To Tianjin and Back, Pt 2

Read Part 1

One of the problems with low-end Chinese electronics is that they suck on a whole new level. They're cheap and there's a damn good reason why. Chinese phone chargers and electrical outlets top the list. Sure, you can buy a phone charger for under $2 but it gradually stops working. I'm no electrical engineer, but I don't understand how you can get diminishing results from a charger. It's not an engine or computer, it either works or it doesn't, right? There are no buttons, no switches, and no adjustment knobs. Wires touch wires touching my cell phones special place giving it the negatively charged juice of life.

The only reason I bring this up is because the day I left for Tianjin I had no juice in cell phone even though it spent all night on the charger. This was a double cell phone folly because I was having to use my old phone after dropping my new one in a waterfall whilst mountain climbing. I was having to turn it on once an hour to see if, as I suspected, I would receive my departure plans from the company. I was expecting a "you fly out tomorrow morning," not a "your train leaves 3 hours after you get home from classes," but hey... minor details, right?

I spent an hour searching for a charger in the neighborhood around my school during my [2.5 hour] lunch break. After scolding two businesses for selling Motorola phones but supposedly no chargers I found a guy selling phone accessories out of a cart. I charged up and napped while waiting for my next class

The phone was important because this was a homecoming of sorts. I had a few Chinese friends in Tianjin that I desperately wanted to see. There were two teachers from the Jixian retreat when I first came to China. The other was my "Tianjin girlfriend," a one-on-one student of mine who was in grad school at Tianjin University. My last night in Tianjin I became the second boy she ever kissed.

My biggest fear was that I was going to get to Tianjin, run through whatever process I needed to do and get flown right back down to Shenzhen perhaps even Wednesday night. We have a teacher shortage in Shenzhen and I was sure it was extremely difficult to cover my classes. That's why I had assumed they would spend the extra $60 and fly me instead of playing with 27 hour trains. I was afraid then I'd have to pick who I wanted to see and snub others, if I had time at all. It didn't wind up being an issue. I wound up staying up north till Thursday. Furthermore, my "Tianjin girlfriend" was in Shandong for a chemistry conference. Sad, sure, but definitely logistically convenient.

* * *
It was like a dream coming back to Tianjin. I didn't realize how much I missed the city. It seemed strange to be returning to a city I used to call home that's so far from Florida. It's all so relative now. I forgot how well I knew it in those two short months I was there. I knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I missed the street food, wide roads filled with cheap taxis, and massive bike-lanes. The things I hated most about the city had changed for my arrival - there wasn't a hint of smog in the air and the weather was perfect.

I began my day coming to the office. Coming up the marble steps into the company HQ, the first person I saw was my John LǎoShī [pronounced Laowsheer, Chinese for venerable/old teacher], my Chinese teacher. In a moment of instant recognition, we feigned a Hollywood reunion and ran towards each other for the bittersweet embrace of parted lovers. We went to Muslim noodles where I showed off my new-found Chinese skills and ordered for us and we traded stories of the past two months. I couldn't stop wondering wondering what it'd be like when I finally go back home to Jacksonville, how many lunches and dinners I'd have and with whom.

I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for dinner with friends in my old hangout at the 4-story electronic store next to the company building looking for new headphones. I hadn't realized I missed playing with haggling over cheap electronics so much. I spent another two hours venting frustration with the local operation to the sympathetic ear of Brian.

Six O'Clock rolled around, it was time to catch a cab to He Xi District dinner with my two Chinese English teacher friends...

Breakfast

The best way I can contrast Shenzhen with Tianjin is breakfast. It's 7:30am right now. I'm hungry. If I were in Tianjin I'd take a five minute walk towards Anshan Xi Dao and would find at least two people in the street selling Chinese omelets, someone else selling fried eggs, and at least one strange variable. In the food alley off to the side I'd be able to get something akin to a chicken McMuffin and several creative concoctions of hot sauce, meat, dry biscuit, and egg. I would grab an orange juice from one of several drink vendors.

Street vendors are illegal here. My clearest option at this very moment is to walk into the kitchen and pour a bowl of fake Mueslix cereal that I bought at Super Wal-Mart yesterday. I could walk across the street to the 7-11 and grab a slurpee [I'm very clearly addicted] and a fried egg if I wanted to. They also have the standard convenience store pre-packaged mini-meals that one throws in the microwave. A few restaurants sell some sort of small meat dumpling with hot soy milk out front in the morning. K. found a few my first day here, but I can't find said restaurants on this side of town.

I really feel like I'm in some hybrid Hong Kong/Los Angeles/Miami right now. The language barrier is more difficult here, no pinyin on signs and different accents, but it just doesn't feel very "Chinese." I think I'd come to accept the lack of aesthetics and grittiness - if not outright dirtiness - juxtaposed with overflowing curiosity and humility as "Chinese." The streets here are cleaner than many European streets, the sidewalks run snake patterns against the road to better show off the beautiful trees hanging overhead. Looking at a map, entire swath's of town are colored green to show off parks. There are several "public gardens" surrounding the office.

That said, all the American teachers are spread out here. I'd have to take a bus to visit half of them. Three others are a 15 minute walk away. I don't feel the same sense of community we had back in Tianjin. I haven't met any Chinese but our small staff of four. I've traveled the length of the city two or three times, but I still don't recognize any landmarks. This place is huge. My first impressions of Shenzhen is a summation of all the reasons I've always feared moving to a big city. Sometimes a place is just too big to become familiar with.

By the time I left, I knew most of the faces in my neighborhood. I knew where to eat, I knew the best dishes, I knew when people set up and closed shop. I'm sure I'll learn the routine here soon, but in the meantime I miss dirty ole Tianjin.

I've been sick the past two days. I'll start posting more regularly very soon.



Tags: Treyopia Shenzhen stories Tianjin comparison food China

Last Photography from Tianjin

I spent too long here. I met too many people to leave so quickly. I know it reads like I'm vacation, and to an extent I am, but this lifestyle has its tough parts. You get tired of saying "goodbye." I can't recall how many "going away" parties I've been to, how many good people I've wished adieu. It's my turn now. Whenever someone leaves the apartment (two roommates have left so far), the office custodian comes and she cleans out the room. Tomorrow my room will be dusted and swept to make room some other fresh off the boat laowai. My time has come.

I began my day with a Sichuan lunch. Two of my students from the Jixian retreat - Chinese English teachers - wanted to say goodbye before I left. We met, they laughed at my new short hair and beardless complexion. And then we ate a standard atrociously large six plate meal. We spoke like old friends. Maybe it's because we were. We did spend two weeks in a mountain compound. I realized though that I was truly going to miss Tianjin in more than in a "it was fun" kind of way. I have Chinese friends here. People who care about me.

I left there and decided I needed to get some pictures of my neighborhood I'd been too embarrassed to grab earlier. I started in Carrefour. I deeply wanted a photo of one of the rollerskate security guys. That's the kind of Chinese thing you can't make up. I saw one in front of the registers when I walked in, but he was on the move and it was too crowded. I went upstairs. No luck. I walked around with my camera out for 10 minutes. I went downstairs. Another ten minutes, no sightings. All the time I held my giant FZ30 in hand waiting for my white whale. I walked out of the security checkpoint to find him amongst the registers again. No luck. I went back upstairs. Then downstairs. Then I left. I never got my photo.

I went from there to the kabab stands of the alley. I shot some men playing cards waiting for the bus. I shot a fruit vendor who was happy to play along after I bought some peaches. I walked a few feet further down to a kabab stand that's been my lunch stable since arriving. I'm unusually devoted to family-run businesses. Back in Jacksonville it was Flip's. If you knew, I mean really knew me, we've ate at Flip's. Jim sold Flip's right before I moved... just another sign telling me my time in Jacksonville was coming to a close. I was lucky enough to find out on the last day they were open under old management. These guys, a husband and wife team, were with me when all I knew how to say was "Ni hao" and still wondering if the meat was cat or dog. They were patient with me, so I stayed with them.

Thus, I present to you the photos from my last day in Tianjin:


Victoria and Jessica, two of the Chinese English teachers from the Jixian retreat.



Fruit vendor in my neighborhood street market.



Kababs cooking at my local street BBQ joint



The husband at the kabab stand I frequent.



Ditto.


Shirtless man inside Carrefour. It's hard to express how popular the shirt-over-nipple style is.

[more coming]


Tags: Treyopia Tianjin photos photography stories story Ali Baba Ali Baba's

Tianjin Nightlife Roundup / Last Night Out

The nightlife in Tianjin is limited. It begins at home. Chinese men love baijo, a grain liquor that tastes like jet fuel and leaves a scarring aftertaste hours later. I hate it. I cannot concieve how this became the national drink of China, but it is. The Japanese have saki, which is delicious, the Chinese have an Everclear + 409 cleaner concoction. The occasional homeless person has a 50 cent bottle and businessmen devour it at lunch. Very often, however, men drink it after work at home. Alcoholism seems a distant concept to the Chinese. The ability to hold your own, toast after toast, is ingrained in the Chinese machismo.

The next step up is the streetside kabob stand where men drink baijo or beer on micro-stools and micro-tables. Beer sells for 4 yuan a bottle. You have to return the bottles when you're finished with them. The stools come up maybe 10 inches and the tables maybe 2 feet. If your a normal Chinaman, it ends here. There are no bars, there are no clubs. You're neither interested nor can you afford it. Besides, you don't need to meet women there. Friends and family set you up with future wives who think throwing down 30 yuan for a beer is ludicrous.

Ali Baba's is the the next step. It's a laowai hangout. It's nearly impossible to find, which is fun. There are no signs and the website gives you an intersection to be dropped off at and GPS coordinates. I'm not kidding. You pass through a steel door followed by a thick blanket deadening the noise inside. The joint is small and is probably 30% European, American, and African. Guest grafitti and foreign flags drape the walls. Beer is cheap, they can cook up some decent Western dishes [grilled cheese!], and can mix a mean White Russian. [Public Service Announcement: Never, under any circumstances, order a margarita in China unless you are inside an American owned restaurant.]

Dance clubs are the next rung up. Beer starts costing nearly American prices, the music can be good, and one can enjoy a night chatting up the opposite sex with most basic of language skills. Cozy's is standard - a mix of lounge and danceclub, followed by Scarlet's which is likely the best club even though it can be overrun by laowai sometimes [it's very near Tianjin University and Nankai University], followed by the giant two-story Coco and the sketchy Seven, both off of "Bar Street" and staffed by paid dancers. I'm sure in Shanghai and parts of Beijing it gets more expensive, but these are the options open to most foreign teachers and tourists.

Photo's from my last night out in Tianjin


A photo of some new crew and some British teachers we met at Ali Baba's on Friday night


Me, Tony, Anna, and Betsy


Inside Ali Baba's.


Another shot inside Ali Baba's


The pen was dying, but I left my writing on the wall: "Trey was here in the summer of '06"

The Other China

I remember the second night I was in Tianjin we were having a small BBQ on a large outdoor patio on the 4th floor of the office building ACES is in. We have the 4th floor largely to ourselves. While we were eating sheep kababs I kept noticing the top floor of a building about 80 meters away. Later I would deduce it was on top of the Carrefour supermarket and KTV karaoke building that also hosts the new restaurant called "Hans" that features Chinese girls dressed as 19th century Dutch maidens.

What caught my eye was that there were men walking passed a window wearing what looked like chef's clothing. White hats, white clothes, the whole outfit. I laughed it off. It was a curiosity. Why would there be cooks on the 10th floor of a building? Other than Dru asking if I'd seen it too, I didn't think about it after that..

From different angles, inside my classroom, I noticed the building wasn't in the greatest condition. Windows were broken out on the top floors but it wasn't abandoned. I could see people walk by occasionally. The mystery deepened... what was going on up there? The photographer in me wanted to sneak around up there.

A week ago, in the middle of a class, I realized what it was. It was a dormitory. A dormitory filled with men of all ages. The structures I couldn't make out inside were bunk beds. It was obvious when I saw men laying down on them now at 8:30 at night.

I don't know who they are. I don't know where they work. My best guess is that they're unskilled laborers from the country. You hear of them in the Western press, but you never really see them. Brian told me they typically live at construction sites. This was confirmed a few weeks ago when I was looking for the antique market and found a construction site with a huge wall around it. Looking from a distance I could see cargo trailers piled three high with the walls cut off filled with bunks.

On my walks home I sometimes catch men near the same building standing outside at night with a hose and a bowl of soapy water. They stand in their underwear and bathe in the streets once the resteraunts close up and people start going home. I know who these men are. They are the cooks at one of the better, if slower, resteraunts in our neighborhood. They live in a dorm behind the resteraunt. Five-hundred yuan ($60) a month, free food, and lodging is their pay. The wage is about half of the GDP per capita ($1,700/year USD at current exchange rate, $6,800 USD if adjusted for purchasing power parity [a relative and sketchy measure of buying power that quadruples their GDP from 2.2 trillion USD to almost 9 trillion USD]).

I'm glad I'm seeing it. I've been getting a false exposure so far. Everyone I meet is educated. They're the only ones who speak English. Most everything I see is in one of the posher neighborhoods in town. I hang out at expat bars and college clubs. Even the mountain village I spent two weeks in was financed by tourist seeing the restored Wall. On Sunday I'll begin a 27 hour train ride to the bottom of China. It's a 1200 mile voyage nearly straight south. I think I'll see the real China there.


The red line running the length of the country is my voyage. Click to Enlarge.

Tags: Treyopia current events poverty Tianjin China trains train network poor

Night Food

I don't think I'd feel perfectly safe even in America walking a dark alley alone. It's different here though. Things aren't safer because of Big Brother. He's hardly noticeable except for the occasional traffic cop and mounted closed circuit camera. But it's safe. So I walked.

I walked down to where a family normally sets up a night kabab stand that functions as a outdoor bar and resteraunt for locals. Chinese men walked past in the dark with their shirts lifted above their nipples. The stand was closed. Too wet. I walked the other direction towards PopLand and the bakeries. I knew vendors set up there in the rain sometimes. I'd been before.

I was still on my camera kick from Tianjin University so I took out the FZ30 and plopped it on the metal bicycle seat that drove the portable outdoor resteraunt. Two long exposures later and nobody seemed the least bit curious as to what I was doing. I snapped a few more. I showed the vendor his photo, took my food, and walked home.


Click for a larger picture.


Tags: Treyopia Tianjin night food kabab vendor street rain China story

Tianjin University

A former student of mine emailed me offering a tour of China's oldest higher education facility, Tianjin University. I accepted. We established earlier that we both had a love for photography so she encouraged me to bring my cameras. We met a few days later at ACES. The plan was to walk but there was a light drizzle in the city. We found a cab that would take her bike and a mile later we were there.

We grabbed dinner and I embarrassed myself by spilling hot and sour soup all over my khaki's. I told her the story of my sister and I visiting my grandmother and her friends for lunch a few months back and the two of us spilling and dropping everything all over the table. I introduced her to a new English vocabulary word: "clumsy."

"We can dress 'em up and make 'em look nice, but we still can't take 'em out."

Best grandmother quote ever.

My host was very nice. She was studying for her masters in chemistry. Against my expectations, she told me it was harder getting jobs like that as a women in China. I figured one of the better lasting effects of communism would be a reduction in sexism, especially at work. She wanted my company primarily to practice conversational English which is a component of the very competitive interviews in China. My roommate warned me that it's disappointing getting to know students and watching them graduate and try to find employment in the extremely dense Asian job market.

We walked around quite a bit. Three hours, actually. There are two main lakes at Tianjin University offering the most beautiful scenery I've witnessed in this fair city yet.

My cab driver back home was thrilled to see an American escorted to a cab by a young coed. I was confronted with a series of disbeliefs. He held the door open for her for a full minute before conceding she was not getting in with me. He refused, the entire ride, to admit to himself that I wasn't the least bit cognizant of his boy-to-boy joking and nudging concerning my host. This turned to him pulling my arm up to his, good naturedly, and then grabbing at my arm hair with a deep belly laugh. A minute later he was rubbing my belly. He pointed at McDonald's and gave it a thumbs up. "Bu, bu" I said and thumbed down. I acted out expanding my gut with my hands using International Hand Gestures (IHG) to say "high saturated fat content". The gesture was misread as a Non-Standardized Silly Foreigner [NSSF] invitation to jiggle a laowai gut. He laughed and pretended to steal my wallet on my way out of the cab.



Future People's Liberation Army officers drilling at the center of campus. More PLA cadet photos here.


Young People's Lake and the Tianjin skyline



Dorms and crepuscular rays at the second lake at the edge of campus. If I were to name it, I think I'd call it the Necking Pond. No no, not for anything I did. China is a crowded place. Eight students to a dorm. They take it outside.

Tags: Treyopia Tianjin University stories photography

New China Blog

A recent pen-pal of mine, Gabrielle, will be arriving in the coastal town of Fuyang [Zhejiang province] in the next day or so. I think the breadth of that Fuyang link, which was the best I found on Google, speaks to it's size. It doesn't even show up on my map of China.

Expect a great introductory post very soon. She's a fellow Southerner [South Carolina] and an excellent writer with very sharp observations coupled with the same ADD-storytelling style that I have. If you like Treyopia, you'll love her blog.

Mysterious and Misplaced.

If anyone is interested in reading [outside the blogosphere] about what it's like living outside the big cities of China, I highly recommend the book Rivertown by Peter Hessler. He was one of the first Peace Corps volunteers allowed in China after the Cultural Revolution and spent two years on the Yangtzhe in the city of Fuling.

Tags: Treyopia Gabrielle Cook Fuyang Zhejiang blog Peter Hessler Rivertown China

Beardless

I've had sleeping issues since coming back from Jixian. My schedule has been light with only three classes at 6:30pm lasting a mere 6 hours a week. Nothing holds my schedule together so I revert to my natural nocturnal circadian cycle. The difference is this is even more whacked out than my college years or even high school summers. Waking up at 5-6pm wasn't uncommon.

I saught help. After a little bit of convincing I got a prescription for a Chinese varient of Lunesta. Things would be different now, I was sure. I had tried Ambien back home and the stuff knocked me out like a brick to the skull.

"Take only one half a pill," John Chong told me. He's our go-to guy for getting things done here.

I tried that a week ago. The wikipedia entry that described hallucinations as a byproduct was spot on. I typed away till 5am on the computer. Dazed, yes, sleepy, no. Meanwhile my periphereal vision was falling apart to changing colors and movement that did not exist.

The next morning Andres stopped me and asked, "dude, what the hell... like, you're alarm clock went off for like five minutes, off, then on again, then off again for like 20 minutes!? What was that about?"

"Yeah... I took the other half of the pill and and fifteen minutes I was trying to set my alarm clock... and... yeah... I was having difficulties." It was a battery powered old bronze round clock with a manual hand you moved to set it.

I guess I don't take sleeping pills right. I look at them as a challenge and not an aid. I expect them to win me over by making me clunk out at the keyboard as a victory knockout. Turning the lights off and slipping under the covers isn't an option unless I actually feel tired. So I've returned to the old falling asleep at 7am routine... but now I sleep soundly and guilt-free until 6pm. Like today.

Today I woke up late, but there was a difference. I woke up without my beard.

Last night, a few restless and confused and blury hours after taking the pill, I came to a very ill-conceived conclusion the an itch on my beard was causing my sleeplessness. Something needed to be done and quickly.

In a half conscious daze I lathered up in shaving cream and... I took a long swipe. And then another. Three deep gashes later and I'm still trying to get used to my new old look. I think it's time to grow the mountain-man beard out again.

Tags: Treyopia Stories Tianjin Beard Lunesta Sleeping Insomnia

Shenzhen - Myanmar

It's official, I'll be leaving for Shenzhen as soon as they acquire more teacher housing down there. I've been told to expect about two weeks. I've met about half the crew down there and everyone is solid.

Shenzhen is a young immigrant city in south of China at the Pearl River Delta. Deng Xiapeng essentially created this city when he created a "Special Economic Zone" in a fishing village bordering Hong Kong. The population today clocks in somewhere south of 15 million today. Shenzhen "has a pleasant climate, often blessed with cool breeze at night, with an average temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round." 20% of the population of Shenzhen is between the ages of 20-25 with 1.22 percent are aged 65 or above. I've heard rumors of beaches, mountain trails, and blue skies(!). I think I might have stumbled on the Chinese San Francisco

Some other teachers and I are tentatively planning a trip to Myanmar (Burma) in October. It would be a fascinating step backwards walking into what China looked like fifty-years ago. No western clothes, no economy, and a military junta running the show. I've some ethical problems with the trip in that the state runs tourism agencies... so we'd be paying off a brutal dictatorship. I'll keep everyone informed on what happens with that. We're also looking at making a run to Tibet together during the Spring Holiday.

Shenzhen Skyline / Photo by China_Winston

Onion Goodness

Mmmmm.... sweet fresh Onions!!

Misremember the Alamo!

Let us all gloss over the truth together with our heads held high!

Remember how Colonel Travis drew that line in the sand in a stirring display of loyalty and courage and how all but one of those brave defenders joined him, including the crippled Jim Bowie, who had to be dragged across... and we'll just stop right there. That's all we need to remember about that particular anecdote, trust me.

Perhaps it's best to just remember that there was an Alamo. But don't actually remember anything about it. Except bravery. And America. Actually, did you ever see the movie with John Wayne? Remember that, why don't you? Remember the movie The Alamo! In fact, just remembering the slogan "Remember the Alamo" is good enough, really. Then, shout the slogan, in public, while you holler like a hound dog and swing a ten-gallon hat around in the air. Yee-haw!

[via English Eclectic]

Dinner Guest, Part III

[previous installments, Part I and Part II]

Before the food arrived Alan asked me if I liked Superman.

"Sure... I watched the movies as a kid."

"The new one?"

"I have not seen it," which was true. My roommate had a copy laying around but it was in Chinese.

"We watch it!"

"Ohh wait, I have seen the new one!"

It was too late. He started the movie.

Alan was not getting the hint that I couldn't stay forever. It was already 7, when I was supposed to meet for David's farewell dinner, and food hadn't even come out yet. I had been with Alan for two hours already.

Alas the food came. I had the seat of honor - the computer desk chair. We had lo mien with tomato and pepper. I'm not going to lie... I'm spoiled on Muslim noodles downstairs from me... it was horrible. It was lukewarm and the noodles were soggy. I ate though. I ate with the largest smile I could muster. "Delicious!" I repeated.

"If you don't like it, you can throw away."

"I love it," I said as I shoved more lukewarm noodles sitting in Chinese tap water into my mouth.

I asked Alan why his girlfriend wasn't eating with us. He scrambled through his dictionary. That earned me just such a going-away prery for the right word. "D-i-e-t. She's too fat! Too fat!" My five foot two programmer now was pointing at his only slightly overweight girlfriend as he said it. She giggled. I daydreamed how any American girl would respond to that. Visions of violence and screaming flashed through my head. I used this oppurtunity to get the movie off his computer by pulling the translation program up again for a word.

I left a my plate only half empty, as was custom. You're supposed to demonstrate that you were fed as much as you could eat, which was true in that I couldn't take another bite of the soggy cold noodles. "I think I need to meet up with David soon," I said.

On queue, "we get ice now!!"

Ice. It was a Tianjin speciality. Small chunks of fruit and sweet red beans piled on top of crushed ice. It tastes at least 7 times better than it sounds. Alan had the idea of us getting ice because in our previous class - about American music - one of the assignments was to come up with information on a make-believe band you starred in and draw a flyer. My band was called the "Slushee Kababs" and had a picture of such. Obvious confusion ensued and I described a slushee as the Tianjin ice treat inside a cup. Once a Chinese person knows something that you desire, they will aquire it for you. When I was in a gift shop near the Chinese Wall I picked up a bull horn turned into a musical horn. That turned into a going-away present from The Face back at Jixian. It's the way of their people.

We took a ten minute walk down the main road near his apartment. It was night now and cooler than before, which is to say it was as pleasent as weather gets. We made it to a street corner with three or four Tianjin ice stands with numerous low tables and low chairs all across the street from a McDonald's. Alan's girlfriend saw her sister and nephew and we joined them.

The nephew was a chubby little guy for a six year old Chinaman. Like most Chinese, the idea of sitting at his street corner with a laowai was comedy gold. He giggled incessently and hid behind his ice. I might as well have been a talking cow.

"He's studying English," his mother informed me.

"Hello, how are you?" I asked.

Giggling. Endless giggling.

He whispered something to his mother, which was repeated in Chinese across the small table where it came back to me, "You are very dear to his heart." It wasn't a mistranslation because Alan was putting both hands over his heart when he said it.

"When do you to leave to see David," Alan asked. An hour ago.

"Soon."

To my surprise, Alan and his girlfriend began shoveling the Tianjin ice into their mouths.

"No no no, you don't need to hurry. Finish, then I will leave."

They pulled away from their plates and started grabbing for their possessions like they were about to stand up.

"No no, eat. Enjoy it!"

They started shoveling again. I let it be.

I called Brian for directions and walked to the cab. Alan, his girlfriend, and her sister and nephew followed me to the cab.

"Please, come back anytime!"

I repeated my offer to cook them spaghetti before I leave.

I left. They stood around and waved me goodbye until out of sight like family used to do.




Tags: Treyopia China stories Tianjin life Dinner

Operation: Evil Tabs

Let me apologize in advance for this rant, I try to keep them off the new Treyopia. Sometimes you read stuff like this, though. You can take the Trey away from the Op-Ed columns of a college newspaper, but you can't take the Op-Ed out of Trey

----
I'm going to say it just to get it out... I. Hate. The RIAA. Let's go over those initials. The Recording Industry [hurts already!] Association of America. These are the guys who brought the world junk like Britney Spears and then threw lawsuits at 12 year olds wanting to download her favorite song without having to ask her mother to spend $15 on mildly pornographic CD with only one decent song. These are the people who have colluded to turn the radio stations into 10-song rotation nightmares. The DRM software they make Apple use so they can sell the iPod wiped the internal directory structures in my 60gb music archive.

Let me be clear on my stance supporting intellectual property rights. It is dead wrong to take someone else's material for the purpose of making money off their work without recompensating them. It's even worse to steal someone's work and claim it as your own. What I see on the streets of China [fake DVD's sold for 50 cents] should be cleaned up. What I also see on the streets of China is an admission... CD's and DVD's don't have to be $15. I can buy them legitemately here for $2.50.

We won't get into how the media industry has fought every major technological advancement... and lost. Movies were going to end plays and professional acting! Yes, the VCR and Blockbuster were going to bring down Hollywood! It's logical to assume that the 500 bands on my iPod that I pay money to see live will stop playing even though they collect more fans because of people like me sharing the wealth. I spent more on seeing music my senior year of college than I spent in tuition. Music fans are not the enemy.

So the RIAA had its monthly conference with the living breathing Satan, and after some peanuts and gin decided they had a perfect target: struggling artists. So the new targets are tablature websites. I'm not joking when I say lyric sites are next.

Throughout the internet you can find guitar and bass tablature sites. Most are discussion forums where musicians try to figure out the chords to their favorite songs together. The recording industry offers overpriced tab books for a few bands and there are customers who buy them - musicians making money off playing the songs correctly as covers. These books are not for the 14 year old with a $50 pawn shop guitar trying to figure out why it's so hard to play Tool's Lateralus.

There is faith yet,

"The good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body in the planet, but you know the problem is, the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter than you are and will be alive when you are dead, and has historical forces on its side, and is using its technological acumen very adeptly to ward off all of your efforts of control and you're gonna lose that one. I mean you're fifty-five years old and these kids are seventeen and they're just smarter than you are. So you're gonna lose that one. But the good news is you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways to rip off audiences and artists for centuries really, and all you gotta do is get outta bed a little earlier in the morning for a spell and you'll find new ways of doing this. I have every faith in you and you should give yourselves a little credit, instead of howling that you're going to be victimized. It's not like you to be victimized." - John Perry Barlow [via Metafilter]

Tags: Treyopia China RIAA tablature copyright CurrentEvents

Dinner Guest, Part II

[scroll down one for Part I]

The normal modis operandi when invited to an Americans house for dinner is that things are already relatively prepared. A couple things will still be in the over but the overall operation was launched well before you got in the car. Not in China.

"Do you like fruit? Yes? We will go to the fruit market."

It was a perfect day. A cool breeze was blowing through the city hinting at a rainstorm that never came. Despite being poorer than my neighborhood I enjoyed the five minute walk. Alan and his girlfriend became minor celebrities walking the baggy clothed laowai with a Key West baseball cap through a small park and into the market.

The Chinese find deep humor and in seeing foreigners in unexpected places. The first three or four times I went to Muslim noodles in the alley behind my apartment a 12 year old boy working there would sit across the restaurant staring at me giggling. Any request for cola, napkins, or my check was comedy gold. Here an old man chuckled out a "Meigouren [American]?" as we walked past.

I was at least relieved to know I'd have some veto power over food choices. Before arriving I was preparing to faux marvel at the wonderful taste of shrimp or fish. I hate seafood. Chicken hearts, lung, brain, and testicle can all be had easily at any restaurant. The Chinese believe eating the animal part will strengthen that part of you. Anything could have been served and as humble guest I'd be forced to eat it. Buy the ticket, take the ride, right?

Chinese vegetable markets are something to behold. It's a photographers dream of contrasting colors and rawness. Fresh and bright tomatoes with peppers with beans with yellow peppers with grapes and bananas and watermelon stacked high above them. Meat is pulled from coolers and diced up for waiting customers. We picked up some noodles, and about seven samples of tomatoes, peppers, peaches and watermelon each.

Alan's computer wasn't hooked up to the internet, but he had several files on his 4 60g drives. The first was a Powerpoint of college pranks and scandal - girls kissing girls! He blushed and giggled when he showed me that. So that fetish is international, check. Next were foreign TV commercials he didn't quite understand but knew were funny. Then an Spanish American Idol-esque video. And then, my favorite... a 45 minute collection of Michael Jackson videos and special behind-the-scenes footage. For joy...

Before dinner came out he pulled up an English-to-Chinese translator he practiced with. I told him Michael Jackson went to jail in American. "Jail?" I then typed in pedophile, then behold, there was a Chinese definition. Shock. Disbelief. "Sorry, man. He wasn't found guilty, but this was the second time... ya know?"


To be continued tomorrow...

Tags:Treyopia China Stories Life Tianjin Students Teaching dinner

Dinner Guest

On Tuesday I put my email address on the board for the class to copy. I invited them to free one-to-one's, something that would normally cost them through the center. A one-to-one typically is just a 30-minute conversation with a teacher addressing the more pressing grammatical issues. My work schedule has been lite and for the first time in my life I've been looking for *more* work to do. The responses were interesting.

Sample 1: An email from a cute female college student in my class with her posing sexy in a doorway wearing a skirt and knee-high boots. She offered to introduce me to the "younglings" of Tianjin University.

Sample 2: "Trey: How are you?" with nothing but Chinese script for a name. "I'm very good, but who is this?" I asked back. "Do you have QQ?" was the response. What??

Sample 3: Another girls offers a tour of the local history museum and proposes a time for a one-to-one.

Sample 4: And my favorite, titled "Welcome You Are Home";

Trey, my lovely teacher. I'm busy for my works over today. So I'm sorry that I answer your email later.

First,I thank you for helping me to have a Gmail. I'm glade to go to our classroom and take you to my home by bus at 5 p.m this Sunday. Furthermore,If you will, I and my girlfriend welcome you to our home at any moment.

Sincerely yours,
Alan

When I first met him he shook when he spoke. He was terrified, like most other students, of speaking English. He was short with homemade tattoos on the top of both of his hands. It contrasted with his sharp dress - he was a JAVA programmer.

"No meaning," he would say of the faded version of Chinese "tribal" design when I asked what they meant. They were two-inch boxes and lines that looked like Chinese script. I had shown him my tattoos when I first met him. "I did them as a child. I wish they come off."

Over the past two weeks his English confidence had improved significantly. He didn't shake anymore when he spoke. Half the job of a foreign English teacher is getting the students comfortable enough to speak so that you have the opportunity to both correct them and show them that a native speaker understands them.

***

We met at the office to take a bus to his apartment. I informed him early I was on a tight schedule. One of the other teachers was flying back home the next morning and we were all going out that evening. Unfortunately, speed would not be a major theme of the night.

It's Chinese custom to bring a gift when meeting someone for dinner so I regifted a giant gift that I had been given when I left Jixian - a big box with dehydrated rice, beans, and nuts. I was told fruit would do well enough, but I knew I'd just throw the box away when I move to Shenzhen.

Alan's apartment was at the end of the bus route, a colorful but poor neighborhood in Nankai district. He called his girlfriend and we made our way up the stairs. Walking up I put my hands on the rail leaving a near permanent stain of ancient dust.

There are two apartments per floor in my building. There were four per floor in Alan's.

I was shocked stepping in. I had assumed Alan was wealthy... he was a programmer and always dressed sharp. Our classes aren't the cheapest service in China either. His apartment was perhaps 50% larger than my bedroom here in Tianjin. The entire bathroom was hidden when you opened the front door. A small "living room" with a bicycle and bookshelf was perhaps five foot by six foot. The kitchen had a wok on a small stove, no refrigerator, and a small plastic sink like you would see outdoors to clean fish in. The kitchen was maybe 3 foot deep and 6 wide with almost no walking area. An even smaller porch to dry clothes abutted it.

His room contained the hardest bed I've ever sat on, a small dresser, a computer and computer desk, and a couch that was really a bent-in-half mattress with wood cushioning. I stared outside at the tattered drapes on the porch of another apartment across the road.

I was confused... there was no food and no table to eat at.

"Do you like fruit?" Alan's girlfriend asked. She was involved in real estate and lived with him. Both were from different provinces in China - rare in Tianjin.

"Sure... fruit is very good!?"

"We will go to the fruit market then..."

I was envisioning some weird fruit kebob when we left...

***

To be continued tomorrow.


Tags:Treyopia China Stories Life Tianjin Students Teaching dinner

Tianjin - Friday Night Photoshoot

Weekend nights come alive on the streets of Tianjin. The center of attention is Carrefour, the French Wal-Mart, with lines at the registers pouring back into the aisles. It's insane. Sorround Carrefour venfors set up selling drinks, kabobs, cheap jewelry, make-up, and children's clothes. Half a block down is a sidewalk seafood resteraunt (the picture of Mama-san). A little further down is another major outdoor resteraunt, alive only at night, with over a hundred patrons. You can still find food vendors set up in their traditional all-week alley spots as late as 2am.



A kabob stand down the street from
my apartment that sets up every night




A worker relaxing after a shift



Mama-san watching over people
eating seafood at a street market



Girl walking past a street vendor.
Note how most vendors roll in on
modified bicycles.



Traffic on Anshanshe Dao Road, in
front of the company headquarters



Street vendor selling beverages

Tags: Treyopia China Tianjin Photography

Sharing Wisdom

Lisa is a friend of Nina's and Nina is the friend who sent me to China. Nina took off for the Peace Corps in Moldova a month before I left and Lisa left nine months ago for Vietnam. At home, they were a slightly older group of friends who were everything I wanted to be - well traveled, interesting, and content.

We've been keeping up online. Lisa wrote a particularly powerful blog today about greatness. It's a disease I've always had, as does she, some clinging feeling that one must aspire to greatness. Not nessecarily popular fame, not nessecarily wealthy, but great. Great the same way some obscure and ancient E.P. from your favorite band is great. I always assumed that if I did find greatness, it would be completely an accident. I wasn't searching for it like Lisa. I assume I have little control over it. It's a disease though because you can't be content being what 99.9999% of the world's population is... just being a human - "try to make ends meet, try to find some money, then you die."

I've always taken it as some secular stab at immortality. Being remembered. There's something humbling though about being 1 person in a county of 1.3 billion. It's even more eye opening buying a 30 cent lunch from a perfectly content street vendor.

Anyway, she writes:

I had put a great amount of pressure on me ever since I step foot in this country because I believed that my time here was my "make it or break it time." I wanted to make something of myself here. I wanted to do something important. I wanted to be great. I wanted to make so much money that Id get myself out of debt and start something that I could continue when I go back to the States. Every day that passed when I lived here made me feel more and more guilty for the fact that I never got started on it and every day was pressed to make up for all the days prior.

And;

Something happened in the past couple of months though, and I stopped thinking about my future. I was having a conversation session with a friend whos in her mid 40s, divorced, with no children, and she told me this that life isnt so complicated. In fact, its very simple. She went on about a friend of hers who took so much time and worry about the meaning of his life and what he wanted to do with it. Her friend is in his mid 40s, divorced, with kids. A few years ago, I took it to myself to listen to anyone older than me and to take their advice, no matter how much I despise advice.

Later, descring how she started teaching English (the last thing she wanted to do) she continues;

So, Im pretty much throwing in the towel, and I'm gonna stop trying to prove everyone wrong when everyone is... well, right. I'm not gonna fight that any longer and I'm not going to continue to pressure myself for no reason at all. I'm going to just make myself happy and love my freedom. Im not going to earn plaques; Im not going to be anything to brag about. Im just going to be that goofy wanderer who doesnt have a care in the world. At least thats how my mom and a friend described me as.

My response was,

There's something about teaching in particular that's satisfying. If you're any good you make connections, you see people improving and you know it's your influence. You become great, in a sense, just not to the whole world like I originally planned. The world's a bigger world than I thought, anyway. I'm happy enough being a great person within my karass just as I said I'd be happy enough being great with a certain type of people.

I like your idea on listening to the advice of older people, no matter how tough it is to swallow.

I spent a weekend with my grandparents last Christmas and I did everything I could to extract words of wisdom from my increasingly feeble grandfather. He's near deaf, near blind... but I knew he had a sharp mind. I remember it. What I got from him was this,

"No matter how hard it seems sometimes, things get better."

Tags: Treyopia China Life Teaching

On Regulating Reincarnation

"The reincarnation of the Panchen Lama has been regulated since the Qing dynasty, that is, since the 17th century."

and

"Every nation on earth teaches its people to love their motherland. We are organizing patriotic education everywhere, not just in the monasteries. Those who do not love their country are not qualified to be human beings. This is a matter of common sense."

Der Spiegel interviews the Communist Party Chief of Tibet. [via Political Theory Daily Review]

Tags: Treyopia China Tibet Dalai Lama Current Events Interview Spiegel

Seniority

There's a certain moment in every employment where you become senior to someone else. Suddenly, you're no longer the new guy - someone else is! Your own tattered and fragmented view of the work environment becomes useful insight to someone else. That happened today. For the past 45 days Dru and I have been the newbies trying to figure things out, today we had 45 days worth of wisdom to unload on two teachers new to Tianjin.

One was new to China, one had been in Shenzhen for a month. Both had spent time in the Philippines. Both highly recommended that we visit said islands. Daniel worked at an orphanage for a few years and fled when his girlfriend proposed marriage. Reagan was seeing the world before he put his Army-sponsored MBA to use.

Lisa said she wanted to go out tonight, so I had been prepared since my class was over to finally get out of the neighborhood. Sometime around 10 we got a call. Lisa had gone home and the bar they found was empty in a creepy way. It was payday and I'd been cooped up inside the apartment for most of the week. We met them in front of Carrefour. In retrospect, I was quite excited. I twice jumped a one-meter fence separating Carrefour's bicycle parking lot with the sidewalk.

As knowledgeable elder, we took the two new guys to Ali Babba's for Tsingtao and sandwiches. Babba's isn't necessarily the most happening place in Tianjin, but it has the most foreigners - which is a welcome site sometimes, an annoyance other times - and the only reasonably priced Western menu in town. We mingled over grilled cheese and beer. The new guys were really cool. Both down to earth and both had the personality that comes with being a small vessel bouncing around the globe. These are the people I hoped to meet traveling... the restless vagabonds, the people open to whatever came their way for the sake of experience and stories. The people only competing with themselves, as Steve Sykes would say.

After finishing our food and beers we walked over to Scarlet. Most of the worthy Tianjin nightlife is clustered around Nankai university. Dru hadn't been there since the fight, but we had a mission: show what Tianjin had to offer in the way to nightlife. It was fun. Daniel and I wound up in front of a private room trying to sneak into a room with a group of girls tickling each other. I wisely suggested we refrain as it was certain their boyfriends would be coming back. We all hit the dancefloor and caused trouble there.

It was a good night. For better or worse, part of the reason I came to Asia was to meet the other people who'd want to come here.

Tags: Treyopia China Stories Life Tianjin

Recovery, Part III

[Part I, Part II, and this is Part III. If you're new to the blog, read this first for context]

"I've missed you."

She recognized me. Maybe the rest would go just as smooth.

I didn't know what to say. Did I miss her? Err... even I did, that wouldn't be the right answer. Not in America... but this is China. Cute is more important than cool. Cool doesn't even exist as we understand it. I need a comeback. Quickly

"I missed you too?"

Fumble. Dru snickers.

"How've you been?" I hate those moments of clarity when I realize just how bad I am courting women.

"Tomorrow is my last night working here."

Great, it's obvious I just hopped a cab across town to see her and thinks I'm a stalker and is quitting now...

"Why is that," I ask. "I thought you liked Cozy's?"

The band was playing loudly in the background. I felt bad that the dancefloor cleared whenever they came back on and the DJ stopped spinning.

"I'm going to Beijing for university!"

Her face lit up when she said that. You had to be smart to get out of your hometown. Of all the high school teachers I met at Jixian, only two had scores high enough to go somewhere else besides Tianjin Foreign Language University. Going to Beijing was gold. This girl had brains.

I could tell she was looking for me to be excited. I wasn't.

"That's awesome!"

It's funny how communication works like that here. Most of what native language speakers say is loaded with subtextual meanings, things other native speakers naturally pick up. She had told me she'd like to go to Beijing for college last we spoke. I took it as that - a wish - not a fulfilled desire.

"And you leave this weekend?"

My small dreams were crushed. I wasn't looking for anything serious or particularly devious. Just some flirty company if nothing else. Something to think about other than what to read next, watch next, or blog next. I knew I'd be leaving Tianjin soon.

I tried having a deeper conversation about leaving home. Conversations like that are hard with non-native speakers, even harder with a Fillipino band blasting a Will Smith cover behind me. The conversation petered out and she went to get someone else a drink.

Dru left for a moment and I sparked up a conversation with an Aussie sitting next to us. I told him the story of the lost phone number and we got a laugh. We got into a long conversation about expat life in China all the while ignoring Ju. I have a tendancy to ignore that which bothers me.

Dru wins Wingman of the Year prize. He sparked a conversation and snagged her email for me while I was deep in conversation analyzing the materialism in Chinese culture. He also found out her boyfriend worked at the bar too.

"Dude... no use on the email. Seriously... boyfriend and she's moving out of town."

"Shut up. Email her. You can be her first Beijing boyfriend. Jesus, man, I leave you alone for five minutes and you're talking to a bald man! Come on, stay with it!"

We left Cozy for Tsingtao and grilled cheeses at Ali Babba's for a post-situation round-up and laugh... which brings us to the end. Dru wrote the email down wrong, but it's all good. It wasn't really about just her, it was about getting out and doing something... an adventure. Something to think about besides my next lesson or my next meal.




Tags: Treyopia China Stories Life Tianjin Recovery clubs expat night life