A quick pace.

When I first came to Beijing, the area I lived in was undergoing some renovations. The paving, which was fairly substandard, had been torn up, and a group of about 25 men had re-laid a stretch of road about a kilometer long, both sides, in the space of a couple of weeks.

In anyone’s language, it was impressive work. They’d have started before I got to work at 8am in the morning, and finishing up the day’s work at 6 when I was walking home. Keeping in mind this was just the weekend, that’s impressive.

Of course when you’re paying your workforce from about 10 yuan an hour ($1.50US/hr) not having enough people is never really a problem. And I’m sure that doesn’t make the workers feel any better either!

What really got me stumped is that, 3 or 4 months after the work was completed, they have torn it all up again to fix/update/install some massive pipes under the footpaths. Quite literally, the whole side of the street has been torn up, for reasons I’m not totally sure about.

I can’t help but think of what the workers would be thinking by seeing all their hard work being undone so easily. All that time and effort, when really they didn’t need to have done it at all. If this was a planned thing, I’d say someone has seriously messed up, but of course if it’s to fix something up, which is highly unlikely as some other areas are also undergoing the same procedures, then it would simply be a pity.

It had me thinking a lot of construction work back home. I distinctively remember road works and building construction taking so long in Australia. You’d see a small office take months, maybe even a year to be built, however in China, and I guess Korea, too, the same office would take a fraction of the time.

Sure, no one is going to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I’m guessing there is probably a huge question mark over safety of workers and the quality of the job they are doing (I have to admit the labor work here looks sloppy), but it does mean a place like Beijing can grow a lot quicker than it would back home.

All that said, there’s something about the slower pace, and somewhat Aussie looking architecture, that I find comforting and miss terribly here in Beijing.

Protected: Lots of work, no time for play.

Difficulties getting onto Facebook.

I’ve talked previously during my stay here the frustration of not being able to access certain sites due to censorship by the national government, otherwise known as the Great Firewall of China (aka the Golden Shield Project). It’s basically a huge IP, DNS, and URL filter that allows and disallows websites to be delivered to China from outside sources, say the US or Australia. That means web sites such as Youtube, Facebook, and blogspot  hosted blogs, cannot be access from within China (theoretically) for fear of, well, I suppose spread of information to the Chinese public.

Without wanting to go into details of what that information is, it’s best to bundle it up as national security for the People’s Republic and the people that reside within it. Including yours truly.

Over the last few months I have been able to access Facebook, not often, but certainly able to if only to send and receive messages and do the odd piece of tinkering. In the 3 and half months I’ve been here, I’ve probably been on Facebook less then 10 times. One can sidestep the Great Wall, if only briefly by technical means, which I will refrain from writing about although it does seriously limit what one can do on Facebook. In actuality, that has been the main reason I’ve hardly been on, it’s not that enjoyable when most of the functions don’t work.

Not to say that a reduced amount of time on Facebook has been to my determent. Quite the opposite to the point where it’s been almost liberating. Seriously, how much time do you spend on Facebook each day/week/month?

However, during one of my random and infrequent visits, I noticed that my little gap in the wall has closed up. Well, I wouldn’t say it’s closed up, but the information coming through isn’t working well enough for my, or anyone else’s, browser to read it properly. I’m not sure if this is due to changes in Facebook, or the Great Wall adapting its shield modulation much like a Borg ship under attack by multiple Federation crafts, suffice to say that Facebook is now, and for who knows how long, is off my reachable areas here.

Being so far away from home Facebook is one of the few tools one can use to maintain contact with friends and family. One of the biggest fears I have is coming back to Australia and being completely out of touch with my friends to the point that, well, your friend status has been replaced with acquaintance.  So, to that extent, I’m not that happy to lose Facebook.

I’m also a little disappointed to see sites such as Youtube and Google.cn banned here. While I can access Google through Hong Kong (I don’t see the point in banning Google.cn then) there is still a lot of content this banned. It does appear that Google.cn is back to being registered by Google, the road for any real content seems a long way off. I found this great site, from Google, that monitors it’s access in China. If anyone is interested, the link is here; Google China Access Monitor

I know there are plenty of ways of me to get around the Great Firewall of China, including a vpn and other tools, but I don’t use Facebook, or any other banned service, enough to warrant spending money on getting one. As far as I can see, any thing that get’s me away from the computer is probably a good thing, leaving me more time with my study, work, and most importantly, the two girls in the house.

So you see, perhaps the wall is doing me a favour?

Jay Chou Concert in Sanlituan, Beijing.

As I mentioned the other day, Em and I went to a concert the other night. We went to see Em’s favourite singer and performer, Jay Chou (周杰伦, Zhōu Jiélún) at the Workers Stadium in Sanitun last Saturday, with at least another 50,000 people. For anyone unfamiliar with Jay Chou, he’s one, if not the leading, music artist in Asia having won the World Music Awards (whatever they are) four times. Unlike most Western performers, he also writes and composes all of his own music, and came to fame by winning a talent contest in the late 90’s on his musical talent alone.

I have to confess I don’t know a great deal about his music, but Em has idolised him since she was a teenager, so any blanks she quickly fills in for me. I actually took Em as a surprise for her birthday in early may. Back then, I was still fairly new to Beijing, so I couldn’t really go out and buy anything with much meaning. One of the Chinese teachers at work helped me to organise and buy the tickets, and I think Em was a little surprised, and touched, that I was able to organise something like for her, albeit a couple of months late.

The concert itself was awesome. Despite not knowing any of the words, I did recognise a few of the songs from when Em sometimes plays his music in the background at home. The beauty with most good music (and good being a relative term) is that you don’t have to know the words, with 50,000-odd people cheering on, you really get wrapped up in the atmosphere. I also had a big flashy stick to wave around, so I didn’t really need much more to keep me entertained for the better part of 3 hours.

In addition, Em’s best friend (and her boyfriend) also purchased tickets (after they found out Em was going) and joined us (on the other side of the stadium). We caught up after the concert, had dinner together, and then they stayed with us at our place for the night, seeing as they both come from the other side of town and was too late to drive home.

I did take a few pictures on my video camera, as well as some video, what you can see below. I edited it together to make it a little easier to watch.

As I don’t have access to youtube, google video, or yahoo video here in China, I’ve had to open a youku account (it’s the Chinese version of youtube). While it runs amazingly fast here in China, I’m told it’s slow everywhere else, or just doesn’t work. I apologise for this, but alas I can’t really do much else.

Anyway, below are a few photos and the fore mentioned video. I hope you enjoy. I know I sure did! Happy Birthday sweetie.

If anyone has trouble viewing the video, please let me know in the comment section. Thanks.

Photo’s can be found by clicking here… Read more »

Black t-shirt thugs in Beijing.

I didn’t write this before, but now that I have a minute (I’m stuck at work and totally out of motivation to keep on lesson planning after 5 hours!) I thought it would be an interesting story to share of something I witnessed the other day.

On my way to work, early last week, I walked past the medium sized mall near my place. When coming to the intersection, I noticed a three-wheeled motorbike taxi waiting (a tut-tut for use of a better word) and a young woman entering it. These ‘taxis’ are a cheap way to get around a local area, and usually cost no more than 5 yuan (<$1) for a trip no more than 6 or 7 minutes. I haven’t been on one, but Em has and while being a little dangerous, are a godsend during any rainy or hot days when one doesn’t want to walk 20 or 30 minutes to wherever they’re going.

In front of the motorbike taxi, a black van rolled up and stopped in front of it, blocking it’s path from leaving. That’s not an unusual sight in Beijing, seeing as most drivers don’t think beyond themselves in their own form of transportation (yes, even a small Hello Kitty bicycle will cut a bus off).

However, the van door opened and inside was filled with a group of young males, probably in their late-twenties, early-thirties, with black short sleeved t-shirts, jumped out and surrounded the taxi. In all, there was about 10 men altogether, plus three of them sitting in the front, although I’m still not sure how they all managed to fit inside the van. 2 of the men held video cameras.

After they had surrounded the taxi, they forced the young woman out and sent her packing (she didn’t seem to object in the slightest) while a couple of the men tried to open the door where the driver was sitting. The driver, instead of looking even remotely scared or in fear, simply smiled and nodded and was saying something in Chinese. Obviously he knew what this was all about, because none of the 20 or so spectators around (I was literally 5 meters from the bike) had any idea of what was going on.

Thankfully the light at the intersection changed colour, so I, with some haste, started walking to the safety of the other side of the road. On looking back, they had managed to open the door of the motorbike taxi and were proceeding to grad him out, by his hair, into the van.

Now this is the part that I truly find amazing. Along comes a police van that promptly stops in the middle of the road (the area between the two opposing sides of the road) and two policemen walk out. They literally walk to within a meter of the poor driver (poor?) and merely watch the events in front of them without doing anything! I mean, they just looked on like they were just another couple of bystanders.

In the end, the man is pulled (dragged) into the van, the van doors close, with about 5 of the black-tshirt fellas jumping in, and zooms off. The remaining black t-shirted guys very casually start walking off in different directions to each other.

And as soon as it began, it was all over. A lot of shouting, pulling, angry faces, and then gone.

I relayed the story to one of my co-workers, who mentioned they had heard of such things happening in Beijing, and hinted it may have something to do with underground gambling, which apparently is an issue here in Beijing (Chinese people gambling? Nooooo…). The driver may have incurred a debt that he hasn’t been able to pay off and the collectors had finally caught up with him. Either way, it was not a good time to be hanging around, and I was fortunate enough to not remember I had my camera with me, as I know I would have taken a picture or two, and probably resulted in both my camera, and myself, getting a good beating.

Still, one doesn’t really expect that sort of excitement before work.

Had anyone else experienced this kind of thing before? I tend to agree that it probably is linked in some way to money debts, be it gambling or otherwise, or maybe a husband found out his wife was having an affair with some poor taxi driver and thought he needed to be taught a lesson? Either way, I won’t be gambling, or playing around, here in Beijing (umm… well the last one also applies to anywhere else in the world, too!).

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2 month update from Beijing.

I’ve had a few people write to me, in different forms, asking how things are going for me here in Beijing. In short, things are going very well, and both Em and I have settled down fabulously well in the two months we’ve been here.

Yes, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been working for eight weeks already, but much like Korea, the weeks really do fly so quickly. It’s hard to imagine that only a couple of months ago I was sipping a margarita on the patio during an Australian summer.

I have adjusted well to my job and feel comfortable with most aspects of it. As I’ve mentioned previously, I spend a lot less time actually teaching in the classroom than what I did in Korea, but overall I’m actually in the office a lot longer, mainly planning lessons. The amount of additional teaching skills I’ve gained in the little time I’ve been here kind of makes a mockery of the teaching I did back in Korea. Most English teachers who first enter Korea know exactly what I’m talking about, how those first few months are faced with trying to accept that an English academy in South Korea is more about making money then teaching children English in an effective manner. Although I should stress that my last academy was one of the few places where I didn’t always get that feeling (and a
huge amount of respect is given to them from me for that).

The people I work with are nice and I’ve gotten along with them well. It’s always nice to work with a swell group of people. The Chinese staff are also super friendly and, while I shouldn’t be making comparisons with Koreans, seems a little more ‘real’ than their Korean counterparts. There’s a lot less ’small talk’ that goes on, and for the most part Chinese people are in the same amount of ‘awe’ that Koreans are when you work with them. I’ve also yet to hear those strange little comments like; ‘Wow, you don’t look so fat today!’ and ‘You look really sick! Have you eat some rice?’.

Life in Beijing does take a little time to adjust to. The language alone is enough for one to pull their hair out although the satisfaction of actually being able to string a few words together, such as ordering my morning coffee a McDonalds, is very rewarding. I have started my Chinese study, although have been solely practicing how to read pinyin, the English form of Chinese, which alone is a challenge. Over the next few weeks I’ll be going into a bit of vocabulary and grammar with a new Chinese book that Em helped me pick from the bookstore. It’s not too intense and seems like a good starting book to learn basic conversational Chinese. For the moment, reading and writing will take a backseat, as most people recommend that it is too much to begin with.

The area I’m in is becoming a lot more familiar to me. All within walking distance of me is Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Jenny Lou’s, Lotte Mart, and several good supermarkets. There aren’t many other areas in Beijing where one could be spoiled for choice. There are quite a few ‘westerners’ in the area, too, with some large companies setting up base here, such as Siemens, and a few other large electronic companies.

Our choice of food, as I’m guess with almost any area in Beijing, is extensive. Aside from the usual Chinese fair, there’s a Tex-Mex place not too far away, lots of western fast food joints (Subway – YES!), and a bucket load of Muslim restaurants which makes for an easy point-and-select option for me, if they don’t have an English menu (although I’ve yet to be brave enough to try it!).

The rest of Beijing still remains a bit of a mystery for me, which is one of the things I’m going to enjoy about living here. It’ll take me a long time to discover all the places I have on offer, and provide Em and I with an almost unlimited amount of weekend destinations. As we all know, I travelled through Korea quite extensively and enjoyed every minute of it (ok, not every minute) so I’m blessed to be able to do it again with a new city.

So yes, things are going well, and both Em and I are happy. As too Millie, who’s living quarters have almost doubled in size, and spends most of her time sunbathing in front of her huge window.

Apologizes for not blogging as much as I used to. I don’t often find the time, or motivation, to so there’s really no point forcing it. With a few more places we go to this year, the post number will gradually go back up again.

And I’d love to hear from you all. Still read everyone’s blog and while I don’t comment much, don’t mistake that for me not reading.

Bye bye from Beijing!