Call Me the Effecter of Change

My first cubicle at the Beijing office was near the entrance to our office space. It was a good location, near the rest of my team, adjacent to a water cooler, and obviously a short walk from the elevators. Ironically, though, its proximity to the entryway in the end proved to be its hamartia. The office doors were always left wide open, allowing the cigarette smoke from the stairwell to extend its disgusting, carcinogenic tentacles deep into my olfactive orifice. I almost felt sorry for the smoke, though, because its unprovoked attack only served to awaken the sleeping giant, filling me with a terrible resolve.

My first tactic was a direct counter-offensive against the malefactors. I came to know from a reliable source that smoking was technically not allowed inside the stairwell. Armed with my seemingly unassailable fact, I submitted my demand for the enemy's full surrender and immediate withdrawal. The one with the power to police the interlopers, however, responded that the stairwell was clearly equipped with ashtrays, thus proving that smoking was perfectly lawful. I didn't bother explaining how stupid her argument was, because, as we all know, intelligence is no match for stupidity in a head-on battle.

After regrouping I realized I needed temporary relief from the enemy's chemical warfare to clear my head and allow the winning stratagem to present itself. I retreated from the front-lines, moving to a cube a few trenches farther from the gates. Soon thereafter I was paid a visit by an ally bringing intelligence from HQ. At a clandestine rendezvous he informed me that the Beijing base, like the Sunnyvale base, was intended to be a secure compound, meaning the doors were to be shut and locked at all times. This clashed with my previous intel that the doors could in fact not be closed since it would interfere with the daily civilian rationing system. If the civilians were present all day at work they received a small food stipend. The keycard system recorded when they arrived in the morning and left in the evening, but every time they swiped their card it would overwrite the previously recorded value instead of remembering the earliest time in the morning and the latest time in the evening. For this reason, the doors had to be open, otherwise they would be forced to re-swipe whenever they wished to enter the compound.

I'm getting tired of my war motif so I'm just going to finish the story. I explained the situation to the facilities guy in Beijing and he got in contact with the door system people. They were able to change the system to only remember the earliest and latest times, thus allowing the doors to stay closed. An email was sent out explaining that the doors must now stay closed because of security concerns, but of course I knew the real reason things had changed: me.

Highfalutin Prostitutin

Interest piqued by that suggestive title? Well, it is my brilliant translation of the bubble tea flavor "贵妃" (literally meaning imperial concubine). Faced with the insurmountable task of ever topping this linguistic delight, I hereby retire from the world of translation with a perfect 100% flawless translation record.

If you are a faithful follower of my blatherings then you definitely remember my love affair with bubble tea last summer. With Emily here this time keeping an eye on me, though, we've had to cool things down a little bit, but we still see each other once or twice a week. Perhaps the real reason I don't go as often is related to my coworker telling me he doesn't touch the fake bubble tea stuff because nothing in it is real. All you are getting is a cocktail of flavor-modifiers and various other stuff that doesn't do your body good. I'm not sure I totally believe it, but apparently I'm wary enough to cut back on my consumption.

Now it is time for my serious, thought-provoking paragraph. In case you don't read the news, China has serious food quality issues. The most publicized examples are probably the "recycled" (read: fished out of the sewer) oil some restaurants use to cut costs, and the poisoned baby food scandal from a couple years ago. I asked my coworkers, and they said food safety is a top public concern, but the government still doesn't do much to improve things. They explained that the government is basically only interested in keeping the peace and growing the economy. Insignificant social complaints are not their concern (especially when they control all news outlets). I wonder how long the government can maintain this attitude and still keep the peace?

Novel Novels

Lately I've been reading a lot. It's not what you think though -- it's way awesomer! I read about a genre of Chinese novels a while ago on one of my internet haunts, and soon thereafter bought one of the so-called Kung Fu novels. I picked one of most famous ones by the easier of the two most famous authors. (By "easy" I mean the author doesn't employ as many historical allusions and other hard-to-understand techniques that make the more difficult author harder for foreigners to fully understand.) Back then I was still in the US, so it took the full 8 weeks to receive the book. I meant to start reading it, but, you know, I didn't.

Not until after we came to Beijing, that is. I cracked it open, and man, was it fun. It's like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but with way more cool Kung Fu and intrigue. The genre also embodies some of the enjoyable elements from "Kung Fu Hustle", like never being sure who the real Kung Fu master is. It was slow going at the start, but once I got used to the writing and the Kung Fu lexicon, I powered through the book at a pretty good clip. Now I am on my third novel by this author, and I ordered online the complete set of books by the other, more difficult author. Everyone seems to agree the harder author's books are much better, so I'm excited to give them a try.

Beyond improving my Chinese and being enjoyable, these books serve a third purpose. I now have something to talk about with just about every Chinese male I encounter! You see, these books are kind of like their Star Wars or Lord of the Rings - most guys read/loved/watched them as a kid. I also hear that you occasionally runs into references to these books in modern Chinese culture. Won't that be fun to finally "get" something without having to look it up!

A Jaunt to Xi'An

Seeing as this week is a national holiday we decided we should take a trip somewhere. The only problem is that all 1.3 billion other people in China had the same idea. We were planning an epic train journey spanning multiple cities but we anticlimactically weren't able to get any train tickets, so we settled for plane tickets to what would have been our first stop: Xi'An.

The trip over was smooth - a little too smooth. I had packed my medicated shampoo and sunscreen in my backpack because we thought we could carry them on. It turns out the rules are the same as the US. I surrendered my sun screen, but obviously didn't want to part with my special shampoo. After a little bit of explaining, they put my shampoo in some little scanny machine, gave it back to me and let me go on my way. I was happy, but on the other hand it was a little unsettling (but not surprising) to see that rules aren't strictly enforced, even at the airport.

Our hotel in Xi'An (Kempinski) was a little ways outside the city center. We figured it wouldn't matter much because we were only staying for 2 days and were only planning to go into the city once. Unfortunately it did end up mattering. We caught a taxi to the city, and after sampling the famous local Muslim dish 羊肉泡馍 and strolling around for a bit, we were ready to head back to the hotel. Unfortunately, empty taxis were nowhere to be found, and even if we did happen upon one they refused to take us to our hotel (too far away). I won't go into the shady details, but suffice to say we eventually made it back. Emily was not happy.

The next day we chartered a taxi to take us to and from the Terra-cotta Warriors. It was interesting to see that basically an entire city had sprung up surrounding the dig sites. There were countless restaurants and shops and vendors... and people. Once we made our way to the actual exhibit, we quickly felt how the area was simply teeming with history. So historical, in fact, that there was even a museum about the museum. That's right, inside the museum part of the area there was a wing dedicated to the history of the exhibition itself. Apart from the museum building there were 3 pits you could tour. They were large dig sites enclosed in big warehouse-like structures. This is where you actually get to see the terra-cotta army. We didn't dilly-daddle too long (mainly because it just isn't comfortable being around that many people), leaving as soon as  we had laid eyes on all the dig sites.

We headed back to Beijing the next morning. Interestingly, the first class tickets were only 50RMB (less than $10) more than economy, so of course we sprang. The VIP lounge at the airport was about what you would expect in China. It looked okay, but we quickly found the coffee machine, wireless internet, and flight status displays all didn't work. That didn't leave many amenities left for us VIPs. Our flight was delayed a little, but soon enough we were en route to Beijing in style.

The foreigner has arrived

Whew, first week done! A lot has happened, but thankfully most of it has been good and/or expected, so no disasters yet.

Our trip over was very smooth. After we arrived I thought about it, I realized you never notice when traveling goes smooth, only when it goes disastrously. The flight was long, but we had books and crosswords and sudokus and iPads and iPods and in-flight movies, and each other. I sat next to a nice Chinese man and we chatted for the first 30 minutes or so, but who can maintain boring chit-chat for longer than half an hour? We basically didn't speak again for the next 11 hours, only breaking the silence again to wish one another farewell.

At the airport we cruised through customs and made it onto the airport express train that connects with the main city subway system. China doesn't seem very good at keeping escalators in working order, so there was a lot of suitcase lugging as we deftly hopped between lines, working our way to the hotel. After an hour or so of transit we were checking into the old HuiHuang International (just across the street from the office in Beijing).

I think we managed to stay up until 7pm that evening, but we couldn't sleep much past 3am. That morning (Saturday) Jackie met us at the hotel to show us some apartments in the area we had chosen to live in. The WuDaoKou area is sort of student central for all of Beijing. It has many universities in/around it, so apartments and nightlife options abound, but you can end up paying through the nose. Jackie worked for a rental agency recommended by Aruba's HR in Beijing, but WuDaoKou was out of her area of expertise so it turns our she had worked out a commission-sharing deal with an agent at a local rental agency. The two of them showed us various apartments in HuaQingJiaYuan, the biggest, most well-known apartment complex in WuDdaoKou. The apartments were all pretty crappy by American standards, and the prices were roof-shattering. Admittedly this was a bad time to look for apartments (students coming in for school), but 8,000RMB a month for an unimpressive 2BR!? Keep in mind the buying power of 1 RMB is about the same as 1 dollar, so 8,000RMB a month isn't far off from $8000 a month in relative terms. You may be shocked to learn that we did not end up choosing a place that day. We were, however, desperate to get out of the expensive hotel and establish our home-base, so by no means were we going to rest on our laurels and wait for Jackie to waste some more of our time (she had had said it would take 1 week to close an apartment after we found one we liked!).

On Sunday we contacted a different agent in the area and he was able to show us some places in another complex directly behind HuaQingJiaYuan. This new complex, called DongShengYuan, is essentially located just as conveniently as HuaQingJiaYuan (close to subway station and main WuDaoKou strip), but with significantly cheaper prices. By a stroke of luck we saw a decent apartment that had just gone on the market (despite the insane prices apartments move really fast, so you have hours or less usually to think it over before pulling the trigger - certainly not an advantageous position for the renter). The owner was still inside it cleaning up. She was a middle-aged well-to-do Chinese woman. This was the first time she had rented the apartment out, which reassured us a little bit that the living conditions would be comfortable. Another group of potential renters were hot on our tails into the apartment and wanted to take it right then and there. Our agent told us if we wanted it we had to say so right then, so we mumbled a few words of indecisive English to each other and then decided "what the heck? Let's go for it!".

The agent led us out immediately to avoid a confrontation, but on the way to the rental agency he, erm, had a few words with someone on the phone about our dibs on the apartment. He sealed the deal for us, though, with a little fib that he had already accepted money from us. Thankfully that morning I had talked Wells Fargo into raising my daily ATM withdrawal limit to $3000, so we were able to withdraw all the money we needed (which is a lot - 5 months rent) to finish the deal that day. The apartment wasn't quite ready by the time the paperwork was done, but we came back later that evening and moved in! We sort of screwed Jackie over in the end, but in our estimation she had done a horrible job overall, so we didn't feel too bad. I won't talk about the apartment because most of you should have seen Emily's video tour.

My first week of work went pretty well. I spent most of my time getting the team's development infrastructure up to snuff and assisting them on their development tasks. The office has been newly renovated since last time I was there so it is much nicer than before. They are also renovating a neighboring floor in the building the serve as the lab area (which will be very nice considering their current lab is a total piece of shit).

This weekend we played tourist a little bit. On Saturday we went to the Forbidden City and TianAnMen Square, stopped by the Silk Market, and then picked up some stuff at Walmart on the way home (there is a Walmart 1 subway stop from us - yay!). Today we had a walkabout through the QingHua and BeiDa campuses (the MIT and Harvard of China, respectively). We also scoped out the closest ATMs of the Chinese bank we are planning to open an account at.

So, like I said, all-in-all things are going pretty well. One major complaint is that there's a lot of smokers here, but we'll just have to suck-it-up on that front, so to speak.

Woohoo! No more language pledge! Finally I can unleash my real personality on you unsuspecting internets. Actually, though, it is very interesting getting to know people while speaking a foreign language. Some people can express themselves and convey their personality pretty well, but other people (like me) come across as dull, watered-down mere echoes of their true form. I think your ability to accurately portray your character in a foreign language depends mainly on two factors: your grasp of the language, and how much your personality depends on the intricacies of your native language. One outstanding aspect of my personality is my quick wit, often manifesting itself as searing quips (did you bring your aloe), and clever word play. In a foreign language, however, one lacks the finesse and mastery of subtlety required to pull this kind of performance off.

Speaking of performance, last weekend our program held a performance/talent show event. Students were encouraged to perform skits, sing, dance, or anything, really, as long as it was in Chinese. I penned a brilliant satire in which I poked fun at our head teacher and pointed out a few funny, oft-repeating situations in class. I of course played the part of Professor Zhou (who is the head of the Chinese department at Princeton). In the skit Professor Zhou is giving the new PiB teachers some instruction on how to deal with tricky situations in class. Most of the bits are inside jokes, so I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say I had to stop a few times to wait for the raucous laughter to die down. I do have a video of it though, so I can put that on Youtube or something.

Yesterday I woke up at 4:15am to start the final leg of my journey. I had a disastrous time trying to check out of the dorm, but finally got that squared away. I caught a PiB arranged shuttle bus to the airport, and in no time made it to Taibei safe and sound. Auntie Jia was at the airport to meet me (holding a sign with my Chinese name written on it). On the way back to her house we stopped to buy a few things, then made it home and got settled in. Her house is pretty sweet, especially compared to the dorms at PiB! Today we met up with a bunch of family for lunch. It was a good time meeting everyone, and I think some of them might be playing tour guide for me later this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday I'm gonna hang out with two classmates from PiB. They are the two mixed sisters I mentioned before (Kim and Sam). They are pretty familiar with Taiwan, so they are gonna drag me around to their favorite places. I think they most of all can attest to my radically different personality when speaking English.

Weeks Five and Six

這兩個星期過得不錯。上個週二打了一次網球。我找到了一個三年級的網球夥伴，他特別厲害！他非常擅長打網球，打得比我好多了。還有，他認識我大學的朋友 Atsushi，真巧。昨天我跟一個同學出去逛逛街，買些東西。她和她的妹妹都是普北班的學生，而且也是混血兒（台灣/美國，跟美麗一樣）。其實，普北班的混血兒挺多的，好像他們都在探究自己文化身份的一個方面。

我們星期五考完試以後去扔飛盤。我扔的還可以，但很多同學仍得很棒。甚至有一個同學參加過真正的大學非盤比賽，她果然扔得最好。

告訴你們一個秘密，我最進對珍珠奶茶上癮了。簡直太好喝了。差不多每天都起碼喝一杯。更危險的是他們會外送到宿舍，所以我們埋頭讀書的時候，只要打個電話，奶茶就奇跡般的突然出現。不過，不僅是奶茶，西方快餐廳也會外送。麥當勞，賽百味，肯德基都會把他們的食品送到你家裡。雖然我不常吃快餐，但住在這個又發達又便捷的城市不言而喻很容易就變得疏懶成性！

These past two weeks have been pretty good. I played tennis last Tuesday. I found a PiB 3rd year student to play with. He is very good at tennis, much better than me. And he knows my college friend Atsushi. What a coincidence! Yesterday I went shopping with a classmate. She and her sister are both PiB students, and also biracial (Taiwanese/American) like Emily. [Emily's note: I am half Chinese/half American, not half Taiwanese.] As a matter of fact, there are quite a few biracial students in PiB, as if they are searching for part of their cultural identity.

After the exam on Friday, we played frisbee. I threw ok, but quite a few classmates were great. One particular classmate even participated in an official college frisbee competition. She threw the best.

Now I'll tell you a secret: I am addicted to pearl milk tea. [Emily's note: also called "bubble tea."] It is delicious. I pretty much drink at least one cup everyday. The fact that the bubble tea shop will deliver makes it even more dangerous. When we are buried in our studies, all we need to do is to call, and the milk tea will miraculously appear. Besides delivering pearl milk tea, they also deliver western fast food. McDonald's, Subway, and KFC can all be delivered to your door. Although I don’t eat fast food often, it is easy to become lazy living in this well developed and convenient city.