Summertime in the City

I have been quite busy here in the last couple of weeks. Lots of news stories and mindless drivel in store so lets get started.

The biggest bit of news is that my roommate Bryne has moved out. He left at the end of June and is visiting his girlfriend in Korea before heading to Shanghai to start a new job at a school there. It is the end of an era. Bryne and I came to Beijing and worked the same job last year and decided to room together this year. He is a very good friend and will be missed. Before I start weeping uncontrollably I should let you all know that I will be visiting Bryne in Shanghai in September to relive the helsian days gone by.

Since his departure two things have changed in the apartment: There is more food in the fridge and more dirty dishes in the sink. I am terrible at doing dishes. Call me spoiled, call me a child of the modern age, call me domestically challenged, or just call me lazy but this is the first time I have lived without a dishwasher and my lack of talent in that field has been exposed. And since improving myself is a big hobby of mine, it is something I am working on.

A quick update on a topic I raised in my last post. I solicited ideas for movies to show to my students and received many suggestions. Thanks to all who shared their ideas with me. Two weeks ago I showed what is one of my top 50 movies to the students. I was very excited when I saw it in the video store and purchased it immediately giggling to myself all the way home. Groundhog Day. What a fantastic movie that is. I had been looking for it for a long time because of its obvious appeal to my students. It has broad comedy, a tinge of romance, and repetition, three things they love. It was well received and students were lining up afterwards to borrow the movie. Success.

The glory days of DVD buying seem to be over in Beijing and I have the Olympics to blame. Last week I struggled to find an open DVD shop. My old standby was open but had changed format seemingly overnight. The only DVDs they had for sale were Chinese ones, all the foreign DVDs had been removed from the shelves. I recognized the truth instantly but denied it and headed to another DVD shop. There too I found the same sad situation. I realized instantly that the famed Olympic crackdown was in effect. For months the media in the west has been reporting on Chinese efforts to curtail pirating and enforce international copyright laws. This was the first time I had seen evidence of such efforts and though I knew these tactics would eventually be employed I was saddened by their implementation. I traveled to an area near a local market that caters to Western tourists. Stationed outside the front doors of this market are men who quietly whisper 'CD,?DVD?'. Those men were gone. I walked around the market because I figured that, while I never went down the proverbial rabbit hole and followed these men, some unwitting tourist had. I assumed that they would not have to walk far so I patrolled the perimeter of the market. Soon enough I found a small DVD shop. Within one second I realized the same scourge that had wiped out the Western DVD's at the last two shops I had visited was in effect at this shop as well. As I tuned to walk out a voice called out to me, "Looking for Western DVD sir?", I replied in the affirmative, "Come with me", she whispered. I followed her into a back room with a smaller than normal door. We went through the door and into a hallway for service staff that was attached to the larger market. Down the hall we went and through an unmarked door through the door we made a left, then a right, and finally came to our final door. She knocked three times, slowly. The door opened and a choir of angels sang a beautiful song of celebration as I entered what looked like my dreams. DVD's everywhere. It was great, but is this what Beijing has come to? Secret hallways and knocks now required to procure Western DVDs?

This crackdown on the DVD's is just part of a larger effort to prepare for the Olympics. With the games just more than three weeks away efforts to create a 'safe and secure Olympics' are in full effect. Measures to reach that goal have included beefing up security on the subway. Me looking like a member of a particularly feared and despised ethnic minority in China has led to me being called out for bag inspection a little more than most although such inspections never occur at the stations near my home or near my work. Sporadically well armed police can be seen patrolling major intersections throughout the city center. They are decked out in body armor and carrying serious heat. Surface-to-Air missile installations protect the Bird's Nest and Water Cube as well, just in case they need to shoot down a plane over the center of the city. I've talked with my students about the amped up security and most of them hope that the bag checks in the subway continue after the Olympics. I was a bit surprised by that and hope to engage one of them in a more in depth conversation on the subject in the days to come.

I have plenty of other stories regarding this topic but none I should write down here.

On a lighter note, my office had a party last weekend at a cafe in a rather ritzy shopping area in Beijing. The biggest hit at the party wasn't the food or drink but Jenga. Jenga is a hell of a game that I was introduced to in the early 1990's. A stack of wooden planks are weaved together to form a tower and players take turns pulling the planks out and placing them on top of the structure. If you knock down the tower you lose. Since it can be played with any number of players there is no real winner, only losers. It is a game to identify a loser, which makes it unique in the realm of indoor family entertainment. At work one of the teachers is creating a class based on board games and Jenga was included, that is how it found it's way to the party. Jenga is unknown outside of the US. I didn't know this. Everyone was Jenga crazy including Maggie, my Chiense boss. There was a group of about seven people playing and she was the ringleader. She would call on people who were not even playing the game to come over and take a piece. I think she saw it as some sort of test of mental ability. The entire staff was all over Jenga. After the staff party broke up a contingent of us headed to a bar. There we set up Jenga and resumed play, this time drawing the attention of passers by. We even drew a bit of a crowd once the tower got really high. The Chinese wait staff was also involved in the game. Jenga brings people together.

The day after the party I was invited by a student of mine to join him and several other students in dining at his family's restaurant. I was happy to go on an eating expedition and joined them for lunch on Monday. My students are all adults, between twenty and sixty years old with the average age around twenty-nine. The students I dined with were David, Kiko, and T-Bag. That day we were visiting T-Bag's family at their restaurant. The four of us headed to the south part of Beijing. It had been told that the southside is the stabby side of Beijing, with most of the violent crime in the city happening on its southside. Violent crime is rare in Beijing and even more rarely reported. No one I know in Beijing has had a friend or acquaintance who has been a victim of a violent crime which is amazing. Think about your own life and friends? Amazing, isn't it? I headed to the southside with phone books tucked into my pants ready for a stabbing or a delicious meal. I got the latter, thankfully. T-Bag's family restaurant is located on the fifth floor of a market. It is a small place that specializes in Sichuan food. I had a bowl of spicy noodles and boiled vegetables in a spicy sesame sauce. It was great. We stayed there for about two hours talking and enjoying ourselves. T-Bag's mom, (Mrs. Bag?) thanked me for teaching her son. She was a very nice lady and thanked me profusely. It was great and I plan on getting back there sometime soon.

This weekend I organized basketball on Saturday at Beijing's premier street basketball venue. We had great attendance and I put up some monster stats in limited action (5 points, 1 3-pointer, 5 rebounds, 3 assists in 7 minutes of play), so all was well. Before, during, and after basketball I was being hounded by a clutch of coworkers and students to join them for a hike northeast of Beijing near Mutianyu, a section of The Great Wall. I was on the fence as they would be leaving at 7:30 a.m. and I am unaccustomed to such a time as I don't begin work until 1pm. After much cajoling I agreed to join them. I went to bed early and joined them the next morning at the apartment of one of my coworkers. From there we piled into two cars and made for the mountains. It was a three hour drive full of singing along with Chinese pop songs (not by me of course) and questions about curse words in English. Once we made it to the mountains we emerged from our vehicles to find that it was quite warm, 93 degrees. We began our ascent at 11 a.m. the scenery was beautiful mostly due to the abundant rain we have received in Beijing recently. The trees were incredibly green and the streams were flowing quite rapidly. From the trail you could see unrestored portions of The Great Wall. It seemed as if most of the hike was spent going up up up. Portions were quite steep but the trail was well maintained and clearly marked. We finished the hike around 2 p.m. covered in sweat. It was a fun if exhausting. After we finished the hike we were quite hungry. The area we visited is famed for a special dish that uses some kind of river fish that is found in the area. We went to a local restaurant and enjoyed this delicacy among others. One of the best dished was one I had never had before. It was fried pumpkin in but the batter used salt and sugar and it was dredged in goose egg. It was quite delicious and a great mix of savory and sweet. After the meal we headed back to Beijing, this time the pop songs were not so entertaining. For some reason it was decided that the party could not stop and we had to go out shopping. I was...exhausted. We parted ways after a couple of shops and I headed back home for a long overdue shower around 8:30 p.m.

This morning I have some housekeepers in my apartment cleaning around me as I type this. I hate this. It is awkward. They refuse to come when I am not here so I they have to clean around me while I look like a lazy slob. This could be a way to reform their customers but that would just be hurting their own business which relies on people like me.

Soon I'll be off to find another DVD joint and maybe get some more of that fried pumpkin, soooo good.