Taking "the War on Drugs" Literally

On the front page of China Daily today: "China marked International Anti-Drug Day yesterday with the execution of four traffickers...."

Putting aside for a second the question of the proportionality of the punishment and the inhuman callousness of the phrasing, it strikes me as a part of the conscious showmanship of the Chinese government. On "Earth Day" no doubt some fallen official will be made the scapegoat for an environmental disaster. On "International Please Don't Pirate Stuff" Day, some bloke will be made an example of, while it's so widespread that I can't walk a block without finding a place or street vendor selling pirated goods.

Not that this is a unique property of the Chinese government, but at times it seems beyond farcical.

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

I confess. I forced myself to go to a cheap-eats Chinese restaurant for dinner tonight, a yin-yang atonement.

How to Put "Decent, Caring Human Being" to the Test?

I’m walking the way home late after spending a few hours in a café writing ideas and looking at itineraries, when I see what looks like two people embracing in the dark on the part of the street left unlit by street lamps. As I come closer, I hear strange sounds. As I get closer it becomes clear that the sounds are wails and laments. It is not two people at all, but an elderly woman alone, embracing a young tree. I pause for a second to see if I had misunderstood, if she is suffering a medical condition. But I see that she is suffering the human condition.

I walk on. I turn my head back once to that scene, thinking of what to do. And so I keep thinking, as the human distance grows with each step and each fleeting thought. But I walk on.

If that tree is the only thing she has to hug, I shudder. I think I gave the wrong answer.

Where 2

After having a third interview for the tech writer position, I decided to stop pursuing it, although the interview went fine and the pay would have been tremendous by local standards. I simply want to try to live some place else in Asia for a while. I’m not convinced Beijing is the best place for me right now. There has definitely been a challenge to adapt here, and in some respects I’d rather not adapt.

We had a 10-course or more buffet to celebrate graduation and after seeing me pick at the food, one of my teachers was giving me looks wondering “why the hell are you in China?” while the other was trying to pile the “delishus-ness” on my plate despite my protests. (A question for my readers, can you make yourself like things you really don’t like? Should you?)

My original intention was just to stay here for three months to learn the language and hopefully be inspired in some manner or another. In that I have succeeded at some rate (not enough to make day to day life too much easier), but some of my motivation has been lost in the process.

I would tell anyone considering trying the same thing to consider other options than a Chinese University, from both the price and effectiveness of teaching perspective. Although 800-1200 USD for twelve weeks of 20-hour classes seems cheap, the class sizes mitigate the effectiveness. If I did it over again I would try a private school. And I will try private schools.

I am planning to leave Beijing at the end of the week, but I haven’t decided where. I’m thinking of spending two more weeks in mainland China and gradually travel closer by train to Hong Kong. After Hong Kong, I’m looking to give Taiwan a try, to see if I want to live there. If I find Shangri-la on my way, I’ll let everybody know the GPS coordinates.

Sledgehammer Sturm und Drang

If anyone is looking for a replacement for your run of the mill alarm clock, I would propose moving to the student center where I have lived for the past three months. With any luck you can be awakened to a sledgehammer serenade at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. You will enter the hall and be greeted with a scene out of a crack house as nearly every one has moved out (“except you, sucka’”) and crews are busy deconstructing every single thing screwed down or affixed.

You will have told one of the managers (or whoever it was that took my money!) not a week before that you were staying until July 1st, and she will tell you at that time that unless you stay later and pay more you cannot move to one of the already remodeled buildings.

You will return that afternoon to find that water is leaking through your bathroom ceiling from the handy sledge work of the morning (that’s still continuing in full swing). You will try to put on your friendliest face, because anger at the haphazardly managed building closing won’t accomplish anything. (While I was waiting the week before, another guy was so pissed off by the front desk blithely ignoring his requests in Chinese that he threw their brochures all over the floor.)

You will get the manager to move you to the new building without a sorry, and on the way to your new room, she will tell you with a straight face, “By the way, this room is 5 kuai (sixty cents) more a day.”

Now, to give her the benefit of the doubt, I probably wasn’t the first request of a long, long day, and maybe she had no idea what “water is leaking from the ceiling” means even with effusive body language. If I worked for her salary, I probably would’ve cackled, “Yeah sixty more cents you spoiled, atonal-Chinese-speaking American bastard.”

But if those explanations are wrong, I wonder if it’s just that the management hierarchy is different. The person at the top sets everything up, and doesn’t expect any independent judgment on the part of underlings. Also, there’s a built-in reluctance to criticize due to the concept of “losing face” which may lead to feedback impedance, along with little incentive to make things better.

Maybe I’m just used to high levels of customer service, so that it seems anomalous why management couldn’t see the contribution of word of mouth and word of bad mouth to their bottom line. Or maybe they can, and they calculate that is more profitable not to do anything about it.

(For you who have come by way of search engines out there, I stayed at the Beijing Foreign Student Activities Center. It has been livable, but like everything else in China you may have to adapt to different ways of getting what you need done and be more persistant.)

Hidden Camera Show Garbage

I'm watching a show "Action Now!" right now that seems to be based entirely on randomly rewarding people who use the proper trash receptacles with Olympic panda bears or MP3 players. And the rumor is that state television is going to have 200 channels not too shortly.

Snazzy Certificate Made in China

Here is my snazzy certificate. Thank you, thank you. Hold your applause.

Pre-Occupational Hazards (Or How I Became a Beijing Garbage-Man)

I had a second interview today for the technical writer position I mentioned. The manager so much as offered the job to me, pending HQ’s approval of my salary request and a phone interview with “Team America.” Okie-dokie.

Since last interview I had wasted a couple bucks on a cab ride, this time I tried to take the economical 25-cent round-trip bus ride (which ended up being a buck fi’ty since I got off at the wrong bus stop and had to get a cab to find it anyways).

Pondering my next steps while waiting for the bus back to WuDaoKou, a group of horse carts passed, dragging bricks to a construction site. But other than the incongruity of horse-mobiles passing 21st century architecture, the street was devoid of activity, devoid of more than a handful of people. The bus stop was a great place to think. A great place to pace side to side. A great place to step backwards lost in the depths of rumination. “Whoah! Shit!” A fellow bus-waitee murmured a minute warning grunt too late to avert it.

Absent-Minded Foreigner + Open Manhole Sans Cover = Comedy Platinum.

Garbage was my salvation. I landed on my feet, my body halfway-plunged down the hole to the rat netherworld. Instinctively my right elbow had caught the edge, and I hiked myself right out not a second later, my only injury a scraped elbow coupled with a complementary sample of eau d’garbage cologne.

Metaphor-incarnate?

The Tibetan Book of the Hoping to Become Well-Read

On the way to the Beijing Bookworm yesterday, I decided to get off the subway two stops early and check out the three century-old Yong He Gong Lamasery. In comparison to the other historical sites I’ve seen here so far, I’d rate this one as the most interesting to date, in part because it’s still a living Tibetan Buddhist temple, but mostly because it is jam-relic-packed. The Cultural Revolution kept its philistine paws off.

And certainly, it qualifies as the best-smelling. In the surrounding streets and in stalls within, there are vendors selling incense for offerings. Amidst the camera clicks, you see Buddhists paying their respects to the effigies of absolutely-trippy (as in psychedelic) gods, Buddhas, arhats and giant lamas.

Near the entrance, a photo exhibit of the so-called 11th Panchen Lama’s visits to the complex informs visitors of the government’s expertise in reincarnated-Lama searching:
“On November 29, 1995 after a lot drawing ceremony, the six-year-old Gyaicain Norbu, who was born in approved [sic] by the Chinese Government as the 11th Panchen Lama. He is the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama hence the name Qoigyijubu.”

There is too much to describe, I wish I had photos. But I forgot my camera, as it was spur of the moment. However, the biggest eye-opener in the place is Guinness World Record Maitreya statue, said to be carved from a single 26 meter tall white sandalwood tree. “Damn, now that’s what I call a Buddha.” I’d be curious to know if the tree must have been older than Buddha.

After my vision of the Tibetan cosmos, not much must have rubbed off. Back on the subway (incidentally, the first part of the word subway in Mandarin is “di,” or earth), trying to get off when too many people are pushing to get on, I did my patented “I’m twice as big as you, move the hell out of my way” offensive lineman rush. Buddha never had to take the B-train. Or line 2 as the case may be.

I went on to my bookstore but was disappointed that they don’t have much of a new book selection. They do have a used-book lending library I might join if I stay in Beijing. But I finally found a place with English-language magazines (after about five attempts to cure my reading list boredom). I bought a new Singapore-based magazine “Asian Diver” which is decent, but like too many dive mags consists more of advert than content.

Assuming I can find a good job, I’m trying to think of where I will do my first dive trip in Asia. Thailand sounds like the hands-down place to go, from everything I’ve heard about price and quality of destination. It’ll probably still be a matter of airfare price, since there are other great scuba destinations.

Reverse Outsourcing Myself

Last Friday, I had my first interview.  A friend works for a large, Chinese software company located in the Beijing version of the Silicon Valley (the buildings nearby are all very new and futuristic).  She suggested I talk with their HR.  

I arrive with plenty of time, although the taxi driver has to stop and ask about eight people where to go, after I had already called the office and asked them to give him directions.  In the building lobby, I try to write down my selling points to get in the i-mood.  “Excellent written English.”  “Has a foggy idea what finite automata are.”  “Plays well with others.”  “Uses deodorant and bathes regularly.”  Yeah, I ran out quick.

So, assuming that per Chinese time I ought to be ten minutes early, I go up to the company’s floor.  And lo and behold I went in the wrong end of the building.  That is probably what the security guard tried to tell me when I asked him if I was in the right place.  They don’t have a public entrance on that side, but I come across about five employees who let me in and then go about paging my interviewer.  The offices could be mistaken for any big cubicle farm in the U.S.  All the computers are up-to-date with flat screens.    

My interviewer finds the lost, lost waiguoren and introduces me to the HR director of her division.  And the fun begins.  My interviewer is actually dressed more casually than I’ve ever seen at a big company.  She wears what appears to be some rock group T-shirt.  

The HR director understands English, but ends up giving questions through my interviewer.  So I get an opportunity to see how much comprehension I’ve developed in the past eight weeks.  Surprisingly, I understand a fair amount, though in pieces.    

I’m interviewing for two possible positions.  One is teaching English, but turns out to be only a few hours a week.  After giving a Woody Allen style rambling reply to the open question “so tell us about you,” we spend ten minutes discussing my Visa situation.  They think I need to go back to the U.S. to change my status, I think I just need to go to Hong Kong.

“Really,” I tell them, “my long term goal is a technical writer position.”   If I was to teach English part-time I would study Mandarin more intensively.  The HR director leaves, and then a technical director comes that has a tester position to fill.  It’s another case of listening to the interviewer and director Mando-chitchat in between questions.  “We like to hire foreigners.”  After describing my work experience, using my simplified resume, they are prepared to talk turkey.  “What’s your salary demands?”

I sit there stupidly for a little too long.  “Uhhh…I’m trying to think in RMB…I think in dollars.  I have heard a range of 10,000 to 30,000 RMB/month.”  After a little more back and forth, I tell them I wouldn’t do the tester position for less than 16000 RMB (or $2000 U.S.).  They are able to offer half of this.  I probably explain my logic too openly, but I tell them I’m not willing to work for less per hour than I would teaching English.  

I finally tell them I could negotiate more with a technical writer position, as it would be more inline with my career goals.    She asks for the copies of my resume, and we cancel the second interview I would have had with the Testing Director.     And today, this afternoon I hear back from a Vice President of the company that they might have such a position, but that they have to contact their American client company first after hearing my salary demands.  “You want a Senior-level salary.”  So we shall see whether I have a second interview with a different division of the company.  

It’s somewhat difficult to adjust to the different pay scales here, but how I look at it is in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity).  Their salary for tester would provide a very decent living here, as the costs of many items are a third to a fourth of what they are in the U.S.  And services like housekeeping are even cheaper.  But since I have some loans, etc. back in the U.S. that I must pay U.S. prices for, I would need more than what is comfortable for someone native born.  
  
Part of my debate is whether to move to a cheaper, out-of-the-way city, for low pay/low work at a university, or to stay in Beijing (or go to Shanghai or Taiwan).  The drawbacks to going to the out-of-the-way places are that you might become a bit of a sideshow, since in some places there are only a handful of foreigners (and even here in Beijing, you are still somewhat a sideshow).  Also, it’s harder to find things to do on a Saturday night, and there’s less variety of people, restaurants, and English books to find.  I also don’t want to have to learn another dialect right now when I barely understand the Beijing dialect.  The advantages are a more tranquil environment, better weather and maybe air that’s marginally breathable.  

Expanding Culinary Horizons One-Whacked Out Snack-Food at a Time

Today I experienced the savory taste of a green-pea flavored popsicle. Frozen green peas. Milk-based substrate. Not bad.