Monday: 4-2-07
Another extremely windy day, strong enough to rip down some awnings and signs in the area. Riding my bike in the direction of the wind required almost no peddling at all. Johanna and I met for the first time in a couple weeks, having lunch at a very dirty little restaurant midway between our apartments. The yellow table cloths were stained black and the glass table tops were broken. Every surface was sticky. We were the only customers and 4 employees were sitting at a table loudly playing with some dirty cards. I hate to think what the kitchen may have looked like, but it can’t be any more risky than eating from the vendors in the alleys.
I wanted to talk with Johanna about helping me sublease my apartment if I leave China this weekend, but she’s actually interested in it herself, which could turn out to be very convenient for both of us. And, after spending so much of my time working on the apartment, I hate the idea of renting to a total stranger. Johanna lives with a Chinese female right now, but the location is not convenient and she hasn’t been practicing Chinese with the roommate as much as hoped.
Johanna hadn’t seen the apartment since the day she helped me clean, when it was really disgusting, so I took her there after lunch and acted like a salesman. The wireless Internet access was a major sales point. Maybe I should charge her a $100 commission like the real estate agent who rented the apartment to me. We next watched a DVD then had dinner from various vendors in the alleyway. Doing a bit of shopping in the supermarket, we saw huge thumb-sized live larvae for sale, in a bin like bulk candy is usually sold. Most of the larvae were still, but a few would wiggle around when stared at.

Tuesday: 4-3-07
There is a restaurant across the street with a sign in the window reading “NO Japanese”. Many Chinese seriously don’t like Japanese, so this is kind of like seeing a “NO Mexicans” or “NO Blacks” sign in the US. Johanna and I had lunch at KFC. They might want to change the name to KFCTW because they are now selling Turkey Wings on sticks. I took Johanna on a long bike tour on some of the areas I explored last week, including the park with the scenic lake.

Wednesday: 4-4-07
An American writer called this morning about renting my apartment. I was hoping Johanna would take it, but she has decided not to after seeing two roaches chase each other up the wall yesterday. The writer agreed to meet me at the west gate of the BLCU campus at 3 o’clock. But, he was running late then couldn’t find the location, so I had to meet him somewhere else. He’s a pleasant guy of about 30 years old, who’s in the city to write a historical drama about China. Since he was coming to look at my pathetic apartment, I assume he hasn’t published a lot yet. But, maybe he’s just trying to live poor in order to research Chinese culture, who knows?
After looking at the place, he sat in a chair for about 10 minutes looking around at the walls and thinking. Thankfully, no roach races took place during that time. He finally decided he wasn’t sure what to do yet. He appeared to be debating the decision even while walking out the door, so I’m at least a bit optimistic.
Johanna and I had dinner at the Internet cafe across the street, not the dirty smoky one, but the nice one where I had pizza earlier in the week. Getting a pizza on my last visit took about 30 minutes, and it took even longer tonight, at least 40 minutes. Worse yet, we received a Hawaiian pizza instead of the vegetarian that we ordered. But, the roast beef sandwich we had with it was so good that it almost made up for the bad service.
We later watched this horror movie on DVD called “When a Stranger Calls”, which is the stupidest movie I’ve seen in quite a long time. If you get a chance to destroy a copy, then do so because you’ll be sparing other people the pain of watching it.

Thursday: 4-5-07
I either paid a bike parking ticket or a bike parking fee today, not sure which. My bike was locked to a lamp post on the street and a woman ran up yelling behind me as I rode away. At first she appeared to be a homeless woman looking for a handout, so I kept riding, then she yelled louder and I realized she was wearing one of the red arm bands that city employees wear and was carrying a bag of money. Her hat had a “P” on it, which must stand for “Parking”. She asked for six cents, then let me ride on.
Two men were sitting on the curb with a box full of fuzzy yellow newborn baby chicks, which they were selling to passersby. The small shallow box was full of crap and had about 30 cheeping little chicks in it. This was the scene in front of a supermarket where I bought a large backpack to take with me on my upcoming Saturday move.
In the evening, Johanna and I went to a bar called “Pepper Bar”. I’d passed this place several times and noticed a sign out front saying drinks were Buy 1-Get 1 free between 7 and 8 o’clock. The bar’s storefront is unassuming, but the place is large and luxurious inside, with high ceilings and suede-lined booths. The lighting was perfectly dim, the music relaxing and each table had candles lit. The main bar was located underneath a high gold archway with shelves of liquor rising 15 feet on a brick wall behind it. The bartender was lighting drinks on fire and throwing bottles around like a circus act. The drinks were great and cost less than $2 with the Buy 1-Get One special.

Friday: 4-6-07
So, I got up this morning and decided not to leave China after all. Everything had been planned out, including my flight tomorrow, where I would stay, and possibly even a job. The airline gave a full refund for the flight. I was going to stay in a house and pay a woman only $100 per month for rent in exchange for working 10 hours per week in her gardens. The job discussions were taking place with a company that was looking to hire a general manager for a shoe store they want to open in Honolulu. I could have been Al Bundy.
I can semi-securely now stay in the country due to the offering of a small line of credit from a friend, which will at least ensure that my rent can be paid through the summer. I wasn’t going to accept any loans, but finally decided that I couldn’t pass up the offer since I’m already settled in here with the apartment.
Johanna and I went to a cold noodle street vendor in the alley for lunch. The vendor uses a meat cleaver to cut noodle sheets into small strips, then mixes them with salad dressing, sprouts and other vegetables. Cost: 30 cents.
At 11 o’clock, I went to the school by the subway station and signed up for two weeks of classes. I’ll be attending the same class that I had sat in on for a free day 3 weeks ago. The teacher remembered my name and asked if I would like to teach some English classes at the school. I was hesitant, but this is a private language school with small classes, so I’ll at least give it a try if the job is offered. The interview is next Thursday.
The rest of the day was spent trying to get my visa extended, which expires tomorrow. The original plan was to go to the government visa office and extend my existing tourist visa another 30 days. Traveling there on the subway, three people were standing by the entrance selling tiny puppies. I took a picture and one of the salespeople got mad, maybe because such sales are probably illegal.
An officer at the government visa office said I was missing a form after I’d waited in line for 30 minutes. That form was required from my local police station, so I decided to find a way to convert my tourist visa into a business visa. Tourist visas can only be extended twice anyway, so this is something that would eventually have to be done. But, unless you work for a company, you can’t just apply for a business visa, because a letter from a government-approved employer is required along with the application form. Like everything else here, there is an easy way around this, it just costs money. For a fee, most travel agencies will create a letter saying an applicant works for some company. They take care of the whole process. All the applicant does is drop off a passport and photo at the travel agency, then pick it up in two weeks with the new visa inside. So, my question is, where does all this money go? Some people in power must be getting paid in order to allow such a system to continue. As far as I know, the same system has been in place for nearly 30 years, so this all ads up to billions of dollars. With the proper forms, a person can get the visa for a fraction of the travel agency cost.
I was unable to find an agency around my area, so I went back to the apartment and started looking online, eventually contacting a man who agreed to meet me at the Mcdonalds near the subway station. His name was Jack and he works for a company that teaches English and apparently processes visas on the side. The price was only $130, a bargain compared to what I was expecting. Jack also tried to recruit me for English teaching, and I just might take him up on the offer. His company places teachers in small classes and in one-on-one tutoring, so I’ll at least try it for a day. Jack’s going to call next week. As for the visa, I have to wait 10 days to pick it up.
In the early evening, I spent $8 on few apartment issues that were driving me crazy; a humming light on the living room ceiling and cold floors with no rugs. The new light fixture was smaller than the old, leaving a hole exposed in the ceiling, so I made a “gasket” out of a piece of white cardboard. Believe it or not, it both looks and sounds better than the old arrangement, which was a humming ball of not-so-well insulated wires.

Saturday: 4-7-07
Bugs die very slowly when sprayed with a small amount of insecticide. A small roach was crawling across the floor last night and I gave it a split-second spray and kneeled down to watch. It crawled in the direction it was headed for 10 seconds then tripped over all six legs. Another fall came after a journey of 10 inches, then it did a 180 and walked towards my big toe. I moved the toe out of the way, but it made another turn towards it, then another, almost as if it was seeking help. Then came another trip, followed by a seizure. Things got really chaotic now as it took short walks disrupted by ever more frequent seizures. Then, almost as if playing its role in society, it took an abrupt flip and lay silently on its back. But, the dramatic death hadn’t concluded yet. Another flip landed it upright, but only briefly. The rest of the death took place belly-up with all six legs and two antennae spastically searching the air. I can’t determine the exact time of death because the antennae were still sweeping the ground when I went to bed 20 minutes later. If I film such drama, am I an investigative journalist or a Nazi doctor? Or is there no difference between the two?
I also watched the movie “The Siege” last night, which isn’t all that great but is worth mentioning because it was made in 1998 and depicts a major terrorist scenario in New York City. The main focus isn’t the terror itself, but the country’s oppressive reaction to it. The World Trade Center looms conspicuously in the skyline during the whole movie, an unintended but strong statement about what was to come 3 years later.
I tried lunch from a sweet potato vendor for the first time today, and I think she overcharged me at 75 cents, considering a huge piece of pineapple is only about 11 cents. This was on a bike ride to a wholesale market I discovered a short distance from my apartment a couple weeks ago. This is the place where small shop owners go to buy everything from toothbrushes to air compressors in bulk. There are hundreds of vendors in a warehouse-style building. The isles between the booths are narrow and filled with empty torn boxes. I was hoping to watch some sales taking place, but cash is not used. Customers are given invoices, which they take somewhere else to pay. This place holds some interest because a couple people back home have been asking about importing bulk quantities of some everyday items and jewelry.
The sunroom in my apartment had no light in it, so installed the fixture that I removed from the living room last night. Speaking of lights, check out this article about the US banning incandescent bulbs. For dinner, I mixed sliced potatoes and chicken breasts in a pan and boiled them all together, then mixed in cheese and a bunch of butter. I need a maid.

Sunday: 4-8-07
I actually got up early and studied my new Chinese textbook for a couple hours this morning. It seems that I just need classes sometimes when it comes to difficult subjects. Anything technical or complicated I’ve ever learned was learned from classes or from another person.
The weather was beautiful and the sky was a rare bright blue. Johanna and I spent the entire afternoon, about 5 and a half hours riding our bikes south and back while visiting various locations. Our first stop was the Bell Temple, which boasts the largest bell in all of China. The place has become sort of a bell museum actually, with dozens of historic bells from all over the country, some of which are over 1000 years old. The main attraction is six meters high and has been molded with over 200,000 Buddhist scriptures. The bell is so large that an entire building has been built around it. Hearing it ring would surely be cool, but I have a feeling they don’t do that out of fears of accidentally cracking it. A sign in it’s building reads something like, “Rubbing Bell – 75 cents, Climbing to top of bell – 50 cents, Video taping bell - $1.25/time , Photographing bell – 40 cents/time”. I paid the 40 cents and snuck in two extra pictures while the clerk was busy getting my “Picture tickets”. Yes, official tickets are even given when the money is paid. And not just a single one, but two. The Chinese love tickets and stamps. If such formalities are required for such basic business, I can only imagine the horror of trying to do large scale business. I got a glimpse of such horror when working for the investment company two weeks ago, as the companies applying for the investments came to the meetings with whole books full of approved government certifications, even certifications to certify that the certifications were certified. I’m not exaggerating.
After viewing the wondrous bell, we went to a flower market on the campus of an agricultural university. Johanna got a good laugh out of a big stately building there labeled, “The Beijing Institute of Vegetables”. The market was housed in a maze of interconnected greenhouses, featuring not only plants but also elaborate wood carvings, fish, reptiles and garden tools. This is the first place in China that I’ve ever seen a lawn mower for sale. Some of the wood carvings weighed a ton and cost $5,000, a fortune here. Gigantic tree trunks had been carved into all kinds of tables, statues and other unique forms. The best one available was a hollow burnt trunk carved into an old cloaked screaming sorcerer with his hands raised towards the sky. The sorcerer stood seven feet tall and I couldn’t help but want to learn how to make such a thing while viewing it.
Some of the fish vendor’s tanks held hundreds of gallons and contained things that scared Johanna, especially the sting rays. Some of these rays were about 20 inches across. Even the biggest ones were housed several to a tank. They interacted in very unusual ways with the cramped conditions, sliding over top each other as if they were dancing. Johanna fell in love with one smaller ray, which she insisted was waving to her. Instead of being completely disk shaped, it was a different species that had at least some semblance of arms and legs. The arms were flat like the rest of its body, but I must admit, it did appear to be responding to Johanna’s waving by flapping these flat arms back.
We next went into a park small park that was full of old people playing all kinds of different games and doing traditional relaxation activities. One guy was walking in circles spinning small balls in his palms. A woman was softly beating her hands with a wooden rod. We ate a mid-afternoon lunch at a Domino’s located nearby. Like the US version, Domino’s delivers here, but unlike the US version, they deliver with a fleet of bicycles. Business must have been slow today because the whole large fleet of bikes was sitting idle in front of the restaurant. Each one has a cooler mounted on the back with the Domino’s logo printed on it, which keeps the pizzas warm during delivery. The delivery drivers all wear official Domino’s helmets.
Prices for whole pizzas here are about the same price as the US, but they do have very affordable value meals. Meal side dishes include fried chicken and tater tots. The urinals in the restroom were filled with ice. Why were the urinals filled with ice? This is incomprehensible.
We bought DVD’s from a woman on a pedestrian bridge on the way home, then watched “Happy Feet” at my apartment. Hilarious.

Monday: 4-9-07
My first day of Chinese class was disappointing because the teacher speaks too quickly to understand. I rarely understood anything she was talking about during the two-hour class. The material in the textbook is at my reading level, but my listening skills are way behind. There are 7 other students in the class, all Koreans who speak little if any English. One brought a video camera and was showing footage he filmed this weekend of a famous Brazilian soccer player. So, tomorrow I’ll try a class that is one level below this one.
Three middle-aged Chinese people with identification badges around their necks showed up at my apartment in the evening, two men and a woman. None of them spoke any English. They had some forms they wanted to fill out, so I let them in to sit at the kitchen table. After much confusion, I understood that they wanted to see my lease and passport. I didn’t have the passport since I had to give it up last Friday to apply for a visa, but this didn’t seem to be a problem. They copied some information from my lease onto their forms and left pleasantly after saying “goodbye” in English. Everything is such a mystery here.
Johanna stopped by at 9 o’clock and we had an alley dinner of meat sticks, pineapple and ice cream bars.

Tuesday: 4-10-07
I went to my school a bit early this morning to convert my registration to a lower-level class and buy that class’s textbook. Taking a first look at the book, it seemed the class might be too simple, but going to class changed my opinion. The teacher doesn’t slow down her speech whatsoever, so even simple conversation is a challenge. There are about 15 people in the class, all Asians except for two white guys, one of which may be American. Several of the Asian students are in their 50’s or 60’s. The mood in the class is very jovial, young and old alike. Although my listening and speaking skills are a bit behind, I feel at home here since I can easily understand the written forms of what we discuss.
I had a not-so-great hot lunch in the small dining area on the school’s fifth floor after class ended at noon. In the early afternoon, I took my books to the nearby scenic BLCU campus to spend some time outdoors enjoying the weather while getting some studying done. Exploring the school’s library was a real disappointment, as it seemed bare of books and uncomfortable. BLCU gets some criticism online as a not-so-serious school where students come to party, and the library definitely fed into that stereotype. It’s a large decent-looking six-floor building, but the study areas are hard and cramped. Open spaces with soft furniture were not to be found.
I went to Johanna’s apartment in the late afternoon. She bought a new electronic Chinese dictionary yesterday, the kind where you can write characters on the screen and it will recognize them. But, I tried writing a few simple characters and was disappointed with the incorrect results. But maybe I’m not a good tester of this since even my English handwriting is bad.
Johanna and I had another meat stick/pineapple dinner in the alley. I also had a spare apartment key made here for the second time. The first one was made over the weekend, when the vendor had been sleeping on a cot he keeps behind his key-making machine. The vendor next to him had yelled to wake him up, then I got home and the key didn’t work. But, today’s worked just fine.
Johanna’s bike was gone when she went to leave my apartment. It had been sitting right next to my apartment’s stairwell entrance with the tire locked to the frame. The lock was very substantial, so somebody had to have carried it away. Like I’ve said before, every apartment complex here has an abundance of perimeter security, so the culprit must live in this building. There are only two buildings in this complex, surrounded by high brick walls. There are two entrances, but one is too narrow to get a bike through(even mildly fat people won’t fit). The main entrance is “guarded” all day by a bunch of old retired/unemployed man and women who stand around and talk. Johanna and I are the only foreigners who ever enter these walls, and our bikes are the only new shiny ones. Maybe somebody did this out of spite, but everyone always seems so friendly, even though we can barely communicate. Johanna and I walked all through the complex looking, but with no luck. There were about a dozen “guards” at the gate, none of which had seen anything, so the bike is almost surely still here. Someone drug it into their apartment and is cutting off the lock, then they will spray paint it. It would be risky to ride it every day, so they will probably leave with it at some odd hour and sell it. On the bright side, this offers some good practice for my Chinese writing, a sign that I will place in all the corridors saying “Foreigner’s bike stolen here between 7-9PM on April 10. $2 reward for return or information leading to arrest”.

Wednesday: 4-11-07
I walked around the apartment complex this morning looking for any clues as to the whereabouts of Johanna’s missing bike. What I found was disappointing, her cut chain lock laying on a bench in a corridor entrance next to mine. Someone had apparently pulled the bike into the shadows and cut the lock before riding away. This was a formidable and rather expensive lock, so the thief was a professional. Carrying the cut lock around the complex caught the attention of several people, including one of the old men that is in charge of monitoring the grounds. We couldn’t communicate much, but they did ask if “my girlfriend’s bike was stolen”. My more expensive bike would have surely been the one stolen had I just not so happened to put it in the bike storage building after class yesterday. I put up the “stolen bike” sign on my corridor entrance before going to class.
One of our class discussions today was “when did you meet your first love”. When the teacher came around for my turn, I said, “Yesterday, it’s you”, which led both her and the class into a momentary hysteria. Returning to my apartment after lunch, somebody had taken already taken down my “stolen bike” sign and placed it by my door. I assume that the management did this because posting messages isn’t allowed on the building. Johanna called a few minutes later to ask that I bring some money to her campus so she could purchase a used bike. The bike was owned by some men who operated one of the many small bike repair booths in the area. It was a very well-worn 12-speed mountain bike that cost about $10. It looks totally like crap, but at least nobody will want to steal it.
We tried a new small restaurant near my apartment for lunch. A store nearby was selling pea sickles; green pea flavored popsicles. After studying Chinese for a couple hours we went back out, taking a long walk around the area. Exploring new areas is always a challenge because there are so many traps. These traps are a result of the abundance of walls surround so many properties. It’s not uncommon to walk down an alley for hundreds of feet before realizing there’s no way out. Usually, you can tell where through passageways are because lots of people will be walking down those alleys, but it’s easy to be fooled.
We tried another new restaurant for dinner, a place across the street called Big Pizza. This wasn’t just pizza, but a whole western-style buffet. The price was $5 and included drinks and ice cream. The food selection was descent, but the employees were constantly running out of things because so many customers were present at the time. Walking back to my apartment, a group of people standing by the gate stopped us to ask some unknown question about the stolen bike. One of the men showed us a pair of handcuffs he had in his pocket, so he must have been a cop, but we never did figure out what he was talking about.

Thursday: 4-12-07
Cool and a bit wet today. I just can’t wait for regularly warm weather to finally hit. I met Johanna at the Silk Market after Chinese class, which requires traversing all 3 of Beijing’s subway lines, about a one-hour trip. She was in the area after attending a job interview at the Finnish embassy this morning. We ate lunch at a dumpling restaurant near the market. A sign outside the restaurant talked up the dumplings to be some kind of divine creation, but this didn’t seem to be the truth. We tried vegetable dumplings from the very limited selection and were not impressed. One of our side dishes was a vegetable that’s so crunchy it’s probably considered a weed elsewhere in the world.
We next took a cab to Chaoyang Park. Chaoyang is a district known for its foreign embassies, foreign businesses and luxury apartments costing up to $5000 per month, years of income for the common worker. The weather had cleared up a bit by this time, but was still too cool and windy to make for a very relaxing time. The park covers a couple hundred acres and is beautifully maintained with a large lake and full-scale amusement park. The bathrooms are located inside giant lady bugs.
We took a long cab ride back to the Wudaokou area at 5 o’clock. Stopping at the subway station to pick up my bike, a young Chinese guy approached with a job offer. He was looking for Americans and Canadians that were willing to have their voices recorded for a voice recognition mobile phone project. Johanna wasn’t eligible for the job, so she rode my bike back to my apartment and I followed the guy to the an apartment on the 16th floor of a nearby building. Inside was a middle-aged man and a young woman working with various recording equipment. The girl took me into one of the bedrooms and had me read words into a microphone connected to a laptop computer. The recording went on for the next 40 minutes and included all kinds of strange words, some of which were nonsense. The process started out slow because a very certain amount of time had to pass between each word and I messed up the spacing a couple times. But, things went very quickly after the initial confusion. The girl also held a cell phone next to my mouth the entire time I spoke.
After the process was complete, I typed some basin info about myself into a computer in the living room and the man handed me a 100 yuan bill, equal to about $12. You just never know what might happen here. This project is part of the development of a new kind of mobile phone which will only work when its owner speaks into it. If anybody else tries to use it, it won’t work. Not sure what the benefit of such a phone would be, but I got my $12. They are working on the project in cities all over the world, and looking for 1000 people to record their voices in each city.

Friday: 4-13-07
I changed my Chinese class to an easier one for the second time today. The textbook is now going to be far too easy, but maybe I’ll at least be able to understand what the teacher is saying. If I can get my listening level up to my reading level, then I’d be able to have basic conversation.
I bought a 4 foot x 4 foot detailed map of Beijing from a guy selling them on the street after class, then put it up in my living room. This is the first decoration to grace any of the walls in the entire apartment. I went to WuMart in the evening to buy a pair of sports pants so I’ll have something comfortable to wear playing soccer with my friend Simon tomorrow. Later when going out for dinner, I bought two 25 cent coffee mugs from the small houseware/tool store in the alley. I like that store owner because he never tries to rip me off, at least I don’t think so.
I would have barely uttered a word all day had Johanna not briefly stopped by in the afternoon.

Saturday: 4-14-07
I tried some new alley-vendor food for lunch, some kind of flatbread “sandwich”. A whole egg is cooked into the middle of each piece of bread, and in the middle is a small amount of sauce and lettuce. I may have found a new favorite vendor food, and as always, the price is less than a quarter. I took a long subway journey to Dongzhimen station in the early afternoon to meet my friend Simon, whom I had agreed to play soccer with today. We took a series of buses from there to meet up with his friends, accidentally getting off at the wrong stops a couple times. Our trip took us past the block-long overhead display screen I’d just so happened to pass by several weeks ago. Simon said the company that built this spent over $100 million on it. He also said that it’s the largest screen in Asia and the second largest in the world, behind one in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar.
We met Simon’s friends in the courtyard of a luxury apartment complex in the heart of the foreign business district. Passing from the street to the courtyard requires going through a “gate” that is actually a small shiny brass and marble building with a revolving door and sharply-dressed stoic guard inside. The yard was full of the children of expats enjoying the bright sunny day among green grass and sculptured water fountains. Simon’s friends were very young guys from Iraq, Yemen and Brazil. The two Iraqis were brothers. All of them appeared to be of high school age.
We all now got on a bus and went to another foreign apartment complex courtyard, which was also filled with what mostly looked like high school age kids. This complex wasn’t nearly as nice as the first, but was quite luxurious compared to elsewhere in the city. The center of activity was a cement soccer field enclosed with high wire fences. The games were fierce and it constantly seemed that a fight could break out at any time. Considering the fact that the games were being played on cement and I have no soccer experience, I decided not to play. Simon also didn’t play, because he has a broken finger from punching one of his 5 roommates that had been severely harassing him.
I stayed here with Simon till dark, then he and I took a bus back to the luxury apartment complex so we could meet a girl that lived there. The inside of the complex was even more impressive than the exterior, and Simon said that rent runs up to $2,500 per month, years of salary for the average Chinese person. The girl, named Wangyi, came to the lobby and met us with minor facial injuries from a recent bike accident. Simon went outside to kick a soccer ball around with his friends while I continued talking to Wangyi. We agreed to meet tomorrow in the afternoon and attend a book signing event together. I’ve recently been leery of hanging out with Chinese girls because I’ve been getting the impression that they all just want to get married, but I’m comfortable with Wangyi because she had made her intentions clear; a language exchange relationship. But, maybe I should want to marry her considering where she lives. If you are a serious player, buy a ticket to China and break some hearts.
I said goodbye to everyone and walked to the subway station at 10 o’clock. I wanted to stay out later, but doing so would have required an expensive $6 cab ride home(subways quit running at 11). All three subway lines were surprisingly crowded considering the time. Several vendors were selling flowers at the line 2/line 13 transfer point. They smelled so good that I almost became a zombie. I found myself inadvertently walking towards them and the vendors all got excited and started spouting out insanely inflated prices. Seriously, these flowers were amazing, and that’s coming from a person who grew up with a family of flower growers. These vendors must be spraying their product with some kind of artificial scents because no real flower can smell that good. The vendors yelled prices that were about 15 times cheaper as I came to my senses and ran away.
Back at my apartment, I turned on the hot water in the kitchen to boil some eggs and a ball of fire shot up to the ceiling from the hot water heater. The hair on the top of my head was singed and I nearly fell back into the stove. The small heater only turns on when water is running through it. The electrical ignition runs on two C-sized batteries, and it would seem that those batteries need to be replaced. The problem is that the gas is running for several seconds before the igniter kicks on. So, all the gas builds up inside the heater and then explodes out the top.

Sunday: 4-15-07
Johanna came over this morning and we had an early lunch or late breakfast, whatever you want to call it. The back tire on her new used bike was rubbing the frame, so we paid a repair vendor 11 cents to fix it. I met a guy on the street at 1:30 and gave him $120 in exchange for my passport, in which he had obtained a new 6-month visa for me. Strangely, the visa was issued in another city several hours from here. This is suspicious, but whatever, as long as I don’t face any fines or imprisonment. I’m not really worried since my first meeting with the guy was at a company in a nice office building.
Next, I took the subway to Yanganli Station to meet the Chinese girl Simon introduced me too last night, Wangyi. Just as I arrived at the station, I noticed a phone message saying she now wanted to meet at a different station. We finally met in front of Beijing’s largest bookstore, a huge building with a bronze statue of a pile of books at the entrance. The multi-level store was full of thousands of people due to a book signing event by a very famous Chinese actress. Wangli had come to get this woman’s autograph, so we waited in a long line of about another thousand people that stretched throughout the building’s underground parking garage. A small army of guards constantly battled line-cutters. I was the only foreigner in line and a guard asked what I was doing, apparently thinking I was lost. The line eventually led to a cash register where boxes of the actress’s new book were being sold. She was looking exhausted sitting at a table surrounded by dozens of crazed fans snapping pictures and pushing books at her to sign. Wangli somehow got her book signed about 2 seconds after arriving at the table.
We next walked down to Tiananmen Square and ate a pizza dinner at the 365 Inn, a restaurant/hostel across the street from where I stayed my first two weeks in Beijing. Wangyi showed me dozens of pictures of herself on her phone, which she had taken over the past couple years. Each picture was a close-up of her face making some kind of unique expression. Her explanation for this was, “I love myself”. She said that she likes to wear very short skirts in the summer and will email me some “sexy pictures”. She has a brother and a sister, which is a great mystery considering the One Child Policy. I think we will have to meet again so I can get some answers, and those sexy pictures.

Monday: 4-16-07
I got up at 6:30 this morning in order to dress up and meet my friend Simon at 8 o’clock this morning, who had arranged an interview for me at a local English tutoring agency. We had agreed to meet at my school, but Simon took the bus and got stuck in a huge 2 hour traffic jam. I spent the time browsing through the stores near the school. Simon finally did arrive at 10 o’clock, but at the wrong school, about another 10 minute bike ride away.
It was now lightly raining as we next took a short taxi ride to the tutoring agency. A young woman named Jenny interviewed me, who didn’t speak much English. Simon sat in on the interview and acted as a translator. The agency seemed good, but pays a bit less than I may find elsewhere, so I told Jenny that I may call her back later in the week. Simon and I now walked through a large technology university located next to the agency. He had to go to the bathroom so bad he was sweating, but couldn’t find one with toilet paper. China can be a nightmare for the unprepared defecator.
We met 4 of Simon’s friends for lunch at the campus where I’d parked my bike earlier, two of which I’d met before. The other two were a Jordanian and a Somolian, all really pleasant guys with great English. We ate our lunch in a massive 500-seat Japanese restaurant reserved for students, teachers and guests only. Almost every seat was full and we had to wait a few minutes for a table. That first open table just so happened to be in a private room. We shared a table full of dishes for a grand total of only about $15, which is actually considered an expensive lunch. There was a loud explosion in the main dining area as I walked through to use the bathroom. Glass was shattered everywhere on the floor near the kitchen entrance. All 500 diners instantly fell silent, but it didn’t appear that anyone was hurt and I have no idea what happened.
After the meal, I bought a couple shirts and a pair of shorts from a clothing street vendor. Most such vendors keep their clothing in inconvenient heaps on tables, but this lady had everything neatly hung and organized. The clothes were half-decently priced and she assisted me with a smile the whole time.
I went to Johanna’s apartment at 3 o’clock to meet a man that lived there who was looking for a private English teacher for his two kids. He had approached Johanna on the street two weeks ago about the same issue. He had bought her lunch, then taken her to a school and tried to get her to work there. She had been thinking it was some kind of deception, but he showed up at her door late last night again asking for assistance teaching his children. He lives in the same building as her, but she has no idea how he knew exactly which apartment she lives in. I showed up 15 minutes early and the man was already sitting in her living room. He spoke no English and I got Simon on the phone to translate. Suspiciously, the man told Simon that he now had only one child, a son. He also said that there was a problem; his son’s Chinese-language English textbooks might be too difficult for me to understand. He went to get the text books and returned so I could have a look at them. Sure enough, parts of them would be a challenge for me to understand, but not impossible with some preparation.
I informed the man that I would teach the kid(s), but he now went off on some incomprehensible tangent. He started reading English words from the textbook, loudly and with the worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard. Johanna started laughing and the man started speaking even louder, almost yelling. The word “boy” became “BOWL” and the word “computer” became “COMPULE”. I tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop. The man kept on and on with this for nearly 30 minutes and I finally got rid of him by saying that Johanna and I had to leave.

Tuesday: 4-17-07
I got up at 7:30 and got dressed up to go meet Simon so he could take me to another job interview, this time at a distinguished language school where he knows a person that works in human resources. He called at 7:30 to say he would meet me at 9:30 instead. I arrived at the meeting point at that time and he called again to say that the interview was rescheduled for 2:00.
A cab driver hit me on the bike ride back to my apartment. I was passing a stopped bus and the right corner of his bumper lightly hit my bike pedal and foot. I just kept riding on, but the driver freaked out. He pulled up along side me blarring the horn and screaming through a closed window. After a few second of this he veered the car over like he was trying to hit me again. There was a high metal construction fence on my other side, so no escape. I came to a stop so he wouldn’t crush me, then he jumped out of the car and ran towards me as he continued frantically screaming and pointing. He quickly settled down when I said in a very calm voice that I didn’t speak Chinese. His attention was now focused on the part of the bumper that hit my bike, which was slightly scuffed with a small black mark. I rubbed part of the scuff off with my finger and he pointed to a little crack below it and another light scuff below that.
So, this cab driver had hit me from behind and was now blaming me for damage that probably wasn’t even a result of this tiny collision. The situation had the smell of extortion all over it, and that fact became completely obvious when he demanded $80 for repairs. The plan was to scare me out of the money, so he was quite disappointed when I calmly asked him to call the police. Of course, he was reluctant to make that call, and instead kept repeating the demand for compensation. His mood was almost jovial now and he laughed at my Chinese every time I spoke. Most of what he said was unclear, so I got Simon on the phone to tell him my side of the story(just the fact that he hit me). The driver didn’t react to this challenge with any anger, but finally decided to try his luck with the police.
After 30 more minutes of standing along the edge of this busy street, a short fat friendly motorcycle cop showed up. Another unknown man also showed up at this time, pointing in my face and making some seemingly unpleasant comment. Whatever this unknown man said to me, the fat cop got very angry at him and he quit bothering me. The three men now went to the cab’s front bumper and examined the damage. Their conversation abruptly went from laughing to yelling and shoving. The unknown man shoved the cop, the cop shoved the unknown man, then the cab driver shoved the cop. As quickly as the situation had escalated, it went back to normal and they all just quietly chatted again. This is not the first time I’ve witnessed such behavior among Chinese men having debates or arguments. It would seem that such physical contact is more of a means of expression than a threat, even when it involves a cop.
Simon spoke with the cop on the phone and told me that cop understood my situation, but then a police car with two more cops arrived and the debate continued. A crowd of about a dozen onlookers had now surrounded the scene. One of the cops again spoke with Simon on the phone, telling him that the wanted me to leave, so I left. It appears that these three cops really helped me out. First of all, the fat one threatened the unknown man for yelling at me, then backup arrived to make sure him and the driver didn’t cause any problems when I tried to leave. Not sure if this was exactly what happened, but it sure did appear that way. This goes directly against the negative Western stereotype of Chinese police behavior, so I’m quite surprised.
I went back to the subway station to meet Simon at 1:30, then he called and asked that I instead meet him at the language university. We spent the next couple hours taking cab rides to two different English tutoring agencies, which were both located in the upper floors of nice office buildings. The similarities between the three agencies I’ve applied at over the past two days are strange. The pay is almost exactly the same and the applications and contracts are completely identical. I’ve filled out applications for all three, but have not signed any contracts yet.
The last interview was in Wudaokou, so Simon and I took a 30 minute walk back to my apartment. We met Johanna at the nice Internet café across the street for dinner. Just like the last time I was here, they gave Johanna the wrong kind of pizza. She complained this time, but the employees simply said that it was made right. Either they don’t understand the English on their menu or they were just trying to ignore the complaint.
I helped Simon write a speech for a speech competition after dinner. Students at several universities in the city are competing against each other for the best English speech about the Beijing 2008 Olympics. I walked with him back to the subway station at 8:30 and he went home. Along the way, I noticed one of the men that had yelled at me today working at a gas station near my apartment. I made sure to pay attention that he didn’t notice which way I went home.

Wednesday: 4-18-06
I had a meeting at 9:30 this morning at the investment firm I used to work for. My old boss Annie contacted me yesterday and asked if I would be available to go on a business trip at the end of the week. None of the other foreign employees were available, so she decided to ask me. The trip involves flying to the southern province of Yunnan, near the border of Myanmar. The firm is investigating a hydroelectric dam project that they are considering investing about 30 millions dollars in. They need a foreigner to give short speeches in English and take notes to send back to headquarters in Washington DC. The trip is expected to last 3-4 days.
The meeting was held with Annie and her boss, a middle-aged Chinese man named Vigor. Vigor is studying English, but can’t yet speak well enough to communicate, so Annie translated for us. He stressed to me twice how rough the conditions would be in Yunnan, an extremely poor sparsely populated region. He gave me a notebook and asked that I take notes on today’s meeting. There was really nothing to write, but Annie said that he expects all employees to write down everything, so I wrote down a few very simple facts and he seemed pleased. Most of our discussion centered on the short speech that Annie and I will give together. I’ll read it in English and she’ll translate to Chinese. We practiced the speech for Vigor twice, which is just a short introduction about the American Frank investment company.
Returning home, the air in my neighborhood was filled with what looked like snow, but the temperature was about 70 degrees. Some of the “snow flakes” were tiny and others were nearly the size of golf balls. There were millions of them raining down out of the clear blue sky. All the windows in my apartment had to be shut because dozens of the flakes started floating all over inside. My theory is that these are some kinds of seeds that are blowing in from the mountains. I’d noticed a few of them floating around last week and just assumed they fell off some tree. They are similar to dandelion seeds, but look more like pieces of cotton.
Johanna came over in the evening and we watched a few episodes of Prison Break on DVD after having dinner in the alley. I just finished season one of the show and got started on season two tonight. It’s a complete waste of time but I just can’t quit watching.

Thursday: 4-19-07
Hundreds of cars were stuck in almost a complete standstill around my neighborhood this morning. Even the bike lanes were full of cars that were hopelessly trying to avoid the jam. Jamming the bike lanes lead to a bike/people jam on the sidewalks. My friend Dawn mentioned to me in an email the other day that Chinese streets are like a stew of cars, people and bikes. Developing the analogy further, I’ve come to think of traffic jams as letting the stew marinate. Heat is applied when the stew sits still, in the form of road/sidewalk rage. Sidewalk rage may be even worse than road rage because your body is not semi-safely enclosed inside of an automobile.
I had another meeting at the investment company at 9:30, this time with a client that is seeking funding to expand their gingko vinegar factories. The company representatives were a married man and woman who had invented the product and started the company. During the meeting, my boss leaned over and whispered to me that the company had given the investment firm a sample of the gingko vinegar a few weeks ago and it tasted terrible. The company representatives brought samples of the product today, but none of the employees from the firm made any attempt to try them. The vinegar is said to be very healthy and the recommended method of consumption is mix it with ginger ale and drink it. Hmmmm, not sure if this is such a good investment, but I’m not Chinese, so who knows.
Annie and I were supposed to meet with the boss after the meeting to practice our Yunnan trip speech again, but he was stuck in some massive traffic jam. When he still hadn’t showed up by 11:30, Annie invited me to have lunch with her, paid for by the firm. The boss was still stuck in traffic when we arrived back at the office an hour later, so we read our speech to another employee.
A guy named Richard called at 1:30 wanting to interview me for a photo editing position I’d applied for a month ago. I don’t have much experience for such a job, but the company wants to hire a foreigner. Taking the subway there, a guy with metal poles for legs was singing into a microphone as he begged up and down the isles. Like the other train beggars, the microphone was connected to an amplifier in his backpack.
The job interview was at a company called Schmap.com, which is located near the Worker’s Stadium in the foreign district on the northeast side of the city. The small office is on the second floor of an office building that appears a bit run down. There were about a dozen Chinese employees working in cubicles and two foreigners with their own private rooms, one of which was Richard. Richard is a guy about my ago who is probably Australian. He introduced me to another guy, named Luke, who is also probably about the same age and nationality. Luke did the interview, saying it was the first interview he’d ever given. I was given a can of diet coke and we sat at a table speaking for just about 10 minutes. The job is full time, 9-6 Monday through Friday, but the pay is only $500 month. It involves sorting through thousands of photos and picking the best ones. These photos are then used for the tourist mapping software that the company produces for cities all over the world. Luke said that I would probably be offered the job in the next couple days. I hate to work full time for so little, but I guess I don’t really have a choice, for now at least.

Friday: 420 ‘07
I noticed several 2-man crews beating the sidewalk in various places with sledge hammers last night, then noticed this morning that each crew was working down inside a hole about 7 feet deep. They had hammered though about 20 inches of surface concrete. All that without a single power tool, so they must have worked all night long. The only thing marking the holes to unsuspecting pedestrians was the pile of excavated dirt and two small orange cones. But, if anybody falls in, they can just fill the hole back up. I’m just worried that they may be tunneling into my apartment to steal my computer. I must stop them.
I’d paid for a full schedule of classes this week, two hours per day, but today was the only day I was able to attend due to unexpected activities taking place during class time every other day. Last week, I’d attended two different classes trying to find the one that most suited me, and I tried out a third today. This class was large, about 30 students, and way too easy. The young female teacher had a microphone connected to a sound system with the volume turned up way too high. She yelled into the mic to emphasize certain tones, distorting the speakers and literally giving me a headache. All this while making extreme facial expressions that distorted her face like a monster. She asked that I go to the board and write Chinese characters with 3 other students. Checking them afterwards, she made sure to point out to the class that the errors in my characters were the exact same errors that the student writing next to me had made. The class got a good laugh of my exposed cheating and I sat in the back eating Ritz crackers laughing along with them. The teacher seemed to enjoy the scene as well.
Strong wind was blowing after class, resulting in a mouth full of dirt by the time I got home. Johanna met me for lunch at a restaurant in the alley, then we watched another episode of Prison Break afterwards.
I went to Wumart in the early even to buy a suit coat and couple other items to take with me on the upcoming business trip with the investment agency. The dark blue coat I purchased looked decent except for fact that all the buttons were falling off. I complained and the saleswomen made a sewing motion with their hands and returned with the coat looking great. Wumart is kind of like a Walmart with an extremely inconvenient layout, but in this case, it was at least a bit convenient.
Back at home, I discovered a key to a cash drawer inside one of the bags of clothes. It was attached to a wrist strap and apparently fell off an employee’s arm when she put a shirt in the bag. Johanna came over and we went to the Pepper Bar to drink a couple Long Island Teas. The bartender was again doing his circus act of bottle flipping behind the bar, almost nonstop this time.

April 21, 2007
Johanna and I rode our bikes to a clothing market this morning. Her bike’s rear gear broke along the way and we had to stop at a repair vendor to get it replaced for $4. We arrived at the market after I convinced her to make another stop at a Mcdonalds along the way for lunch. We got separated before ever entering the market, then did just some independent shopping on our own instead of meeting back up. I had come to purchase a pair of casual dress shoes, but as usual, nobody had what I wanted in my size. Eventually, I ended up purchasing a pair I really didn’t like for too much money.
The bathrooms were so frightening in the market that I went home to use my own. All the doors were ripped off the stalls and the people waiting to use them were just staring in at the other people squatting inside over the Chinese toilets.
My kitchen table was full of glass and plastic bottles that I’d been saving to take to the recycling woman in the alley. This woman sits by a wall every day and pays people for anything recyclable. She gave me 50 cents for three full grocery bags of bottles, which I quickly spent on a large bottle of water at a small store a few minutes later.
My boss Annie met me at the Wudaokou subway station at 3:00 because she had volunteered to help me ask some questions at the wholesale market near my apartment. An American in Chicago saw one of my “American for Rent in Beijing” ads and wants to send me a couple hundred dollars to buy him some stuff to resell in the US. If he can sell the stuff, he claims that he’ll send me 50% of the profits. This seems like a good deal since he’s paying the money in advance all I stand to loose is time, which I have a lot of right now. The guy is mostly interested in kitchenwares, so I had Annie ask all kinds of questions to an old woman who was running such a booth at the market. The woman was very excited when Annie introduced my America export plan. We volunteered this information so the woman would understand why I needed to take pictures of her products. The prices were quite good, such as very nice looking woks for $3. A very small child kept following me around and saying the same thing over and over in Chinese. I’ve never seen a single foreigner in the market, so I get a lot of attention here, especially when I’m going around with a translator taking pictures of products.
Annie and I went to a coffee shop by the subway station next, where we sat and talked for an hour. She said that a rumor is developing among Mainland Chinese people that the Taiwanese government may declare independence next year before or during the Beijing Olympics in August. China is working hard to polish its image before that time, so the rumor theory is that it will not attack Taiwan because that would overshadow the Olympics. But, since the Olympics is over after just two weeks, it would seem foolish for Taiwan to do such a thing, because China supposedly has hundreds of missiles aimed at it and has promised to attack if independence is ever declared. Interesting conspiracy theory, though.
Annie got on the subway at 5:30 and I went to Wumart to enquire about my debit card, which I realized today was missing. That card was one of my most important possessions and I’d been trying so hard to take care of it. My theory is that I left it sitting somewhere in the store yesterday, but none of the 10 or so employees I talked to today knew anything. It’s now so strange that I had returned home last night to find that a cash drawer key had somehow made its way into one of my bags. So, both I and Wumart lost something that we really badly needed.
Johanna met me inside the store and we went across the street to a nice Western restaurant for dinner, where they got her order wrong. Everywhere she goes, her order is wrong about 50% of the time, so she’s getting pissed.

Sunday, 4-22-07
I got up at 5:30 this morning and rode my bike to meet my coworkers at the investment agency to leave for our business trip. The journey involved 12 hours of riding in taxis, planes and cars. Our first flight left from the Beijing airport at 8:40, headed 3 hours south to the southern city of Kunming. An English version of the China People’s Daily newspaper was handed to me by a stewardess. In response to the Virginia Tech shooting, it showed a picture of a steamroller flattening 30,000 replica handguns seized in Shanghai this week. The brief article with the picture mentioned the shootings and China’s strict gun policies. Another article even more briefly mentioned that 30 workers had been killed in a factory when molten steel had accidentally been poured on top of them. Making the memorial should be easy because the statues are pre-made. But, such a memorial would just be a reminder of the accident, so these figures should probably just be melted back down.
The group traveling today included three young female employees and the older male boss, all Chinese. Of the employees, the only one I’d had a lot of prior contact with was Annie. The employee Cindy had a long political conversation with me on this first plane. This really struck my interest because it’s often hard to invoke such conversation here. Speaking about the recent school shooting, Cindy told of a mass stabbing at a Chinese university 3 years ago, where a medical student had killed 3 people. She rationalized his actions by saying that that medical students are so used to seeing blood that stabbing someone is just like cutting a piece of cake. Translating your thoughts to another language is never easy.
We collected our checked baggage at the Kunming airport and had a huge lunch at a hotel/restaurant connected to the building. Despite the proximity to the airport, the hotel/restaurant was a bit dirty and the most expensive room was only about $25. The interior of the airport was a about the same, except for a couple lobby/shopping areas that looked a bit better. Our next flight left at 3 o’clock and we didn’t have to check our baggage. There were a dozen empty seats in the front of the plane, so I moved and had whole row all to myself. Our first flight had been a 737-800 with about 200 passengers and this second plane was s 737-600 with only about half that many. The flight only took one hour and we landed in a tropical valley surrounded on every side by massive mountains.
Just like at the first airport, we also exited the plane here by means of a ramp leading onto the tarmac. There had been a shuttle bus before, but this second airport was too small to even need such transportation. Our plane pulled up right in front of the tiny terminal and we were met inside by the financial officer of the company that we had come to investigate. This woman, named Mrs. Yan, led us outside to two waiting luxury vehicles. We were introduced to her husband here, Mr. Zhong, also an administrator of the company. Also present was a driver for one of the vehicles.
I rode with the driver, Annie and another employee named Nicole. The trip from the airport to our hotel was a three-hour drive through the mountains. Riding in such plush transportation among the poverty was quite a contrast. The two-lane highway was constantly being blocked by herds of oxen and slow-moving tractors pulling dozens of people. One thing these people do have going for them is great mountain views, which can rival anything I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world so far. The highway was completely blocked at one point due to a mud/rock slide that buried a couple hundred feet of roadway.
After 3 hours of driving, we finally came to real civilization, a town that appeared to have a population of at least a couple hundred thousand. Oxen were still dominating parts of the streets even as we entered this town. Annie had to jump out of the car and was sick as we neared the hotel, presumably because of the lunch we’d had earlier. I presume it was the lunch because both I and Nicole felt just about the same.
I’d expected to be taken to a hotel of extremely poor quality, but instead, I got the best room I’ve ever had in all of my life, and I don’t have to share with anybody. Seeing the hotel instantly reminded me of the hotel in the movie “Hotel Rawanda”, because its luxury is surrounded on all sides by high fences holding back reality. The lobby and common areas of the hotel may just be considered “above average” by Western city standards, but the size and décor of the room rates “high above average”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even really appreciate my room at this time because my stomach was killing me. Not only had everyone in my car been sick, but the girl in the other car also felt the same way, so it was almost definitely the lunch.
The company officials met us downstairs a few minutes later, including the president of the company, Mr. Hong. We all got back into the same vehicles and went to a restaurant that was just as nice as the hotel, where we had our own huge high-ceilinged room with a private bathroom. Food began to pour onto the table, including a whole catfish and a turtle floating in a bowl of soup. One of the company officials handed me the turtle’s shell and instructed me how to eat the meat from it. The meal lasted two hours and rice wine flowed freely the entire time. Our wine glasses were only thimble-sized, but an employee religiously filled them after each downing. The company employees, primarily the president, were being very persuasive with the wine, which has an alcohol content about twice that of normal wine. Nicole turned so red she appeared to be about to faint, but she ended up doing fine.
The wine kept flowing and this business trip suddenly wasn’t turning out to be what I’d expected. We talked about taking a walk in a park after the meal, but instead were taken to a karaoke bar behind the hotel, the Chinese kind where each group has their own private room. Our room was big enough to hold 50 people and had a projection screen on one side of it.
This is where things may or may not have taken a turn for the worse. My only instructions for the evening were to help avoid silence by asking questions and entertaining the clients. The company officials didn’t speak any English, so the girls translated my questions, ranging from anything from casual conversation to specific questions about the company. I’m supposed to play the role of an experienced company employee who has just come here from the US to investigate this potential client. Since I really had no idea what to do, I followed the lead of my coworkers and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The more I talked to the company employees, the more drinks they poured, and the president started to get drunk. He was completely smashed after another hour at the karaoke bar, and one of my coworkers whispered over that I should quit having drinks with him.
My coworkers got up to leave and I of course followed suit. We got on an elevator and the company president tried to pull me out by the arm, apparently wanting to keep the party going. My boss pulled back the other direction, then the company employees went home. I went into a hotel room with my coworkers and the boss was very mad at how the night had developed. I’d done what I thought I was supposed to, and he didn’t seem mad at me, but he seemed mad at the girls and he kept referring to me. So, this is a mystery for now. (Update: this the first time a client had ever gotten really drunk and the boss blamed the girls for allowing me to toast the client so many times, leading to his drunkenness. They had actually tried to warn me, but the client had seemed to be the one pushing the drinks, not me. Apparently, it is polite to decline toasts sometimes.)

Monday: 4-23-07
I had a meeting in an adjacent hotel room at 7:30 with my coworkers from the investment company. The boss’s main message was no smoking or drinking with the party-loving client today, as had been the case last night. We had a huge breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, involving all kinds of foods I’d never seen before. The boss let me borrow a tie after the meal, saying mine was too dark. The dark one looked new and his had stains on it, but he’s the boss.
We met the clients in the hotel lobby at 9 o’clock, including Mrs. Yan, the party-loving company president and two drivers. The plan for the day was to drive three hours into the mountains and visit the hydroelectric project that the company is seeking funding for. The narrow mountain roads were made out of stones and dirt, so the journey required two sport utility vehicles. I rode along with the president and my three female coworkers. My only other instructions from the boss were to “ask a lot of questions”, so this is what I tried my best to do all day. My ignorance of anything having to do with hydroelectric power made this task a constant challenge.
Ever since taking an interest in China several years ago, I’d wanted to see how the poorest of the poor live, and I got a good glimpse of that life today. The largest town we passed though in our three hour drive consisted of just a couple thousand people and had a narrow unpaved main street filled with mud, oxen, pigs, horses, geese and dogs. Every head turned as we made our way through this mess in luxury SUV’s. The breathtaking mountain views and year-round spring-like weather probably helps the people cope with the poor life here. These beautiful jungle mountains are filled with bamboo shoots that rise 30 feet into the air, banana trees and various flowers. The people’s main industries are different types of farming and making things out of the wood that they collect from the jungle. Most of the people live in homes built of straw and bamboo.
The road got progressively worse as we went higher and higher into the mountains. It was now only made of mud and full of large uncomfortable holes. There were of course no guardrails to guard against plunging hundreds of feet to certain death, but our driver was luckily quite experienced at such driving. The sights along the way made the uncomfortableness well worth while. One valley was full of thousand-year-old moss-filled trees. Annie said that this moss made the old trees look as if they had beards. Wild domesticated animals were in no short supply. We often had to come to sudden stops for large families of such animals that were blocking the road.
This province is full of minority groups, some of which we encountered today. In one of these groups, married women wear pink head scarves and women over 50 wear black ones. We passed a man on a small scooter with two pink-scarved women riding with him. The company president said that the man had two wives. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but he insisted it wasn’t. My initial thought was that it must be difficult for such poor men to engage in polygamy, but maybe it’s actually profitable if you can put your harem to work.
To take a bathroom break, we stopped at a silicon mine and the employees there let us use their restroom, which was just a small brick building built over a hole dug in the ground. Pieces of bamboo were laid across the hole so people could squat down. Arriving at the site of the hydroelectric project, we had to drive through a shallow river. I was expecting to see a massive dam being built here, but the site just consisted of construction equipment scattered among hastily built bamboo buildings. We were introduced to the construction manager, a middle-aged man named Mr. Ge, then led inside of one of the bamboo buildings that served as his office/apartment. A small table with a tea set on it was sitting in the middle of the concrete floor. The room’s décor included a bed made of bamboo and some real furniture with a computer, TV and DVD player on it.
Mr. Ge served tea along with some locally grown watermelon and pineapple, then we were given hard hats and taken on a short drive to the base of the mountain to view where the work was being done. Again, I expected to see a dam being constructed, but there was just a hole in the side of the mountain. It turns out that the mountains themselves will serve as the dams. Holes such as the one here will be dug all the way to a river 6 kilometers away and 1000 meters higher in elevation. Five separate tunnels must be dug at different points in the mountain in order to get all the way to the river. Power generating turbines will be at the exit of each of these tunnels. Only the lowest two levels of tunneling is taking place now. The company needs additional financing to continue construction, which is the purpose of this trip.
Following my instructions from the boss, I came up with all kinds of questions for Mr. Ge about seemingly-clever subjects like flow rates and local historical rainfall fluctuations. The boss took several dozen pictures as I had this conversations through my translating coworkers, all wearing the bright yellow hard hats. Mr. Ge said that the tunnels are being completed at a rate of 6 meters per day at a daily labor cost of just $20. There are several dozen employees working on the site, so hopefully he was only referring the pay of the 5 or 6 people who work inside the tunnel each day. Even still, that means each one is making less than $5 per day.
After viewing another hole for a few minutes, we were served a surprisingly wonderful lunch inside one of the huts, prepared by the company’s young female cook. This meal included some of the best meats I’ve had since arriving in China. Our long drive back to the hotel began shortly afterwards. We came inches from a collision while passing around one of those sharp mountain bends situated over certain death. For the remainder of the trip, the driver honked while approaching sharp curves.
We finally arrived at the hotel at 4:30 and were given two hours to rest. Since I’ll probably never see this town again in my life, I decided to use the time walking around, even though I only had 4 hours of sleep last night. I was still wearing dress clothes and absolutely everyone stared, even the lazy dogs lying all over the sidewalks. Most of the street activity involved people in ethnic clothing selling the variety of strange produce that they grow in the mountains. Walking about two blocks away, I unexpectedly came across a lush green park with pools and fountains.
The company president came to pick us up for dinner at 6:30, taking us to a restaurant where dining took place in nice small buildings situated among massive bamboo shoots. The company employee Mrs. Yan met us here along with one of her employees, a young man who worked in finance. Our meal included fried bee larvae, which I ate one of because everyone wanted to see my reaction. I’m only making $120 for this 4-day trip, so maybe having to eat larvae isn’t worth it, but I really need the money. No, actually, this is probably the best job I’ve ever had. We even had a private violin player for 10 minutes during dinner.

Tuesday: 4-24-06
My coworkers and I had a meeting at the headquarters of the hydroelectric company at 8:30 this morning, located in the same city just a short drive from the hotel. The office consisted of two sterile-looking rooms experiencing a lack of furniture. We conducted our meeting sitting in chairs around a coffee table. Only the company president and Mrs. Yan attended the meeting. We had expected to possibly have an audience that included investors and government officials. Yan and the president filled the coffee table with various kinds of local fruits, including a really tasty one called Red Dragon fruit.
My job at this meeting was similar to the meetings I attend in Beijing; ask some questions in English and have the translators explain the answers to me so I can take notes. The only difference today was the fresh fruit and the fact that I had to give a short speech introducing the investment company.
We were taken out to lunch after the meeting, then embarked on the three hour drive back though the mountains to the nearest airport. I rode in the vehicle driven by the company official Mr. Zhong, in which Annie and Cindy were also passengers. Mr. Zhong doesn’t speak any English, but asked me all kinds of questions through Annie and Cindy, including some political ones about the United States. Zhong also asked how much I thought his vehicle would cost in the US. It was a brand new BMW SUV and I guessed $60,000. He looked disappointed, so I in turn asked what the Chinese price was(such questions are generally OK here). Hearing that it cost $100,000 made me feel a bit safer about how we was passing traffic with just feet to spare from oncoming trucks.
We constantly passed groups of very young children walking alone along the winding highway, some that appeared to be only about 5 years old. It was still early in the afternoon, but Mr. Zhong said that school was already out. We made three stops along the way. First, Annie got sick, then we bought some watermelon from a roadside vendor, then we stopped to eat the watermelon at a restaurant by the airport. This restaurant had six large glass bottles filled with foods and small animals floating in a yellow liquid. Two bottles had lizards and one had a snake with the head detached. The sole waitress in the small restaurant explained that the liquids were traditional medicines used to cure various illnesses. This “medicine” just consisted of rice wine and whatever happened to be floating in it. Mr. Zhong bought a half glass of each kind of “medicine”, which cost a total of about $1. He then poured a small amount of each kind into tiny teacups and tried to convince everyone to try it. He was of course most interested in seeing my reaction. I drank a full teacup from the bottle that had onions floating in it, then drank partial cups of lizard and snake. Each drink was harder and harder to swallow, which I’m not sure was due to bad taste or the fact that the detached snake head was staring at me from inside its bottle on the window sill.
Mr. Zhong dropped us off at the airport at 3:30. Mrs. Yan stayed with us because she just so happened to be getting on the same flight. Just before boarding time, an announcement was made that our plane, in route from the city of Kunming, had returned to Kunming instead of landing. No reason was given and another plane didn’t arrive for 2 more hours. I spent most of the waiting time talking to Annie, who has become a good friend over the past few days. Nicole looked at my passport picture and said I was “fatter” then.
Our plane landed in Kunming just before dark. Several male passengers got up, retrieved their luggage and walked to the front of the plane while it was still taxiing towards the gate. Both of the flight attendants yelled for them to sit back down, but the men just ignored them and the attendants gave up. Extremely rude behavior is all-to-common on public transportation here, but having it happen on an airplane is a first.
We took a taxi and checked into a beautiful hotel a few minute’s ride away. The lobby contained huge elaborate jade sculptures made from single massive stones. My room had a city view, a real table with 4 chairs and Internet access. We all had dinner together at a restaurant just down the street. Mrs. Yan accompanied us. Like all my other meals on this trip, we had our own private dining room at the restaurant. Four servers laid about 60 small dishes across our table, then brought in boiling bowls of chicken broth for each of us. Each bowl contained about a gallon of broth. The employees dumped contents from all the 60 small dishes into the big bowls of broth, then noodles were added.
Yunnan workers are rumored to be lazy. The meal tasted great, but hinting at the said laziness was a very dirty environment. The table looked as if it had been wiped with a cloth that hadn’t been rinsed all day, and the big broth bowl had some dried food caked on them. A faint but noticeable odor in the air smelled of rot. The employees started closing the restaurant even before we were served, then came in our room to remind us of the closing time.

Wednesday: 4-25-07
I met my coworkers at 6:30AM to start the day with the hotel’s free breakfast. To my complete delight, the spacious dining area was filled with all kinds of hot western-style breakfast foods, including bacon and eggs, all of which could be eaten with shiny silver forks. Nearly everyone dining here was a foreigner.
We were back at the airport by 8 o’clock and on a jet to Beijing before 9. The air was clear for most of the flight, offering a good view of hundreds of thousands of tiny farms down below. Arriving in the city three hours later, we took a comfortable air-conditioned bus for the 30 minute ride back to the office. I’d expected to retrieve my bike and ride it home at this time, but the boss offered lunch instead. We ate in a private room at a small restaurant a short walk from the office. The room was also being used for storage and processing food, kind of ruining the private-room effect. Another employee came to meet us here, named Crystal, who will be attending the business trip I’ll leave for tomorrow afternoon.
The boss asked at the end of the meal if I could return to the office for an hour to attend a meeting, even offering a bonus because we were all so exhausted. The meeting was held with an old doctor named Mr. Wang who was seeking funding for his cure for cancer. The man claimed to have spent 40 years developing some kind of machine that worked by “activating disease fighting cells when used in conjunction with other treatments”. I’m not sure if he was really so vague or his words were just lost in translation. He provided documentation that included pictures of cancerous lungs and a picture of one of his coworkers shaking hands with Mao Zedong.
The bike ride home went a bit slow due to my heavy backpack, but the weather was perfect. I promptly fell asleep for two hours after arriving at home. Johanna later joined me for dinner and we continued watching Prison Preak.

Thursday: 4-26-07
I washed my laundry in the kitchen sink this morning because it’s just easier to do small amounts that way than rolling the half-broken washing machine into the kitchen and hooking it up. There wasn’t time for the laundry to dry before leaving on the next business trip this afternoon, so I bought a couple new pairs of socks and underwear at the supermarket in the alley.
There was time to get in a short nap before meeting my boss and coworkers at the office at 3 o’clock. Going on this trip will be the boss, Annie and another employee named Crystal. For some reason, the boss and Annie have both suddenly changed their names. The boss is now Roger instead of Vigor, and Annie has become Sophia. The company made me my own business cards now, so I no longer have to be Donald, but the name on the cards simply reads “Kiser”. I think the first name is not listed so the clients have no way of looking up things, like say, this blog, for example.
We took a taxi to the massive Beijing railway station, which is designed with traditional Chinese buildings rising 15 stories into the air. Passengers were already boarding our train to Xian when we arrived, all 1000+ of them. We were in car #15, a hard sleeper, meaning it is sectioned off into open-ended rooms with 6 bunk beds in each room. Soft-sleeper rooms are enclosed with only 4 beds, but those were sold out. The beginning of the journey got quite hot before the air conditioning was eventually turned on. The train’s many attendants went up and down the isles selling everything from fresh fruit to jewelry to flashlights. In addition to these employees, each car also has two security attendants stationed in small rooms by the lavatories.
We had dinner in a very comfortable dining car. Our meal included whole fresh cucumbers and bird rape. Yes, that’s right, bird rape. Annie used her electronic dictionary to translate the name of one of our dishes, and the dictionary replied “bird rape”. It was the best bird rape I’ve ever had, but I hear bald eagle is pretty good, so don’t take my word for it.
I knew the next two days could be long, so I was in bed by 8:30. Waking up sometime in the middle of the night, I was engrossed by the moonlit scenery passing by outside. The train was speeding through an ocean of small mountains separated by deep narrow gorges. The word “ocean” describes the scene well because there were little or no valleys between the small mountains, which resembled waves in the darkness. Laying tracks here must have been a daunting task, because hundreds of these hills had to be cut straight through.

Friday: 4-27-07
Our train arrived in Xian at 6:30 this morning, before which time I had to try and use the tiny lavatory and sink facilities to dress up in order to meet the clients at the station. This was difficult because the 60+ people riding in our train car were scrambling to use these areas at the same time. Outside the station, a young man was holding a blue sign looking for us. This man was the younger brother of the president of the company we came to investigate for investment purposes. Also meeting us at this time was the young sign-holder’s father, Mr. Liu, and two other company officials, Mr. Chen and Mr. Yang.
Just like the last trip, we were taken to the hotel in two luxury vehicles, one of which was actually the same year, make and model as what the clients on the last trip had, a BMW SUV that apparently costs $100,000. The hotel was even more luxurious than last time, but not as unique. This hotel is the type with an inner enclosed courtyard that rises up 20 stories to a windowed ceiling. The entire interior is filled with hundreds of original paintings. Even my bathroom has a pretty yellow abstract oil painting in it.
My boss had said my bag was too big on the last trip, so I just packed a nice-looking little green backpack for this one. He didn’t want the clients to see me touch the backpack today, so he made Annie carry it instead, apparently because it doesn’t look professional. The company officials gave us some time alone after showing us to our rooms, so my coworkers and I had a short meeting. The boss told me the following: If the company officials come to my room and ask questions, then say this; I have been employed by the investment company for one year and arrived in China at 2PM on April 25th. Also, if they ask for my cell phone number, I do not have a cell phone in China.
We had breakfast in the hotel’s dining room after the short meeting, which included all kinds of fresh western food. One of the chefs even cooked me two eggs over-easy. We took an hour-and-a-half car ride to the project site after the meal, passing through endless peach orchards along a nice highway in the countryside. The city of Xian has a population of 7 million, but there is plenty of open space surrounding it.
This company we are investigating is requesting $80 million to build a large cement factory that will make high quality dry powdered cement. The company already owns a coal mine and a limestone quarry nearby, apparently important ingredients for making cement, so they seem well-suited to open such a factory. The first site we visited was the coal mine, where we were met by the manager of the mine, his two top subordinates and the local county leader of the Federal Bureau of Mines.
I was led into a conference room with this group of people, which had now grown to 10. The conditions at the mine were primitive, but the offices and conference room were quite luxurious. A meeting took place and Annie and I read the same speech that we’d memorized for the last trip. Afterwards, I was supposed to ask questions, so I asked the government official what he thought the advantages and disadvantages of the product were. Luckily, his answer went on for about 10 minutes, so there was only time for me to have to think of one more question.
We were taken on a short tour of the mine after the meeting, viewing the area where carts of coal were lifted out of the 270 meter deep mine shaft. It was demonstrated here how the cart of coal was pushed to a ramp, a pulley was connected to it, then it was pulled up the ramp and its contents were flipped into the back of a truck underneath. The mine officials said that this advanced system had recently been installed, before which the miners had to push the cart up the ramp by hand. Annie, Crystal and I walked into the building housing the mine shaft to get a closer look, where two zombified men covered in coal dust were hoisting another cartload of coal from the hole. I used the mines outdoor bathroom and was surprised by the site of thousands of maggots trying to crawl up on me. I haven’t seen so many maggots since leaving food in a broken refrigerator for two months 8 years ago.
Leaving the mine, we got stuck in traffic in a small dirt road town nearby. The traffic wasn’t moving at all, so the company president, who was driving our truck, called a city government official to get the police to clear the road. He grew up in this small town and has built roads and schools in it since becoming successful, so he’s highly respected. I rolled down the window of the luxury vehicle to take a picture during the traffic jam and broke it. A loud pop emanated from inside the door, loud enough to sound as if someone had hit the side of the truck. The glass didn’t break, but the window slid down inside the door and wouldn’t return up. Dust from the streets was now flowing inside, so the people in the vehicle that was following traded with us.
We next went to city hall of this tiny town and visited its two top officials, the mayor and Communist Party Leader. Every town and city has both a Mayor and Party leader to run it. In a short meeting, these two officials told us that they would do everything possible to ensure the success of this project, including doing paperwork for free and shutting down other smaller coal mines. The other mines would be shut on the grounds that they are dangerous and produce a lot of pollution. The officials say they want one large modern mine instead of many small dangerous ones, but maybe they’ll say anything to get their cut of an $80 million investment.
Driving out of the small town, I had some time to ask the company president some questions about strange things I was noticing on the roadside. First of all, many small caves were dug into the embankments surrounding the roadway. He said that people in this province lived in the caves up until this century. Secondly, the side of a mountain had several dozen identical small structures built into it. The president said that this was a fireworks factory. I’m assuming it’s designed this way so accidental explosions are limited to one building. Thirdly, 3-4 feet mud fences have been built surrounding many of the fields. I didn’t get a change to ask the president about this and I can’t imagine why these people would work so hard building such a delicate fence, but I’m also sure there’s some reason. Finally, the area is full of tombs. Small tombs can be seen all over the roadside, which are marked by small brick structures that rise about 10 feet into the air. Larger tombs are also located in the area, including that of a famous emperor and a former Party vice-chairman.
The company president decided to stop at the emperor’s tomb to let us have a look. The site is 1,300 years old and beautifully preserved. A wide stone roadway leads to the tomb, which is sealed inside of a mountain. The edges of the stone road are adorned with vast gardens and dozens of large marble statues. Many of the statues were donated to China by foreign countries 1,300 years ago to express sympathy for the death of the emperor. We had a private tour guide that must have shared 100,000 words with us, and as always on these trips, Annie patiently translated it all to me. We stopped to each slap a statue of a lion on the butt three times, a traditional activity. The first slap is for success in employment, the second is for money and the third is for love. While one person slaps the back, another puts their ear to the lions head and listens to the strange reverberations inside. I accidentally slapped four times and everyone simultaneously yelled for me to stop, so I may be cursed or something now.
We next stopped in the largest town in this county, called Pucheng, with a population of 700,000, where the company president owns a three-star hotel. He briefly took us into the hotel to meet his staff and wife, then we were taken to another three star hotel for lunch. By the looks of the spacious private room we dined in, this hotel could have been a full five stars. The roundtable had room for 20, the china was trimmed in gold and two chandeliers hung from the ceiling. We were served no less than 20 dishes on the vast lasy-susan that stretched across the tabletop. This was my time to make toasts complimenting the project and come up with more clever questions. Not only do I obviously know nothing about cement factories, but I was also getting tired, so I settled for toasts like, “To the continued friendship of the United States and China”, and everyone seemed happy. Based on my experience with this job so far, it seems that my boss is leading the clients to believe that I’m the one who must be convinced of the feasibility of the projects, so this would explain the great respect which they give me. I’m always the first one served and the first one toasted, and the highest level official present always sits by me, with Annie on the other side to translate. If the pay was better, I could probably do this job for years and stay interested.
Annie is Mongolian. The vice president noticed this and happened to know some Mongolian customs, so Annie was put on the spot. In the first custom, Annie beautifully sung a song while the vice president downed three glasses of wine. In the second custom, he and Annie stuck their fingers into a glass of wine three times. They flicked wine into the air the first time, dapped it on their forehead the second time, and I can’t remember what they did the third time.
The company president next took us back to his hotel, to an upper floor where an expensive tea shop was located. It was time to go before anyone had time to drink more than a sip of the tea, then we were whisked back on the hour-and-a-half long drive to our hotel. Along the way everyone fell asleep in the car but me. Even the driver, the company president, started to doze, so he stopped and let another person drive from the other vehicle.
We all now had a two and a half hour break before meeting again for dinner. Beautiful piano music started to filter through the window in my room that faces the massive lobby atrium. A grand piano is located there and the 15 story atrium reverberates the sound perfectly. For dinner, the clients took us to a restaurant with a plaque designating it as one of the top ten restaurants in China. The lobby features a massive white jade Buddha sculpture carved from a single jade boulder. It must weigh tons and be worth millions. For a restaurant with so much class, I really didn’t like the food all that much. My coworker Crystal earlier said that she doesn’t like Xian food that much, and for many dishes, I have to agree. Tonight’s main dish was some kind of tiny pieces of fish, maybe the shark fin that the restaurant is famous for.
Back in my hotel room, I stretched out on the large marble windowsill overlooking the atrium. The company vice president and director of operations noticed me there and came to my room to invite me out for drinks. Following my earlier instructions about clients coming to my room, I called Annie to come drink with us. The clients also asked for my mobile phone number. I’d been instructed earlier to say I didn’t have a phone in China, but the phone was clearly sitting on the coffee table. So, I said the phone was only a temporary phone to use in China, and that I didn’t have a phone right now in the US because I was switching companies. We got Annie on the phone and she said she was feeling too sick to go out, which was actually the truth.

Saturday: 4-28-07
I heard this morning that my boss thinks our clients might be lying to us. He apparently thinks that the vice president and the manager of operations that we have met may not actually be associated with the company. It sounds crazy at first, but considering that I’m posing as a foreign investment specialist, maybe it isn’t such a crazy idea after all.
I had another nice Western breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant this morning with Annie, then had a meeting with the clients in a conference room on the 10th floor. I asked two questions concerning financial details of the investment and the clients spent nearly the whole 1-hour meeting answering them. Sure enough, the only person that really spoke was the president, so my boss’s theory may be right.
The meeting was over by 10:30 and the clients spent the rest of the day taking us on an all-expenses-paid tourist adventure of Xian in their luxury vehicles. Going to see the world-famous Terra Cotta Warriors, we witnessed a wedding party throwing powerful fireworks out the windows of moving vehicles. They sped right through a large column of uniformed elementary students crossing the road, continuing to throw their explosives the entire way. Two large cylindrical firecrackers landed right in the middle of this column and a dozen kids jumped out of the way to avoid the explosions. I don’t make this stuff up.
The Terra Cotta’s are the big deal that they’re made out to be. Each ticket costs $11, at least a days work for the common man here, so the facilities that house the 2,200 year-old relics are beautiful. Well thought-out landscaping and foliage surrounds three main museum buildings, two of which are large enough to hold several football fields. Mountains rise a mile away in the background. The larger buildings house the warrior statues, some of which have been excavated and some that haven’t. These huge buildings have simply been built over the excavation sites, so the statues stand at where they were originally placed over two thousand years ago. No two statues are the same and some have been left in near perfect original condition. Further excavation has temporarily been halted until more advanced techniques can be developed that won’t damage the statues. So, some areas inside the building are works in progress, as the digging process sits at where it was left off.
One of the larger buildings has several hundred stone warriors and horses exposed, while the other larger building is mostly unexcavated. Seeing such a vast building built over a huge hole in the ground really makes the importance of what’s in the ground sink in. The United Nations recognizes the site as one of the 8 wonders of the world. Not a single person on the planet knew about any of this till until 1980, when a farmer digging a well came upon some interesting ceramic fragments and notified local authorities. Pictures at the site now depict this once-poor farmer shaking hands with Bill Clinton. These remains are part of a vast tomb that an ancient emperor had built for himself before his death. The thousands of stone figures were arranged in battle patterns and simply buried. Maybe this emperor intentionally did a great deed for his country and planned out today’s money making scheme so long ago.
An official gift shop in the complex was selling replica Warriors for $25 to $10,000, depending on their size. People outside the complex were selling the $25 size for 25 cents, no joke, it was the exact same thing. Having lunch with the clients in a restaurant on the grounds, I didn’t really have any clever questions left, so I said, “It’s too bad your cement factory wasn’t around 2000 years ago, because you could have made a lot of money making these statues for the emperor”. Luckily, my comment didn’t seem to cause any cultural offense and everyone laughed.
We next visited the hot spring bath of another ancient emperor’s favorite concubine. 1300 years ago this was the fat woman who made being fat in China beautiful for generations. Actually, if her statue truly depicts her, she wasn’t really that fat, but maybe fat for Chinese standards. The bath complex is located at the base of steep green mountains. While the historical value of the site isn’t nearly that of the Warriors, its beauty is much greater, an effect created by traditional buildings nestled amongst so much greenery. In the style of Chinese tourism, some strange phenomenon can also be witnessed here, like a building that raises and lowers out of a small pond as gas explosions are created around it. Large open-ended gas pipes stick out of the water and immense heat can be felt 50 feet away as they are periodically turned on and ignited, causing mushroom cloud fireballs to rise high into the air.
Not only is the concubine’s bath located here, but so are many others. Each of these function like a modern pool, but are built with stones and get their water from hot springs coming from the mountain base. The traditional buildings on the site house most of these baths. The hot springs still produce water, but most of the pools are dry. The only way to touch the water is to pay a small fee and enter an area where it sprays from fountains shaped like oversized lilies. The people readily pay the fee and play in the water like children, cleaning their hands and faces in it and splashing it all over each other. One of the clients in our group took things way too seriously and got mad at the splashers. After I’d put my hands in the water and let them dry, they felt so moisturized, and I don’t think it was my imagination. I also tried out another traditional activity, rubbing the head of a dragon statue, which was somehow just as relaxing.
It was now almost time to catch our train, but there was still time for the clients to briefly let us stop and view a pagoda tower, called Giant Goose something. At the train station, a group of cute girls said “hallo” and shyly giggled at me, making the day complete. My coworkers and I had a “soft sleeper” on our train back to Beijing, which left at 6 o’clock. This means that we had our own room with four bunk beds. A strange woman came in the room and claimed one of our beds, then started loudly slurping noodles from a bag she had in her purse. She was traveling by herself and gladly agreed to trade tickets with Crystal, who had accidentally been given a ticket in another nearby room.
The atmosphere was quite light-hearted for the rest of the evening, as we were glad to be done with business and heading home in our private room. Annie and I continued our ongoing jokes about demonic possession and the boss danced and sang in the hallway while listening to his MP3 player. After having a dinner in our room, Annie and I had a beer in the dining car while I analyzed a couple of her dreams, saying one was forecasting imminent suicide.

Sunday: 4-29-07
Why does a Chinese train have an unsecured wireless signal emanating from each car? This is a question I asked myself while lying awake in my room last night listening to my boss’s high-decibel snoring. My laptop readily connects to the signal, but there seems to be no Internet access available with it, so what’s the purpose? My only good theory is that such a signal may be used to control the LCD message boards in each car, so learning more about it could be fun……..my not-so-good theories on the idea include possibly speeding up the train…….
The mysterious train arrived in Beijing at 8AM and we took a taxi back to the investment company’s office. We had breakfast in a tiny nearby restaurant where the dining area also served as the kitchen, eating some kind of corn pourage along with something that looked like an oversized stuffed dumpling with thick skin. The total cost for the 4-person meal was $1.25. The boss is always telling everyone to hurry up, even ranting to the sleepy restaurant workers, “Hurry, we’re hungry!”
Up in the office, I took in a cash payment of 2,722 Yuan, which is about $350. That amount included about $40 in bonuses that the boss voluntarily threw in, so it seems he’s come a long way from time I got one of his clients drunk earlier in the week.
A worker was mopping the carpet in the hallways of the office building. Asking Annie about this, she said that such mopping was not common in China, but that it is common in this office building. The worker just went up and down the hallways with a very wet mop, probably making matters worse.
My bike was still in the office bike corral, but the guard there made me pay a 12 cent fee for leaving it overnight 2 days. Back at home, I made full use of my stationary bed and caught up on the sleep I lost two nights on trains. Johanna’s sister just arrived in town, and they invited me to go see Beijing’s Summer Palace with them, but I declined because they were ready to leave and I wasn’t. They will leave tonight on a train to Mongolia for several days.
There is a posting with my apartment number written on it pasted to the main entrance of corridor #5, my corridor. It has official-looking stamps on it, so I thought a translation might be a good idea. Turns out that the water company has been trying to get inside to read the meter. The notice says that they will enter the apartment tomorrow between 3 and 5 PM whether or not I am home. It seems strange to post the note on the corridor entrance instead of my door or mailbox, but maybe this is done so the neighbors know to expect an unknown individual to be entering at that time. But, if I was a savvy criminal, then I would come at that time and break in. If the meter reader happened to come while I was there, then I’d just answer the door and pretend to live there.

Monday: 4-30-07
It seems that there are suddenly 100 flies for every resident in Beijing. Their eggs must have all hatched while I was gone on the business trips this past week. Eating a bowl of beef noodles outside of a restaurant in the alley, these flies were overwhelming, and it seemed that every shop owner was battling them with flyswatters. The filthy streets and soupy puddles are a breeding ground.
A lady from the water company came to read my meters in the afternoon, then asked for $10. She was just a small woman carrying a big bag of money with her. That might seem a bit dangerous, but Chinese theft crimes usually only involves secretly stealing things from people rather than direct violent confrontations.
I went to meet Annie at the subway station at 5:30. Light rain was falling for the first time in weeks. The sky was dark and strong wind was blowing dust everywhere, as the ground was not completely soaked yet. Annie arrived 30 minutes late because the boss had kept her in the office till later than expected. She brought a cake box with her and we had dinner at a Western restaurant/bar called Lush, next to the subway station.
Next, we took a cab back to my apartment and opened up the well-designed cake, which had flowers and hummingbirds made of icing on the surface. She had used the baker’s utensils to write “Happy Birthday Garth” on the cake by herself, worried that the Chinese-speaking baker would get the English wrong. She put five candles on the cake, and we each ate a slice after I blew them out. It had a thin layer of fruit in the middle and tasted great.
Annie brought her portable hard drive so we could trade pictures from the business trips. Pictures from another point of view other than my own camera were hilarious to watch.
I received a phone call from CCTV(China Central Television) about playing a small role in a documentary that will be broadcast to hundreds of millions of households. The British-English voice on the phone asked if I could play the role of a Roman Emperor, and I agreed to meet a CCTV van at the Military Museum subway exit tomorrow morning at 7AM. The man called back a few minutes later to say that they now didn’t need a Roman Emperor. He sent an email a few minutes after that to ask if I could play a French general on May 7th or 8th. The part only pays $25 and takes 6 hours, but this may be my only chance in life to be viewed by millions as a French general on Chinese TV.