Hello Everyone

Hello, everyone.I guess I have to apologize for the sporadic postings; I wonder if anyone's evenreading them anymore. Truth is I have difficulty spending any significant amount of time in the internet cafe here in Beijing, the air quality is so bad. I'm sitting right under a "no smoking" sign, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Even the guy at the front desk has a cigarette in his mouth. It's eight o'clock on a Sunday night, and the place is so full up of wacky video game junkies that I got the last computer here. It's crazy.

My second week in Beijing has been slightly less exciting than the first, which I'm actually grateful for. Last week was so hectic that I hardly had the opportunity to sit down for five minutes at a time. I'm finding ways to fillthe extra time, though, and the whole experience just seems to be going by soquickly. I've done so much shopping it's embarrassing, had the best manicure of my life, and even went to see Zhang Yimou's latest film (ever seen "Hero"?) called "House of Flying Daggers." I was really excited, since "Hero" is hands-down my favorite movie. "Flying Daggers" is a pretty controversial film on this side of the globe; Zhang Yimou used to be a dissident filmmaker, but people are regarding him as a little bit of a sell out now. When "FlyingDaggers" opened the government promoted the film so heavily that they wouldn't let any Hollywood movies screen in the entire country for the first twenty days after its release. I have to admit that the plot was at once! slightly thin and layered on way too thick, but the cinematography is gorgeous in true Zhang Yimou style, and all in all it was fun. Besides, like I was telling my friends last night, since when does a Kung Fu movie have to have a plot at all, much less a believable one?

We've had a pretty exciting line up of speakers and such here this week,including two of China's most prominent fifth-generation directors and an"Americanist" from Beijing University. We also went shopping at Wangfujing, which is so outrageously expensive I couldn't believe it. It was very eye-opening as to the enormous chasm between the rich and the poor in this city; where we're staying near the Hutongs (old neighborhoods) a shirt in a littleclothing shop will cost maybe 30 yuan ($3 USD) if you don't bargain too hard, and from what I understand we live in a part of town that "normal Chinese" (I still haven't quite figured out what that means, but Beijingers use the phrase constantly) have difficulty affording. At Wangfujing a good shirt will run you a good 300 yuan (about $35 USD) at the cheapest, and there is no haggling. It's very western. We even ate dinner at Pizza Hut, which in China is a fancy restaurant, go figure. There are also McDonald's all over the city! , but here McDonald's is a status symbol, as are the Starbucks. It's comparable to what you would pay in the states, but when you're paying the price of a nice shirt for a cup of coffee or a hamburger it kind of throws you for a loop. In the US, nobody ever complains that McDonald's is too expensive.

The thing about Beijing is that it just simply accosts your senses: there's so much going on here at once that it's hard to get your bearings. The streets never have the same buildings two days in a row. There's the smell of overflowing sewers (you have to watch where you step) and the smell of Budweiser from the brand-spanking-new American-style bars. On Friday I had traditional flat bread from a street-stand for breakfast and Schlotzky's Deli for dinner. Then I had Chinese candy, green tea, and Pringles for dessert. People drive their cars like they're still on bicycles, driving in between lanes on thefreeway and going wrong-way down the one-way streets like that's the way you're supposed to do it. It's noisy and it's dirty and it's poor but it's also lavish and exorbitant and over-the top. I'm having a hard time getting my bearings here, always feeling like I'm floating around, and I've only lived here for two and a half weeks. I can't even imagine what it must be like to have lived here for sixty years and suddenly feel like the world is being pulled out from underneath you. How can anybody call this place home? Doesn't the very word imply that there's something there that you recognize?