Stick a fork in her

Summer in Shanghai is finally OVAH! I almost wished I had a jacket when I biked to work this morning! Hurray!

It's been a busy week and a half, since returning from the Hermit Kingdom. On my first day back in the office (with almost zero of my copy in for October...) I was greeted with: Can you do this extra sidebar for the cover story, oh and you need to interview Akon in half an hour. Ageh!

Akon was cool on the phone though (For those of you who don't know, this is the video I sent my mom for introduction. Somehow she wasn't impressed.)

Last night I started going through my 400+ North Korea photos, will hopefully get some up by the end of the weekend.

Back from the DPRK

Yesterday I returned to the relatively-more-free world. North Korea was a lot like I expected it to be (I've done quite a bit of reading/documentary-watching in recent years). I imagine what I saw was a lot like what China looked like 30 years ago - lots of people walking and biking everywhere, dilapidated buildings, absolutely zero advertising anywhere. We had a little more latitude than I thought we would. Everywhere we went we were guided, but there were occasions where we got to interact with locals. There isn't much spoken English so it was mostly just smiles and waves. The worst thing was seeing young people who clearly suffered stunted growth from living through a famine. We saw a work unit full of 18-year-old men who were mostly all much shorter than me and one of them looked as if his head was too big for his body. 

We saw a lot. We watched Mass Games. We boarded the USS Pueblo. We paid our respects to President Kim Il Sung (who, by the way, holds an honorary doctorate from a phony US university, it was on display at the mausoleum, all the Americans in our group got a kick out of it).

My birthday was a week ago, 25 - woohoo! The year is 2/3 over, so I started thinking back to my new year's resolutions. One was to travel more, the other was to save money. So far this year I've been to rural Anhui, Xinjiang, Qingdao and North Korea. Plus I've picked up a bit of freelance work (and all but one of those trips was work-affiliated) so I've managed to accomplish both. I'm also doing pretty good on reading more books. I could still stand to find more language exchange friends, but I haven't been drinking much Coke. 

More on my DPRK adventures later. Hundreds of pictures to sort...

Totally Unfair

You probably know that China's phenomenal growth in recent years is largely fueled by the massive migration of rural people into urban industry centers. The come from the countryside, they might make between $200 and $500 a month, more if they have a skill, and China has them to thank for all that awesome economic growth.

But what you might not know is that these people are second-class citizens in the cities they work in, they have no claim to city benefits, and their children often have no right to attend school in the cities where their parents work. Shanghai, to its credit, allows children of migrant workers to attend up to middle school, but after that the kids have to go back to their home province. If a family has two children (which is more common among rural people, the one-child policy is more lenient in the countryside) they might be able to scrap and borrow to pay for high school for one child (usually the boy). But often the schools parents can afford are sub-par, nowhere near Shanghai standards. Girls suffer the most. And more often than not kids wind up dropping out of high school in their home province because they can't make the adjustment back to rural life or they just go to work alongside their parents in the city.

I know all this, but it just pulled at my heart this morning when I was talking to my ayi (cleaning lady). She's this brilliant, sunny person. When I first met her she said she liked me because I'm always happy, just like she is. I asked her why she's always so happy. She said she's happy because she has two children, which is most definitely something to be happy about in Shanghai. Most everyone loves their children, but since I hear her talk about them time to time, they've become part of what I know about her, and I happen to like my ayi a lot.

So this morning she came in - still very upbeat - and mentioned that her daughter was now back in Jiangsu, living with grandma to go to high school. We had a moment of stewing about how wretchedly unfair this is. Her daughter received top-of-her-class marks in middle school. There's nothing to be done. It's an 11-hour journey from Shanghai to the town she's going to school in, which is a lot closer than their home village, so they can visit occasionally.

Children deserve better.

Beer, beer, beer

Well it ain't exactly Oktoberfest, but we're having a pretty swell time up here in Qindao. Jess has actually been to Oktoberfest, where she says there's non-stop music in the beer tents and everyone gets up every five minutes to raise their glasses for a drinking song. We were in one beer tent where the entertainment was auctioning off Chinese paintings...

At the beach Saturday morning I bargained my way into proud ownership of a 60-kuai giant sombrero. The shop owner started the price at double that, which means it's probably worth about 12 kuai, but it's rare that I feel like I don't get totally hosed in a bargaining situation. For another 20 kuai she threw in a pointy rice hat for James. Our hats won us lots of new friends and free beer once we got to the beer festival.

For awhile we sat at the table with the festival organizer, took lots of pictures, ate lots of meat skewers and tiny clams.

Jess has designs on swimming in the ocean at some point, I'm not so sure. The beach is so so so crowded. Just a month ago I was back in Oregon, with Oregon beaches fresh in my mind, walking along the pier yesterday morning was a little bit ... yuck. They have jet skis in the harbor, but a dude drives it for you, you just get to ride.

Also yesterday morning, we walked up to this grand old Catholic church, built when Qingdao was under German control. We counted no less than 15 different couples taking their wedding pictures, in front of the main gate there was a different woman every 10 feet, posed with her legs folded under her and her dress all spread out.

Time for breakfast!

News you can use

It's deadline week, I'm swamped with proofing and Chinese homework and all that, but since I got a naggy email from a certain someone here it is:

1. I made pesto this week and it was delicious

2. The Marriott treated me to a steak Monday evening and it was probably more delicious than my pesto.

3. On Friday afternoon my roommates and I are flying to Qingdao (coastal city up north) for a beer festival. 

4. In two weeks I'm going on a tour to North Korea for 5 days. If you want a postcard, better pony up yer address.

How ya like that?!

Packing Fail

I accidentally brought my car keys and one of my brother's undershirts to China (I blame the latter on deceptively piled laundry). I forgot all the awesome sand dollars I collected on one of our beach runs. At the last minute I had to unload a pair of heels, my AP Style Guide and 4 pounds of quinoa to get my suitcase under 50 pounds. My bottle of Robert Mondavi cabernet ($8 at Fred Meyers, $30 in Shanghai) made it in tact though. Priorities. We'll be cracking that open on my birthday next month.

Back in China

It's 730 am and balmy and the horizon is hazy. Sorry no posts during my vacation, I couldn't bring myself to sit in front of a computer for long while at home. It seems like just a few days ago I was rushing around trying to get ready to go, having goodbye drinks with my now-departed chief editor and packing. Now I'm back - argh!

This was my first time visiting the States during summer since 2008 (!!!). I swam, I took my dog to the beach, I went tubing and bridge jumping with my brothers and lit off ground fireworks, I cooked a lot, I read. There were a lot of things I didn't do. I didn't talk to many of my friends on the phone. I only met up with one person outside my family. I didn't drive anywhere farther than half an hour away. It just seemed more important to either be outside or hanging out with my family. But since most of my days were pretty much the same the time all blends together and it's hard to believe two weeks slipped by so quickly. 

On my last day I went to Dunefest - an Oregon Coast atv rally where my brothers' band was opening the Friday night entertainment. I ate a pulled pork sandwich and a funnel cake. It all seemed like a very aMERican way to end my trip.

Another highlight was getting to see my brothers compete at an open track meet. Billy almost beat his personal best pole vault and Ricky ran a relay (and won) with a bunch of college runners. 

It doesn't get any easier to leave. I had a little cry on the airplane between Coos Bay and San Francisco, but I was also laughing because my brother had been miming aiming a bazooka at me from the waiting room window that looked down on the boarding area. I probably looked like a crazy lady. The crying made me congested, so I got a screaming headache as we descended. It felt like my brain was about to explode out of my left eye socket. 

I think one thing that makes it harder is China has become so familiar. It's not so exotic anymore, just very far away. Short grocery lines, the brand of milk I like to drink, being able to easily find the things I like to cook and fresh air all seem more attractive and important than they used to. 

Thankfully James was there to pick me up at the airport and I got to come home to my little American tribe and my lovely apartment. Now I'm off to work. It's going to be a busy week.