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The Middle Kingdom
Jun. 9th, 2008 03:45 amI spent last week in China on business. I thought I'd go random-association on my impressions. First off, the air in Beijing was bad. Really bad. At 4pm with no clouds, the sky was white, not blue, because of all the coal smoke in the air. I'm told that even this is an improvement as the government prepares for the Olympics. On the other hand, there were newly planted trees and shrubs almost everywhere in the city, as the government is working hard in that area.
Advertising in the northern capital includes these little stickers on the sidewalks. They are maybe 2.5" x 4" in size, about twice the linear size of business card, and include a prominent phone number surrounded by get-rich-quick schemes and the like. Every day, a government worker goes around water-blasting them off of the sidewalks, but they appear again within hours.
Bike lanes often leave room for 3 riders to ride abreast of each other, and even the expressways have them. The larger streets have almost as much room for bikes as for cars, and a raised curb in many places provides extra protection for the cyclists.
At 11pm, it is possible to get a small meal of eggplant-over egg-noodle of fast-food quality for 9 yuan (about US$1.30). There is a domestic brand of red wine called Great Wall which tastes truly awful. It will take them some time to get up to the standard of the US$5 bottles.
The right of way for traffic is radically different. Cars drive around 5 kmh through crosswalks and the pedestrians are just expected to avoid being hit and flow around them. The pole position trick of slot riding in a car is common for taxi drivers, and the horn is used more as a threat than a notice.
The Peking Duck is wonderful. Spend the money on this one, and go to somewhere that specializes in the dish. The best places raise their own ducks specifically for this purpose.
Blood Dragon is a fruit with a vivid magenta rind, dark red seeds, white meat, and the texture of a kiwi fruit. The taste is mild, and I quite enjoyed it. Don't eat the rind.
There is a touristy area of the Great Wall that you see in photos, but a little more research and dedication will take to to a "wild" Great Wall park. A one-hour bus ride (only around 11 yuan), then 20 yuan (about US $3) gets you into the park, and a half-hour hike (each way) gets to the wall itself. I'll have pictures later, but this proved to be the highlight of the trip. Far from the shiny bricks of the tourist area, this was a deliberate construction made with ancient technique and a staggering amount of manpower for a clear military purpose, and beautiful in its awesomeness. There is a guard tower every quarter-mile to a mile apart, where ever the convenient peak was, and the defenders' advantage from the wall with medieval weapons would have been enormous.
Most of the restaurants don't serve rice, and if they do it isn't in remotely the quantity and in Chinese-American restaurants.
Except for service uniforms in businesses, everyone was wearing western clothes.
Tienamen Square is lit up at night, and is right across the street from the forbidden city.
"xie' xie" is still "thank you" -- but "xie' xia" is taking over as "thanks" (informal thank you). I'm not at all sure when to use which, but "xie' xie" seems to always be safe.
Haggling is very much part of the culture. Some malls don't even post prices, and the initial asking price is often an order of magnitude about what is required. I got asked 1440 yuan for an item that I eventually got for 200, and was asked 750 for one I got for 50.
The stalls are tiny for each vendor, and walking in front of the neighboring stall is a big no-no. Vendors are aggressive and will touch you or grab your arm to get your attention.
People on bikes will try to sell you bootleg DVDs on the street. I'm told that no matter how well the cover is done, the disc inside is crap. A camcorder recording of the real movie at best, and empty plastic at worst.
Many people local to Beijing speak openly about the people of Tibet as being stupid, uncivilized, and worse. They do not consider this controversial.
Lunch restaurants tend to put a television on for background noise. This has something to do with conversational etiquette, but I'm not exactly sure of the details. It has something to do with speaking into a quiet room being considering addressing the whole group, which requires too much status for side conversations to work.
In large groups, social status dictated order of service, and this was rigorously observed.
It is assumed that white people do not understand any Mandarin at all and cannot tell Kanji characters apart. The people that engendered this stereotype are not hard to find, and even harder to not find.
The bicycles tend to be ridden in a high gear with a low RPM. It seems like this would put a lot of strain on the knees and lead to relatively poor control.
The ratio of bikes:cars used to be more-bikes, and is now more-cars. Gasoline is heavily subsidized and runs about US$3/gallon.
Coal smoke makes it hard to get clean, no matter how many showers you take.
Speaking distance is about 20% closer than in the US.
Women wear pants. Dresses were not included in the westernization of clothing.
Most public-serving jobs are strongly gender-marked (either all-male or all-female for a given role) and have an associated uniform. Many of these look like they came from 1950s American uniform design. Maybe the clothes are a WWII holdover?
There are traffic signs all over that show the local major roads and turn colors based on how well the traffic is moving in an obvious green-yellow-red code. Even at "red" the traffic isn't LA-bad.
The city is designed in concentric rings. Space is at more of a premium, and the city is quite vertical in rings 2 and 3.
The Olympic Stadium is supposed to look like a bird's nest, but from the ground it looks more like some grad student with a CAD program got bored, and then someone switched that with the real plans for the stadium. So now there is a huge irregular toroid of steel girders that seats 100,000. The water stadium is somewhat cooler.
15 hour time difference makes it real hard to get to sleep upon returning, but I have to try. Ask me questions and I'll write more later.
Advertising in the northern capital includes these little stickers on the sidewalks. They are maybe 2.5" x 4" in size, about twice the linear size of business card, and include a prominent phone number surrounded by get-rich-quick schemes and the like. Every day, a government worker goes around water-blasting them off of the sidewalks, but they appear again within hours.
Bike lanes often leave room for 3 riders to ride abreast of each other, and even the expressways have them. The larger streets have almost as much room for bikes as for cars, and a raised curb in many places provides extra protection for the cyclists.
At 11pm, it is possible to get a small meal of eggplant-over egg-noodle of fast-food quality for 9 yuan (about US$1.30). There is a domestic brand of red wine called Great Wall which tastes truly awful. It will take them some time to get up to the standard of the US$5 bottles.
The right of way for traffic is radically different. Cars drive around 5 kmh through crosswalks and the pedestrians are just expected to avoid being hit and flow around them. The pole position trick of slot riding in a car is common for taxi drivers, and the horn is used more as a threat than a notice.
The Peking Duck is wonderful. Spend the money on this one, and go to somewhere that specializes in the dish. The best places raise their own ducks specifically for this purpose.
Blood Dragon is a fruit with a vivid magenta rind, dark red seeds, white meat, and the texture of a kiwi fruit. The taste is mild, and I quite enjoyed it. Don't eat the rind.
There is a touristy area of the Great Wall that you see in photos, but a little more research and dedication will take to to a "wild" Great Wall park. A one-hour bus ride (only around 11 yuan), then 20 yuan (about US $3) gets you into the park, and a half-hour hike (each way) gets to the wall itself. I'll have pictures later, but this proved to be the highlight of the trip. Far from the shiny bricks of the tourist area, this was a deliberate construction made with ancient technique and a staggering amount of manpower for a clear military purpose, and beautiful in its awesomeness. There is a guard tower every quarter-mile to a mile apart, where ever the convenient peak was, and the defenders' advantage from the wall with medieval weapons would have been enormous.
Most of the restaurants don't serve rice, and if they do it isn't in remotely the quantity and in Chinese-American restaurants.
Except for service uniforms in businesses, everyone was wearing western clothes.
Tienamen Square is lit up at night, and is right across the street from the forbidden city.
"xie' xie" is still "thank you" -- but "xie' xia" is taking over as "thanks" (informal thank you). I'm not at all sure when to use which, but "xie' xie" seems to always be safe.
Haggling is very much part of the culture. Some malls don't even post prices, and the initial asking price is often an order of magnitude about what is required. I got asked 1440 yuan for an item that I eventually got for 200, and was asked 750 for one I got for 50.
The stalls are tiny for each vendor, and walking in front of the neighboring stall is a big no-no. Vendors are aggressive and will touch you or grab your arm to get your attention.
People on bikes will try to sell you bootleg DVDs on the street. I'm told that no matter how well the cover is done, the disc inside is crap. A camcorder recording of the real movie at best, and empty plastic at worst.
Many people local to Beijing speak openly about the people of Tibet as being stupid, uncivilized, and worse. They do not consider this controversial.
Lunch restaurants tend to put a television on for background noise. This has something to do with conversational etiquette, but I'm not exactly sure of the details. It has something to do with speaking into a quiet room being considering addressing the whole group, which requires too much status for side conversations to work.
In large groups, social status dictated order of service, and this was rigorously observed.
It is assumed that white people do not understand any Mandarin at all and cannot tell Kanji characters apart. The people that engendered this stereotype are not hard to find, and even harder to not find.
The bicycles tend to be ridden in a high gear with a low RPM. It seems like this would put a lot of strain on the knees and lead to relatively poor control.
The ratio of bikes:cars used to be more-bikes, and is now more-cars. Gasoline is heavily subsidized and runs about US$3/gallon.
Coal smoke makes it hard to get clean, no matter how many showers you take.
Speaking distance is about 20% closer than in the US.
Women wear pants. Dresses were not included in the westernization of clothing.
Most public-serving jobs are strongly gender-marked (either all-male or all-female for a given role) and have an associated uniform. Many of these look like they came from 1950s American uniform design. Maybe the clothes are a WWII holdover?
There are traffic signs all over that show the local major roads and turn colors based on how well the traffic is moving in an obvious green-yellow-red code. Even at "red" the traffic isn't LA-bad.
The city is designed in concentric rings. Space is at more of a premium, and the city is quite vertical in rings 2 and 3.
The Olympic Stadium is supposed to look like a bird's nest, but from the ground it looks more like some grad student with a CAD program got bored, and then someone switched that with the real plans for the stadium. So now there is a huge irregular toroid of steel girders that seats 100,000. The water stadium is somewhat cooler.
15 hour time difference makes it real hard to get to sleep upon returning, but I have to try. Ask me questions and I'll write more later.
