Go rbt cafe!

There's a cafe that I'd seen before in China, is symbol is a stylized rabbit and I don't know the characters in its Chinese name (I should look them up. Later.) Its English name is rbt. And, I have discovered, has FREE WIRELESS AT ALL LOCATIONS!!! We are very happy about this. Yes, we are.

Still no internet at home, but I have had some other successes. One, I bought this awesome Hello Kitty keyboard vacuum that's powered through a USB port. Sweet!

I also bought a new electronic dictionary today, very exciting. For about $50 I got a touch-screen dealy where I can write in a character as well as type in, like my old one. I still wish my old one hadn't broken, but this is a good replacement, and wasn't TOO expensive compared to the fancy color-screen-will-practically-do-your-English-homework-for-you variety. And buying it gave me an excuse to go the big electronics super-center down the road from where I live (the one at 中关村 for those of you who know). Wheee, electronic gadgets! Anything you could ever want and more. In triplicate. On the downside, also lots of people trying to sell you things. 'HELLO! HELLO! SONY! I-BEE-EM!'

This morning I also got more pictures of Beijing University to share. This is the lake that's just inside the gate that I walk through. There are pretty pretty coy in it.And often cute children looking in it.

However, Beijing is still dirty. These are my (before coming to Beijing) brand-new shoes after one day of wearing them. They were mostly in the office too! Really its after two walks across campus.

I'm walken, All by myself

Things are going well here in China, or at least as well as can be expected. I have a nasty cold that caused me to text in sick for half a day (that's right, text. Phone calls are so passe here in China, and also quite expensive compared to texting). Being sick coincided with a power outage at my apartment complex. This is not surprising, it happens all the time all over China, but talk about adding insult to injury! Actually, it turned out to be a blessing because without power, the people in the downstairs apartment couldn't continue on their remodeling task which involves jackhammers on the ceiling, it seems like. When I woke up from my morning sick-nap, the power had just come back on and the jackhammers were just getting started. Time for me to go to work!

A few nights ago, though, I took a walk. It was a nice night out, and I needed bobby pins and cough drops, a good challenge for a night's walk in Beijing. I ended up maybe 15 minutes down the road at a Watson's (a British CVS-type place), which was in a shopping corner called 'Left Bank' in Chinese. It had nice statues.

Here's the university gate I walk through every day to get to work. Its across the street from my apartment-park area, and is the most famous gate at the university. Also lots of people taking their pictures in front of it or posing their babies in carriages in front of it. High hopes, you know?

Yesterday a professor from Indiana University came to give a talk, which I attended. I want a copy of the powerpoint he used because someone translated, word for word, everything. Good words like public finance, and capital gains, and federalist system. More importantly, I want to study the grammar patterns they used. I'm no good with formal Chinese.

Last night I went on another walk, this time to get to free wifi. On the way back there was a night market, yay! There were watches, and purses, and clothes, and bowls, and jewelery, and clocks, and....puppies. SO CUTE! All different kinds in one box. I got the impression that whoever brought them here had gotten them from a wholesaler, and purposefully brought them in every shape and size to appeal to more people. Don't like this one, how about that one? I'm pretty sure the guy told a girl looking at the dogs that the beagle she was holding would be about 2/3 the size that beagles actually grow.

Most deliciously, its yangmei 杨梅 season! They were selling them on the streets. I used to get these in Harbin all the time, they're sometimes really sour but always super juicy, and I mean look at those, how could you not want to eat them?

又在中国了 Once again, in China.

Hello everyone! I see that I apparently haven't been anywhere interesting since 2006, according to this blog. Well, I'm back in China, so you get more posts. This time I'm here for an internship with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which has a 3-odd-year-old office on the Beijing University campus, informally known as BeiDa. This is all very exciting. I, in theory, get to learn about how an international research foundation works, and in any case they research stuff I'm interested in (land policy, sustainable development, tax policy). However...my boss wasn't in when I went to work last Friday so I got put in an office and told 'ok, get to work' and then left by myself, haha. I acted like a good Chinese worker and browsed the internet to appear busy, and then acted like a good American worker and left early because I was jetlagged. SO: I still don't know what I should be doing exactly. Hopefully my boss will be in on Monday!

My flight here was uneventful: I didn't sleep, as usual, but Korean Air was super nice and had good food. Middle seat between two Korean businessmen, but I survived. The worst part was getting to Beijing and a) forgetting my debit card pin so I couldn't get money and b) getting the only cab driver in Beijing who doesn't know where BeiDa is. Let me explain. A) It's not that I didn't remember my code, its that I have it memorized by the letters, and Chinese ATMs both don't have letters AND they switch the keypad order (the 7 is in the upper-left corner instead of the 1). I know this. Its been this way every time. But for the life of me after this long trip I just couldn't get the code switched properly in my head. In the end, I desperately exchanged what US cash I had (like $30) for an exorbitant fee, hoping that this would be enough to make it to BeiDa. B) I get in the cab, and say I want to go to BeiDa. This is like showing up in NYC and saying you want to go to Columbia. Common and famous. The cab driver starts off, slowly, much slower than your usual cutting-through-traffic Chinese cab driver. Halfway there he pulls to the side of the road and gets out a map, saying he's not sure where BeiDa is. No, he doesn't want to call anyone. Could I also read the map? His eyes aren't good and can't see it. GAH! I end up looking all over the map for the tiny characters that say 'BaiDa' and then give the driver directions to where I *think* the east gate of the university must be (where I'm supposed to meet my people).

气死我了.

In the end, everything was fine. I met my people, I was taken to my home for the next three months, and met my roommate, who is from Inner Mongolia and very sweet. Also about five feet tall and tiny, its really funny when we stand next to each other. Funny things that have happened: the day after I got there, I took a shower and got dressed as usual, and she said 'wow! you look so stylish! yesterday when you got off the plane you just looked like a graduate student.' Also, 'your hair is NATURALLY that curly? no! really? no! I just couldn't figure out before why foreigners always permed their hair so much! you mean you guys really just have hair like that? many of you? wow!'

Here is where I'm living:This is what you see when you first walk in. I'm on the third floor of a 40-year-old apartment complex. The university owns it and many professors used to live there, I'm told. Since the people who the university gave the apartments to can't sell them (since the U still owns the rights, even though the people have the right to 'use' them, and I think pay for that right), all they can do is move and then rent out their old spots, which many do.
The kitchen is to the left once you walk in, and looks like this. The whole apartment setup is very, very similar to the ones my teachers had in Harbin and Kunming.
This is the other side of the kitchen. The box above the sink is the hot water heater for the house--yay! 24 hour hot water!
Here's the bathroom. Yes, that's the shower-head above the washing machine on the left. We cover the washing machine with plastic bags to help keep it from getting trashed. I don't think it helps. Also, the machine's not attached to the water line so we have to fill it with a hose from the sink before we start it. BUT...there's a washing machine to begin with, so I'm happy!
This is my room. HUGE!
And perhaps the best part, this is the view! That's right, its GREEN in Beijing! Amazing. The birds are loud in the morning, and there's this one type that I see everywhere--it's black with a blue head, very pretty and fairly large. I had no idea Beijing anywhere still had animals besides tiny dogs, bats and pigeons.

Sabino Canyon in Two Days

[PSA: I realize that the vertical pictures didn't rotate. I will fix this. Later. Right now I'm done with Computer Time.]

Yesterday I went for a little hike in Sabino Canyon with my back-from-back-East friends, and then today I went again with the family. And what a difference a day makes, as yesterday was beautiful, mid-70s and sunny, but last night/today it snowed in all the mountain ranges around Tucson. See the following:

Yesterday looked like this:

And today looked like this:


We were originally going to head up Mt. Lemmon today but the road closed because of the snow! No go. We got some nice pics, though, which is what it's all about, right? Suuuure. Also, we took the tram into Sabino Canyon today, something that I made fun of people for doing yesterday. ::hangs head sheepishly:: The deal with the tram is that it goes the first 2 miles of the paved trail and then you hike in the rest of the 3.8 miles to where the road got washed away by the flood last summer. I'm not sure if you can continue after that (ie, if they've repaired enough of the trail yet). I *think* you can.

I took this one...
...and Dad got this one.

Road Trip to NM

Cassalyn and I went to New Mexico for a little road trip -->
This is the view looking onto White Sands National Monument from Cloudcroft, a mountain town with lots of second homes in Lincoln National Forest. Did you know that Lincoln National Forest is the birthplace of Smokey the Bear? Now you know.
Ah, the lovely gypsum sands of White Sands National Monument. Did you know that the sands are almost always cold or cool due to their white color and gypsum makeup?
White Sands was flooded from rains...in August. Did you know that the water table here is only about two or three feet below the surface? Hence...
...cottonwoods grow here. This is the top of a 30 or 40 foot tall tree that has survived the shifting sands because it is taller than most dunes.
We needed a sled. This method did not work at all. Next time, white mountains...next time.
The New Mexico crew.

I went to Harbin again for work, and it's already cold there!

Man I'm glad I don't live in Harbin anymore! It's already fleece and jacket weather, ewww. A few snapshots of the work trip:

Topiaries!

We went to dinner at a special Dongbei (northeastern-style food) restaurant where they have a floor show. It included:

A man playing the hulusi through tubes in his nose, quite a talent.

Let's sing old propaganda songs together, comrades! I remember seeing a show like this when I lived in Harbin before, and I couldn't believe people where allowed to do this. By this, I mean brazenly make fun of the old style Mao-worship.
Let's pull the silly foriegner on stage to sing propaganda songs, ha ha ha!

Scary, scary fat man who later sang a famous love song to me about an inch from my face while everyone in the restaurant went nuts. That's what I get for reserving a table in the front row, I guess!

And the Songhua River that runs next to Harbin. Lovely, isn't it? It was frozen when I was there. You could go down a 30-foot ice slide onto the river.

Night at Lao She Teahouse

Mom and I just spent a lovely evening watching the variety show at the Lao She Teahouse. There was Beijing Opera......kuaiban, fast talk, where the performer speaks in time with clacker things, usually tells a joke with lots of puns in it, I love it, I will learn it, just you wait and see......acrobatics......bianlian, face change, where the performer changes masks all the time, so fast that you can't see him do it, very cool...
Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I go back to work (boooo) and mom goes on a tour to see the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall (yaaaay).

Afternoon with the Ma

Important Photos from the Afternoon

It was clear out! And blue!
Delicious 'modern Brazilian' food at Alameda:
Beijing public phones, always the memorable orange clamshell:

My mom is visiting here in China

Mom's visiting, and we've done some fun stuff (even though during the week I have to be at work). It's actually worked out quite well, Mom can go on her own during the day to the tourist sites I've already seen and have no desire to see again, and then we go out to dinner and do stuff at night when I'm off work. Brilliant! Here was one of our first dinners at a vegetarian place where the food presentation is half the fun:The veggie restaurant has a Buddhist theme, please see the following menu excerpt for the 'Fire of Ignorance Tofu' we ordered.

I had a three-day weekend on account of Labor Day, so we took the opportunity to head to Pingyao, the city I missed out on seeing a few weekends ago on account of there being no train tickets. This time, I was smarter and planned earlier...and got a ticket agent to get the tickets for me. Sweet. So hard-sleeper tickets and 12 hours overnight later, we arrived in Pingyao Ancient City. Mom in the dining car:Our hotel:Scenes of Pingyao Ancient City:Muslim guy making lamian, pulled noodles:Guy shoveling coal in the middle of the street:

We returned to Beijing after a night spent on a traditional Chinese kang (brick bed that can be heating from below during the winter) via 1.5 hour bus ride to Taiyuan, and then a quick dash to a train that was leaving in 20 minutes. This time the train ride was only 8 hours...but we were only able to get hard seat. Ah well, it was during the day so it wasn't so bad, it's not as if we needed to sleep or anything. Mom was shocked by the seatless folk--you don't have to buy a seat either if you don't want to or they're sold out, you're welcome to stand the whole way!

Work Trip to Qingdao

Last Thursday and Friday I got to go to Qingdao for work. Not too bad, eh? Qingdao is known for being clean and having beaches. It is also well known as the home of Qingdao Beer, probably the only Chinese beer anyone outside of China has heard of...it's spelled 'Tsingtao' in the states.

This child looks very perplexed at the man trying to tell her about starfish.It was really, really windy, hence the hand holding the hair back.The Famous Zhao Bridge in Qingdao, the pagada at the end is on every bottle of Tsingtao Beer. The next time you order it, take a look!