Sunrise at Tiananmen

 I celebrated National Day like a true patriot: Johan and I got up at 4am and went to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag raising (click on photos to make them bigger).

5am outside Tiananmen Square

Lots of soldiers

People were let into the square in groups at intervals. We opted to watch from outside rather than line up.

After the flag was up they must've let about 200 little birds fly out of the Forbidden City. That was pretty cool. What was not cool was slogging with the throngs back to the subway. The crowds were elbow to elbow for about three blocks leaving the square. It took us half an hour to reach the subway. And so I retreated to my apartment and spent most the rest of Golden Week tucked away reading and cooking. Can't believe it's already time to go back to work. Wah.

Fluency

This morning my dad sent me this Chinese-language animation about the presidential debate with the subject line "You understand this?" 

I've been living in Mandarin-speaking society for almost exactly four years and have spent about three years actively studying the language, yet unhappily my answer is "not really." Barring subtitles (and obvious graphics), I would be able to tell you that the audio says Mitt Romney won the debate and Democrats are unhappy about it and not much else. Okay, that's probably a lie - I don't know how to say Democrats. 

At this point, I have a comfortable pragmatic vocabulary, but I don't know phrases like "public broadcasting" or "tax cuts" or "deficit." I guess even my American friends with Chinese parents would not get the full gist of the video because they didn't grow up hearing those kinds of words either (though my vocabulary is still smaller than theirs as well).

I haven't been studying since I moved to Beijing. I emailed a language school once about a tutor, but work has been so overwhelming I abandoned the idea.  When I move back the US, I plan on continuing some basic study -- maybe with an online course, maybe with a tutor -- not so that I can reach the kind of high-level understanding that would allow me to watch the news in Chinese, I would need an intensive immersion program for that, but rather so that I don't lose what I have. And as a hobby. I really like learning Chinese.

This afternoon I went to get my haircut and as soon as I told my stylist I was American we started talking about the greatest of global ice breakers: American movies. We talked about Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger. We talked about The Godfather and The Departed and the Hong Kong movie upon which the latter is based. We talked about Tsui Hark and Chow Yun-fat lighting his cigarette with Benjamins in A Better Tomorrow. I don't know the Chinese names for any of those movies but we were able to describe enough plot to each other to get the point across. He commented that I seemed to like a lot of gangster movies. I said yes, probably true. Then he said America was kind of like Japan's gangster since they wouldn't dare step to China over the Diaoyu Islands if we didn't have their back. I grinned and laughed, "Oh really?" Then he said my government likes to fight a lot of wars. To which the only appropriate response it seemed was, "Yeah, 差不多"

So I guess you could say I'm action-movie fluent. Don't ask me about current events. I'm only Diaoyu-island fluent because that's the event of the moment, but I can recount a Scorsese film plot pretty, pretty well.

Living next to the Russian Embassy

My apartment complex is adjacent to the Russian Embassy. It's a giant, barbwire-encircled compound and I can see an Orthodox steeple peeking above the fence directly across from my building. 

Pros: 

My street is extremely, blissfully quiet at night and is always guarded by at least half a dozen boyish-looking PLA troops.

The PLA troops live across from the embassy. I can see where they hang their laundry and some mornings I can hear them shouting in formation. It's not loud or often enough to be annoying and it's kind of a fun reminder that I'm in the capital.

Plenty of opportunity to gawk at Russian diplomats. Some of them like motorcycles and have skinny, beautiful blonde wives who look like models. Maybe because they are models. Or maybe because the Russian look is really popular right now and a lot of models look like Russians. That's one of those chicken or the egg things. 

There are enough Russians living near here to warrant not one but two small Russian groceries on the street. I never thought it was possible to live this close to a steady supply of sliced bread and salami and still be in China.

Cons: 

My local grocery lady is always telling me the price in Russian and then looking at me like I'm completely stupid when I'm all "什么?" I want to say "hey, not 100% of the white folks on this street is from up north." But cab drivers are always mistaking me for Russian too, so I don't say anything. 

Meichang 3

Oopsies. So I have my blog set up so that I can write an email and it will automatically post to my blog. I also frequently email myself interview notes, and it appears I accidentally posted my interview notes to my blog. 

Nothing to see here folks, move along...

26!

Tuesday was my birthday, the third I've celebrated in China. I have fond memories of all three. Each exemplifies a different period of my expatriate journey: When I turned 24, I'd been in Shanghai six months, I'd just finished my first cover story and my chief editor (whom I now count as a dear friend) took me out for dinner and drinks in the French Concession. It was a little triumph, I was finally being welcomed into the fold after several lonely months in the vaguely-defined and poorly-funded world of "web editing" (I was promoted to the magazine soon after). When I turned 25, my roommates threw a house party, which was big and loud, I worried the neighbors would complain. After 18 months, I was in my element. Now, at 26, I've only been in Beijing three months but I slipped into a community easily this time. Partly because this isn't my first rodeo, partly because I got lucky with cool roommates. I hadn't planned on anything special, but Brando rallied a handful of people for dinner at a hutong restaurant. We ate Yunnan food, drank Belgian beer and a bunch of architects sang "Tanti auguri a Te," which was very sweet.

It was at about 13, half my life ago now, that I decided what kind of person I would be. When I was 11 and made my first trip to Asia, for Billy's adoption, I promised myself I would one day live in this part of the world, and over the next few years the idea cemented itself and I decided writing and traveling were the most important things. I never came up with goals like "win a Pulitzer by age XX," my thinking was more along the lines of "if I can make enough money and spend this much time writing and live in such-and-such a place that would be really, really cool." My 13-year-old self would be happy with how things turned out so far.

That said, I have so much to learn. Like expats my age across industries in China, I haven't had much mentorship. Responsibility comes quickly, and there's very little guidance to go with it. Four years out of college, I'm anxious and eager to keep learning. I don't know if or when that will happen in an academic setting, but my goal for the next year is to read widely and deeply. My work commitment ends in November. Then, I'll begin traveling and I plan on instituting some sort of organized approach to working my way through the Western canon. Or parts of it. I'll pick and choose and inject a bunch of modern lit too, it won't be all dead European men. I'm looking forward to having time off to experiment with my writing outside of a work setting. Basically, I'm going to slide into my late twenties with a massive downsizing in responsibility, I'll just coast on in...

American Magic

We had a barbecue this weekend. There were about 20 people in attendance including myself, my roommates, a Greek-Chinese translator, a Spanish-Chinese translator and then mostly Italian architects. My contributions to the meal were two bottles of rum and a vanilla cake made from a box, so it was kind of embarrassing when all the Europeans started gushing about how delicious the cake was (don't thank me, thank Betty Crocker, guys!). 

As I explained this box-cake thing to my Italian roommate he said the other day he was quite surprised to find our other roommate (also American, not much of a cook) whipping up pancakes in the kitchen, but then he learned that you could buy this box from the import grocer and just add water. 

"If you'd been born in America, you too would also already know this magic," I explained. 

Why I don't do "wellness"

Yesterday I went to a massage center. It's a potential client so I was offered a free massage, which is always great, but on my way out the marketing woman watched me walk down the hall and told me she could tell by the way I walked my spine wasn't straight. This is a fact I already know. Two years ago when I did my health check for my China work visa they told me I had "minor scoliosis," which sounds really scary until I realized it was just a small curve in the spine, and doesn't everyone have a messed up back? I get lower back pain when I stand in one place doing dishes too long, but - again - everybody has back pain. 

Now this lady is telling me I walk leaning to one side, and here I was operating under the delusion I have pretty good posture. Actually quite often civilians - i.e. people who don't work at massage centers - tell me I have good posture.  Now I imagine myself listing to one side like a sinking ship. She recommended I come back to see the chiropractor and get treatment, which sounds like more time and money than I want to spend on what may or may not be the reason my lower back hurts when I do dishes. I prefer ignorance about my ailments. 

Pro Tip: They did tell me that one of my vertebrae sticks out because I have computer neck. So, if you're like me and spend all day staring at one, take time to tilt your head all the way back and stretch out your neck muscles. This is supposed to help.