hey all

sorry about the large gap in posting. the firewall has gotten the best of me with wordpress, but i’m pushing on and trying to use my own site. so check me out at blog.beanjean.com

note to self:

don’t forget to have gnomes when you own a home/garden. there’s nothing more awesome than a gnome.

On Censorship

Grrr. So I’ve been very happy this past week because access to wordpress and blogspot has been restored here, as well as to flickr. Though I am still having trouble with reaching the upload flickr server. It’s nice not to have to proxy into wordpress and all the blogs I read though. For the past week though I thought I was having a flash player problem related to my recent installation of KDE, and it’s incompatibility with Firefox displays. Upon logging into Windows today, I discovered that I still couldn’t display videos in google reader. That’s when I noticed it wasn’t adobe flash, or anything else, it was an inability to reach youtube.com. Quick searching revealed that it’s been completely blocked by China for a week now. Apparently, a new video released by the Tibetan government-in-exile was release last week and instead of their usual practice of just censoring the offensive video, they’ve gone and taken away our youtube! There’s also some speculation that the ban is because Youtube introduced a Chinese language version of the site. The government here doesn’t seem all that concerned about blocking the English language sites. I can go to nyt.com and the bbc and read about all sorts of evil China-related news. I guess they assume most people can’t read English that well. Proxy servers let me view the youtube site, but every video is “no longer available” GRRR.

Speaking of censorship, my friend asked if I had a blog and if so what the site was, but I declined to give it to her. Mostly because I don’t want to worry about what I say on here, and people here really take the whole “China can do no wrong” sentiment to heart. Anyway she asked why and I told her that she can’t get to the site from China. She asked why and I told her that there’s a firewall and a lot of the internet here is censored. This seemed to come as a surprise to her, though her friend from the U.S. did tell her about wikipedia and how great it is, but Fiona can’t get to it here. I find it crazy that people can be unaware that their access to media is blocked. It’s insane how many 404 errors you get here.

Just a quick note

I love that whenever I search my music library for some ABBA to throw on the running list or whatever, Black Sabbath gets pulled up as well. The distance between the two always makes me chuckle and then throw that on the old pod as well. Good Stuff.

24 hour party people

Holy mother of god, I am tired. I see that I haven’t

had a chance to mention the “party people”. These are friends of Philip who are members of “the party”. Sounds so serious.  Philip and Ya Ming had recently gotten married when I arrived, so they had a dinner with their friends to celebrate and invited me. According to Philip, I was a hit and now he’s pretty much required to bring me to dinner. I’m not sure why, since they don’t speak English and I’ve mastered like 10 words of Chinese. They’ve taken it upon themselves to find me a Chinese boyfriend, more on that later. Anywya, of the past 6 nights, we’ve had dinner 5 times. Tonight, I’m off and I’m excited to have some time to myself, though I do need to spend some of that coming up with some lesson plans for the week. Tomorrow it’s dinner out again. It will be at least late May before it’s not rude for me to beg out of an invitation, but Philip suspects that the volume of invites will slow sometime in April, hopefully to a more manageable 2 nights a week. I do have to say, China was made for me and my mom. Dinner is at 5 and you hang out and eat forever and you’re still home and in bed by 10 (and that’s a LATE night). Dinner with the party people is always an affair. One dude (Max) is in charge of restaurant inspections and so we always get extra special service, also part of it is that these people are all super rich, so you know.

Last night was one of the best, food-wise. We had hot pot, which is a Harbin specialty. Similar to fondue, it consists of a pot in the center of the table over a burner or hotplate. It has a partition in the center and both sides are filled with boiling starchy water that is left over from boiling rice. One side has spicy flavorings and the other is just plain. Meat, fish, veggies, mushrooms etc are dumped in and you fish them out with your chopsticks and dip them in spicy sauce and garlicky vinegar. Very good. Last night was noticeable for delicious abalone, some raw salmon with wasabi soy sauce (real wasabi) and, the best part: thinly sliced, fabulous raw beef on ice that you also dip in a wasabi sauce. SOOOOOO fantastic. Indescribably delicious. Apparently the beef comes from a very small cow (I was unclear as to whether it was veal, or if it was a cow that doesn’t grow large). Word around the english speakers at the table (ya ming) was that we’re being taken for blowfish. I’m not very excited about that, but I’ll let you know how that goes, maybe they’ll forget.

As delicious as the food is, it can be rough to eat with these people. There’s a lot of drinking involved, and when the gambei goes around (cheers) you’ve gotta drink the entire glass. They’ll just stare you down till you finish it. Luckily, the glasses are tiny, but downing more than a sip at a time is rough. So it’s crucial to keep your head down and don’t drink unless your name is called for the gambai. Last night’s glasses were huge so I studiously avoided eye contact and started only 1 gambei with the guy paying. Meanwhile, it helps to keep your glass tucked behind your soup bowl so no one notices if it’s low, because otherwise they’ll top it off and start another gambei. I keep thinking the DH would dominate Harbin culture.

If I could change just one thing about my apartment here, it wouldn’t be the fact that the toilet clogs, nor would it be that the windows leak cold air, leaving me to wander around wrapped in my heavy blanket. I wouldn’t fix the front door (that metal prison thing you’ve seen….it’s lock is broken… did you notice that the only thing it has is a lock, no latch, just a lock) it wouldn’t be the dirty dirty walls. it would be that when I want to wash my hands or face, or brush my teeth the water from the bathroom sink does not have a proper drain. it pours down the pedestool and then leaks out underneath to the bathroom floor, where it drains to the “general drain”. the shower drain, conveniently located where you need to stand when washing your hands. this means, that if I need to use the restroom mid slumber, I need to find my sandals, or else I can’t wash my hands. or if i choose cleanliness, my feet are now wet. now i’m wide awake.

Actually the lock story is funny. So George is the guy in the international office that I’m supposed to go to about things like, broken stuff, paying the electric or gas, etc.  So after day 2 or 3 I tell him about my toilet not flushing, he says, “oh too bad, just yesterday the plumber retired, it will take a few days to find a new one”. I finally locate the necessary itmes to fix my toilet myself and move on with my life. Last week I tell George about my door not locking sometimes and he says “gee, the locksmith just retired today, It’ll be a little bit before I can find a new one”. Seriously? How dumb do I really look?

Had dinner with the party people wed. night. First time seeing people eat bug larvae. Hard to watch, even harder when you have to shift seats and suddenly your plate is covered with mushed larva shells. I try (really!) to be open minded but still! I have limits. Ok though, this is the reason I started the story, so philip is in a taxi, when he first got here, and (background, apparently in England, instead of beep they say bee. So in traffic, you say bee, bee) Anyway back to the story, he’s in a taxi and their stuck in traffic and everyone is honking (like they do here! Seriously everything requires a honk) So Philip, trying to make conversation, says to the taxi driver, bee bee bee bee! The driver starts laughing, and he continues since it’s funny, bee, bee, bee, bee, bee! Taxi driver can barely drive at this point,  BEE BEE! This goes on for the rest of the drive, bee, bee, *laughing through tears* bee bee! So the next day Philip describes the experience to his students, and finds out, Bee, in Chinese is the c-word so the whole time, there he is, yelling the c-word and the guy finding it so funny just egging him on. Hilarious! The taxi driver must have been thinking, what the hell is WRONG with this dude?

food stalls off campus

food stalls off campus

Originally uploaded by stringbean jean

Today after work, I got off the bus and decided to head over to the little set of about 25 stalls on a street that have people making “fast food” to order. Ok so I played it safe and went to the stall ya ming took me to on wed and got 2 of the noodle that dude makes. He remembered me and was really friendly. For 4 yuan (50 cents) i got dinner consisting of a fried noodle with egg on it and some cilantro, onion, vinegar and spices. very very tasty! I call it Spicy Egg and Noodle Fast Food. I named it myself, since I have no idea what it’s called and everywhere seems to name things as they wish anyway. Also, either everyone is treating me like a child (highly likely) or things really are named very descriptively. Examples: spicy green beans, green beans with meat, spicy noodles with fish, you get the idea.

Also of note, I must be losing my mind, because I got to Ladder a half hour early (after yesterday’s lateness debacle I left at 4:30 for the bus instead of 4:40 and instead of arriving at 5:30, like yesterday, I arrived at 5. great. Luckily I had brought my camera, I wandered up and down the street snapping photos and getting to know the block while it snowed. Apparently 19 degrees is starting to feel warm. I was also tempted to buy some ice cream a few vendors were selling. The best part, they just have the bars out on a table, no need to waste electricity on refrigeration. Then tonight on the way home from the bus when it was even colder and still snowing, after waiting 5-7 min for my noodles I continued to pause for photos. Anyway, I can tell right now, coming home from Ladder on Thursday and Friday and getting some delicious fast food will be a highlight of my week.