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The Beijing Meteorological Bureau couldn’t have picked a better day to hold its press conference detailing their plans to predict—nay, to control—the weather for the Olympic Games.
Outside, a cloudless, smogless sky. The sun shined. It wasn’t even as cold as late January in the capital can be.
The press conference, of course, was inside, in a well-appointed but stuffy room of the Olympic media center, which kept all such well-controlled elements safely outside. I suppose that was the safe bet, after last year’s interruption: when a sandstorm covered a tree-planting ceremony in fine yellow dust.
Officials with the Bureau promised ongoing and up-to-the-minute reports on weather conditions during the games. They also said a much-hyped rain mitigation system—one that chemically-seeds clouds using aircraft and artillery batteries—will disperse light showers before they reach the city, promising a dry opening ceremony on Aug. 8.
Some concerns:
Here’s my big hang-up: Rain is one of the best cleansers of Beijing’s air. This city would be downright livable, pleasant even, if it just rained every other day, or every night. Almost all the best days I’ve spent here come after a rainstorm.
But if they prevent rainclouds from reaching the city, will that just leave all the smog in the atmosphere?
There are other plans in place to fight air pollution. Factories will shut down. Cars will be kept off the ground. But Beijing’s topography, similar to that of the Los Angeles Basin, is uniquely good at trapping dust and smog around the city.
The best way to wash it all away, in my experience, is to have a little rain.
Update: Photos and links added. Also, the picture above came to me by email, but I don’t know the original source. Can anyone help ID it so I can give proper credit?
I’m leaving Dalian. And China.
I know this seems like a good time to be in China, and hence, an awkward time to leave. I had planned to stay until the Olympics.
I wish there were an easy way to explain why I’ve decided to go back to California, but there isn’t. I woke up one day back in November with one clear thought in my head: “Time to go home.”
The best reasons I can give are my girlfriend and my grandparents. In about two weeks, my girlfriend and I will hit the four year mark. The past 18 months of that have been spent on different continents–Africa and Asia–with the brief exception of this summer when we spent two months traveling together in Madagascar. It’s time to try for a normal(ish) relationship.
My grandparents are in their 80s. I won’t get any time back with them. That’s more important to me than the Olympics, or anything else China does.
Leaving China feels as strange as coming here in the first place. Both decisions were spur of the moment. I can’t say whether either is or was the right course of action.
This is by no means the end of my interest or involvement with China, nor is it the end of this blog. The country is far too interesting, and I’m still fascinated by it. Who knows, I may even come back for the Olympics if the right opportunity comes up.
I’m going to miss Dalian. As cities in China go, this is one of the best. It’s one of the few places in Asia I’d want to live long-term.
Much of the hype is true: It is one of the cleanest cities in China. It benefits from being international and multicultural. It remains an affordable place to live, despite a growing economy.
The local expats here remain a tight community, even as the number grows. Dalian feels like a small town in a big city.
For anyone thinking of coming here, short- or long-term, by all means email me (eyeseast at gmail.com). For continued blogging coverage, some suggestions:
And of course: DalianDalian.com. It really does have the best Dalian map you’re likely to find. Thank Alex for building it.
So long Dalian. Thanks for all the fish.
Before I left Dalian a month ago, I’d planned on spending my time (and hence, not my limited budget) plowing into Drupal and PHP, since that’s what we used for DalianDalian. It also seemed a logical follow to my efforts with XHTML and CSS.
What diverted me was Matt Waite’s blog post on learning Django. I followed the links, started playing, and ended up somewhere very different from where I intended to be. Such is life, I suppose.
Anyway, I’ve yet to build anything useful with Django, but I think I’m close. I’m six chapters into the Django Book, which I highly recommend (along with How to Think Like a Computer Scientist for fellow Python newbies).
Ultimately, I’m hoping this helps me do more of the kind of journalism I did at my old newspaper, covering education. I used to rummage through state databases on schools and demographics and test scores and teacher pay, turning it all into blobs of text. Mind you, I think they were very well formed blobs of text, but that’s not always the best thing to do with this kind of information.
Text is good for context and analysis, for presenting trends, for guiding a reader through a pile of numbers. But it’s worth letting people sift data on their own and presenting it in a way that makes doing so easy. Hopefully, Django will help me do that.
You get used to self-censoring in China. I don’t like to admit this, but I’ve seen it happen to everyone. I don’t bring up certain topics anymore. I sugarcoat certain things in certain company. We can all guess what those things are. Most of them start with a T.
But now I’m in South Korea, an openly and unabashedly capitalist democracy. More importantly, it has its own taboos, not China’s, and those haven’t worked their way into my routine. I won’t be here long enough for that to happen.
Here at Yonsei, I have a Canadian friend whose wife hails from Taiwan and who isn’t shy with opinions. Last week another friend, an American headed to Dalian next month for a semester at DaWai, raised the subject of that island I’m no longer used to talking about.
Eventually, he said, it has to go back to China.
Uh uh, the other guy wasn’t having it. Taiwan’s never going back, he said. I haven’t heard anybody say that in 18 months.
“If Taiwan could get what Hong Kong has…” the American started to respond.
“Taiwan doesn’t want what Hong Kong has,” the other guy threw back. “Hong Kong wants what Taiwan has.”
Later, I tried to throw in what I thought was an off-hand comment: “It’s weird, on the Mainland—”
And that’s where he stopped me. “No, man, there ain’t no ‘Mainland.’ It’s China. There’s China and there’s Taiwan.”
Refreshing, really. Like snow down the back of your shirt.
The Costco in Seoul is like every other Costco on the planet. That’s why I went there.
A few weeks ago, a friend back home (who shall remain nameless), expressed what I’ll generously describe as shock that there is a Costco in Seoul. There are three.
And so, I was asked to reconnoiter said whole-sale food and merchandise outlet and send back video describing it. My good friend James was kind enough to host:
That was a tasty hot dog.
Production notes: I shot this on James’ camera, an HP, which I didn’t like. My Canon A530 was sitting at home. There was only about five minutes of space on it, so I was constantly culling shots I knew I wouldn’t use. Made for tighter shooting, I think.
For editing, since I didn’t have my laptop with iMovie, I tried out Jumpcut.com, an online video editor. It was easy enough. The interface is mostly intuitive, especially for anyone used to iMovie. EyeSpot.com is another option.
It’s hard to calculate total production time on this, since I shot while shopping and edited at 3 a.m. using new software while IMing with someone back in California. Best guess is about 90 minutes, including learning curve.
Seoul is a lovely place. Probably. But for the past week, it’s also been an unbearably, wretchedly, can’t-feel-my-face, my-hands-shouldn’t-be-that-color cold kind of place. Really, it hurts to go outside.
So, if such a thing is possible, I’m spending more time than usual in front of my laptop, which does have the side benefit of warming my hands on it’s overheating core duo. Ah, technology.
What that means for you, dear reader, is that I’m compulsively hitting reload on the social networking sites where I now have more friends than I do in what an online-gamer ex-girlfriend of mine referred to as RL. Should you be trying to find me in either realm, here’s a few places to start:
And if none of those work for you, feel free to shoot me an email: eyeseast at gmail
Feet are firmly planted in 2008. Memories are catching up with reality and moving into the cold year ahead. But Seoul does not hibernate. Continued from before, and from even earlier:
Someone in front of me was speaking Chinese. Three someones, on second look, middle-aged or better, and not from Dalian or Shandong judging by accents.
Arriving in South Korea means going back to the beginning. New country, new language, a month of playing charades just to order a meal. Such is travel.
I sat on bus 24. The woman who changed my
For the time being, my outdated copy of Lonely Planet Korea would have to get me through. Incheon, while geographically next to and largely indistinct from Seoul, is buried on page 128 of that edition in the Gyonggi-do chapter (and should not be confused with Icheon, a page prior and 60 km southeast of the capital). Nothing in the brief description of the city or what to do there included getting between the ferry terminal and the subway. Apparently, not many people take the boat from China.
So I leaned forward into the Chinese conversation in front of me.
“
It’s funny, the conversations most irritating in China so often involve variations on the phrase, “
But fragile egos would have to wait a bit. More immediate questions needed answering: Were they going to Seoul as well? Were they taking the subway? Did they know where to get off? Affirmative on all counts. I had guides.
The man doing most of the talking was an old Korea hand; the other two as green as me, likewise just off the boat. At the appointed stop, we piled off the bus, me with my backpack and laptop, them with over-sized sacks on under-sized dollies, which I helped them lug up and down stairs to the station. It felt a bit like traveling with my grandparents might, except that I’ve never traveled with my grandparents.
We rode the Number One line together to Sindorim. From there, I headed to Sinchon alone. Before we parted, the man leading us unfolded a nearly destroyed subway map and handed it to me. Korea in Chinese, just to keep things interesting.
On the steps outside the first station, while the other two new arrivals from China sorted the pile of bags they’d pushed out the bus door, there was a lull in the conversation, and he finally said it: “
It’s still not true.
Coming up, reality, or at least life in the here and now. Try to stay warm.
Seoul is lightly salted with snow. An aggressive chill is setting in, just in time for New Years, but first, the recollection continues from yesterday:
I have my visa. I’m packed. My boat leaves in four hours and all I need to do is take enough money to last me a month out of my bank of China account, change it to South Korean Won US dollars (other currencies aren’t available this year) and get on the boat. I mean, I have to buy a ticket to another country the day I’m leaving, but this is China. International transport can be handled last minute. Getting my money is the issue here.
I sit on the padded bench with an out-of-date Lonely Planet Korea and read up on the tribute system. And wait.
For anyone thinking of coming to China in the near future, here’s a tip that will may preserve some of your sanity: Bring a book. Almost any book will do. Other recommendations: Middlesex, China Wakes, anything by Haruki Murakami, a Chinese-English dictionary, a pamphlet on overseas tax laws, pretty much anything with words will do. Keep in handy at all times. Waiting is part of the game.
I reach the window. An hour and a half has passed. I withdraw all the money I will need, a process that takes two minutes. I ask where I can change money, but think better of it when I hear a sentence that begins, “To change to US dollars, you will need…” followed by a list of documents I don’t have. I don’t have tax forms. I don’t have a monthly salary. I don’t have a foreign expert’s certificate. I don’t have a job. And everyone is on lunch.
I leave. I eat, wait, come back. Better yet, I try a different bank. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The lines are shorter and the paperwork is one half-sheet. I can change $500. Plenty.
I hand a clerk a pile of renminbi. She counts it by hand. Then it goes into the machine, which counts it. Then she feeds it back into the machine to count again. My head drifts away to a place with no clocks, no departure times, no deadlines. When I return, she is counting again. She aligns more half-sheets of paper, interlaced with carbon. She stamps them, checks each one, stamps again. “Can you go faster?” I ask, politely, I think. “Mashang,” she answers. I used to like that word. “Get on your horse. Immediately.” But it never really means “immediately.”
I’m out the door as soon as money and passport are in my hand, in a taxi and at the terminal with a good 12 minutes to spare. A berth is secured. I walk down a long stretch of off-white hallway toward the gangway. It’s probably 200 yards end to end. I wonder, as I’m walking, if these terminals are designed to stretch out the process of leaving a country, to give the traveler time to think about what it means to leave, to wonder when he’ll be coming back, to hesitate, and possibly to miss his boat.
Those thoughts don’t linger long.
I board the boat, settle in to a cramped but otherwise comfortable bunk, watch the Simpsons Movie and crash out. When I wake up, it’s Christmas Day in Korea.
Next up, Act Three, into the heart of Seoul. Stay tuned.
Eyes East is once again blogging from Seoul. I’d like to say I’m here for a deeper look at Korean culture or to gaze into the future through the lens of the most wired country on Earth, really, I’m here for the cash. I’m teaching at Yonsei University again, and I’ll be here for most of January.
We’ll get to the day-to-day details a few posts hence. First, a bit about getting here, in three acts:
Getting a visa for South Korea means going to Shenyang. I hate Shenyang. There is no getting around this fact. Maybe it’s because I only go there for unpleasant business. In my mind, Shenyang brings together all the elements of a large city without ever gaining the benefit of so many people in close quarters. Think of Beijing without the culture, the Olympics, the foreign influence or any reason whatsoever to go there.
But as I said, it’s the only place within striking distance of Dalian to get the visa I need. So I go. Usually I come back the same night. Eight hours on a bus means I finished two books and started a third in the two weeks it took to get my documents. David Sedaris does make the trip easier.
Inside the embassy, I have this slight variations of this conversation with embassy staff at least three times, over a period of two weeks:
“Mr. Amico, we need your contract.”
“I gave you my contract.”
“I know, but we need your information.”
“What kind of information?”
“Your personal information.”
“What kind of personal information?”
“It’s in your contract.”
“I gave you my contract.”
“I know. But we need you to call your university.”
“What should I tell them?”
“They need to send us your information.”
“What kind of information?”
“A fax.”
“What is in the fax?”
“Your personal information.”
“What kind of personal information?”
“They will know.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No.”
And outside, Shenyang is a pile of gray ice covered in dirty snow.
Tomorrow, Act Two: Slow boats and slower money. Please do not tap on the glass. Stay tuned.
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