So long, China!

I'm off to the land of killer grocery stores and instantaneously loading YouTube videos. Hoo-ray!

It's the Communist Party's 90th burfday this year, so all around town their are dear posters like this one (I did not take this photo, a friend did). In honor of the momentous occasion, there's some awful movie at right now called The Founding of a Party and the gov't is making us all wait to see Harry Potter because they don't want to have to compete against it at the box office. So in other words, I couldn't have picked a better time for vacation.

Bad China Day #2

So...it turns out that in addition to your passport, work visa, alien employment permit, employment agreement and proof of regular income - you also need to go to the tax bureau and get your tax papers in order to buy more than US$500 per day from a Chinese bank.

Did I mention it takes no less than half an hour to process and stamp all the paperwork for changing money, no matter how small the sum?

Ageh.

The week in review

I've been so busy catching up from my Xinjiang trip and preparing for my two-week vacay (!!!), but here are a few interesting bits that happened between the work overload:

This week one of my co-workers was writing something and posed a question to the room: What was the name of the occupational Japanese government in Shanghai? I turned and ask my assistant (who is a Shanghai native and majored in history). She shook her head in disbelief. As if I'd just ask what the name of the occupational Martian government was, so I sent her a link to the wikipedia page. She was blown away, had never learned about in school.

We're babysitting my boss' rescue dog. This is a trial weekend (since I'm allergic to dogs). But it's gone well so far and we're thinking we'll keep her on while he returns to Australia for five weeks. I always see plenty of Chinese people out walking their dogs, although usually they're teeny little rat dogs or big fluffy white purebreds, not scrappy mutts. Nevertheless, I was surprised when I took her out for a walk the first time. Some people would bend over, coo, say something nice, and then roughly an equal number of people would grumble and/or recoil in fear, making a big deal about giving her a wide berth. She's very calm and sweet, and she's not very big, so it's odd.

On Friday night I went to a party on the Bund and this guy came up to me and told me I was the Russian lady in some exercise video. I said, "No, sorry, that's not me." And then he got really indignant and maybe a little angry, "Yes you are!"

And that's all the bizarre China shenanigans for this week...

Ready to go home

Phew, it's been a long nine days. Finally, this is my last night in Wulumuqi, we fly home tomorrow. After I got food poisoning, it was hard to re-muster enthusiasm. I've been ready to go home for several days now. It also didn't help that they put us on a crazy schedule. Our days were packed with long bus rides between factories, railway stations and wholesale malls (we're in some of the most beautiful country China has to offer - and that's where we spent most our time). Once we got to these brilliant locations some Han Chinese guy (almost without fail it was a Chinese man) would introduce the place, in the foyer or whatever, we usually didn't even get to look around much - something that could've made it interesting - and then we'd hop back on the bus. It was essentially a heap of driving to obtain info that could've been relayed in press releases.

On Saturday the PR guy for one county squeezed in an extra business park and so our drive was delayed to the next county and we didn't sit down to dinner until 11pm.

All day Sunday was boring business visits, then we had an overnight train, then breakfast in Wulumuqi and then a meeting where we went around the table and told the provincial PR folks how much we liked the trip. And I was all, "Meeting?! I haven't showered or changed my clothes in 24 hours!"

So I peaced-out of the afternoon activities with a couple others. Our team leader tried to bar us from leaving the hotel as a small group because it's around the anniversary of the Xinjiang riots, which was totally over-the-top, so he eventually changed his mind.

In my first free afternoon in more than a week I had KFC for lunch, the most delicious KFC of my life after all that Kazakh/Chinese hotel food. Then we went shopping and walking around (did see a few SWAT teams posted about).

At dinner they were going around doing bai jiu shots. They only had three glasses, so they were making people take turns. Gross alcohol on top of gross hygiene. I only finished half of mine and poured the rest out into my empty soup bowl because it practically made me dry heave. The guy serving told me I was being rude.

We got back to the hotel (after 11) and our team leader says "Everyone come to my room so I can download all your pictures and upload them in one place!" And honestly my pictures are not that awesome (there were a bunch of pros on this trip), my camera was acting up and my throat hurts. So I didn't go. I can see where some people will think I'm being standoffish. Maybe I am, but after 9 days of non-stop, forced togetherness, I'm going to give myself a pass.

If I had it to do over again, I still would. We drove through some great countryside and I got to take a picture of the Kazakh border. However, I think I've filled my state-run tour and Chinese grain alcohol quotas for a good long while.

Last night in Ili

I'm halfway through this Xinjiang excursion and thus far I have ridden a horse, watched a horse race, eaten horse and drank fermented mare milk. So perhaps it's no surprise that tonight I skipped the last smokey/boozy county government banquet to entertain Mr. Ed's revenge in my business suite (the foreigners got the best rooms). I sat down next to the county PR head and was pretty sure watching people eat oily spicy Chinese food wasn't going to do anything for my mounting nausea: "Mr. Wang, I'm really sorry but I don't feel well. I'm leaving." "Just eat a little bit." "Certainly wont."

I'm not sure "certainly wont" was the polite/grammatical response, but hopefully he understood it was a I-seriously-don't-feel-good reply and not a big F you.

It's been fun out here in Kazakh country. The vast majority of people in this county are Kazakh but all of the government officials we've met, with the exception of one Kazakh PR lady, have been Han Chinese (at least I'm pretty sure, I didn't poll them all). We've visited a lot of farms, where all the farmers have told us how much the government policies have helped them...

But we also drove through gorgeous countryside, got to go on a little hike yesterday and saw some fun traditional dance performances.

I'm basically having a cultural experience inside a cultural experience, since I'm seeing Xinjiang for the first time, but I'm also the only Western journalist (and one of three foreigners) on a tour full of Chinese media.

I've been pretty cool about being the whitey sideshow up until now. I take pictures with people whenever they ask. I don't mind the other journalists surreptitiously stealing shots of me. I've danced (horribly) after the banquet dinners whenever I was asked. Hell, last night I got up and belted out "Happy Birthday" in front of the banquet hall when they asked me to sing.

I've spoken to a handful of Xinjiang people and many say I'm the first American they've met. And I don't think the other journalists I'm with have had much interaction with Westerners (only two speak fluent English, I communicate in Mandarin with the rest).

It's important to me to be a good sport and be cheerful, but I just about came to the end of my rope today after being pushed (and I do mean physically) into a photo opp with a group of Mongolian dancers by another journalist. "No, I don't want to!" It was a bit awkward afterward, I probably would have taken the photo but it just grinds my gears when people (particularly men I don't know well) touch me without forewarning. Then at lunch someone at our table said, "Oh Leslie, you're good at drinking [I had three small shots of bai jiu over the course of dinner the previous night, hardly impressive] tonight you should have a drinking contest with them." "Ha ha! Certainly wont!"

I'm going to have to ask Teacher Liz about the appropriateness of "certainly wont" as it seems to have wormed it's way well into my conversation arsenal.

Now as I sit here, typing and griping, four of our group members (including the pusher and the drinking contest guy) just came to my door to offer to take me to the hospital ("NOOOooonononno thank you") and then came back up to my room with stomach medicine.

In fact, everyone in our group has been lovely to me. Everyone wants to make sure I know what's going on, everyone gives me food, asks how I like things, basically they all take care of me up, down and sideways. It's just my patience wears thin with all the attention. But patience is definitely one of the things China is constantly teaching me.

First night in Xinjiang

I'm out here in the far west for the next ten days with several other journalists from our publishing company (which is under the State News Council), which was invited by the Xinjiang government to make the trip. They served Halal meals on our flight and now that we're in the capital a lot of signs are in both Mandarin and what I'm pretty sure is Arabic. But we're staying in the Chinese part of town, so I haven't seen too many Ugyhur people yet. 

They only gave us the agenda once we were on the ground - we'll spend most of the next week traveling through Yili County, a primarily Kazakh region and every day there's some sort of government official group interview which should be ... riveting. I believe we're meeting the governor of Xinjiang tomorrow morning, and that should be rather interesting.

Ai Weiwei released - hurray!

They let him out today, phew.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I'm coming up on the end of another cover story cycle. In the mean time, you should read this article I wrote about scrap collectors in Shanghai.

Other news: I got a Kindle (!!!!). And soon me thinks I'm going to buy a fancy camera. I want something smaller than an SLR, but with interchangeable lenses. Leaning towards a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3. Camera heads, I welcome your feedback.

Toodles!