Just a brief plug..."Hero," for so long in limbo in the U.S. due to a contract between Zhang Yimou and Miramax, is now playing in theaters nationwide. If you're a martial arts fan (you know who you are!) and/or you like a little eye candy, I highly recommend this movie. I was surprised to find out in Beijing that the movie's actually a little bit controversial among Chinese film critics, but hey, I'm not Chinese, so I can enjoy it without the slightest bit of guilt owing entirely to my blessed American ignorance.
Friday, September 24, 2004
A Short Apology and a Lot of Blabbing
Well, hello again. I don't know if anyone's even reading the blog anymore, since I've been home for a little over a week now. Truth be told I'm surprised anyone's reading it at all, given I posted so little. I really have to apologize for that: I was so busy in Beijing, and when I could get to a computer it was truly a pain to try and get anything posted. It's just one of the things about going to a communist country. You can type in a web address, but it's a crap shoot as to whether you'll be able to go there or not. Who knew John's 'blog would be full of anti-socialist sentiment?
Some more promising news: I've created a photo album with pictures of the trip, accessible at http://beccamozart.zoto.com, so you can finally see some of the stuff. Here comes another apology: when I uploaded the pictures I added descriptions on all 150+ pictures, but for some reason a lot of them didn't save. I'll be going back and fixing them, but it'll take some time so if you're curious about a certain picture it might be worth your while to check back a couple of times.
My trip home was decidedly better than the one to Beijing; all luggage made it safely to Seattle, I got three very filling vegetarian meals on the flight, and no one gypped me out of anything substantial, as long as you don't count the guy who charged me ten yuan to carry my luggage from the taxi to the customs gate. I also made several new friends on my oh-so-adventurous flight, including a guy who grew up in Beijing but now lives in Fremont, CA (and kindly saved me from misguidedly getting on a flight to Singapore instead of the one to San Francisco); a girl who's studying at Stanford and was taking her mother to the States for the first time; and a professor from Fudan University in Shanghai, who offered to help me get into the school should I choose to pursue graduate studies in China. I'm starting to think that when you're a white girl in China and you can speak just enough Chinese to get yourself into trouble it's really not too hard to make friends, because everybody around just finds you so darn amusing.
The last week away was a little difficult, just for the fact that my dizzy little brain was starting to remember that there was a world where I understood other people and knew whether I was being complimented or insulted when someone told me I had such very white skin (in Beijing, by the way, it's apparently quite the compliment). I started feeling a little homesick and anxious to get back to my husband and my little apartment still full of yet-to-be-unpacked boxes. It didn't help that the class schedule was starting to wind down, so I had more time to myself, all of which I used to wonder where John was and what he was doing, even though the majority of the time it was the middle of the night in Seattle. We did do a few interesting things with the group, however, including eating at a very fancy Peking duck restaurant and taking a boat out on the lake. We met with an urban planner and an expert on public art (rather scarce as yet in the New China) and all the rest of the seminar-y stuff that we had to do to qualify the trip as a "class," but for the most part we spent the last week winding stuff down and - dare I say it - shopping.
Oh, but this is getting long. I may actually post a couple more times; there are some stories and things about my trip that I still want to share, since I had so much difficulty posting when I was there. Let me know if you like the pictures!
Becca
Some more promising news: I've created a photo album with pictures of the trip, accessible at http://beccamozart.zoto.com, so you can finally see some of the stuff. Here comes another apology: when I uploaded the pictures I added descriptions on all 150+ pictures, but for some reason a lot of them didn't save. I'll be going back and fixing them, but it'll take some time so if you're curious about a certain picture it might be worth your while to check back a couple of times.
My trip home was decidedly better than the one to Beijing; all luggage made it safely to Seattle, I got three very filling vegetarian meals on the flight, and no one gypped me out of anything substantial, as long as you don't count the guy who charged me ten yuan to carry my luggage from the taxi to the customs gate. I also made several new friends on my oh-so-adventurous flight, including a guy who grew up in Beijing but now lives in Fremont, CA (and kindly saved me from misguidedly getting on a flight to Singapore instead of the one to San Francisco); a girl who's studying at Stanford and was taking her mother to the States for the first time; and a professor from Fudan University in Shanghai, who offered to help me get into the school should I choose to pursue graduate studies in China. I'm starting to think that when you're a white girl in China and you can speak just enough Chinese to get yourself into trouble it's really not too hard to make friends, because everybody around just finds you so darn amusing.
The last week away was a little difficult, just for the fact that my dizzy little brain was starting to remember that there was a world where I understood other people and knew whether I was being complimented or insulted when someone told me I had such very white skin (in Beijing, by the way, it's apparently quite the compliment). I started feeling a little homesick and anxious to get back to my husband and my little apartment still full of yet-to-be-unpacked boxes. It didn't help that the class schedule was starting to wind down, so I had more time to myself, all of which I used to wonder where John was and what he was doing, even though the majority of the time it was the middle of the night in Seattle. We did do a few interesting things with the group, however, including eating at a very fancy Peking duck restaurant and taking a boat out on the lake. We met with an urban planner and an expert on public art (rather scarce as yet in the New China) and all the rest of the seminar-y stuff that we had to do to qualify the trip as a "class," but for the most part we spent the last week winding stuff down and - dare I say it - shopping.
Oh, but this is getting long. I may actually post a couple more times; there are some stories and things about my trip that I still want to share, since I had so much difficulty posting when I was there. Let me know if you like the pictures!
Becca
Sunday, September 05, 2004
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?
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?
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