Korea was not my original plan for this month. I meant to be far away, on another continent, somewhere far hotter and just plain farther. That trip didn’t happen; it has been pushed back to July or August, when it won’t bring my travel budget down to zero.
I have maybe 10 days left in this country before I float back to Dalian. This trip has drizzled away, with most of my time spent in classrooms filled with elementary school-age children, or online late at night. It’s strange, thinking back now, how this trip almost didn’t happen. A month ago, I was shoring up Plans C, D and E, since Plan B (Korea) looked to be going the way of Plan A.
I kept quiet about the Korea plan because I was afraid I’d somehow jinx it, like I probably did by telling too many Dalian friends about Plan A (keeping mum for now for the same reason; I’ll write about it eventually). I meant to write about how I got here earlier, but as I’ve discovered since starting this blog, there is always something more immediate I can write about, and it’s easy to let things slip into the ever-growing pile of “things I meant to say.” I’ll keep this to a few (relatively) short installments to save my reader’s eyes. Here goes:
It started in Dandong. I went because I wanted to see what I could of North Korea after it conducted its nuclear test in October, before it or someone else took it off the map. Through a friend in Dalian, I met Keith, another journalist-turned-teacher, who offered me his couch. While waiting for him to get off work, I met Sam. She mentioned that an intensive English camp near Busan paid for a semester of Chinese study. I filed that factoid away.
Then it was back to Plan A, which involved looking for airfare and vaccinations and scrounging whatever cash I could find. Somewhere in that process I started thinking about grad school and real jobs post-China, whenever that is.
The money never really added up. Plan A was going to cost everything I’d saved in China, not much in international terms, but the equivalent of several months salary there. It would mean dipping into other savings for a rushed trip. It was one of many recent moments when I wrote a note to myself saying, “You need to plan your life, just a little, but more than a week ahead.”
Plan A was rescheduled for summer, when it will make more sense anyway, for reasons to be detailed later. Sam put me in touch with a recruiter at this camp in Korea. Within a day, I had a job offer and a contract FedExed to me.
The schedule was always going to be tight. The camp started Jan. 3, and I applied for it in early December. Korea is ostensibly more strict than China, requiring an original diploma and transcripts to teach there. I had neither in Dalian, and when I called my parents, they reported that my diploma, which bears Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature and so far has been half as useful as a blank piece of paper (you can only write on one side), was missing from the house.
I ordered transcripts. I needed something on paper (any paper seems to work in China) showing I graduated from college. I waited. I placated the recruiter: “The documents are on their way. Funny thing, diploma seems to have disappeared. Isn’t that strange? Don’t worry. Replacement’s on the way.” That last bit was a lie. It takes four months to get a new diploma.
What I had was a scan of my diploma, printed on beige, antique-looking card stock, the kind with that sort of marble texture. It probably looks the part enough.
My transcripts arrived the Friday before Christmas. That meant Christmas day would be spent on a bus to Shenyang, my least favorite city in China, dealing with an absurd concoction of Chinese and Korean bureaucracy.
I catch myself thinking sometimes, “If I heard someone having the conversations I’m having right now a year ago, I would hate them.”
A year ago, I worked in a cubicle (yes, this one here). Sure, I was a reporter, working at a daily paper in the remote vicinity of Los Angeles, fulfilling at least part of what I spent two of my four college years studying, but let’s be realistic. I worked in an office with fluorescent lights and name badges where they told me to wear a tie. Something about that setting just sucks the life out of you, poisons your soul and makes you want to join an overpriced gym because there’s an In & Out Burger down the street and you’ve gained 30 pounds (a 20% gain in body weight) in six months. This is not a healthy way to live and no human should endure it.
I just got off the instant messenger with a friend back in Dalian. This is how it went (in uncorrected AIM-speak):
Me: i have some loose ends to tie up in dalian, and i want to see everybody. i don’t have to teach another class until march 5 though
Her: everyone isnt here though
Me: kinda makes me want to do something irresponsible for a month
Her: they are all traveling
Her: you should go traveling
Me: a friend of mine is putting together a tibet trip. do you think it’ll be too cold?
Her: umm if the pass is open.. if they let you enter tibet
Her: itll be super cold, but if thats the only time you can go… go
Me: that’s what i’m pondering. it’s that or SE Asia. I want to go everywhere.
So, Tibet or Thailand. The Himalayas in February or tropical Southeast Asia. Getting to Tibet involves a two-day train ride from Beijing, which is itself a day from Dalian. It’s been on the list as long as I’ve had this blog.
Or I could fly to Thailand, go overland through some combination of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, then possibly take the long way back through China, stopping along the way to catch a few other sites.
Here’s the catch: I can’t do both, and summer is booked. Whichever one I don’t choose now will have to wait at least a year, unless I find a way to do this on someone else’s bank account (if there are offers available, my email is eyeseast [at] gmail.com) because that’s when I next have months of untethered time. So what do I choose? I know this is the second time I’ve asked this in a week.
I’m sorry if you work in an office. Please don’t hate me.
Remembering wars can be a tricky thing. How does a country view its actions? What does it count as just and unjust? Are the millions killed martyrs or victims?
Of the memorials I’ve seen, the Korean War Museum in Seoul is possibly the most comprehensive and most respectful of the 4 million who died. It is a far cry from its Chinese counterpart in Dandong, where signs boast about how many “enemies” were “eliminated” each day, and where the North’s breach of the 38th parallel is overlooked and blame is placed on the UN for responding.
What struck me most was the number of children at the Seoul museum on a Sunday. Mostly, I saw them running and playing, climbing over old weapons and treating the awful relics like one big jungle gym.
This video is what I saw, and the song I had in my head all day. It is a rough edit, and my first time doing something like this. Mostly, it was an experiment to see if I could do it. All critique is appreciated.
“This page has more gray than the Battle of Gettysburg,” my old journalism teacher used to say when our college paper printed a spread packed full of nothing but text.
Well, I’m falling into the same habit on this blog. I’ll blame it on my bad internet connection this week. Photos are now attached to a few recent posts, and there are more new ones at my Flickr page. They’re not in any order, so you’ll find Dalian bowling mixed in with Seoul museums.
This is not a drinking blog. I have neither the steel to hang through a long night nor the prose to turn it into something lucid when I wake up the next afternoon. But I’m not going to pretend I’m not like every other backpacker I’ve ever met, drinking on the road because, to some extent, what happens here probably won’t follow me home.
And I like discovering each new country’s particular national alcoholism: Baijiu and cheap beer in China, soju and bad beer in Korea.
There is something vile about Korean booze. I was in no way drunk last night, and I am in every way hung over this morning.
Soju has a nasty reputation for giving more in headaches than happy haze, and something in the Hite beer or unnamed red wine I was drinking last night carried the same effect. I never thought I’d miss Tsingtao, Harbin and Yalu Jiang.
I need to decide on my next destination. The East Asia Beer Tour pushes onward, with six weeks left before I have to teach another class in Dalian. I think it’s time for someplace warmer.
I need some advice here from the blogosphere: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos? Some combination or all four? How much time ought to be dedicated to each? Anything I should avoid?
I’m heading back to Dalian in two weeks to tie up some loose ends. From there, I’d like to head out soon. If anybody will be in Southeast Asia and wants to meet up, I’m all for that, too, just drop me a line.
The longer answer is something Time’s new China blog still seems to be searching for. I’m not going to join the China Law Blog’scall for a boycott just yet, mostly because I’d like to see the site turn into something useful.
I remember once, back in college, telling a friend that with AP stories (or other wires, for that matter) the writer almost disappeared. There was no sense of where the reporter stood in the story. I’m not talking about political perspectives or media biases. Please don’t start telling me how this or that outlet is plotting against your pet cause. It probably isn’t. What I mean is this:
Most wire stories are written so that you forget there was once a human sitting at a keyboard struggling to decide which turn of phrase captured a scene just right, or which quote to use from which source first, or what kind of fallout might come from the finished piece. The story becomes almost inhuman.
This is not a bad thing. News wires were created to funnel straight-forward, factual if somewhat dry, plain old news (though hopefully new news) to larger outlets who would use them to supplement their own coverage. That’s why most papers don’t usually run AP/Reuters/AFP on the front page.
The big dailies (I’m a fan of the NY and LA Times, among others) can get away from this because they have more breathing room. They can tell a story that does more than just get the facts out. I like to pick through a big Sunday feature and think about how long the reporter worked on that one piece, what questions she asked each source, where he was standing when the sniper targeted his embed unit. The reporter exists in the story, even if a personal pronoun is never used.
Blogging is a different animal entirely. As a medium, it is personal, transparent and interactive, three things that hardly ever describe a newspaper or magazine. Interactive is the big one. A blog post isn’t news written in the voice of God, it’s the start of a conversation from a guy with his picture in the sidebar.
I don’t think Time Magazine gets this. So far, Time’s China blog hasn’t said anything worth talking about. And as CLB pointed out, what they have said has generally been said elsewhere, and usually said a lot.
There’s nothing to interact with on Time’s blog. It reads like it was written by and for people who’ve never read another China blog.
Time’s blog in China seems an attempt to move magazine journalism onto a blog basically intact. To borrow from an earlier era, they’re sticking a Mac-formatted floppy into a Tandy machine. Or maybe into a CD drive.
The point is, blogging is different. It has a different style and voice and purpose. It’s not a transplanted magazine article or a set of news clippings, which is what Time’s blog has been so far, plus some vanilla observations.
I keep reading Time’s posts, hoping they get better, and asking myself: “What is this blog about?” Maybe it’s a policy blog. Maybe it’s a news round-up. Maybe it’s a noodle blog like this one. I don’t know if the writers there have come up with an answer, either.
I’m still figuring this all out. Six months ago I was writing daily stories about schools in the Antelope Valley, working for a paper that is dying slowly, whether the people there know it or not. Of the news outlets I’ve worked for, the one with the best website so far is the blog you’re reading now, and I’m not saying that with any sense of pride (OK, a little).
There are great China blogs written by journalists. What I like most about Richard Spencer’s and Tim Johnson’s blogs are that they talk about their reporting process and what it’s like being a writer in China. Time could do this, too. Or it could be a collecting point for all the news about China. Or each of its four writers could just pick a focus and stick to it.
Or it could keep doing what it’s been doing, and be ignored.
It’s not BlogSpot this time. It’s not even the Great Firewall. Actually, it’s not online at all.
It’s a play by a bunch of 9-to-12-year-olds that involves a volcano and homework not being turned in. Who could possibly be offended?
Here’s what happened: Part of my job at this English camp in Seoul is a group project, where I have to get 10 kids, elementary school age, who are supposed to be on vacation, to give some kind of performance in front of their parents, mostly to show off how much English I’ve taught them.
I decided it would be fun to do a little fake newscast. For added entertainment, I made one segment about a volcano erupting next to the university and burning down the camp. The punch line (yes, I’m making disaster jokes) is when one kid says: “The children are happy because now there’s no homework.”
Maybe it’s a bad joke. Comedy is not my strong suit. And all of this is in special English, so maybe it loses something. Whatever the reason, one of the camp managers grabbed me as I was leaving today, hungry and in need of a beer, to tell me to change the script.
If parents hear their kids celebrating the idea of not having homework, they might think we’re instilling poor values in the camp, she told me. Also, some other people at the university that houses the camp might be offended if I write a tongue-in-cheek story about their school being consumed in lakes of fire.
Now, I’m new to Korea and it’s possible this is a cultural thing. Is she telling me there are kids somewhere that like homework? And like getting it over winter break?
In truth, the bit about no homework was half the kids idea and half mine. The kids also wanted to have everyone burned to death by lava. I nixed that one.
Coming to Seoul from China reminds me of the last time I drove into Las Vegas at night, when the endless and empty desert gave way to a sudden and tremendous onslaught of color and light.
I walked down each new avenue with my shoulders pushed forward, my neck stretched, my head swiveling upward and side-to-side. Seoul is neon and tall and alive, and it feels real.
Only one part of Dalian comes close: a stretch from Victory Plaza to Zhongshan Square, but even that runs shallow compared to Sinchon, where Sam and I quickly lost our way in streets overlapping and overflowing with everything for sale, everything available, everything thrown at you with a flashing sign and promising ads. I’m still not sure how I have any money left.
Most of my time and money has been spent in Sinchon, a district encircling several top universities and filled with college students flush with their parents’ money. This place leaves no excuse for saving.
Northeast China, even Dalian, is still marked by a scarcity of options when it comes to food and nightlife. The message boards on DalianXpat.com light up whenever a new western restaurant opens and foreign-friendly bars get extra credit just for existing. It’s not that Chinese food is bad, but there’s a limit to how many times you can order from the same standard menu, especially when you’ve grown up with California’s culinary diversity.
Seoul offers an overwhelming load of choices. Western fare has been the standard, not the occasional treat of the past five months, because here it’s no more expensive than a local meal and endlessly available. I had pizza for the second time tonight (Friday), Korean barbecue last night, and Chinese (though not really similar to Dongbei food) the night before. I eat at least one meal every day at the cafe on campus, where the menu is in English and prices are reasonable, at least by local standards.
Can all this be the result of consumer-driven capitalism and high-density living? I’m not sure. If so, I wonder how many Chinese cities will look like this in a few decades.
Two things right off: First, this is not my latest entry into the ongoing discussion of what it means to be Chinese. I’ll have more on that when I’m actually in China. Second, if you’re actually Chinese, this may be rather offensive. Please don’t be put off.
Korea has made it all too apparent that living in China since August has taken its toll. It’s not just that I’m converting every price to RMB and thinking, “I haven’t paid that much for a meal in months.” It’s that I seem to have picked up some very “Chinese” habits.
“Chinese,” in fact, has become something of a derogatory term among the teachers I’ve been hanging with, at least those who’ve spent time in the Middle Kingdom. Every time I step off the curb, about to dash across eight lanes of speeding traffic, I have to remind myself that I’m not in China, and no one in Seoul is expecting me to run in front of their car. “So Chinese,” my friend Sam and I tell each other often.
I tried to pay my part of a cab fare last night, only to have my W1,000 ($1.07) handed back to me. “You’re Chinese. You need it,” my friend said. She’s right. Until pay day at this month’s end, I’m living on the meager savings from my Dalian university teaching salary.
Oh, and I spit. Disgusting, I know, but I’d almost gotten to the point when I could tune out the throat-clearing, the hoik, the drip and splat. It just started to seem normal. Of course, I’m sick, and my lungs are producing something foul that just wants to get out of me, so I’m inclined to help it along, civility be damned.
I hate to say it, but I think James Fallows was right.
Five months in China and I barely got a cold. The worst was a day of sniffles in Xi’an, which some Cambodian herb supplement and a day in Revolutionary Park took care of. Somehow, living in my dingy old apartment in Dalian–with peeling paint, poor heat and things growing under the walls–never made me sick.
Korea has proven less merciful. I’ve spent most of this week drifting through my classes and doing my best impression of a harbor seal, trying to clear whatever has taken up residence in my lungs. I’ve been knocked flat, sleeping late and going to bed early, downing cough drops and sinus medicine.
Since getting online from my room is still proving more of a headache than it’s usually worth, I’ve been skimping on the blog. I should be back on as soon as this clears up. Keep a look out in the next few days.
Korea was not my original plan for this month. I meant to be far away, on another continent, somewhere far hotter and just plain farther. That trip didn’t happen; it has been pushed back to July or August, when it won’t bring my travel budget down to zero.
