.000+08:00

I gave a lecture at the Consulate yesterday about the Youth Vote in the 2008 election. It went very well! I deliberately made it short, because I knew there would be a lot of questions afterworlds. If you're interested, the PowerPoint I made is here:

I really enjoy public speaking. And I know it's not just anyone who can field a half-hour's worth of questions about the Democratic primary process and the electoral college, so that's fun!

I think I also have made some progress in dealing with that annoying 1-day gap between my ticket and my visa expiration. We shall see, but it's looking like that might not be as expensive a problem as I was afraid it could be!

I also had another phone interview last night, which I think went well. I'll know within a week whether they want me to come for in-person interviews when I get back to the States. So nice to have options developing!

The research continues to go well... if slowly lately. It took me longer than I expected (and, looking back, longer than I even realized at the time) to get over last weekend's food poisoning!

It's 2AM. Do you know where your job applicants are?

2008-05-06T03:04:00.002+08:00

I just got woken up at two in the morning for a pre-interview phone screening. When the recruiter asked if it was a good time, I remembered what a pain Skype has been lately, so I decided to run with it. I acquit myself pretty well for a guy woken up to phone interview in the middle of the night, if I dare say so myself! Haha

In other news, job hunting 12 time zones away is hilarious. Also, I am now wide awake.

oww...

2008-05-03T13:03:00.001+08:00

Prior to last night, I had no idea what food poisoning really was. Woah. Turns out, ignorance is bliss.

What on earth is there in palak paneer that can mess you up that bad?

Yay!

2008-05-01T10:44:00.001+08:00

My gym reopens today! Finally!

In other exciting news from the Middle Kingdom...

I saw this car parked outside the market where I do my research the other day. And I just don't get it. I mean, if the whole thing were mirrored, I could accept that. Somebody designed or applied a decal backwards. Fine. But how on earth do you flip just the 'Disney', while getting the 'Mickey' right???

And, for a final giggle of the day: BBC.com - Tibetan flags made in China. lol

Odds are, it's not an issue

2008-04-28T13:38:00.002+08:00

NY Times: Passenger Trains Collide in Eastern China

woah. I've been on that Beijing to Qingdao train, and not all that long ago!

I'm sure trains, like airplanes, operate a thousand times a day without incident, and that it's considerably safer to take an overnight train to Qingdao than to ride my bike on the First Ring Road to the market. Still, I do kinda wonder what the rates are like. After all, everything here is made in China! haha

Changing China

2008-04-24T16:34:00.001+08:00

The NY Times has two good articles up right now, about two very different ways of life in China today. One is highly relevant to about a billion people in this country... the other is highly relevant to me!

With First Car, a New Life in China talks about the dramatic changes sweeping over rural China. Very well written.

Bracing for Games, China Sets Rules That Complicate Life for Foreigners, on the other hand, talks about changes that have been making huge waves through the expat community. Visas have gotten waaaay harder to get, renew, and fix. You can't just hop over to Hong Kong for a quick visa fix any more, and the days of the US$50 no-questions-asked business visa appear to be over. I've even heard that students without residency permits (which I have) are going to be kicked out of the country by August, and that none of the study abroad programs have summer sessions this year. Myself, I'd better get the sixteen hours between my visa expiring and my plane departing figured out!

On second thought...

2008-04-21T09:30:00.002+08:00

So, remember my plans to go follow-up on a job lead in Hong Kong? Turns out, not so much.

I sent an email over the China Fulbright Google group, seeing if anybody had the email addresses of the Hong Kong Fulbrighters so I could maybe meet up with some of them while I'm there. I got a reply from IIE's Beijing office reminding me that we can request a maximum 14 days of out-of-country leave (which I've used up), and that going to Hong Kong and Macao count as traveling out of country. So that's awesome.

What's really weird to me about this is that Hong Kong and Macao are defined as separate "countries." I mean, Taiwan I could accept, but HK and Macao? Those just are part of the P.R. of China, no debate about it. Does that mean that the midyear conference should have counted against everybody's travel allowance? And are the HK Fulbrighters stuck on that little island for a whole year without even being allowed to come to the mainland?

Ultimately, I'll probably be able to meet with somebody from the company in Shanghai instead, but this is still pretty frustrating. *grumble*

New Number

2008-04-20T11:02:00.002+08:00

New phone number, new card!

An obligatory update

2008-04-19T17:44:00.001+08:00

I haven't updated in a little while – I've been busy! My grant period ends June 30, which means that I have just over two months to identify and gather any and all remaining data that Dr. Schirr and I will need to produce a publishable paper or two out of this research. Needless to say, I'm panicking! haha Fortunately, the weather's been beautiful lately (you could even see the sun occasionally today!), so spending time in the market is no hardship.

The job search front continues to be a source of frustration. I'm planning a trip back to Hong Kong next month to talk to some people, and I'm continuing to try to leverage whatever network I have, but it's not an easy process. Of course, it could be WAY more frustrating: I could have landed a dream job and had it taken away, like 250 Bear Stearns new hires whose offers have been rescinded!

Speaking of Hong Kong (land of the emergency visa), it turns out that my visa expires June 30, but my flight is for July 1. I have a sinking suspicion that this is going to be a very important – and expensive – discrepancy to fix. Sounds like I've got a project for Monday!

Googled!

2008-04-12T11:46:00.001+08:00

Remember that Google Earth project I've been working on? It's just about done! I now have a fully zoomable map of the market I'm researching, with a couple hundred photos pinned to the locations they were taken, so you can do almost a virtual tour of the market! Check it out!

This is the whole market, with an icon showing where each of the photos is pinned. This isn't actually a very useful view – I normally toggle off the photos when I'm looking at the market as a whole – but it gives you sort of a macro view of where I've taken photos and what this project is all about.

This is a close-up of the south part of the market. At this zoom, the Google Earth image gets annoyingly fuzzy, but the map I've overlaid with each stall's location becomes very useful. Here, you can see where all the photos are, and start to get an idea of what the market looks like on the ground.

When a picture catches your interest, you can click on its icon to see a larger version.

Originally, I wanted to create this as a way to organize my photos geographically (with ordinary filing systems, it's hard to cross-reference photos by subject matter, or show the special relations between them) and to give Dr. Schirr a way to get a more intuitive feel for the market. I'm starting to think that it's a pretty cool thing in and of itself, though, and I'm considering uploading it to the Google Earth servers and making it publicly available when my project is done. We shall see.

In the mean time, it's a Google Earth (.kmz) file that you host off your own machine. Let me know if you're interested, and I'll email you the file so you can check it out for yourself!

On an unrelated note, there's an article in the NY Times Magazine this week about cell phones, user anthropology, and poverty alleviation in the third world: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? Terrific piece – very worth the read! Of course, my question is… are they accepting applications for that dude's job? Haha

Great Relief of the Great Firewall

2008-04-10T16:29:00.003+08:00

WIKIPEDIA IS BACK!!!

You can even get to the page about the 2008 Tibetan unrest! I checked, and BBC News is back too!

On an unrelated note, remember I said yesterday that I'd shaved my head? Well, this is me getting my Shao Lin on, much to the amusement of some of my vendor friends in the market. haha

Evan's Photos

2008-04-10T00:52:00.002+08:00

Evan's posted a bunch of pictures with commentary from his trip to China! Check it out!

In other news, I shaved my head today. I'd been going with the shaggy look all winter and now that Chengdu is really warming up and... why not? haha

Red youcai, 1.5 kuai per jin

2008-04-04T11:21:00.000+08:00

Before my trip to Hong Kong etc., my friend Ben and I spent a couple of hours one day biking around Chengdu pretty much at random. We found a little vegetable market, and decided to check it out. What we saw has been on my mind ever since:

What you're looking at is, essentially, a ticker. It's scrolling up, listing the current prices of various commodities. Pig's hearts are this much, a jin of cabbage is that much, etc. Given my research (and, of course, my general level of dorkiness) this was fascinating to me. Some of the questions this raises:

-- Where do these prices come from? Are they predetermined by someone or some group, or are they the result of market forces determining how things have traded in that market lately (with, for example, vendors registering each of their sales and those reports forming the market price, like in a securities market). I'd tend to believe the prices are dictated, both because of the logistical difficulty of creating a reliable last-sale-price reporting system, and because the prices in this picture are all nice, round numbers.

-- If the prices are dictated, by whom? Typically at these kinds of markets, each vendor is a sole proprietor who rents a stall from a landlord-like market management. Here, is the management setting prices? Has a cartel of vendors formed to control prices? Is there an enforcement mechanism to prevent vendors from undercutting the posted price?

-- How closely do vendors hew to the posted prices? Is bargaining important in this market? In typical vegetable markets people will bargain for an unreasonably long time about tiny amounts of money. What about here? Are there volume discounts?

-- How does the presence of posted prices change the market? Is average transaction time here lower? Does a different demographic prefer to patronize this market? Are the vendors here different from those at other markets?

-- How common are markets ticker prices like this? Are they growing more common or popular?

I could do a whole second Fulbright! haha If only I could find my way back there…

Finally!

2008-04-03T13:13:00.002+08:00

I'm not entirely comfortable admitting how long this took me to make:

slightly larger version here

That's my market, with every single one of the 198 stalls carefully drawn in to the Google Earth picture. Actually, what you're looking at is a screen shot of my Google Earth, where every one of those stalls is mapped out, along with information about what it's selling. It's all part of a new effort to look at the geographic and spacial relationships between stalls in the market - to show that there are more jade stores farther south, and more ethnic minority handicrafts in the north, that kind of thing. Ultimately, I want to turn this into a fully interactive thing, where I can click on any one of the stalls and pull up data and pictures of that stall.

I'm also looking at how to upload the non-confidential information onto the internet, so that I can post a virtual tour of the market complete with photos and basic stall info.

... but yeah. This already took a lot of time! haha

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

2008-03-29T18:47:00.000+08:00

"Excuse me, but your voice is carrying."

I looked up. He was tall and lanky with red hair – American, by his accent. I knew what was coming next. I saw it in the accusatory flash of his eyes; I heard it in my own well-practiced evasions; I remembered it from the first time I decided to study abroad in China. And what turned my stomach was that I agreed. I waited.

"Your voice is carrying, and I don't think this is an appropriate conversation to be having in public. And I think you know it."

The savvy, culturally sensitive, politically correct Sinologist in me – the part that knows a dozen ways to dodge a topic in two languages and the part that understands which topics are simply never to be discussed – knew he was right. I'd been talking too freely, too casually, and too publicly. I'd I'd been talking about Tibet in a cafe, and that's quite simply not done. My voice went through the forms of casually ending the offending phone conversation, my mind reproached me for my words and, in that same instant, the core of my being shuddered with revulsion.

*

The Forbidden City is reputed to have 9,999.5 rooms. If that's true, then it also has 9,999.5 elephants in those rooms, and they're not to be discussed. There is only one China, and Taiwan is a part of it. The Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief, and Beijing arrested the 6-year-old Panchen Lama in 1995. Prostitution is illegal in China, and hair-washing parlors are open past 2am. China's government is atheist, and has sole authority to identify the reincarnation of a living Buddha. China is a socialist state, and the rural poor can neither afford nor access health care. Like delicate quantum superpositions that can be sustained only so long as you never look directly at them and never call them by name, these are the contradictions of modern China's harmonious society – and these are the terms I've accepted.

It's not my country; it's not my problem; it's not my place to have an opinion. I'm a guest in China, and I should keep my head down and get along. And yet. I wrote papers in high school railing on Catholicism's insistence on submission of intellect to the Vatican, but now I implicitly accept the submission of judgment to Beijing as the condition on which I'm allowed to live and study here. This conspiracy of silence is so pervasive and so insidious that even foreigners volunteer to become its enforcers. I didn't blame the American for what he'd said; after all, I agreed with him.

But in that moment, as I watched him walk back to his table and sit down with his Chinese girlfriend, I wanted to leave China and never come back. But that feeling will pass; it always does.

It helps if you don't look at it too closely.

Beijing, Part 2

2008-03-27T11:48:00.000+08:00

The Odyssey of Andy & Evan made its last stop back where it had begun: in Beijing. But before we get to Beijing, an important lesson:

Never, never, never fly into Beijing Nanyuan Airport. It's just not worth it – I don’t care how much cheaper the tickets are. It's essentially like flying into Newark when you're trying to get to NYC, except that there are no transportation links whatsoever between the airport and the city, and you have to rely entirely on heiche ("black cars" – illegal cabs). With no idea how far from the city we were and what kind of price would be reasonable to get into town, I insisted on a cab with a meter… which turned out to be just a dude with overly-tinted windows and the most hilariously crooked "meter" I've ever seen. When it had hit 30 kuai within kilometer (about three times what it should be), Evan and I spotted a public bus stop and got off. Good move to cut our losses, I think. The less good part is that our losses included my cell phone. I'd been texting and had it out of my pocket, and it probably just slid off my lap and onto the floor when we got out. D'oh! So, for anyone who cares, my Chinese number will be 13161166408 for a few weeks (until this number runs out of money and I get a new Chengdu one). So, moral of the story? Nanyuan's just not worth it.

The hostel situation seemed to work out only moderately better than the cab, and Evan and I ended up spending a long time looking for a hostel that came highly recommended… but turns out to be gutted for renovation. lol By the time we finally settled somewhere (that gave up vaguely bad vibes, and had a bathroom way more Asian than Evan was prepared to deal with!) it was time for a dinner of hearty jiaozi (the dumplings that are a specialty of northeast China).

We'd heard that Tian'an Men Square was under lockdown because of the Tibet thing, so we went over to check it out after dinner. Somewhat disappointingly, there were no tanks. The whole thing had been done very smoothly – almost subtly – with single guards standing in places you might not even realize were entry points, and the fence used to separate pedestrian from vehicle traffic just extended so it didn't have any gaps. Really, disappointingly well done! haha

The next day, we went to the Great Wall. Verdict? It's pretty Great. Much amusement with illegal cabs and quazi-legal 28¢ "access fees," but let's cut to the pictures.

It really is a darn photogenic wall.

For some reason, Evan felt the need to do a great deal of running on the Wall.

Ok, here's my thing. One of the persistent stories about the Great Wall was that even if it wasn't that successful as a fortification, it made a great road - even if the Mongols got in, the Wall let you move your troops in to deal with them asap. Bollocks. You're constantly reduced to literally climbing up or down the sides of mountains on the Wall, and even if you could get soldiers to crab-walk their way to the rescue, their horses and supply wagons would have no chance at all.

Crab-walking down a mountain.

These rocks were in a big heart when we got there. We showed them! America > Love.

This was probably the shadiest ladder I've ever seen in my life. Climbing it was not the wisest decision that an Ivy leaguer and a Fulbrighter have ever made. lol

Lunch at the top of a mountain.

For some reason, they just decided not to restore this bit. No idea what they were thinking. It required a somewhat alarming vertical descent where any loose rock would have been a big problem. We totally picked the right part of the Wall! Chinese couple behind us had a lot of trouble.

'You think that was where we were supposed to stop?'
'I dunno, do YOU think it was?'
'Eh, whatever. Let's go to the top of that next mountain and see what we see...'

Definitely NOT where we were supposed to be. You can tell from the picker bushes. lol

I like the contrast here between the unrestored Wall in the foreground and the restored portion in the background

... oh. Whoops. Not real sure why they didn't post that ON the Wall when you make the transition from the public part to the closed part! Glad they didn't, though - overshooting where we were supposed to stop was awesome!

So yes, after resisting for nearly two years, I've finally seen the Wall. And you know what? Very glad I have.

On Evan's last day in China, we did the stuff you're supposed to do in Beijing. We went back to Tian'an Men (it was opened) and tried to see Mao's pickled corpse (it was closed). We went through a lot of the Forbidden City but that really wasn't worth much in my book. Impressively large and impressively red, but it was essentially just an enormous, very red hedge maze.

With time to kill before dinner, Evan and I looked for the Beijing Police Museum, but found it after it was closed. We wandered down in the general direction of the Temple of Heaven, but quickly found ourselves somewhere much more interesting than that. In amongst the narrow, winding hutongs, we found a very exciting market area (where I did some very fun bargaining over some chopsticks that we didn't end up buying). Evan and I spent a long time wandering around the hutongs, soaking up the atmosphere. Definitely a melancholy sort of feeling, seeing all those neighborhoods with signs proclaiming the countdown until their destruction, and knowing that these people's would be destroyed and their lives changed forever in just 39 days and counting.

Finally, Evan and I went to Liqun for Peiking Duck! I'd hoped to pull together a big group of Fulbrighters for dinner, but that wasn't in the cards. And that… is just about it! A very enjoyable visit, albeit with a few hitches that made it all the more of an adventure. I could write more about hanging out in Beijing for a few extra days, then returning home just in time to save my flatmates from almost certain doom… but I won't. haha So that's all for now… until I break down and post something about the Tibet situation and something about Atlas Shrugged. In, you know, a few hours. lol

Chengdu

2008-03-26T20:40:00.000+08:00

The first order of business once we got to Chengdu was obvious: Food. For weeks before Evan arrived, I kept thinking to myself "Man, I've gotta bring Evan here for lunch one day!" or "Oh, I should totally order this while Evan is here!" So, naturally, we started off with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with my flatmates.

After dinner, we went to the Bookworm and hung out for a while. When we arrived, the new author in residence was giving a lecture about "New Media Language-Based Arts," and later Evan and I played a game of Scrabble over a beer while the night's band played a blues/gypsy funk fusion set. What a cool place. By the time my friends all got back from dinner, it was just about time for a little insanity of the Shamrock variety. When it was time to call it a night and head back to my place, Evan and I proceeded to stay up for the next two or three hours anyway, discussing Life the Universe and Everything. Evenings like this are what best friends are for!

Our next day was spent in and around the market where I do my research. Evan bought a very cool phurba, and I had fun bargaining hard on his behalf over a pair of jade earrings (he bought at 5% of her initial asking price – lol). We also went to the Qingyang Temple, which was probably one of the best temples I've ever been to in China. The high point for me was definitely when we were exploring the gardens behind the temple, and ran into a group of old men playing Chinese chess. We stood there for most of the game, as I explained it to Evan and the old folks marveled at our presence. Good times!

Dinner that night was the obligator and wonderful hotpot with a big group of friends. Apart from a slight ordering mishap involving some only mostly dead fish (who were most upset to find themselves suddenly dumped in boiling oil), it was the delicious, boisterous, gastrointestinally stressful hotpot adventure that I've come to know and love! Finally, we joined Bill at his new place of employment (The Leg and Whistle) and hung out with him and his family (who are visiting this week).

The next day, we went to the Panda Base, and Maryanne showed us around. By this time, rumors about the Tibet situation (more on that in another post) had gotten pretty wild, so Evan and I decided to go down to Chengdu's Tibetan district and check it out. The road was closed to vehicle traffic but pedestrians could enter, and the whole place was under very heavy guard from military police in partial riot gear. The whole place had that particularly military sense of tense boredom – very cool to see.

One more night in the Leg, and that was the end of our far-too-short time in Chengdu!

Shanghai

2008-03-26T12:11:00.000+08:00

Immediately after Evan arrived in Beijing, we high-tailed it to Shanghai the next morning. Seems a little strange, I know, but that was just kinda how it worked out.

As soon as we got to Shanghai, I knew that there were two things Evan absolutely had to see – whether he wanted to or not! The first was the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. If you haven't been, you need to click on that link right now and watch the video. Go ahead, I'll wait. … I meant the whole video! … See, isn't that just about the greatest thing ever? The second thing on our "must see" list was the Chinese Sexual Culture Museum, conveniently located at the exit of the Sightseeing Tunnel. There was much inappropriate giggling and picture taking. Finally, we froggered across probably about 436 lanes of traffic to get to the Jin Mao Tower, where we invited ourselves up to the 54th floor and loitered annoyingly in the Hyatt's lobby, enjoying the view. That view included the nearly complete Shanghai World Financial Center which, thanks to a diplomatic snafu, now looks like the world's largest bottle-opener. That made me giggle.

Back at The Captain, Evan and I ran into a girl from Canada who was desperately starved for English conversation, and spent the evening hanging out with her. That's the great thing about hostels – cheap rooms and unexpected friendships. Not much more you could ask of a hotel, eh? Well, maybe a clean and functional bathroom… and no snoring roommates… but still! haha

On Saturday, we found our way to a cool little park (though, upon reflection, it probably wasn't the cool little park we'd been trying to go to) and hung out there for a while. We left there around lunch time… and then spent the next two hours trying to find a restaurant. Not a good restaurant, mind you, but any restaurant whatsoever. Inexplicitly, we'd found our way into the Lace & Buttons district of Shanghai (I've been in China a long time, and I still can't explain why you need an entire district of your city with dozens of shops selling nothing but buttons by the kilo and lace by the spool), and there were absolutely no restaurants to be found. Finally, vaguely dizzy and extremely hungry, we found a restaurant! A terrible restaurant! It was, no exaggeration, the worst food I've ever eaten in China – I've had better Chinese in the Springfield mall. Considerably better. Fortunately, neither the food nor the semi-feral kitten hanging around killed us, and we moved on with life. Predictably, we passed twenty restaurants in the next five minutes. lol

Dinner, however, was much better. We met up with Emma, Chris's language partner from Nanjing, who is now working for L'Oréal and living in Shanghai. She brought us to a very nice restaurant with great local food, and I had a good time hanging out with her. I stand by my conviction that Sichuan food is the best in the country, though!

After dinner, we were planning to meet up with my friend Ping Ping. Shanghai's a cool enough city, 'n all, but the real reason that we wanted to spend the one weekend of Evan's visit in Shanghai was to hang out with Ping Ping. Turns out, no such luck. She'd brought the majority of the CIEE Nanjing kids with her, apparently, and it turns out that they'd had such a good lunch that by the time evening came around Ping Ping was already partied out. Oh, and her phone was dead, so we had no way to find this out. Instead, Evan and I hung out at a club where we didn't know anybody, waiting for friends who never showed up. Not the way I'd hoped to spend the evening, but oh-well.

Rather than write the evening off as a loss, of course, Evan and I made our own fun! We wandered aimlessly around the streets of Shanghai for a while, raging against the dying of the light. You know, like you do. Further proof that, with good friends, and a couple of pointed sticks you can make your own fun! Shanghai didn't exactly make the great leap off my "cities I kinda hate" list, but I'm glad we went.

Beijing, Part 1

2008-03-25T23:23:00.001+08:00

I left Hong Kong early because, well, it's expensive and I didn't have any reason I needed to stay there. I hopped a fast (only 24-hour!) train up to Beijing, and had a good time reading Atlas Shrugged (more on that later) and playing uno with the three other people in my compartment.

Of course, I didn't really have much more reason to be in Beijing than to be in Hong Kong, but I have some friends up there, and it's cheaper! I spent most of my time essentially chilling out and waiting for Evan to show up. I read a lot of my book, watched Firefly with Emma (a Fulbrighter based in Chengdu but currently in Beijing for a few months – more on how my research plus her research equals rioting in the streets in another post), and rested from the conference. Good times.

Then, on Thursday, Evan came! All afternoon, I kept checking his flight status. I was pretty disappointed to see that his first leg (from Detroit to Tokyo) had been delayed two hours for security reasons… and then pretty confused to see that his second leg (Tokyo to Beijing) was on time, and would therefore be taking off an hour before the first leg landed. Odd of them not to hold that flight, but whatever. I did the math and figured that Evan couldn't get in to Beijing before 11, and popped in another episode of Firefly.

Wrong.

Turns out, the internet is full of lies – that first leg had been half an hour early. By the time I was almost at the airport at 11, Evan had gone through two hours of thinking I'd abandoned him in a country where he doesn't speak the language, and had finally managed to call my cell. Whoops. lol It worked out, of course, but I felt like an idiot. haha

Not the most auspicious start to Evan's visit, but things definitely got better from there!

Macao

2008-03-25T12:34:00.002+08:00

After the Fulbright conference was officially over, there was an optional side trip to Macao. Because, you know, what better to follow a conference about China than gambling and gangsters?

Macao (which, like Hong Kong, operates under a "one country, two systems" of quazi-autonomous self governance as a part of the P. R. China) is working hard to position itself as the Las Vegas of the Orient. Gambling is illegal in the PRC and Hong Kong, but it's still wildly popular in Chinese culture. Take that fact, add a few tens of millions of dollars of investment from foreign casino holding companies, and suddenly you've got the highest casino revenues in the world.

The Fulbrighters split into two groups, one focusing on Mattaeo Ricci, and the other on gambling. As an econ person (and as someone who's had plenty enough Ricci over the years, thank you very much) I went for the casinos. We went to dinner with the CFO of Stanley Ho's empire, who was a hilariously snarky America guy who seemed to know everything that was going on on the island. As he rode with us on the bus towards dinner, he gave a running commentary on the PA: "...That casino over there is reputed to have the loosest cocktail waitresses in the eastern hemisphere… Over there is the site of the Triad assassination last month… When I saw the architect's model for that monstrosity over there, I honestly thought it was just some awful new piece of corporate art on Stanley's desk, not a building we were actually going to inflict on the island…" and so on. Awesome.

Dinner, in addition to featuring more of the CFO's Deep Thoughts on Life the Gambling Industry and Everything, was probably the best meal I've ever eaten – certainly in China. It was one of those overly-pretentious seven-course meals where they bring you tiny little plates of not much, but each of the dishes was unbelievably good, and somehow the whole meal leaves you with exactly the right level of satiation. Also, Macao has a startlingly good beer. Are the Portuguese known for their beer?

After dinner, most of the gambling group went to the Venetian Macau, the largest casino in the world. I definitely went as a fake anthropologist rather than as a real gambler, and the whole thing was fascinating form that standpoint. I loved watching all the little rituals the players had (Crack your neck, snort three times, bend back one corner of your card to see what it is, cough, turn the card, bend back another corner to make sure, then toss the cards back at the dealer. Lather, rinse, repeat.), and the careful, lightning-quick choreography of the dealers. The dealers, for example, have to flash their palms up after every time they touch cards or chips (to show the security cameras that their hands are empty) and they do it in this incredibly fast, matter-of-fact sort of way that's very cool to watch. I imagine the whole thing would be an OCD person's dream-come-true.

Oh, other side-benefit of this whole PRC-HK-Macao-HK-PRC trip: my passport is now totally awesome. I'm going to need to apply for extra pages when I get home!

Hong Kong

2008-03-24T19:15:00.000+08:00

Back in Chengdu! This month's adventures have been awesome, but I'm more than ready to get back to my regularly scheduled life and research. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to go back and catch up on some of the cool things that went on while I was on my internet hiatus. So, starting with Hong Kong…

The Fulbright China Research Forum in Hong Kong (or "conference" to its friends) was really great. It's a lot of fun to spend time talking, arguing, and hanging out with such a smart, ambitious, and well-informed group of young people. Everybody at that conference has some topic that they're extremely knowledgeable and passionate about, and now everybody's got a dozen stories about the inevitable insanity of living in China. Fortunately, the folks organizing the conference realized that, and worked hard to make the conference a series of semi-structured opportunities for us to interact with and learn from each other, rather than making us sit through endless panel presentations or lectures (or, worse yet, PBS documentaries about China. I'm looking at you pre-departure orientation in D.C.!). Other than the painfully early starts and the disappointing food, it was great.

Since I was planning to meet up with some people and do a little job-search networking, I stayed in Hong Kong a few extra days after the conference. That was when I realized that Hong Kong is basically the greatest city ever. Absolutely incredible.

I was staying at Chungking Mansions, which houses the filthiest, shadiest, most sketch-tacular flophouse I've ever stayed in. I didn't even take pictures of it, because I honestly didn't expect to still have my camera by morning! haha When the maid lead me to my room (in a different building from where I'd checked in, up a rickety elevator, up four more flights of stairs because the elevator couldn't go that high, and through two doors labeled "No Entry"), the door to my room was already open, and a guy who looked like a teenage Japanese dude in most of a suit was flopped on my bed, passed the hell out (at 4pm). The maid kicked him, told him he was in the wrong room, and he stumbled out. "I wonder how he got in here?" the maid mused, "But look, he barely even mussed the covers! Have a good night!" Awesome. The neighborhood was an incredible warren of curry shops, African Halal dives, and people with large mustaches constantly offering you "Lolexes." It was one of the most diverse, vibrant, intense places I've ever been… and it was only two metro stops away from The Mid-Levels and SoHo.

The Mid-Levels and SoHo are an unbelievable fusion of Old World swank and Asian flair, where businessmen commute by escalator by day, and wealthy young people from around the world come to show off their designer clothes and hand-made cars at exclusive bars and clubs by night. I felt solidly underdressed in a tailor-made suit, and I couldn't stop marveling at how close I still was to the insanity of Chungking Mansions. It's hard to believe that so much energy and so much diversity exists in such a small space!

As I waited for my train out of Hong Kong, I picked up a copy of the South China Morning Post. It's pretty common for me to pick up a newspaper before a long trip… but this was the first time I'd ever picked one up for the classifieds. Definitely a city I'd like to see more of!

Just you wait...

2008-03-11T14:19:00.003+08:00

Hong Kong is an incredible city, and I can't wait to go back. The Fulbright conference was also very good - but more about all that later. For now, I offer a brief tidbit about the city I'm in now: Beijing.

You know that old prank where you release pigs in a school with the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5 painted on them, with the idea being that the janitors will go nuts looking for Pig 3? Similarly, Beijing has subway lines numbered 1, 2, 5, and 13. Just you wait... those other nine lines will be completed any minute now!

lol

Hong Kong

2008-03-05T15:27:00.001+08:00

Taking advantage of a brief pause in the conference to hop online!

Hong Kong has been terriffic. Fulbrighters are a darn interesting group, and most of the conference has been centered around facilitating conversation between us about... pretty much whatever we want to talk about! Among other things, I got a chance to talk to some of the IIE staff about what changes I think need to be made to help the Fulbrighters learn about and impliment responsible, ethical, and legal research practices.

Also, I'm thinking of taking the initiative myself to create a Wikipedia-style webpage for Fulbrighters to share their experiences with eachother and future grantees. Once I get back to China, I'll look in to that. Good stuff.

Lunch today was frantic networking with representatives from the Better Hong Kong Foundation (the host of my table was the Managing Director of McKinsey's HK office!), and dinner tonight is at the Consul General's residence. I'm still not 100% sure what my plans are between the end of the conference and when Evan gets in, but after this weekend I'm sure I'll have a couch or eighty to crash on wherever I spend the time!

Holy Inflationary Pressure, Batman!

2008-03-02T09:50:00.003+08:00

Lunar New Year has come and gone and with the new year have come new prices – dramatic ones. After working out yesterday, I cruised into my local kwiki mart, grabbed a bottle of water, and put the usual 2.5块 on the table. 'You're short one kuai,' the woman told me, 'they're a little more expensive this year.' I pulled out the extra cash and thought about the situation. Sure, one more kuai (US 14¢) really is just a little more expensive… but it's also 40% more expensive.

Most of my daily out-of-pocket expenses are in the food or entertainment categories, and I've been reminded of the price increases almost every time I reached into my pocket lately. Case in point, here's what I spent money on yesterday:

Purchase	Old Price	New Price	% Increase
Yogurt breakfast drink	3.6	3.6	0
1.5 L Water bottle	2.5	3.5	40
Pulled Noodles	4	5	25
Diet Pepsi	1.9	2.4	26
Green Tea	15	15	0
"Family Style" dinner	12	14	17
Bottle of beer (expat bar)	15	20	33
AVERAGE			20%

Now, that's nobody's idea of a balanced and representative market basket, but I think it shows the sudden and dramatic way prices have jumped in the last month. Nationally, China's consumer price index in January jumped to 7.1 percent, from 2.2 percent a year earlier. The article that I just linked to also says that "Much of the problem is food. Food price inflation in China is running about 18 percent year-over-year." That's pretty much the same as what I've seen from last month to this!

It'll be interesting to see how this ripples through the global economy. Personally, I hope I'm not trying to break into the China hand industry just as the economy matures beyond the role it's had in the world economy for the past two decades!

The Nut That Holds the Handlebars

2008-02-28T21:01:00.003+08:00

This is my bike:

Let's take a closer look at that seat…

Thanks to some brilliant engineering work, my bike features a huge metal bar in the seat, which pushed its way through the pleather and foam seat and into my crotch after about a week. This is not quite as uncomfortable as you'd expect… but it's close. Even more remarkable than the fact that my bike was designed with such an obvious flaw is the fact that I haven't yet spent the hour and five dollars that would be required to buy a seat that doesn't suck. Nor will I, in all likelihood. Not real sure why. hahaha

In other bike-related news, I kinda caused a minor accident the other day. lol So, I've taken to jogging to my gym. The health benefits of jogging outdoors in China are dubious at best, but I enjoy it – the mental challenge of urban jogging makes it much more tolerable than the mind-numbing futility of a treadmill. Anyway, I was jogging to the gym, and a middle-aged woman was coming towards me on her little bike/scooter thing, well out of my way and not on a collision course. She was looking down, futzing with something on her jacket, and then looked up and noticed me when she was three or four yards away. The woman flipped out. Apparently, conventional wisdom holds that Americans never move above a slow lumber except when we're invading something (and even then, we prefer to ride in tanks), and she just could not handle this white guy jogging towards her. She cried out in surprise, threw both hands into the air, and lost control of her bike. hahaha She caught herself before she totally wiped out, and there was no harm done. I, meanwhile, tried hard not to laugh… which probably makes me a terrible person. lol

On the non-bike front, my flatmates have finally come back! It's good to have some noise and activity in the apartment again – this was a big place to have all to myself. Less exciting, however, is the fact that I've had to swap rooms. Since the four rooms in our flat are patently unequal and we couldn't agree on a graduated rent arrangement, we decided that the best and the worst rooms would switch half-way through our lease (as would the middle two). As a result, I've lost my loft penthouse and moved into a room approximately twice the size of my old bathroom. lol I'll put up a picture soon.

Speaking of pictures, I'll leave you with this little gem, taken in the park outside Dufu's Thatched Cottage:

hehehe… I'm pretty sure that it actually means that you should buy fish food, rather than using your private stash of breadcrumbs. Still…

On the Road Again

2008-02-25T16:58:00.000+08:00

My last post mentioned that I'm heading off for some traveling soon, but when I talked with my parents last weekend, I realized that I hadn't mentioned why. Two things are coming up that lead me to travel: the first is the Fulbright China Research Forum in Hong Kong; the second is that Evan's coming to China!

The Fulbright China Research Forum (March 3 – 6) is meant to be a sort of mid-point in our time in China (though it's well before half-way for those who did the CLEA and past half-way for those of us who didn't), and I'm really looking forward to it. I really enjoyed the Pre-Departure Orientation in D.C. last summer, largely because the Fulbrighters, as a group, are darn interesting people! Everybody's got some topic that they're extremely knowledgeable and passionate about, and we've all had some common experiences with China despite our diverse origins throughout the States. This conference should be even better, both because we're all going to be flush with stories from the field, and because Hong Kong is a cool city that I'm really looking forward to seeing. After the official events of the Forum, there's an optional day-and-a-half trip to Macao that I expect almost all of us will go on. Should be a good time. After the Forum, I expect to stick around Hong Kong for a few days to meet with a few people.

When I'm done in Hong Kong, I'll head up to Beijing. Hopefully, I'll have time there to do a few days' research at Panjiayuan, the granddaddy of all Chinese curio & antiques markets. Then, on the 13th, Evan gets in! We're going to head down to Shanghai pretty much straight away for a weekend of craziness and visiting friends, and then out to Chengdu. We'll hang out here for a few days (too short!), then head back to Beijing for a last few days of hiking the Great Wall and doing the Beijing tourism thing before Evan leaves on the 22nd. It's gonna be a jam-packed week or so, and it's gonna be awesome!

So yeah, that's what's coming up. I can't wait!

Made glorious summer by this sun

2008-02-21T17:11:00.002+08:00

... but somewhat less glorious by this rancid cooking oil.

It's finally warmed up here, and yesterday morning marked the beginning of my triumphant post-Spring Festival return to hardcore researching. My hiatus turns out to have been fairly justified, as most of the vendors I talked to yesterday said they've only just reopened in the past four or five days or so. Yay!

But you know what they say: One step forward, 36 hours flat on your back. As a result, I've learned the following things:

- Being sick is no fun. Being sick when you live alone is waaaaay worse.
- In the interest of sanitation and sanity, I think maybe it's okay to pay more than 70¢ for lunch.
- Acidophilus is my new favorite microorganism. Actually, I think it was also my old favorite microorganism too, but I have a renewed appreciation.
- My apartment's DVD player will work about 40% of the time… though only in black & white, for some reason.
- David Attenborough can make anything interesting, including an entire hour of cameras panning around trees.

Speaking of health, I got invited to the Cleveland Clinic's closed beta of Google Health. Worried that there was a remote chance that Google might not already know everything about me, I figured I'd sign up. Thus far, not overwhelmingly impressed. Better interface than the CC's MyChart thing, but nothing thrilling.

Anyway, feeling better now, and looking forward to my trip to Hong Kong (and beyond!) next month.

Your tax dollars at work.

2008-02-20T11:29:00.000+08:00

So, the triumphant conclusion to Bill's exploding MacBook: Spring Festival has finally ended and Bill gave them his defunct hard drive to mail to Shanghai a week or so ago. They called him yesterday to tell him that his new drive was in, and that if he wanted their help reinstalling the operating system, he should bring his disks. Uh-oh.

This was clearly a problem that was going to require some good Chinese, so Bill called me up and I went with. When we got there, we were informed that, if he didn't have his own OS disks, there was really nothing they could do. Not only was it a hardware repair store only (and thus they didn't have any disks to use if they wanted to), but apparently it's strictly against Apple policy to just go handing out their operating system willy-nilly.

And so, I began to negotiate. I've been reading the seminal (though cheesy) Getting to Yes, and I was very deliberately bearing it and everything I've learned in my market thus far in mind. First, it was just flat-out impossible – couldn't physically be done. Then it was technically possible, but against important company policy and anybody who did it for us would get in big trouble. Next they could do it, but we'd have to buy the disks for US$ 125. Finally, after nearly an hour of my best Chinese pleading, coaxing, cajoling, and complaining, they told us to have a seat for a while, and started making calls.

An hour later, we walked out with the latest operating system installed and without paying a dime. score.

I feel like I should put this on my resume, you know? "Can persuade uncooperative customer service representatives in Chinese," or something like that. That oughta say more than an HSK score, right? haha

Zen and the Art of Macintosh Maintenance

2008-02-20T10:50:00.001+08:00

It's a bad day when you hit F12 and, for no apparent reason, your MacBook crashes. It becomes a worse day when you try to turn your machine back on and get nothing but a question mark on the screen and an ominous clicking sound from your hard drive… and then you realize that you hadn't backed up or emailed the articles that were due for that day's publication deadline. The situation becomes almost comically absurd, however, when you realize that it's the day before Chinese New Year.

Welcome to my friend Bill's situation a week and a half ago. When I heard Bill's problem, I thought there was a good chance I could help, since I'd rescued the data off Caela's Mac with their ever-so-handy FireWire Target Disk Mode, but when I heard his hard drive clicking, I knew we were in for a long day. He and our Chinese friend Aaron and I all went to Chengdu's one and only authorized Apple retailer, in one of the huge, multi-story electronics superstores (which resembles a high-tech version of my curio bazaar far more than any electronics store in the west). When we got there, the 8-story building was locked, barred, and abandoned, with a sign on the door that said "Happy New Year."

Aaron knew better than to be deterred, and he lead us on a search for a side entrance. We finally got into an elevator shaft, then checked about five different floors before we found that was propped open by some garbage collectors and snuck in (despite my insistence that there was no point – the building was closed and locked, why would the store be opened?). Up a few more flights of stairs, and we finally found the Apple store. Incredibly, it was open! Kinda!

There was one employee there but, fortunately, he seemed to really know his stuff. As soon as he heard the clicking noise, he announced confidently that the hard drive was shot, no chance of data recovery, hope it's under warranty. Since it was, they'd replace the hard drive for free… after Spring Festival. 'The mail has already gone today, so I couldn't even send it to Apple Shanghai until we come back in a week.' Seriously? I mean, restaurants and little mom & pop shops I can accept, but how does an entire country's high-tech service sector just shut down for a week?

We left, figuring there was no reason to leave the computer to sit on a shelf in their store for a week until it got mailed. At Aaron's suggestion, we checked out a couple of shady little computer repair places (filthy, dingy little Frankenstein's Laboratory-type places with soldering irons, voltmeters, and computer bits strewn everywhere) to see if any of them could at least recover Bill's data. Around 3:00, we found a guy who said he had the hardware to recover any readable data on the drive. 'But could you come back next week instead?' he asked, 'I want to go home early today, and I won't be back 'til after Spring Festival.' I couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing and walked out of the store without waiting for the others.

As we left, resigned to Bill losing his data and not being able to even start the repair process for a week, Bill and I ranted about the inefficiency of a modern economy just shutting down for so long. Just think how much productivity that destroys! 'But in America,' Aaron replied, 'Your stores must close for a long time for Christmas.'

'Nope. In fact, most retail places open early and close late right before Christmas. It's not Christmas in America if you can't buy stuff at the last minute!'

Aaron stopped (in the middle of the road we were crossing) and stared at me in disbelief. 'You are joking with me. That's impossible! Even Christmas Eve?'

'Especially Christmas Eve.'

'Wow. You are crazy.'

I looked over at Bill and his "Useless until after Spring Festival" MacBrick. 'Yeah,' I agreed, 'We're crazy. But at least you can get your computer fixed!'

well, at least it wasn't me...

2008-02-12T11:41:00.001+08:00

ABC News: Peace Corps, Fulbright Scholar Asked to 'Spy' on Cubans, Venezuelans

Oh, good. Because it wasn't already hard enough for me to convince people that I'm funded by the government, but not working for the government. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to explain - to Chinese and Americans alike - that Fulbrighters don't go home at the end of the year and report back to the CIA. gah.

Wish me Luck!

2008-02-11T15:41:00.000+08:00

Ever since I got back to China, the brutal cold (which is finally letting up!) and the Spring Festival shut-down have forced me to direct my attention away from my research and towards another important project: Trying to get a job. After a lot of time and effort researching and preparing, today I finalized and submitted applications for what I think is the ideal job for me: Consulting.

What is a consulting? Glad you asked. Remember Bob & Bob from Office Space? Well, what the movie didn't tell you was that The Bobs had both gotten 1500+ SAT scores, had graduated top of their classes from the best MBA schools in the country, and were making bank. They were consultants.

Basically, consultants are people you hire to help your company deal with challenges that you don't have the talent, experience, or outside objectivity to deal with yourself. Thinking of outsourcing your manufacturing to China but not sure how the lengthened supply chain will impact your customers' just-in-time inventory practices? Trying to figure out whether the Faustian bargain of retailing at WalMart would pay off for your company or not? Suspect that your corporate culture and internal structure are holding your company back, but the powers that be are too entrenched to craft and initiate the required shake-up? Hire a consulting firm. Depending on the firm, many consultants develop specialties, either in an industry (energy or automotive, for example) or in a business activity (supply chaining, HR, M&A, etc.).

The more I learn about consulting, the more it sounds like the perfect job for me. It's an extremely competitive, very demanding field where you get overworked and overpaid (with an emphasis on the former in the beginning and the latter as your career develops). It's a working environment where you're facing new projects and new challenges regularly, and most firms have offices all over the world with lots of opportunity to spend time abroad. Ultimately, consulting equips you with a very marketable set of skills, and it's very common for "alumni" of top consulting firms to move on to upper leadership positions in other companies.

As an entry-level consultant (called an Associate Consultant or a Business Analyst at most firms), it'd be my job to crunch the numbers and help collect the data that more senior consultants base their analysis on, with an increasing role in crafting recommendations as I gained experience. I'd also probably travel a lot as my team visited clients to evaluate their situations. Essentially, I'd be a spreadsheet monkey living out of a suitcase for two or three years. If I'm a good spreadsheet monkey, however, they'll send me to the best MBA program I can get in to, foot the bill, and hire me back at more than double my previous salary.

Managing to snag one of these jobs is a long cry from a sure thing – it's probably the longest shot I've ever taken, including my Fulbright application. The top firms (like BCG, McKinsey, Bain & Co., and Booz Allen) can see more than 25,000 applicants a year, and everybody who bothers to apply is among the best of the best. If you pass the initial cut, the interview process is brutal. If you make it, however, you've landed a challenging, demanding, prestigious, and interesting job. And I wouldn't want anything less.

Happy New Year everybody!

2008-02-08T02:59:00.001+08:00

Maryanne took this video. For reference, we were on the roof of an 18-story building.

INCREDIBLE. Details, pictures, and probably another video or two to follow.

Football with Chinese Characteristics

2008-02-04T14:03:00.000+08:00

I knew something was wrong when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, but it took me a second to figure out what it was. Oh, yeah… I was getting up before dawn to watch football.

I shambled across the street to the Shamrock and ordered a coffee. The Shamrock, despite the fact that they do this every year and really ought to have it figured out by now, were hopelessly understaffed for the 40 or so Americans who had suddenly arrived and ordered breakfast. I wasn't in a hurry, though, and enjoyed watching the pregame show while I waited for my friends to show up.

The pregame show was, as near as we could figure, in Thai. The three panelists were hilarious: there was Youth Dude who had a scruffy beard, a Livestrong bracelet, and an Apple laptop in front of him; next came Cadre Man, who wore a black suit and a black tie, and whose jowls would kinda jiggle if he got into whatever he was saying; finally there was Awkward Guy, who wore a sweater vest and, as far as I can tell, never spoke. The three (or possibly two) of them droned on in a fairly monotonous stream of indistinct noise, that somehow seemed to convey across the language barrier the impression that these three Thai guys had never watched an American football game in their lives.

Finally, the national anthem! Wait a minute, what? The Thai dudes are still talking. Huh? It turns out, our satellite feed only had audio from the Thai commentary. No national anthem, no crowd noise, nothing but a monotonous stream of Thai that never seemed to change pitch or tempo or convey any emotion whatsoever. Awesome. lol You'd be surprised how much crowd noise contributes to the viewing experience – it seems distinctly odd to just have these disembodied voices that seem completely ungrounded in the game.

Anyway, so the kickoff is away, and the Giants are well on their way to a good, clock-eating drive. Huh? Now what? Everybody just left the field! It was a TV time-out, and we were watching a long shot of an empty field. Anybody who ever tells you football has too many commercials, just be glad there's something going on, because staring at an empty field while people drone on in Thai is just odd! hahaha

Finally, during half-time, somebody figured out how to get an (almost) live stream of the game's audio on his computer, and plugged it into the sound system. There was about a 30-second delay, which basically meant that our audio was a play behind, but it was way better than the Thai! So we had audio (complete with crowd noise and commercials) for the second half of the game.

And, as of course you know if you watched, it was an awesome game. Gotta love when Manning looked sacked, then suddenly reappeared on his feet to throw a pass that the receiver caught in coverage with his face. Most of the people in the Sham seemed to be Pats fans, so I had a fun time playing spoiler to that! All in all, a great game and a great experience – totally worth getting out of bed for!

Also, side note: All those statues of Mao look kinda like he's juking. I imagine that someone better with Photoshop than I could make an awesome Heisman Trophy. Maybe the Helmsman Trophy? Given to the college football player who best exemplifies the ideals of the proletariat revolution? I should write to the NCAA..

Help me Dr. Galilei, you're my only hope!

2008-02-03T13:06:00.000+08:00

I field a lot of strange questions from people who don't quite have a grip on the world outside China's boarders - that's part of the fun of traveling. "What's the difference between English and Russian?" "How's the weather in 你们国外 (you guys' foreign places)", that kind of thing. A reasonably common one is "Why do you Americans speak English instead of American?" but my last run-in with that question was epic.

Why do you Americans speak English instead of American?
Because a few hundred years ago, America was a colony of England.
Oh. How did the English get all the way to America?
um, boats.
But it's so far! You have to go all the way across China!
What?
The English had to go all the way across China to get to America.
uh, no they didn't. They just crossed the Atlantic.
No, America and England are too far apart.

At this point, the guy took out a piece of paper and drew me a map Naturally, China was in the center of his map, which put England on the left side of the page and America on the right. I picked up the paper and rolled it into a cylinder. "These two sides connect," I said, "You can go straight from England to America." "Yes, of course," he replied, "But how did they get all the way across China?"

I sorta gave up at that point and conceded that, yes, England and America were far apart, and that it was tough to get there with 16th century boat technology. He seemed satisfied with that, and we both went on with our regularly scheduled lives. Somehow.

And you thought YOUR commute was rough?

2008-01-29T10:31:00.000+08:00

CNN.com - Snow slams China; half million stranded at train station:

In the southern city of Guangzhou, as many as 500,000 train passengers were stranded the past few days when a power failure in neighboring Hunan province crippled the regular train services, local officials said. About 100,000 passengers packed the square in front of the train station while others found shelter in schools and other public buildings while waiting for their trains

Think about that for a minute. Half a million people stranded at the train station. That's more than if every single man, woman, and child in Las Vegas (2000 census) were suck at a train station - twenty percent of them outside!

Here in Chengdu, the situation is less extreme, but still kinda nutty. We had a centimeter of snow on the ground yesterday for the first time in... ever. Naturally, everybody promptly got into their cars and proceeded to run in to one another. The news this morning was awesome. Apparently, nobody in this usually warm city realizes that bridges and overpasses freeze before the ground does. The news tried to do a story about it, but the reporter had to dive out of the way of incoming collisions not once but twice. awesome.

For anyone wondering what the entire population of Las Vegas was doing at a train station in the first place, they're just a tiny percentage of China's migrant laborer population, heading back to the country to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families. By official estimates, China's migrant laborer population was 113.9 million people in 2003. That's more than the population of Mexico – and that's an official (read: crazy low-balled) estimate from four years ago. That's also why you don't travel during Chinese New year. haha

Brother, can you spare a dime?

2008-01-28T22:34:00.000+08:00

"Do you have any change?" After nearly every purchase in china, cashiers will almost invariably try to plug you for exact change – or even inexact change! If your bill is seven kuai, expect the cashier to ask you for two kuai so she can give you a five. Last weekend, I had waitresses get flustered when I tried to pay a 14 kuai bill with a 20, informing me that she had absolutely no change whatsoever. The implication was pretty clearly that this was my problem, and that I should resign myself to being overcharged 43%. Eventually, I convinced her to let me leave the restaurant, buy a Coke across the street, and come back and come back with exact change. Another time, I was asked for exact change and, when I denied having it, the cashier leaned over and tried to poke around in my wallet to see if I was holding out on him! I'm not really sure what this says about the Chinese economy. I don't think urban areas like Chengdu are cash-starved; I think maybe it reflects lower expectations of professionalism from firms in China. I dunno. Vaguely annoying, whatever the reason. heh

In other news, I think the inevitable might finally have happened. There have been rumors forever (2005, 2006, 2007), but I think China might finally have found a way to block all access to Skype. I was on my comp (signed in to Skype but not using it) a few days ago, when I suddenly got a message that I'd been logged out. When I tried to log back in - and every time since then - I got an error message that says "Skype cannot connect." None of my friends have been able to connect lately either – even when routing traffic through TOR. This could be the end of the 2¢/min call home. On the up side, however, the only reference to trouble right now that I can find online is also from Chengdu, which means that it could be a local problem rather than a national policy shift. We shall see.

Some unrelated anecdotes:

2008-01-24T16:21:00.010+08:00

It snowed again today. Apparently, there's been a major cold snap in China, and the word on the street here is that Monday was the coldest day Chengdu's had in ten years! Heavy heater use is putting a major drain on the electrical grid here, and the peripheral parts of the city have been experiencing rolling blackouts. I doubt that downtown, where I am, will be forced to bear equal burden in the blackouts, though. The one day I went to the market today, no buyers were there, and even half the vendors had closed up shop. My fieldnotes for that day boil down to: 'Everybody's too smart to buy or sell this stuff in the freezing cold. I'll be back to collect data when it's warmer!'

Some folks have received (and others will soon be receiving) a thank you/happy holidays card from me. I've found out, however, that at least one of the letters was ripped open and apparently read while it was in the mail! At first, I assumed that this was the Chinese authoritarian apparatus coming down rather ham-handedly and arbitrarily on my thank you notes. When I thought about it, however, I realized that I'd sent Happy New Year cards… in red envelopes. The traditional gift for Chinese New Year is a little red envelope full of money. So it looks like some enterprising postal employee went rooting through some of my thank you notes for cash! hahaha Here's hoping they all make it where they're going eventually…

I was riding the elevator up to my gym today, watching the stream of advertisements on the elevator's LCD. An attractive white woman comes on the screen and then closes her eyes seductively, revealing French flags painted onto her eyelids. Next comes a Latina, who closes her eyes to reveal Brazilian flags. Same with a blond woman sporting American flags. Finally, an Asian woman appears, and closes her eyes to reveal Chinese flags painted on her very distinct eyelids. The commercial said something about achieving "international beauty," and I caught the word for surgery. It was a commercial for Epicanthoplasty – plastic surgery to remove the Asian epicanthal fold. wow.

cooool

2008-01-21T22:12:00.000+08:00

Associated Press January 21, 2008:

MEXICO CITY (AP) — This year, for the first time, expatriate Democrats can cast their ballots on the Internet in a presidential primary for people living outside the United States. Democrats Abroad, an official branch of the party representing overseas voters, will hold its first global presidential preference primary from Feb. 5 to 12, with ex-pats selecting the candidate of their choice by Internet as well as fax, mail and in-person at polling places in more than 100 countries.

Awesome! More details are at the Times: Americans Abroad Can Now Vote Online.

Of Tasty Tubers and Inclimate Weather

2008-01-20T15:44:00.000+08:00

It's snowing in Chengdu. This isn't supposed to happen.

To be fair, it's that kind of snow where it feels well above freezing and it's just a few flakes drifting down to melt immediately on the ground. But still! In further weather-related news, I finally bought a space-heater. It's a small thing that looks exactly like a fan, and makes the meter or so directly in front of itself hot and dry enough to make beef jerky, while leaving the rest of the room still generally frigid. I'm pretty sure this is largely because my windows – while offering a beautiful view – leak heat like crazy. I'd love to cover them with clear plastic, but as I discovered when I made a cover for our ping pong table, rolls of poly are startlingly hard to find in China. Anyway, I've finally realized that instead of simply accepting the nonfunctional heater on my wall as decorative, perhaps I should get the management to actually fix it. This is a major revelation. Hey, quit sniggering!

To turn the topic to the titular tasty tubers (and other asinine alliterations), I finally did something the other day that I've been meaning to do since I first came to China: Eat a roadside sweet potato. During certain seasons, street vendors appear everywhere, wheeling carts with large (maybe 4'x'3x'3) round ovens, roasting sweet potatoes. The cooked sweet potatoes are usually displayed on top of the oven, and they are horrible looking – all dirty and burnt and gross (I should get a picture – they really do look inedible). I'd been told, however, that as soon as you peel off the skin, the sweet potato inside is delicious. Well, I was finally hungry when I saw one of these guys and gave it a shot. I may have a new favorite street food!

On the research front, there's some interesting stuff going on because of the upcoming Spring Festival (which starts Feb 7, I believe). I'm trying to get as much data on it as I reasonably can… but it's an uphill battle! To be honest, waking up to see that it's forty degrees and raining makes me want to do just about anything in the world except go chill (literally) in an outdoor market for a few hours. I'm told the weather gets a little warmer and a lot drier after Spring Festival, so I'm looking forward to that. In the mean time, I figure if I get good data on the Spring Festival stuff, I can probably call that a job well done for now.

Sorry I've been a little quiet online lately. Still getting back in the habit of writing here after not doing it over winter. Should have some good updates coming up!

No thanks, I'd rather not have another $10k

2008-01-12T16:41:00.000+08:00

This week, one of the other Chengdu Fulbrighters arrived in town, and I spent most of Wednesday playing host and showing her around town, which I enjoyed. Why is she only starting now, you ask? Well, she (and one other Fulbrighter, who I believe arrives today) is spent fall semester at IUP Beijing (one of the big names in the study abroad game) as a bonus added on before the start of her Fulbright grant period.

As part of the government's National Security Language Initiative, Fulbright applicants going to places that speak Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, etc. can simultaneously apply for the main grant and for a Critical Language Enhancement Award (CLEA), which covers four to six months of intensive language training. Normally, the National Security Language Initiative grants carry a service obligation, but not if you do it through Fulbright.

When I was writing my application, I tried to play up my decent Chinese as a reason why I should get the grant, and I didn't want to undermine that by applying for the CLEA at the same time. Since receiving the Fulbright, I have discovered that applying for the CLEA doesn't affect your chances of getting a Fulbright, and that everyone who applied for a CLEA for China got it. D'oh! Although I'm kinda glad that my grant follows an academic calendar so I can hit the standard hiring cycle, I'm still kicking myself for not taking advantage of the CLEA. That could have been an extra semester of language training, absolutely free!

How to Tell if Your Country’s Visa & Immigration System is a Mess

2008-01-06T09:06:00.000+08:00

For anybody who’s interested, my endocrinologist appointment went really well. My (bad) hormone levels are down to less than a third of what they were at my last appointment, and less than a fifth of what they were at initial diagnosis. For the first time ever, my doc was satisfied enough with the progress he was seeing that he didn’t think it was necessary to up the dose on my meds. Awesome. I’ll have another appointment with him when I come back in the summer. I can’t schedule that appointment with him, however, because at some point in July he’s going to have to leave the country for a few weeks to futz around with his visa. Seriously? Inspired by his situation, I have created the following three-question quiz for How to Tell if Your Country’s Visa & Immigration System is a Mess:

1. Would large sectors of your economy (agriculture, construction, etc.) collapse if they weren’t illegally employing millions of undocumented workers?

2. Is one level of your government (national) completely responsible for customs & boarder enforcement, and another (provincial, state, or local) primarily responsible for providing services to immigrants (legal or otherwise) once they show up? Do these two levels of government have different sources of funding and often have difficulty coordinating their efforts?

3. Does a national-caliber endocrinologist who has been living, working, and paying a lot of taxes in your country for fifteen years still find it impossible to get a permanent residency permit or citizenship, and have to leave the country periodically to mess with his visa?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of the questions above, your country’s visa & immigration system might a mess.

Slight change in destination

2008-01-04T23:42:00.000+08:00

well, after 24 long hours of airports and planes, I am officially alive and well and (somewhat to my own surprise!) in Chengdu!

My original plan was to spend a few days in Beijing and then take the train back out west. On my flight to Beijing, however, I unexpectedly ran into one of my friends from Chengdu! She told me that she was going to buy an airplane ticket back to Chengdu as soon as we landed - standby if need be. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was done traveling and ready to spend the night in my own bed. So I did! No sooner did I clear customs & immigration then I went and bought a 760RMB (US$104) ticket to Chengdu. A quick (2.5 hour) flight later, and I was home! (Or, at least, one of the places that passes for home these days. lol!)

I had a great visit to the States - it was terrific to see my family and friends. And now I'm very glad to be back, and I'm looking forward to resuming my research!

Stateside!

2007-12-21T07:40:00.000+08:00

I'm back in good ol' A. K. Rowdy!

On the way over here, I tried a new strategy to fight jet lag. My entire trip was during EST daytime, so I stayed awake through the entire flight. It got a little long, but it gave me a chance to read Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and an entire David Baldacci novel. Heh I was pretty out of it by the time I finally got home, but then I slept 11 to 8! I caffeinated pretty heavily today, but I'm betting that it's going to be an easy time change this time.

I may or may not update this blog while I'm in the States, we'll see. I head back to China on the 3rd, so I'll definitely start writing again after that.

While you're eagerly awaiting my next amazing post (which might actually be soon, because I have some stuff from Shanghai to get up still!), you might want to check out this hilarious article from The Economist about Mao as a (terrible) hypothetical leadership book author: Mao and the art of management. I first heard about it from Charles, who sent me the link because of the issue's awesome cover:

I think I'm gonna buy a copy just for the cover!

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2007-12-15T21:49:00.000+08:00

There are some books you read where the words pass by you like so much water under a bridge and leave nothing lasting behind them. And then there are books whose words and ideas overflow their banks and threaten to sweep away the bridge itself. I've been reading one such book these last few days: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

As I got ready to leave for China last July, my mom got me a number of books to bring with me. Some of them, per my request, were mindless legal thrillers; others she picked out herself. One of those that she selected was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was the last of the books that I started to read, but it has proven to be by far the best.

By the time I had read fifty pages, I had already decided (in a revelation surpassed in triteness perhaps only by those of the countless 13-year-olds who discover the Stones each day and decide that they don't need no mind control) that I wanted build a motorcycle and learn to maintain it myself. Half-way through the book, I was wishing I'd taken philosophy classes in college, and long before I was finished I knew that I would read it again immediately.

I finished the book on my train ride to Shanghai. Really, it's hard to imagine a better way to spend 36 hours than with a brilliant book, two baguettes, a block of bleu cheese and a wheel of brie, a bottle of red wine, and no responsibilities whatsoever. The only thing you could add to that equation would be a friend to share the ride and discuss the book with!

I'm half-way through the book for the second time now, this time with pen in hand to write comments in the margins. A good enough book that I look forward to reading it again years from now, and seeing from my cramped handwriting and underlines how I read the text as a 23-year-old in China. If you're looking for some wintertime reading and aren't afraid to think a little, I highly recommend it. Obviously. haha

In unrelated news, this is why I don't eat fish in China.

Blind Massage

2007-12-15T21:42:00.000+08:00

"Do you really want to try this? The blind people massage have much more hurt than others."

"I'm pretty tough," I respond with a calculated blend of bravado and irony in my voice, "If you can take it, I can!" Xiao Wang laughs and heads for the door.

"I'm so glad we got to meet up while I was in Shanghai! Did you say in your text message that you only just now got off work?"

"No," she replies, "Just something I had to do." There's something here, but she clearly doesn't want to talk about it yet. We request full-body, hour-long massages and pay. 45 RMB each.

The massage parlor has only one rest room, so I change into the gown they've given me in our room, while Xiao Wang changes in the bathroom. She comes back, and we talk for a while about old friends – the only topic we truly have in common, after all. Finally, our masseuses come in. "I thought this was supposed to be a blind massage!" Xiao Wang says in surprise.

"Not necessarily," one of the masseuses responds, slightly embarrassed. And then, as an afterthought, "Some of us have poor eyesight." I chuckle, and the masseuse approaching me realizes with a small start that I understand Chinese. Xiao Wang and I lay down on our respective tables. My masseuse begins with the back of my neck. Xiao Wang was right – it hurts. I'm far too pigheaded and vein to complain, of course.

"There is a lot of tension built up in your shoulders," Xiao Wang's masseuse comments after a while, "You should get massages more often." Xiao Wang grunts noncommittally. She starts to translate the woman's comment for me, and I remind her gently that I understand. Our voices are strangely muffled by the fact that we're both facing straight down, talking to the floor below.

My back, now. I'm not sure exactly what the masseuse is doing, but it feels like she's driving a knuckle between each of my vertebrae in turn. Not a pleasant sensation.

"Things have been really terrible with my father lately. He's very sick," Xiao Wang says finally.

"Oh? I'm sorry to hear that."

She tells me that he's been diagnosed with liver cancer. "We're lucky, though – his doctors are the best in China."

"That's good, at least," I reply, "It's lucky that you live in Shanghai and don't have to travel far from home for good care."

"Yes. I was taking them to dinner this evening before I called you."

"Oh," I reply, unsurprised. I can't see what Xiao Wang's masseuse is doing to her, but it sounds like she's slapping Xiao Wang repeatedly.

"Being a doctor in China is very hard," she says after a long pause. "You must have a lot of school, and the pay is very small. Several times, you hear about people killing doctors. People from the country who come to Beijing or Shanghai for good doctors, but they cannot afford them or the doctors cannot help, and sometimes people get very angry and kill doctors." This sounds to me like a spiel she heard over dinner. I can see where it's headed.

"So you have to pay them extra?" I ask.

"Yes, of course. It's not written down, but everybody knows."

My calves are strangely ticklish, and I'm relieved when my masseuse finishes with them and asks me to turn over.

"Actually, I think they are very reasonable," Xiao Wang continues. "They didn't ask for too much." I wonder to myself what the going rate for liver cancer treatment is.

Another long pause. My masseuse is tugging on my right arm now, and I'm reminded of how it was pulled out of the socket in kindergarten. I tense my shoulder a bit.

"I feel like I've had to grow up very fast," Xiao Wang says at last.

"I'll bet."

"It's very hard. Finding good doctors, comforting my mother, making sure my father doesn't find out the truth." I've heard about this, of course, but I'm still a little surprised to hear it in person.

"That's a cultural difference between Asia and the west," I tell her. "In America, we always tell people the truth about their own medical situation."

"I think if it was me, I would want to know," Xiao Wang replies thoughtfully, "But my father has always many health problems. He says that if he is ever really sick, he don't want to get treatment. I think he will just give up."

I turn my head and look over at my friend. Her eyes are closed as the masseuse rubs between her left thumb and forefinger. I try for a moment just to imagine the responsibility that's suddenly been thrust onto her slender shoulders. No wonder she's got knots.

The massage ends before long, and we change back into our normal clothes. The hostel I'm staying at is in the direction she lives in, so we share a cab. "I'm really glad we got to hang out while I was in town," I tell her as the cab pulls up to the alleyway leading to my hostel. "And good luck with your dad." The words sound stupid coming out of my mouth, but there's nothing else to say.

"Thanks," she says with a smile, "Give me a call the next time you're going to be in Shanghai!"

... damn.

2007-12-10T23:52:00.000+08:00

.

Well, it turns out that life, the universe, and everything (but mostly one of them "job" thingies people keep telling me I should get some day) have conspired to keep Kyung from coming to China. bummer.

.

Don't tell me what I can't do.

2007-12-10T19:33:00.001+08:00

Méi bànfǎ is perhaps one of the most frustrating phrases in the Chinese language. And I spent several hours today listening to it.

It means "It can't be helped" or "There's no way to do it" or something like that. It also often means "There's probably some solution to your problem, but it would require effort on my part so how about I just tell you it's impossible, ok?" You hear it a lot in this country.

Today's adventure was paying my electric bill. I leave town the day after tomorrow, and my (non-Chinese speaking) roomies leave a few days later. So, there'll be nobody living in our place from late December until early January when the bills are due. I went to our landlord today and paid the water, gas, and management fees early, no problem. My landlord, however, doesn't deal with the electric.

I went to where I pay the electric, and started hearing the day's méi bànfǎ's started. The bill has to be paid between the 20th and the 27th, the guy there told me – no sooner and no later. Méi bànfǎ. I pressed the guy for ten minutes, until he finally admitted that my landlord might be able to help. I went to the management office of my building and asked for help. Méi bànfǎ. I kept insisting, and they finally told me that there's someplace in downtown that apparently does nothing but process electricity bill payments, and maybe they can take it early. They scribbled me the address down for me, and I set off.

Cabs can be miserable to find on my street. It was almost 4:00 by the time I started trying to catch one, and that's never good. I finally got one around 4:30 and showed the cabbie the address. "You can't get there before it closes," he told me, "Méi bànfǎ." I got out of the cab.

Trying again tomorrow. Ultimately, I might have to impose on one of my friends who's staying in town to go an pay for me. *grumble*

Bright Lights, Big City

2007-12-09T17:55:00.000+08:00

I've got my ticket on the K292, departing Chengdu at 4:35 this Wednesday afternoon, and arriving in Shanghai at 5:07 AM (ugg) on Friday. 467 RMB (US$63) for a hard sleeper, which is a much more comfortable way to travel than its name implies. I'll have most of a week in Shanghai before leaving in the afternoon of the 19th for the States.

While I'm in Shanghai, I'm hoping to check out the markets there and do a little supplimental research slash Christmas Shopping, and also meet up with some friends, business contacts, and fellow Fulbrighters out there. I might also pop over to Hangzhou to visit the Witt alums there. Even better, it sounds like Kyung might be able to come down and visit! Should be a good time.

I like Chinese...

2007-12-06T00:03:00.000+08:00

As I got out of the shower this morning, I pondered (not for the first time)my bathrobe. I got it originally as a part of my Halloween costume, and have been happily using it for its intended purpose ever since. The only frustrating thing about this bathrobe is that it's much too small – the sleeves only come about half-way down my forearms. And it's an XXL.

Ask any expat of average American height (let alone weight), and they'll bemoan the difficulty or impossibility of finding shoes, pants, and even bathrobes that fit. Shopping for clothes in China perpetuates the stereotype that the Chinese are uniformly 5'2" and thin as a rail. Walking down the street, however, tells a different story.

There are plenty of short Chinese people walking around (some of the little old ladies, in particular, are remarkably little old ladies), but they're not all you see. Childhood nutrition has improved wildly over the past twenty-five years, and the Chinese have been growing bigger and taller ever since. I'm 5'10", and I'm probably ever so slightly above male average height here. A casual sweep of any small crowd will quickly reveal a handful of guys who are at least as tall as I am, though, and you see guys well over six foot several times a day. And they're all, somehow, wearing clothes. That fit, even! Where do they find them? Are there Chinese versions of Big & Tall stores? And why are clothing sizes still calibrated for a malnourished population?

In other size-related news, my kitchen counter is considerably less than hip-high, so you have to crouch over it awkwardly to cook, and doing dishes would almost be easier seated. Good times. lol

P.S. Anybody who began humming at my subject gets five bonus points.

Foreign Served

2007-12-03T13:45:00.001+08:00

After the lecture I gave at the consulate last week, I spent a long time talking with a consular officer who encouraged me to take the Foreign Service Officer Test and consider a career in the Foreign Service. A career with the State Department was something that had been in the back of my mind for years, and it was exciting to feel like somebody was almost recruiting me for one of my dream jobs. I agreed to read up on the process and to talk with some recent hires at the consulate to get a better sense of the job.

So I did some poking around online, and read the Guide to the Foreign Service Officer Selection Process. As I did so, I came to a startling realization: I no longer want a career in the Foreign Service. At least, not yet. The reason for this might seem counterintuitive – even foolish – but it's this: Job security. Specifically, entirely too much of it.

In the Guide to FSO Selection, it detailed the progression of each of the five career tracks (which you must choose between when you begin the application process and can never change) from junior to mid-level to senior officer status, and what duties an officer at each level of each track is expected to fulfil. There is a chart that clearly shows how much you will make every year until mandatory retirement at 65.

Reading all of this, I felt like a hero in some Greek tragedy, told my future by the Oricle of Delphi and yet powerless to change it. Everything felt so prescribed, so mechanical, and so inevitable. Passing the FSO Test suddenly felt like joining the Men in Black ("This is the last suit you'll ever wear"), and I'm just not at a point in my life where I want or need that much long-term commitment. I know that one of the great things about being a FSO is that you have a new assignment and in some ways a new job every two years, but it's still something new within the same framework. I want to try out a couple of different jobs before I commit to a career; I want to go back to school at some point, maybe get an MBA or a JD or even a PhD. But that's not on their charts.

Of course, the State Dpt does offer continuing education, but even then, your trajectory is already plotted. The Training Continuum for Civil Service Employees is "A roadmap to training and professional development" and the Leadership and Management Training Continuum "Offers one-stop shopping for employees seeking to develop their leadership and management skills." I don't want a roadmap just yet, and I'm not looking for one-stop shopping. At this stage in my life, I want to make it up as I go along.

The Foreign Service is still appealing to me, and maybe I'll take that test some day. But not yet.

Keys Are a Many-Splendored Thing

2007-11-28T22:54:00.001+08:00

In the States, by in large, a key is pretty much just a key. Your house key looks like your office key, and your car key is basically a double-sided version of the same thing. If you've got an expensive imported car, maybe it's got some kind of funky groove thing, but that's not too common. In China, on the other hand, there are nearly as many different kinds of keys as there are locks. Observe:

First, let's start with the basics. This is the key to my mailbox, and it would look completely normal in the States. But wait, there's more!

This is the key to our terrace (don't ask me why a 21st floor terrace needs a key), and it's one of the most common types of key in China. It has four cut faces, each of them different, leading to constant frustration in trying to figure out which way is "up." Most keys of this type (including this one) have a groove or nub on one side... but sometimes that goes up and sometimes it goes down.

This is the key to my flatmate Gaetan's bike. It looks kinda like a little skyscraper, with increasingly small rectangles built on each other.

This is the key to my bike lock. The actual key part is cut into a middle ridge that sits inside a sort of flattened crescent.

The key to my flatmate Sylvan's scooter lock. It's a small cylinder with a pattern of holes drilled into one side as the code.

Combing aspects of my bike key and Sylvan's, this is the key to our flat. There's a center channel with a code cut in that, and also a pattern of holes on each side. Probably the most complicated key I've ever seen.

P.S. I don't know why I always tend to write a bunch of essays at once, but be sure to scroll down to read me rambling about today's festivities!

Just point me to the podium!

2007-11-28T22:02:00.000+08:00

Every week, the American Consulate General in Chengdu hosts a Wednesday Lectures & Video Series that the public is invited to attend. There are usually forty to sixty attendees, mostly Chinese university students, many of whom I imagine hope to go to graduate school in the States. This week, I was the speaker.

As everybody reading this probably knows by now, I gave my lecture half on my own Fulbright research and half on American research ethics. It went very well, I'd say. I've always been very comfortable with public speaking, and I feel like I can be a reasonably engaging speaker. The audience reacted well, and I was really impressed with some of the questions I was asked afterwards. The best was:

You said that The Belmont Report's principal of justice means that you can't research one group of people just to benefit a different group of people, but in your research you're studying Chinese people for the benefit of American businessmen.

I was really impressed that the girl who had asked the question had really been paying attention and thinking critically about my presentation, and was totally willing to challenge me on the point. Very satisfying to feel like people were paying attention and thinking about what I was saying.

Even more satisfying, I spent more than an hour after my lecture talking with a consular officer who was strongly encouraging me to take the Foreign Service Exam. Always cool to feel like you're being pursued. I told her it's something I've considered, and she's going to set me up to talk with some other people in the consulate to talk with them about the Foreign Service. My mental pendulum has swung back towards Big Business, but who knows? I'll talk to some folks, and maybe I'll even take the test. Always good to have options.

Fellow Fulbrighter

2007-11-24T12:09:00.000+08:00

Another Fulbrighter (who's visiting Chengdu this weekend, actually) sent this email to our listserve the other day, talking about the work he's been doing studying sustainable development. He asked us to pass it along, so here it is!

Hello my fellow Fulbrighters,

For the past two months, my roommate Shane and I have been working on making a video podcast about environmental issues and solutions in China. It is my great pleasure to share with you my new website and the first two episodes of this video podcast:

Episode 1 - Beijing's Three Wheeled Bikes: How trash gets around

Episode 2 - Rooftop Revolution: China's 40 million solar water heaters

If you like what you see, please pass it on to your friends and family. My goal here is to educate Chinese people and my fellow American citizens about China's environmental problems and solutions. The New York Times has been doing a great job covering this topic recently (there are [five] installments here), maybe a bit too heavy on the problem/pessimistic side. I try to be an optimistic person, because I feel pessimism and fear will eventually lead to apathy. During this podcast, I'm going to try and provide some inspiration but level it with reality as well.

I have lived in China for 12 months now, and I have been to 15 provinces. China is an amazing place, and I get a very vibrant feeling when I am here. I believe that China can become green, but I need your help in making that happen. Constructive criticism is welcome!

Your green brother,
John

Not to bore you with details, but...

2007-11-22T00:28:00.000+08:00

I went out on a bit of a methodological limb today, but it turned out to be a very fruitful one!

One of my friends came to the market today, originally hoping to commission a painting from a painter she liked the last time she was there. That shop turned out not to be open, though, so we just hung out and walked around for a while. Around 5:15, as the market was beginning to close down, my friend started looking at the small jade pieces (mostly coin-shaped discs but later also some small Buddha heads) meant as necklace pendants at one stall. She gradually showed more and more interest in them, as she decided that they'd make great "Look what I got you in China!" gifts.

My friend doesn't speak any Chinese, so I translated for her. I knew at the time that this might have ethical implications, but the vendor we were dealing with knows well that I am researching bargaining, and even commented on that fact at one point. There was no deception involved, and I probably even contributed marginally to the vendor's material well-being by facilitating a transaction that otherwise might not have taken place. Still, bargaining myself is definitely not my standard m.o.

As my friend looked at the pendants (and before she had decided firmly to buy), I asked their price. The vendor said that they would ordinarily be 35, but she would give us 25 because it was the end of the day and she wanted to go home. This theme of it being closing time came up again and again, and seemed to have a significant impact on the course of bargaining. We were both surprised that the initial offer had been so reasonable, but I gave only a noncommittal grunt in response to the offer, as my friend continued to inspect the pieces.

By not responding to the vendor's offer with a counteroffer, I somewhat inadvertently found myself involved in a "pre-bargaining" stage that's been described to me several times by several different people. By declining to offer a counteroffer (in large part because my friend hadn't decided yet whether she was really interested or not), I forced the vendor to make further concessions without revealing any information. She offered 20, and placed half a dozen or so discs in my friend's hands. "Did I just buy these without realizing?" she asked me. I assured her that it's a common action in bargaining for the vendor to place items in the perspective buyer's hands, and offered my speculation that vendors may hope it encourages buyers to bond with the item and make a purchase more likely. After all, it's harder to put down an object you're holding than to walk away from one still on the table. In the theory, it's called the Endowment Effect.

As my friend continued to look at the pieces, now adding a few Buddha heads to the discs in her hand, the vendor continued to talk to me in Chinese, mostly complaining that it was closing time, and she was already giving a very good price so she could go home. Before long, she had talked herself down to 15, all without me making any offer whatsoever. This, she proclaimed loudly and repeatedly, was her very lowest price. Several times, she drew my attention to one of the Buddha heads, declaring that 白天的时候，这个45块 (During the daytime, this would be 45 kuai), but that she would sell it to us now for 15 because she wanted to close and go home. Another of the Buddha heads she said would ordinarily be 65! I'm not sure it's worth putting much stock in these 'daytime' quotes as real indications of what her normal asking price was, but her relentless repetition of the theme did convince me that she was genuinely anxious to go home.

By this time, my friend had picked out ten items (seven discs and three Buddha heads). She asked me to offer 100 for the lot, which the vendor said was impossible (this was the first price I had offered at any point in the negotiations). I asked her to give us a volume discount for buying ten, and she reluctantly went down to 140. I offered a reciprocal concession of 110, but the vendor insisted that 140 really was her absolute lowest possible price, and that she would loose money by going any lower. My friend tried throwing back the Buddha head that had been identified as most expensive in hopes of getting down to 100 (she didn't have any smaller bills on her, and so was trying to get to a round number to avoid having to ask the vendor to make change), but the vendor only lowered her offer by 20 to 120. I countered with 120 for all ten, and she refused.

My friend considered for a long time, during which the vendor continued to insist that it was closing time and she wanted to go home, and that the price was already very good. Her constant references to closing time seemed genuine, though it's worth noting that most of the other stalls around her were still open, and it was only about 5:40 (the market officially closes at 6). Finally, she made a settlement offer: 135 for the ten, plus the strings to thread them onto ("normally" 5 mao each, though I can't imagine anyone ever pays that). My friend accepted, and I helped her with the change to avoid the awkward situation of having to ask for change after bargaining so hard.

We both walked away extremely happy with our purchase. My friend had good gifts for when she goes home, and I felt like not only had I gotten a good price, but I had also seen two interesting principles in action: (1) A pre-bargaining stage, followed by a plateau stage (she insisted on 15 for quite a while and 14 even longer), followed by a settlement offer, and (2) Closing time as an (at least ostensible) influence in the bargaining process. The closing time issue is very interesting. Cassady (1968, p. 68-69) addressed time of day as a major factor in the bargaining he observed in Mexican periodic markets, attributing this influence to the need for vendors of perishable goods markets to clear their inventory before the end of the day. I didn't originally expect a strong "time of day" effect at Songxian Qiao because the goods aren't perishable and the market isn't periodic, so there's no need for vendors to clear their inventory. This experience, however, showed me that time of day can have another influence apart from the need to clear inventory: the desire of the vendor to close shop and go home to dinner. I haven't been paying enough attention to this issue, and need to interview some of my closer contacts about it. If that was all I had gotten out of the day's observations, it would have been a productive day. But there's more!

I went to the Bookworm after dinner to type my fieldnotes. One of my Chinese friends (the guy who helped me with my PowerPoint translation, actually) was there, and we discussed bargaining a little. He told me about how one of his Canadian friends bargains. Then, he told me something very interesting that helped me see something in today's bargaining that I hadn't previously realized was there: gender roles.

Throughout our negotiations, the vendor had called me 小伙子。 She probably used that word almost as much as she complained about the time of day! It literally means "(young) fellow," and is a word that can be used by middle-aged people (esp. women) dealing with younger men. I didn't think anything of being called it perhaps 20 times during the bargaining, and didn't even remember it until my Chinese friend brought the word up unprovoked. In Chinese culture, he told me, bargaining hard is seen as a feminine trait. Its somewhat inappropriate for a man to be too concerned with the price or subtle quality imperfections of a cheap good; rather, a man should be decisive and just buy it. "If a man is bargaining too much about small things, that's really feminine." It's okay for a man to bargain hard when there's a lot of money on the table – buying a car or house or in business negotiations – but nitpicking over small purchases is unseemly.

In context, he told me, "she was probably trying to provoke your 小伙子 temper." She was trying to convince me to man-up and just buy the damn thing. She was probably trying to encourage me to be decisive and masculine and not loose face in front of my 'girlfriend' by nancying about over a few kuai. This is a fascinating dynamic, and I'm really excited to have finally found out about it!

And to think, a week ago I felt like my research was stalled! hahaha

Jane Goodtalk

2007-11-21T14:30:00.000+08:00

Last night, I went to hear Jane Goodall give a lecture at The Bookworm. Tickets were a hefty (for China) US$40, but all proceeds went to the Roots & Shoots foundation, and admission also included an excellent buffet dinner and two drinks. It was a terrific opportunity to get to hear her speak in a venue that seats fewer than a hundred, rather than some massive university lecture hall. She's a very engaging speaker, and her speech seemed polished rather than worn out by the fact that she gives it several hundred times a year. She offered some incredible vignettes of very emotional encounters she had with various Chimps over the years, but the main thrust of her speech was conservationism. I was actually really impressed with her description of some of the work her NGO has done to simultaneously try to break the cycle of poverty for locals and protect the environment near some important primate habitats.

Oh, I now have Thanksgiving plans! A lot of my American friends will be at a rugby tournament in Guangzhou, but one of my non-rugby playing friends is hosting dinner at his place, so that should be a good time.

Things to add to resume:

2007-11-16T18:15:00.000+08:00

I can give hour-long lecture on the influence of asymmetrical information on bargaining in Chinese. Barely, but I can! haha

I think the most important factor in pulling it off (apart, of course, from devoting much of the past four years of my life to learning Chinese) was my PowerPoint. I worked up a bilingual .ppt presentation (which took a lot of time and effort), and then asked one of my friends here – a Chinese guy who speaks incredible English and has studied economics – to correct the Chinese. Knowing that, at the very least, my .ppt was comprehensible made all the difference in the world. I knew that even if I was babbling incomprehensibly, at least they'd be able to tell from the screen what I was supposed to be talking about! lol So it worked out. I don't think it was pretty, but I pulled it off. And that's a great feeling!

Now that that's over and done with, I'm looking forward to getting back to my regularly scheduled life. For the past two weeks – first because of the IRB and recently because of the presentation – I've been doing work about my research rather than on it. With winter vacation coming up so soon, I want to be sure to get a few good weeks of observation in before I leave!

Have you got a flag?

2007-11-14T13:53:00.000+08:00

Living in another country constantly challenges assumptions that you have taken for granted your whole life – that's part of the reason you do it! Lately, however, living in another country has forced me to reevaluate what "a country" is at all.

In my mind, a country is a purely political construct, defined by its geographical territory and bound together by a common allegiance, a common code of laws, and to some extent by a common sense of history (real or imagined). The citizenry of a country can be linguistically and racially diverse, and an individual's race is really not tied in any meaningful way to either nationality or language. Within a generation or two, anyone can be as assimilated as they want to be. Living in China, however, has shown me that not everyone has the same understanding of what a country is that I do.

Although China has formally adopted the Westphalian concept of the nation-state, I feel like the Chinese culture has a fundamentally different understanding of what a country is. For example, one of my friends told me the other day that 'The population of China is 1.3 billion... and that doesn't even count the ethnic Chinese who are citizens of other countries!" My immediate thought was 'Of course not! Why would you count them?" because citizenship is a legal designation in my mind, and determining it is as easy as reading the front of your passport. To many Chinese, however, citizenship and ethnicity and language are all interrelated concepts. Some (though not all) Chinese people would consider a fourth generation Chinese-American to be a citizen of China, even if that person has never been here, and many Chinese people would be surprised if that American couldn't speak Chinese.

Race and linguistic ability are also often tied in Chinese people's minds. While the usual response to my Chinese skills is simply to be impressed, I've also had more than a few people tell me that it's 'strange' or 'weird' that I can speak Chinese – that it's odd to see a white face and hear Chinese at the same time. To a large extent, of course, this is just because of novelty – relatively few foreigners ever learn to speak Chinese with any competence. I feel like the surprise goes beyond nationality as I conceive it, though, and into race. I was speaking in Chinese with a Korean person here, and a nearby Chinese person commented that it was remarkable that I could speak Chinese. Even though the Korean person's dress, body language, and accent all broadcast clearly that he was also a foreigner speaking Chinese as his second language, it was unremarkable to onlookers that the Asian should speak Chinese, whereas the white guy was just a big red nose shy of being a circus act.

I think the experience of being in China and coming to see how differently the concept of "country" can be constructed has given me new insight into the English as the Official Language debate in America. Previously, it seemed completely superfluous and xenophobic to me, because language is not a part of how I construct the concepts of nationality or citizenship. After seeing the Chinese view, however, I realize that some people who advocate for English as the official language may be operating off a fundamentally different conception of nationality and citizenship than I am. I still think the debate is primarily fuelled by xenophobia and even racism, and that any law that would end the courts' obligation to provide translators is a terrible idea, I've come to understand why some people feel so passionately for the other side.

... can you tell I'm procrastinating preparing tonight's lecture? hahaha

Pop Quiz

2007-11-14T09:42:00.000+08:00

This week's first challenge is accomplished, and soundly! I was the Quiz Master at the Bookworm's bi-weekly Quiz Night tonight, and I was widely acclaimed as the best QM in months if not ever! I had a lot of fun doing it, and everybody (probably 50 or so, mostly Anglophone expats) had a lot of fun participating in it. I'm really looking forward to doing it again... in a few months. lol If you're interested, my quiz questions follow:

Here's hoping tonight's lecture to my advisor's grad students (in Chinese!) goes as well! More on that later.

I Spy
1. What was the real name of the Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I, more commonly known as Mata Hari?
Margaretha Zelle

2. The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly called MI6, is also known within the civil service community by a colloquialism that derives from its old post office box number. What is this name?
Box 850

3. What Old Testament prostitute and spy does Matthew 1:5 identify as an ancestor of Jesus?
Rahab

4. For five points, what spy did Russian President Vladimir Putin make a Hero of the Russian Federation on November 2 of this year? For the other five, what did he infiltrate?
Dr. George Koval; The Manhattan Project

5. Who said, "He who is not sage and wise, humane and just, cannot use secret agents. And he who is not delicate and subtle cannot get the truth out of them.
Sun Tzu (孫子)

6. What is Steganography?
The art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message.

7. Which James Bond movie was an "unofficial" remake of Thunderball?
Never Say Never Again

8. Who did the Soviet Union and Russia pay $1.4 million in cash and diamonds for information over 22-years?
Robert Philip Hanssen

9. One of the most famous alleged cases of corporate espionage was the Soviet Union's Tupolev Tu-144. By what name did western observers jokingly refer to this aircraft?
The Concordski

10. On April 1, 2001, a United States Navy signals reconnaissance aircraft and a People's Liberation Army Navy J-8IIM fighter jet collided, crashing the Chinese plane. Where in China did the American plane make its emergency landing?
Hainan Island

Do you C?
1. What Shakespeare character said, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."
(Julius) Caesar

2. What is the full name of the medical procedure commonly called a CT-scan or CAT scan?
Computed tomography or computed axial tomography

3. What French novel has the alternate title "l'Optimisme"
Candide

4. This state existed from 1918 when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1993 when it peacefully split in two.
Czechoslovakia

5. Who was the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby?
Nick Carraway

6. The twelfth and final labor of Hercules was to capture this multi-headed monster without harming it:
Cerberus

7. Scientists attempt to determine the age of organic remains by measuring the item's amount of this naturally occurring radioactive isotope.
Carbon-14, or ¹⁴C ("carbon" alone is not sufficient)

8. What unit of measurement represents the same volume as a milliliter?
Cubic Centimeter

9. This leader claims to follow the ideology of Simón Bolívar, and has served as head of state from 1999 until the present.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Chávez)

10) This nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical supernova explosion. It is believed to have been created by a bright supernova that was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers in 1054.
The Crab Nebula

(and I Feel Fine)
1. According to the Bahá'í Faith, what was the significance of the Battle of Megiddo in 1918?
It was, literally, the Battle of Armageddon.

2. The sun is currently getting about 10% hotter every billion years. Because of this, what will happen on earth in approximately 3.5 billion years?
All liquid water will boil off

3. In one mythology, although the gods know through prophecy about the battle that will kill most of them and end the world, they are powerless to prevent it. What is the name of this battle?
Ragnarök ("Fate of the Gods")

4. What is the name of the Last Judgement in Islam?
Qiyamah or awm al-Qīyāmah (يوم القيامة)

5. The Rastafari movement believes the end times began with the crowning of a historical figure as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930, who will soon reveal himself as God. Who is he?
Haile Selassie (1892-1975)

6. What offerings did the Aztecs make make to prevent the sun from disappearing from the heavens and ending the world?
Blood and hearts

7. By the year 500 BCE, this religion already had a fully developed a concept of the end of the world through a divine devouring in fire – the oldest End of the World theory in recorded history. What religion is this?
Zoroastrianism

8. The Book of Revelation mentions the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. For five points, which is the only rider named in the Bible? For another five points, what are the names customarily given to the other three?
Named: Death; Others: Pestilence, War and Famine,

9. What does the Greek word Ἀποκάλυψις, usually written in English as Apocalypse, literally mean?
The lifting of the veil

10. Scientifically speaking, an important parameter in fate of the universe theory is the density parameter, which is the average matter density of the universe divided by a critical value of that density. What symbol is used to represent the density parameter?
Ω (Omega)

Bottoms Up!
1. What is Kumis?
Fermented (mare's) milk.

2. What is the chemical formula of ethanol, the alcohol in alcoholic drinks (and your car).
C₂H₅O (or EtOH or CH₃CH₂OH, or C₂H₅OH)

3. What name is given to beer brewed with fast-acting, 'top-fermenting' yeast, fermented at higher temperatures than other beers?
Ale

4. In the late 19th century, Europe's vineyards were devastated by a root louse that eventually kills grape vines. What has been the solution to this epidemic ever since?
Every wine-producing country of the world except for Chile and Argentina grafts its vines onto North American species rootstock, which is highly resistant to the bug

5. What is the oldest operating beer brewery in China?
The Harbin Brewery, founded 1900

6. This alcohol is usually made from grain or potatoes, but its main characteristic is that it is so thoroughly distilled as to exhibit little to none of the flavors of its source material.
Vodka

7. What is the name of a brewery that deals specifically in mead?
A meadery or a mazery.

8. What are the three grape varieties that are blended in various proportions to produce most Champagne? (5 points for two, 10 points for all three)
Chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier

9. What two distilled beverages are made from the juice of the agave?
Tequila & mezcal

10. What do the Chinese say when toasting? Answers must be either Chinese characters or Hanyu Pinyin with correct tone marks.
干杯 (gānbēi)

MMVII
1) On January 14, 2007, the The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement adopted a new emblem that may be placed on humanitarian and medical vehicles and buildings to protect them from military attack. What is it?
The Red Crystal or the Third Protocol Emblem

2) On February 11, 2007, Portugal voted Yes to a national referendum legalizing what?
Abortion. Previously, Portugal had been the only EU country where a woman could be imprisoned for having an abortion.

3) On March 31, 2007, what city turned off its lights for 1 hour between 7:30pm and 8:30pm as a political statement for Global Climate Change?
Sydney, Australia

4) On April 24, 2007, "Gliese 581 c" was discovered in the constellation Libra. Is it...
A. The first potentially habitable Earth-like extrasolar planet to be identified.
B. The first definitively identified Quark Star.
C. The first predicted source of a Gamma-ray burst.
D. An enormous asteroid briefly believed to be on a collision course with Earth.
Answer: A.

5) On May 18, 2007, the Hong Kong media regulator announced that, despite receiving more than 2,000 complaints in a single week about its sexual and violent content, this book would not be classified as indecent.
The Bible

6) On June 1, 2007, archaeologists in western Japan discovered a melon whose flesh, though obviously no longer edible, had been kept well preserved in a vacuum like state. Give or take 10%, how old was the melon?
2100 years old (accept 1890 - 2310)

7) On July 9, 2007, While celebrating Argentinean Independence Day, this happened in Buenos Aires for the first time in almost one hundred years.
It snowed.

8) From August 4 to August 11, 2007, Yokohama, Japan hosted the the 92nd World Congress of what?
Esperanto

9) For several weeks in September, 2007, thousands of Buddhist monks lead protests against the military junta in Myanmar (Burma). What powerful gesture did monks direct at the rulers of the country?
"Turning over the rice bowl" This refusal to accept alms is tantamount to excommunication.

10) On October 18, 2007, what political opposition leader was the intended victim of a bombing in Karachi?
Benazir Bhutto

It's Not a Truck.
1. One of the first ancestors to the modern Internet was the ARPANET. For five points, in what year were its first two nodes connected? For an additional five points, what US government agency created the network?
1969; Advanced Research Projects Agency

2. In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, who said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Al Gore

3. "The Internet" and the "World Wide Web" are not synonymous; rather, one of them is a service accessible via the other. Which is which?
The Web is one of several services accessible via the Internet.

4. What do IP, TCP, and HTTP stand for? (5 points for two correct, 10 points for all three)
Internet Protocol; Transmission Control Protocol; Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

5. For five points, what is "L337"? For up to five additional points, give as many examples as you can, one point each.
L337 (which is itself L337 for "elite") is an internet slang where numbers and other symbols are used to represent letters. Common L337 phrases include: d00d, 5k1llz, n00b, w00t, h4x0r

6. American senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), said in 2006 that: "the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's [BLANK]."
A series of tubes.

7. What is the name for a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written form, such as a colon, a dash, and a close parenthesis for a smiley face?
Emoticons

8. According to Internet World Stats, how many people used the Internet as of September 30, 2007? (give or take 10%)
1.244 billion people (accept 1.119 - 1.368 billion)

9. ICANN is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names. What does ICANN stand for?
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

10. The Chinese government censors access to the internet by means of what some call the Great Firewall of China. What is this system's official name? (Chinese or English acceptable)
Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng)

By the Mandate of Heaven
To make this round more reasonable, I handed out a "cheat sheet" with a list of all the Chinese dynasties and their dates

1. A ruler of this dynasty first invoked the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to legitimize his rule, a concept that would be influential for almost every successive dynasty.
Zhou

2. Two of China's most famous historical poets, Du Fu and Li Bai, belonged to this age.
Tang

3. Buddhism propagated throughout China for the first time, despite facing opposition from Daoist followers.
Southern & Northern

4. This was the first government in world history to issue banknotes (paper money), and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy.
Song

5. During this dynasty, the central government consolidated control over Yunnan and also stretched its sphere of influence over Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia.
Qing

6. This was the first dynasty to embrace the philosophy of Confucianism, which became the ideological underpinning of all regimes until the end of imperial China.
Han

7. During this dynasty, Zhèng Hé led seven trading and exploration expeditions traveling perhaps as far as the Cape of Good Hope The first of his journeys consisted of 317 ships and 28,000 men--then the largest naval expedition in history.
Ming

8. This dynasty was the first government to rule the whole of China from Beijing.
Yuan

9. The earliest precursors to modern Chinese characters are found on the oracle bone inscriptions of what dynasty?
Shang

10. This dynasty first built the Great Wall of China, centralized the government, unified the legal code, and standardized the written language, system of measurement, and currency of China.
Qin

It's only a Game
1. In Scrabble, what is the most points you could possibly get for playing the 2-letter word "Qi"
72 (playing in a triple word box so "qis" is made twice)

2. How much money does each player start with in Monopoly?
$1500

3. How much is the black ball worth in snooker?
7 points

4. At least one of the following are requirements for castling in chess, and at least one is not. Write the letter of the statement or statements that ARE requirements for castling:
A. The king must never have been in check
B. The rook cannot be threatened
C. The king cannot pass through a threatened square
D. Both the rook and the king can never have been moved
Answer: C & D only

5. In Texas Holdem poker, each of the three turnovers of public cards has a name, starting with the three-card "flop." For five points each, what are the names of the other two turnovers? Be sure to state clearly which is second and which is third.
2: Turn
3: River

6. In Risk, how many bonus armies does a player get per turn for controlling Europe?
5

7. In xiàngqí, or Chinese Chess, the pào, or cannon, has a unique method for capturing pieces. Describe it.
The pào capture by jumping exactly one piece (friendly or enemy) over to its target.

8. The Royal Game of Ur is one of the the oldest sets of board gaming equipment ever found, dating from before 2600 BCE. It is believed to be a predecessor to what modern game?
Backgamon

9. This is the iconic music to what video game?
Tetris

10. To what game does the saying "A group must have two eyes to live" apply?
Go

Political Rant

2007-11-13T01:14:00.000+08:00

Times article that clearly supports what I've been saying since the last time I went to China: foreign students who come to American universities are an absolute windfall, and should be encouraged rather than thwarted as they were in the three years after 9/11. This article only addresses the direct economic impact of foreign students – their tuition and living expenditures that put foreign money into the American economy. Add to that the contributions made indirectly by those students and their research, and the self-reinforcing cycle of America having the best universities in the world which attract the best students in the world, and it's an absolute no-brainer that American visa policies need to be structured so that we continue to be the beneficiary of the rest of the world's brain drain.

This is not a test.

2007-11-09T18:48:00.000+08:00

I was talking to one of my friends the other night, and she asked me what my plan was for the next day:

Me: oh, I've got a tough day tomorrow!
Me: i've gotta get up at the crack of 10am for an appointment with my physical trainer
Me: then i have to go to the marketplace to finish a game of chess with a guy who's telling me about how different nationalities bargain differently
Me: then i'm gonna go to the pub and work on the lectures i'm giving next week
Kyung: ...........
Me: yeah, i know. this is a pretty good gig, eh?

It had started off as a joke, but ended up as another one of those moments when I realize, somewhat to my own amazement, that not only is this really my life right now, but it's also the strongest point on my resume.

I've definitely got thank-you (slash 'keep funding this') notes to write to my congresswoman and senators!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (not necessarially in that order)

2007-11-08T00:06:00.001+08:00

In most of the busier parts of Chengdu, you have to pay a nominal fee to park your bicycle in a supervised 'lot' on the sidewalk. Usually, the fee is the equivalent of 3 or 4 cents American, so I'm convinced that it's more about creating makework jobs for lot supervisors more than actually generating revenue.

Anyway, the guy who supervises the lot by my gym in the mornings has a tremor that makes his hands shake. I always try to have exact change for him, because it's obviously difficult for him to shuffle through his wad of bills to make change. As I'm locking my bike today, a Chinese woman comes up to him and pays her 0.2 RMB parking fee with a 20 RMB bill. He has a little bit of trouble giving her inordinate amount of change, and the lady flips out. She starts yelling and shouting what I can only assume were obscenities and getting all up in his face. Clearly, this eight second delay has ruined her very important schedule. Her shouting, of course, gets the man flustered, and his hands shake more. Finally, he desperately hands her an arbitrary wad of change that I can only imagine exceeded her original payment and she walks away (toward me), muttering angrily. As she walked past me, I quickly but thoroughly considered what would best further the Fulbright's goal of "increasing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries," and reluctantly decided not to punch her in the face.

gah.

On a happier note, I bought some DVDs off the street (57¢ ea.) as I was walking home from dinner today. I'm really excited about one of them: Offside, an Iranian comedy about girls cross-dressing to sneak into a soccer match that apparently did very well at the Berlin International Film Festival last year. You never know what you'll find stuck randomly between Ice Spiders and Dungeons & Dragons II in this country!

Booked, paid, and ticketed

2007-11-07T00:53:00.001+08:00

Coming Home for Christmas
United 836 – Departing from Shanghai at 5:05 pm on Wed, Dec 19; arriving in Chicago at 4:18 pm (yes, this 13-hour flight is -1 hours long. Weird.)
United 443 – Departing from Chicago at 6:45 pm; arriving in Cleveland at 9:09.

Returning to China
Continental 124 – Departing from Cleveland at 7:30 am on Thu, Jan 3; arriving in Newark at 9:05
Continental 89 – Departing from Newark at 12:15 pm on Thu, Jan 3; arriving in Beijing at 3:00 pmon Fri, Jan 4

Coming home (for real!)
Continental 88 – Departing from Beijing at 3:45 at 5:30 pm on Tue, July 1; arriving in Newark at 5:50 pm
Continental 425 – Departing from Newark at 8:10 pm; arriving in Cleveland at 10:01 pm.

Success!

2007-11-06T17:22:00.001+08:00

We've found a solution to the certificate of training problem! Remember the Experimental Design class I took from the Psych department last semester basically on a whim slash because I'm ridiculous? Turns out, that was a prescient move! I've now discovered that it's the class that Witt uses as its IRB training, and Radford will accept a letter on letterhead attesting to that fact and that I took it within the last three years as proof of IRB training. Problem solved!

Now to write an angry email to CITI...

Reridiculous

2007-11-06T01:40:00.001+08:00

Surely that's the word for when something is ridiculous twice and, therefore, the word for the situation I find myself in now.

So, picking up the saga from last time (when I had discovered that I needed proof of training that Witt doesn't give, and which no other uni will give me because I'm not enrolled anywhere), I thought I found a solution to the problem yesterday. CITI offers an online course called Social and Behavioral Sciences Responsible Conduct of Research Course For The Unaffiliated Learner. According to the website:

The CITI public access course in the Responsible Conduct of Research is available without charge to the research community. This course is designed for learners who are:
1.Not affiliated with an institution that participates in the CITI program.
or
2.Affiliated with a CITI participating organization that has not yet established a specific RCR curriculum for their learners.

Great! So I signed up, spent a few hours yesterday and nearly all day today working through the online modules, and happily downloaded my completion certificate to email to Dr. Schirr so Radford can have documentation of training. When I get the certificate, however, it says: "For this Completion Report to be valid, the learner listed above must be affiliated with a CITI participating institution." So, to get a valid completion report for the RCR for the Unaffiliated Learner... you have to be affiliated.

I assumed that this must be a mistake – part of the template that they use to produce all completion reports that didn't actually belong on the "Unaffiliated Learner" report. I sent an email to CITI and, happily, they replied quickly. Less happily, they said this:

In order to get a valid certificate, you will need to pay a fee of $100.00 for an independent user. Once the fee is paid, we will set up an account for you to complete a legitimate course.

Please do not hesitate to call the CITI Program at 305-243-7970 if we can be of further assistance.

Best Regards,

CITI Support

So, apparently, the "course" I took was nothing but a six-hour-long, extremely boring advertisement. I've looked back, and nowhere on the Unaffiliated Learner registration page or even in the FAQ does it mention anything about paying $100 for a "legitimate" course. Complete bait-and-switch.

Meanwhile, the Chair of Witt's IRB got back to me. He was very supportive and clearly wants to help, but said that "Unfortunately, Wittenberg has not issued certificates of the sort that would satisfy the other university's IRB. Our practice is to consider successful completion of the work in your course (PSYC 207) as acceptable training to conduct human subject research. Wittenberg's IRB relies on the instructor to assure it that this training has occurred. I would be happy to write to the other university’s IRB and explain our procedures, in hopes that my letter would meet its requirement for a 'certificate of IRB training.' "

gnah. This really is absurd. Hopefully, Radford will accept my "invalid" certificate and/or the letter from the Chair of Witt's IRB as sufficient documentation. Heck, I'll forward them the PowerPoint of the Research Ethics presentation I'm giving at the consulate if it'll help! Because there's no way I'm paying CITI a $100 hidden fee if I can possibly help it.

Cought-22

2007-11-03T13:38:00.000+08:00

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a panel that reviews and approves, requires modifications in (to secure approval), or disapproves research proposals involving human subjects. Every institution receiving federal funds to support research with is required by law to have one, and its main mandate is to make sure researchers aren't stopping black people from getting treated for syphilis, turning normal young men into sadistic prison guards and broken prisoners, or making people think they are torturing each other - at least, not without a really scientifically compelling reason. Usually it's just sort of a formality that you have to go through before whatever university or research institute is funding and overseeing you will let you start. The system has its pros and its cons, but it turns out that it also has its cracks, and I've fallen through one.

Normally, it's the responsibility of the university or research institute that you're affiliated with to put you through the IRB process. I, however, am not affiliated with any American university or research institute, so it doesn't seem that I fall within any IRB's jurisdiction. I asked the chair of Witt's IRB about this before I graduated, but he never even returned my email. To be honest, I put the issue out of my mind. Nobody was asking me to pass an IRB, so why was I looking for one to pass? The trick, it turns out, is that conferences and journals are increasingly asking for proof of IRB approval when you submit your papers to them.

The situation becomes both easier and harder now that I am collaborating with Dr. Schirr. We're definitely planning to publish on the basis of this research, and he of course does have affiliation with an American university (Radford), so it's now imperative that we pass an IRB. On the plus side, his affiliation puts our collaborative marketing research under an IRB's jurisdiction, so that shouldn't be a problem (but see below). Radford can't approve my solo research on bargaining because I'm not a student of theirs, though it can if that too becomes a collaborative project and Dr. Schirr is listed as the Principal Investigator of record. Not sure what the best thing to do there is.

Remember I said above that it shouldn't be a real problem for Radford's IRB to process our collaborative research? Well, that's if everybody involved in the research is certified as having passed "IRB training," and as far as I can tell, I'm not. I took Experimental Design from the Psych department, and that class talked extensively about research ethics and the IRB. I also applied for and received authorization from Witt's IRB to conduct a research project as part of that class... but I don't know that I ever got official IRB training, and I certainly don't have any certificate of that to give Radford. IRB training is normally a simple formality – an online training program that you go through and take a multiple choice test on. But then we're back to the problem that I'm not affiliated with an American university! I haven't found anywhere yet that's willing to let somebody who's not their student access their online IRB training program.

I gotta say, I'm pretty frustrated with Wittenberg's IRB. I mean, it's great for being able to do really interesting research with little or no oversight (like the research Chris and I did over the summer), but it doesn't give you the training or the tools you need to be able to do research in the "real" academic community. I'm hoping the chair of Witt's IRB committee will answer my email this time and hopefully have some useful suggestions. If not, I may have an angry letter to write.

So, what makes this all hilarious? I'm scheduled to give a lecture at the American consulate on the 28^th about American research ethics and regulations. I'm thinking of titling it:
The IRB and You
or: Are You Sure You Want to Go to the States for Grad School?

hahaha...

And a time for every purpose

2007-11-01T12:35:00.000+08:00

Things are going very well here. I feel like, in a lot of ways, my time in China has entered a new stage. Before, I'd been in startup mode. Now, I feel like I've settled in and established a foundation, and my focus is shifting.

As far as my research goes, a lot of my efforts heretofore had been focused on developing relationships and gaining entrée into the market. In the past week or two, however, I've had a couple of great sessions in the market where I've been able to to gain real insight into the pricing process because of the relationships I've already developed. I've been looking a lot into price discrimination in opening offers lately – I think it's a rich topic that unifies my two research interests (marketing and bargaining) in very interesting ways.

Socially speaking, I've been very happy to find some extremely dorky, Anglophone friends. I spent probably seven hours last Sunday at the Bookworm sitting with two friends and playing online Scrabble with them. haha There were four games going at any one time: a two-player game between each pair, and a three-player game that we were all in. It was great! To make things even dorkier, there was a line of IM commentary going, despite the fact that we were all sitting within four feet of each other. lol

Though I count the developments above as good, one other thing is changing for the less convenient: it's getting cold. It still gets up to the mid 50s most days, but it's well past time I bought a long-sleeve shirt or two! haha I've also taken to sleeping fully dressed – I'd say it's time to buy another blanket and maybe a space heater!

Last but definitely not least, I'll have booked my second flight to and from China by this time tomorrow. I'm going to be in Akron from December 19 until January 3, and you should be too!

Halloween-ed!

2007-10-28T16:55:00.000+08:00

Man, when the local expat pub throws a Halloween bash, it doesn't mess around! The place was decorated to the nines, with 'bloody' strips of fabric hanging from the ceiling, giant spiderwebs everywhere, plastic skeletons hanging by the door, and pumpkins from Thursday's carving contest all along the bar. It would have been an impressive effort in the States! I have no idea how the did it – they import the "pumpkin and skull" banners? Anyway, I took one look at that and knew I couldn't show up without a costume!

So, great last-minute costume idea I found online: bathrobe + slippers + pajama pants + wife beater + sunglasses = The Dude. I don't think many people knew who I was supposed to be, but man was it comfie!

All the music that's unfit to play

2007-10-26T15:47:00.000+08:00

Chinese pop is, in general, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad music. Every C-Pop song is essentially the same vapid ballad, with a uniformity and blandness that they'd be ashamed to play on Radio Disney. It has no emotional content beyond a bland, lilting sort of puppy love and perhaps a mildly frustrated hopefulness that the object of the singer's adorations will one day return his affections. Want proof? this song has been a chart-topper since the last time I was in China. Grown men in suits sing this at karaoke. Shamelessly.

I've known this for years, but now I have proof. The Times ran an article today titled The Sound, Not of Music, but of Control in which they explain not only that but also why C-Pop is terrible. Is it bad that I'm comforted by the knowledge that China's insipid music is a result of the machinations of a totalitarian government, rather than purely by the bad taste of its citizenry?

Do not adjust your set

2007-10-25T14:06:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the view out my window at 1:30 this afternoon. This happens some times – I think rain clouds and low pressure trap the pollution close to the ground. It usually clears up after a good rain. This country is gross sometimes.

In happier news, I met two American art dealers this week, and they were both really helpful! One of them I ran into randomly in the market, and I talked with him over two days. The second day, I followed him around and took notes while he bargained for things, and I got to watch him bargain probably 30 times. The other guy I met through a connection, and I interviewed him last night. His interview made me understand something about marketing that I'd seen while walking around with the first guy the day before. Even better, the second guy has offered to hook me up with the translator he uses when he buys at the big market in Beijing. That might be a great opportunity for me to do some direct comparisons between high and low information situations by having that guy bargain for things, and having somebody else (me? a friend?) bargain for the same object separately.

It's pretty clear at this point that I'm going to make an extended trip to Beijing, both to follow up on that connection and to check out the markets there, which apparently are where many of the Songxian Qiao vendors buy their inventory.

Really productive last few days, despite me taking it easy to nurse the beginnings of a headcold. Life is good!

When it rains, it pours

2007-10-23T13:53:00.001+08:00

I feel like there's almost no such thing as a 'kinda good' or 'kinda bad' day. It really seems like when things are going your way, they're going your way, and when they're not they're not. I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for it – that you tend to interpret events in a way that reenforces your preexisting assumptions, or something like that. Whatever the reason, yesterday was a good day – nothing 'kinda' about it!

Got up in the morning to discover that the Bears had pulled off a very impressive last-minute win. From there, I went to the gym and worked hard for an hour. Really, there's nothing like working out to make a day feel good.

After lunch, I went to the market. There, I met an American antique dealer who often comes to China to buy, and who had many insights about information and bargaining. He also told me about the Panjia Yuan market in Beijing where many of these buyers get their inventories (a fact later confirmed by one of my vendor contacts). I'll be meeting the him again today, too.

After the American left, I played two very fun games of Chess with one of the vendors. I taught him to play chess a week or two ago, and he's learned fast! Our last game (the fourth he's ever played in his life) became a game of pawn-push that ended in a stalemate long after the market had closed.

Finally, when I came home hungry and wondering what restaurants were still open, I discovered that my flatmates and some of their friends were cooking. One of the French girls had just gotten back from visiting her family in Shanghai, and she'd brought back authentic French bread, cheese, and wine. It was delicious! It was also a very good ending to a very good day.

Some final thoughts: Chuck Norris doesn't vote. Chuck Norris sidekicks his candidate through the White House doors from Bethesda.

hail, ever conceal, and never reveal any of the secrets, arts, parts, point or points

2007-10-22T14:34:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I was initiated into the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Flagrant Copyright Violation. Translation: one of my Chinese friends showed me where the good DVD store is.

In Harbin and Nanjing, pirated DVDs were easily and widely available. In Chengdu, however, I had a tough time finding a good shop. Sure, there are lots of street vendors, but their quality is never as good as a shop's, and it's nice to know that there's somewhere you can return a defective disk to. An expat friend of mine mentioned that there's a good DVD store and she told me its general location, but I couldn't find it. Turns out there's a reason.

This DVD store is the most hilariously covert thing I've ever seen – you'd never find it without somebody showing you. First, go in to this electronics market area and head towards the back. Go out a side door into the delivery truck parking lot, hang left, and go back inside through a door marked "Employees Only." From there, go down an unlit staircase, and down a hall that won the Miss Creepy Hallway 2003 competition. This hallway has lots of doors on the left side. If you know which one to knock on, the people inside will draw back the deadbolt and let you in to the largest DVD store I've seen since Harbin! I only wish there were a password.

superfluousness (which isn't nearly so super a word as superfluidity)

2007-10-21T12:14:00.000+08:00

I've been pretty quiet lately. Partly, this has been because it's been pretty quiet here – nothing too exciting to report. Partly, it's because of the Ongoing Internet Saga. The internet at our flat is down... again. Exact same problem as the last three times. And, like the last three times, they sent a guy to our flat, he couldn't figure anything out, and he left in confusion. Just like the last times, I'm sure it's some piece of modem or router equipment in the downstairs office that's messed up. We gotta get an outside line. On the plus side, I think I've found a permanent workaround for the Great Firewall! A fellow expat introduced me to Tor, and I think it's a winner! It slows my connection down like CRAZY when it's activated, but it gets me where I want to go. And it doesn't rely on anybody failing to notice me illicitly using their servers, which is bonus.

Last night was the final of the Rugby World Cup. It wasn't until 4am that I realized that the game was less than half over, and that I neither understand nor care about rugby! Haha

When I got to Starbucks this morning for my Internet & Caffeine fix, no fewer than three people asked me if I'd heard The News. Apparently, J.K. Rawling gave an interview where she revealed that Dumbledore is gay. i dunno. It seems pretty gratuitous – an ex post facto addition that feels more like Rawling using her star power to make a political statement than a contribution to the story. It's also not tough to imagine that this could be a carefully-timed announcement intended to revitalize Book Seven sales now that the first rush is over. But, here I go contributing to the 'buzz' so I guess it's working. haha

And, finally, the ex-pat hangouts are all making a big deal of Halloween... which means I gotta figure something out for that! I've got 'til Friday, and I can get just about anything custom made. Any suggestions?

Good looking, so refined.

2007-10-17T00:17:00.000+08:00

Today was an expensive day for me - by China standards, anyway!

I went to the computer market and bought a Canon iP1180 (I'd never heard of it either - apparently it's only for the China market) for 250RMB/US$33. Now, I'll be able to print journal articles and make physical backups of my fieldnotes. I've been making periodic electronic backups of my fieldnotes, but I've now put enough work in to this that I'm getting paranoid! haha

In the evening, I went and joined the gym that my roommates belong to. It's... China quality. Still, I'm glad to have access to it, and was happy to pay 799RMB/US$106 for a six-month membership. Some time soon, I'll probably pay the astronomical US$13 to hire a personal trainer for an hour to help me figure out a routine. Oh! And they also seem to have some kind of a martial arts class. Definitely going to have to check that out!

On the cheaper side of things, I'm really enjoying StarOffice 8, which is Sun Microsystem's proprietary (but available for free through Google Pack) group of programs built on OpenOffice. As promised, I've had no trouble whatsoever continuing to use the same Microsoft file formats that the rest of the world uses. My only complaint is that the word processor has an auto-complete feature where it tries to guess what you're typing before you finish (like most cellphones). This is useless at best and annoyingly distracting at worst, but I'm sure I'll figure out how to turn it off soon.

Working slightly less well, however, is my internet connection. I've been trying to re-download NVivo (a 6+ hour download at my speeds) for the past two days, but the connection keeps getting interrupted and the file gets cut short. I'm going to try plugging my computer directly into our Ethernet connection tonight, and see if bypassing the router helps.

so... yeah! Tomorrow, I'm planning to hit the gym when it opens (at 9:30? What's with a gym opening at 9:30?) and then spend the afternoon at the market. I tell you, this Fulbright business is tough! haha

Flooj (n): The result of a Chinese shower malfunction. 14 points

2007-10-16T00:36:00.000+08:00

Well, there's been a bit of a lull in my updates. This has been in no small part (though not exclusively) because I've been having some computer hassles. So today, I went through the inconvenient (and yet embarrassingly exciting!) process of wiping my hard drive. Lenovo laptops come with great recovery software, so instead of actually reformatting (which inevitably causes all sorts of driver headaches) I can restore my computer to factory-original settings in about an hour. From there, of course, it's an annoying process of re-downloading all the various Windows updates, browser plug-ins, and media players necessary to have your computer actually function. Now, I'm all back up and running, with one exception: I haven't reinstalled Microsoft Office.

Now, I could easily go to the computer super center down the street and buy a copy of the latest MS Office for about fifty cents. I've decided, however, to do the only thing that will annoy Microsoft more than pirating its software: giving it up. I'm currently downloading Open Office, and I'm going to check it out. Supposedly, it's a fully functional (and fully free) productivity suite, that's completely compatible with all the Microsoft file types. If it doesn't deliver, I can always uninstall and go buy that pirated CD. But I'm betting it works out. We shall see!

From software to hardware, my Shower Saga continues. As I was showering this morning, the hose broke apart from the nozzle and started spraying water all over the place. Fortunately, the water was in an "unbearably cold" phase, and I got it off before it returned suddenly to "blisteringly hot." Gonna have to pull out the ol' dictionary before going down to explain this one to the office!

also, in a surprising twist, I've taken up Scrabble. Now, I'm sure the many people who have come to know and love my spelling may be shocked by this, but I've discovered that the game is a lot more about strategy than spelling - finding a way to stick that X in the triple-letter box matters a lot more than knowing which 'cheap' you're spelling! If anybody's interested in an online game, let me know!

What's that smell?

2007-10-08T13:38:00.001+08:00

Fact of Life: Chinese bathrooms smell bad. Previously, I had attributed this to the fact that most toilets can't flush paper, and the little trashcans could usually stand to be changed a bit more often. Additionally, there's something about squatty potties that somehow they encourage neither careful aim nor frequent flushing. Even in nice places, however, there's this baseline level of "Ugg… this smells like a Chinese bathroom" that I've never really understood. Now, I do.

Our apartment has two bathrooms (western toilets both) and while three Frenchmen and an American guy in their early 20s might not sound like the most cleaning-obsessed group in the world, we at least know what to do if something starts to smell. Except there's nothing we can do about the bathrooms. Daily cleanings, those blue things you put in the tank, even some Chinese stuff you pour down the drain to "freshen" the pipes, we've tried it all. Nothin. The "Chinese bathroom" smell comes and goes, but some days it's bad enough to make our whole apartment reek if the windows aren't open. At this point, I'm convinced that the plumbing belches some kind of sewer gas, and there's just nothing we can do about it.

As long as I'm kvetching about First World conveniences like plumbing that doesn't reek, I would also like to mention that my clothing will never be dry again. Ever. See, the Chinese don't do dryers (a capitalist running dog extravagance), so we have to line dry everything. Well, in Chengdu in winter (and right now too, apparently), it rains just about every day. We can move the clothes drying rack in to my room, but that's (1) kinda annoying, and (2) only mildly useful, because the clothes somehow never manage to get beyond "unpleasantly damp" in there. I'm honestly starting to thing that mold might become an issue if we don't figure this out before winter sets in. Gross.

Other than the usual "Oh, China!" moments, things are going very well! I had a very productive day in the market yesterday, teaching one of my friends to play western chess (he's promised to teach me Chinese chess soon), and also getting some good data on the organization of the market – which spots are considered more desirable, and how rent varies depending on perceived levels of foot traffic. I've also finally realized that business cards can provide a wealth of information about a store, in a form that I can easily walk away with and analyze at length back home.

The coolest thing at the market yesterday, however, was the coat one of my buddies was wearing over his street clothes. It was a red and white jacket, no doubt traditional to some ethnic minority group. It looked kinda like a cross between a smoking jacket and a knee-length bathrobe, and I could easily imagine a Chinese Hugh Heffner lounging around in one. I really wanted to hand him a snifter of brandy, just for the visual. I'm pretty sure it was one of the things for sale in his store, and he had just thrown it on because he was cold and it was convenient. One of his friends joked that, by winter, everybody'd be at his store, wearing his inventory! Hahaha

And, finally: Take that Favre! Urlacher smash!

Of bedclothes, collaborations, and ninja squirrels.

2007-10-06T17:46:00.000+08:00

Sylvan and I went on a four-hour quest today that finally ended in success at Ikea. I now have a mattress pad and fitted sheet on my bed. I cannot express (and would be somewhat embarrassed to admit) how happy this makes me. I had honestly considered asking my parents to mail me sheets from the States if I couldn't find any here!

As I've mentioned to a few people, Mr. Schirr and I have decided to collaborate on a marketing project, in addition to my work on bargaining. This looks like it's going to be a great arrangement for several reasons including, (1) broadening the scope of my inquiry to include marketing has already helped me see bargaining in more of a context rather than looking at it in isolation, (2) I think working with him will help add direction and oversight to my research, which should make it more productive, and (3) collaborating with him will make it much more likely that I'll be able to publish something based on my research. From Mr. Schirr's standpoint, he gets to work with original data collected in China that he wouldn't have the time or opportunity to collect himself, and hopefully get a publication or two out of it. Sounds like this will be a great opportunity for both of us!

Finally, the NY Times is running a six page long story entitled The Squirrel Wars. It includes such classic phrases as "method of cranial concussion" and "a red-squirrel topiary, with two bumps for paws, evocative of the Venus of Willendorf in shrub." Sadly, no references to ninja squirrels massacring each other with tiny little katanas in the part I read.