Eric's Beijing Diary

This evening I delivered a lecture to a bunch of young people who have come to China with a company that arranges study opportunities for foreigners. I was asked to talk about the historical developments leading up to the present business environment. Young people from all over the world are enlisting the help of organizations like this to bring them to China for language study, and to be introduced to the country. Chinese language proficiency is a hot item in the EU, especially Britain. In fact, there is now a well known British public (actually private) school that requires all children to study Mandarin.

I believe it is imperitive for every young person who has hopes of becoming involved in business in China to understand some of the historical events which have come together to produce the incredible contrasts of the past hundred years. Key to understanding the political economy of China is opium. But more generally, it is the fact that capitalism, as practiced before the Communist revolution of 1949, was all but entirely exploitive. Western countries came to China, made money, and took that money away. There was no "sharing of the wealth," except in the form of corruption. And the opium trade, which John King Fairbank called, "the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times," was enforced by the British in two separate violent conflicts known as "the Opium Wars." William Gladstone, who became prime minister of Great Britain, was a member of Parliament during the height of the opium trade. He stood up in Parliament and said, "I am in fear of the judgment of God upon England for her iniquities against the Chinese people."

So it is not really surprising that the Chinese might be attracted by a philosoply like Marxism, which teaches that business is evil, because the business conducted in China really was quite evil. But while Marx (and especially Engels) were quite perceptive in their analysis of the problem, their solution was wrong, because it did not take into account human nature, and because it was based on atheism. Since there was no absolute being to whom even the highest of state authorities should be accountable, the state itself was absolute.

What has evolved today in China, is a culture and economy that is still nominally socialist, but actually quite "Republican" in practice. How long will China be able to continue this contradiction between what the constitution claims to be committed to, and what the government actually practices?

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Rachel called me Friday. Today I took the subway to Chegongzhuang and went to her wedding. The wedding took place at a government office. I don't particularly favor forgoing a church wedding, especially since Rachel is a Christian. But the situation in China is such that some people decide the formal wedding is just too expensive. In America, you go get a marriage license and then a marriage certificate at the church. The pastor is legally authorized to marry people. You can get a court wedding in the States, but it does require a separate ceremony. But in China, when you register, you don't get a marriage license, you get a marriage certificate. Eason forked out 9 RMB (about $1.25) today. They filled out the forms, had a brief interview, took an oath and were legally married.

Somehow, a government office just doesn't seem like the best place for wedding, so I asked Rachel if we could go somewhere else afterward. We went to a small restaurant and had a delicious meal of boiled mutton and cow stomach. None of us had ever been there before, but Eason sniffed the place out. It wasn't a fancy place, but the food was good, and we had a very pleasant conversation about the importance of building a family on a solid foundation. I really encouraged both of them to focus first on finding a church home. My heart really goes out to dear Chinese young people like this who have the same hopes and dreams any young couple could be expected to have, and perhaps a few more obstacles in trying to meet them. But Rachel and Eason were full of optimism about their future. Fortunately they are living in a China that has a lot more opportunity than the China of their parents or grandparents. Rachel has spent some time in Canada, and they are thinking of going there, but ironically, Eason, as a systems engineer, has much better options here in China. This is because there is so much new infrastructure being developed here. The government has been laying a 20,000 kilometer trunk line. That means a lot of jobs for systems people like Eason. In the end, though, a young couple can find no greater insurance for the future than simple trust in a God who never forsakes His own.

I' m having steak and eggs here in Jianguomen. Little place behind the old Friendship store in the Embassy district. This place is run by Paul, and used to be called "Paul's Steak House." The name has been changed to "Steak and Eggs," probably because their specialty is breakfast items like steak and eggs. Just a guess.

Every time I come here, I feel like I'm sitting in a small truck stop somewhere in New England. Maine is a long way from Beijing, but in this place, I could almost forget that except that the help here are all Chinese. He has trained them well, though. They all speak the necessary greetings and questions in English.

I don't come here very often. For one thing, it isn't exactly in the neighborhood. And it is a bit much to spend for a meal. Steak and eggs for 49 RMB, and another 14 for the coffee. That's pretty good by American standards--about eight dollars. This juicy steak is flown in from Brazil. But I can get an American breakfast of bacon and eggs at the coffee bar for about half that. And I don't need anything quite this hearty now. Steak and Eggs is the quintessential power breakfast if you are a truck driver (which I was for seven years). But it has been a number of years, now, since I had to go out and chain a load of steel after breakfast. If I ate like this now, I might get fat.

The waitress here saw that I was enjoying the steak and said, "I am Chinese people. We don't like that." Not sure why, because I have had beef in Chinese restaurants, but certainly not steak. To tell the truth, I didn't like steak either when I went to the United States as a 13 year old kid. I thought I was chewing on someone's old leather belt. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why anyone in their right mind would prefer steak to hamburger. A waitress in Fargo told me one time that steak is most tender if you order it medium-rare. Which brings up another thing about this place. They always cook the steak exactly the way you order it.

Great story in the China Daily about a practical joke played on the media by a couple of Chinese bloggers. This time, the target of the ruse was western journalists. A couple of well known Chinese bloggers shut down their blogs with a brief message stating that their blogs were temporarily closed. According to the China Daily, it was a ruse, meant to test how foreign media would react.

Here is how the Reuters wire service reported the incident:

"Two of China's most adventurous Web logs closed on Wednesday under government orders, the latest in a wave of shutdowns as Chinese censors tighten controls in cyberspace, especially while the national parliament meets."

The China Daily makes a big deal about the fact that whoever put this report together at Reuters failed to pick up the phone and verify what everyone just assumed to be true. Well, this joke on a western news agency by a Chinese blogger got my attention, but a question began to form in my mind as I read the story. I thought, "I wonder how many people reading this article (in the China Daily) about Reuters' failure to check out a story, actually took the trouble themselves to check out the China Daily story to see if they were right about how wrong Reuters was."

I decided to do the job myself, and learned some interesting things. In checking the Reuters statement (quoted above) I discovered that the China Daily, in quoting the Reuters statement, had omitted the last clause ("especially while the national parliament meets."). This is significant. The China Daily doesn't mention anywhere that the incident was staged during the meeting of then National Party Congress and the People's Consultative Congress. Put that fact together with the actual announcement posted on the closed web logs:

"Because of unavoidable reasons known to all, this blog is now temporarily closed."

Unavoidable reasons known to all?? This is not just a prank. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive. What is any western journalist reading this supposed to conclude, especially given the fact that the National Congress was in session? The China Daily story also omits the Reuters statement the next day:

BEIJING (Reuters) - Two of China's most adventurous Web logs reappeared on Thursday, a day after apparently being shut down by government censors.
The blogs, belonging to Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng and to entertainment reporter Yuan Lei, from the southern city of Guangzhou, carried messages saying they had been temporarily closed, but they were both accessible again on Thursday.

"I like telling jokes, but this really wasn't a joke and it wasn't meant to deceive everyone," read a new post on Wang's blog, known as "Massage Milk."

But Wang, who blogs under the name "Dai San Ge Biao," a play on former leader Jiang Zemin's Three Represents, or "San Ge Dai Biao" political slogan, is known for his political satire, raising the possibility that the closure may have been a prank.

So what is really going on? A surface reading of the China Daily article had me believing that a Chinese blogger had pulled a fast one on the western media. But Reuters is a reputable wire service, so I was curious. Reading the Reuters stories together gives a very different picture. And, according to Reuters, Wang Xiaofeng is now refusing to comment on the incident, which causes me to question his credibility. In fact it almost begins to look like the government did order the shutdown of the blogs, and then told the bloggers later to say that it was a prank.

What is the lesson here. Simply that no one has a monopoly on misinformation. The original blog contained misinformation (unless its closure truly was government ordered), because it states that the blog was closed, "because of unavoidable reasons known to all." But if it was, in fact, a prank, then that statement is a blatant falsehood. because a reason like that would not be known to all, it would be known to no one.

The Reuters piece contained misinformation (again, unless the closure was government ordered), because it is now obvious that Reuters did not take the trouble to verify that the shutdown had actually been ordered by the government. They assumed it.

The China Daily contains misinformation, because it fails to note that the shutdown occurred during the meeting of the People's Consultative Congress, and accepts, at face value, the statement of the blogger that the shutdown was a prank.

Doesn't anyone just tell the simple truth anymore?

Labels: Chinese Media

Did you know that every eight seconds another North American baby boomer turns sixty? This morning I was catching up on one of my favorite podcasts (NPR Books). I'm listening to guest Ken Dychtwald, who was introduced as a gerontologist. Gerontologist?? Boy does that make me feel good.!

There is, and will continue to be much discussion about the "baby boomer" phenomenon in the United States. Here in China, the situation is so different, that it is hard, even, to make a comparison. In America, the concern is that retiring baby boomers will place a heavy burden on the tax paying population. In China, people are often forced into retirement to make way for younger workers. It doesn't apply if you have your own business, but for many other positions, I have heard many stories about healthy, 50 year old people being forced to give up their jobs and accept pensions that were a fraction of their former salaries, just to make room for new professionals entering the work force.

This afternoon Nancy invited me to be the judge for the English contest she put on for her students at the Walmart Superstore. Nancy has an after-school English school for elementary students. Some of those kids really do quite well. I emphasized to them, as I do to all students of English, that listening to English is the most important thing they can be doing at this age. And there are lots of opportunities for this in a city like Beijing. This is one major difference between China and Japan. There doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on English language learning in Japan as there is in China. When Piano first went to Tokyo to do an internship, I asked him if he thought his Japanese was good enough. He told me that they would use English for awhile until their Japanese was good enough. When he got to Japan, he discovered that the young engineers he was working with did not speak English. He was flabbergasted. When he asked them about it, they told him rather nonchalantly that they did not need English.

And there is no English channel in Japan. This is another thing that really amazes me. Here in China, CCTV has a 24 hour English channel. Beijing public television is not, perhaps, the kind of programming that everyone would enjoy, but I have found it to be very useful and informative. The news is a bit slanted...actually not so much slanted as limited. But I have all kinds of other sources for news, so that is not an issue. But programs like Dialogue and Documentary do a lot to fill in the gaps in my attempts to understand the huge changes that are taking place in this country.

Every law in China is printed both in Chinese and in English. In fact, anyone who wants to can purchase an English Language bound set of the laws of China. I don't want to overstate this. It's certainly not like India. But English really is the defacto second national language in China.

Last night Raymond and I went to the coffee bar near the North Gate and watched Brokeback Mountain on his laptop. Raymond had told me he thought it was a good movie, so I had asked him if he thought the director (Ang Lee) had used the movie to manipulate emotions for the purpose of getting the audience to acquiesce to something they ordinarily would not approve of. I was also somewhat curious because the movie had gotten a good write-up in the China Daily. Odd, because this movie will certainly not be shown in China anytime soon. But the director is from Taiwan, so his award gives "face" to the motherland (although I am not sure he would consider China his motherland).

This is not a good movie. I was perplexed when I heard that Ang Lee had gotten an Oscar for this film. Watching the film, though, I can see how this award could have been given even for a film that is not first-rate. The directing in this film is good. But the picture itself leaves much to be desired. I don't even like to put it that way, because it implies that this movie could be rescued by a few changes. In fact, the entire premise of this movie is flawed. It is a sad story, and most of the sadness comes from the fact that there is no redemption in this story, only a deep, unfulfilled lostness. The closest this movie comes to some sort of healing is at the end, when Ennis is talking to his daughter about her upcoming wedding--there does seem to be some sense of family there. But even there, it is so very fragmented.

I am not much of a movie watcher, but I have seen several of Ang Lee's films (Sense and Sensibility; Eat, Drink, Man, Woman; and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Ang Lee is an artistic director, but there seems to be a consistent lack of moral purpose in his work. This movie is no exception. It is not so much that it glorifies the homosexual lifestyle, because this movie certainly doesn't make one wish for such a life. The problem is that while one could certainly conclude from this movie that such a lifestyle is a pathway to loneliness and despair, there is nothing to prevent the same person from going the opposite direction, and concluding that the homosexual lifestyle ought to be normalized, so that individuals of this bent could have the "happiness" of a relationship.

I was talking with a student the other day who had seen this movie. When I told her how I felt about it, she said, "Oh, you cannot accept this. But I can accept this, so this love is very beautiful." The main problem with this movie is that it seems to be based on the belief that homosexuals are born that way, and therefore have no way out. This attitude of hopelessness precludes the possibility of healing and restoration. This, essentially, is my problem with the film. There is no redemption.

When it comes to Chinese directors, I definitely prefer the Chinese Chinese to the American Chinese. The Cultural Revolution was a dark time, but it produced directors like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Ironically, these directors (especially Zhang Yimou) have been influenced by Ang Lee. When Ang Lee came out with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou decided to start making martial arts films. This, I believe was a step down. I shouldn't say too much until I have seen Hero, but the characters in Zhang Yimou's earlier movies (such as To Live) faced the troubles of life by suffering through them, not by magically flying over them. Modern martial arts movies are basically cartoons.

Chen Kaige has been known as the "bad boy" of Chinese directing, but he did make a movie a few years ago that is an excellent family movie. My general statement about Together is "if you don't like that movie, I don't like you." I would not hesitate to show that film to the youngest of children, and they would almost certainly enjoy it (assuming they could read the subtitles).

I cite these two pictures as examples, because I think they stand out in contrast to the stuff that is getting so much press in the States now. Ang Lee's Eat, Drink, Man, Woman did have more of a family emphasis than his other films, and it does do a good job of showing the fast-paced life of modern Taiwan, but I wouldn't feel quite as comfortable showing it to young children, perhaps for that reason.

Oh, brother! Not this again. It's the annual response to the United States State Department Human Rights Report. I cannot comment specifically on the U.S. State Department report, because (surprise, surprise) it is blocked in China. I guess I don't blame the Chinese for smarting a bit at the criticism in the report. The problem is that the Chinese response isn't really a response. The "response" doesn't give a single example of a charge that isn't accurate. It responds by listing all the human rights abuses in America. But it is obvious from reading the response, that the writers thereof know very little about what America is really like. The Wall Street Journal puts it this way:

"Foggy Bottom draws its conclusions through consultations with diplomats on the ground, NGOs, journalists, and others. Beijing's essay draws heavily on the Washington Post and the New York Times editorial pages."

Not that there are not legitimate issues. But they are not credible, because they are picked out at random as a "get back," not itemized sincerely by a country which has a history of concern for human rights.

That having been said, it must be admitted that the Americans have created for themselves a vulnerability which makes the annual State Department Report seem more and more hypocritical every year. Most significant of the human rights abuses is the incarceration of prisoners from Afghanistan at Guantanamo. It is understandable that the Americans would want to prevent war criminals from repeating their crimes. But there are basic rights the Americans have always claimed to believe in that are being denied these folks. In America, there are very strict rules about how long someone can be held without being charged. These rules are being ignored on Guantanamo. I am hearing, now, that prisoners there are being allowed counsel, which is definitely good news. But justice delayed is justice denied, and delay of justice seems to be the standard in this instance. Mark my word, folks, Guantanamo will come back to haunt the Americans, because they are using an off-shore location to exempt themselves from their own standards of justice. The Americans are sowing the wind. We are beginning to feel the first gusts of the whirlwind.

Labels: New York Times

Transportation. I am thinking specifically about inner city transportation now. I live and work on campus, so transportation to work is not an issue, but life is more than just going to work--somehow you have to be able to get about. There are four primary means of transportation for getting around the city. They are the Beijing Subway System, the city busses, taxis, and finally a bicycle. I will deal with the subway system first, because it is really in a class by itself.

The primary subway line (Line 2) is a circle around the city. If you look at the station names, you will see that many of them end with "men." "Men" means "gate." So the stops on Line 2 are located at the sites of the primary gates of the old city wall. But if you look at a city map of Beijing, you will see very quickly that the city of Beijing has grown quite a bit beyond the original size of the city. So while the subway system is great for getting around the city center, there are many parts of the city that are not covered. I live in the upper west side, which is the university district. Thanks to the light rail (above ground) extension to the subway system, I can get on the subway in Wudaokou, which is ten minutes from the North Gate where I live. So if I am going to the city center, the subway is definitely the best way to do it. Very cheap and very convenient.

But I am not always going to the city center. In fact, most of the time I am not going to the city center. Most of my life centers around the Haidian District, so I will talk about the remaining three modes of transportation in terms of that dynamic. The first issue I will address is language. Busses require the highest level of language proficiency. The bus system in Beijing is pretty good. I was not really surprised by this, because I grew up in Asia, and mass transit tends to be much better in Asia than in America. But while the bus system is pretty good, all the place names are in Chinese. So I really cannot use it exhaustively. But I am learning the bus system slowly, mainly by taking rides with other people. If you happen to know the name of the stop you are going to, and the specific bus number, the bus system is pretty handy. Friends I have who use the busses extensively are pretty good at reading the online bus schedules, and they use busses everywhere they go. My use of busses is slowly increasing as I learn the routes.

Next to busses would be taxis (again, in terms of required language proficiency). With taxis, you don't need to be able to read bus signs and know the names of the bus stops, but you do need to be able to tell the driver where you are going, and those guys do not speak English. I really wish my Chinese were better, because most taxi drivers that I have met are pretty nice guys. If I am going to meet someone, or going to some function taking place at a certain location, I always try to find out how to say the name of that location in Chinese. I remember one time I was going to a home fellowship with some foreigners. The guy I called for directions was trying to explain to me what landmarks to look for, where to turn left or right, etc. His instructions were sincere, but useless. I don't have a car, and I wasn't going to be driving. I asked him how to pronounce the name of the place in Chinese. That really is all the information you need, although it certainly doesn't hurt to know the general location. When I first came to Beijing, an American businessman I met at BICF showed me a card with the Chinese names for key locations written in Chinese. Clever, but if I had a card like that, I would burn it. I live here. I really do need to learn the names of places. Now, if I am traveling, and I am staying in a distant city, then I will sometimes take the business card of the motel with me, so that I can always get back. But in the long term, this is no way to live. You've got to be able to speak Chinese at least enough to inform the driver as to your desired destination. There is one way to get around this. A while back, I was going to someone's house, and I knew the general direction, but did not know the actual location. When I got in the taxi, I called my friend, asked for specific directions.

"Never mind. Give your phone to the driver."

Bicycles require the lowest level of language proficiency. You don't need to know bus stops or transfer points, and you don't need to know the Chinese names of places you are going to. But your sense of direction has to be a little better. You have to find your way there. You can buy a basic tourist map at the bookstore for 8 kuai, and that will take care of helping you find where you are going. The layout of Beijing is pretty simple.

But there is an additional benefit to riding a bicycle. Sometimes, I get up on a Saturday morning, and I just want to tour the city. Not easy to do with a bus, and too limited with a subway. But I can get on my bike and be at the park near the city center within about 45 minutes. Beijing is well laid out, all major streets have wide bicycle lanes, and the weather is usually dry. There are only two or three days during the year that I cannot ride a bicycle.

Shoes. There was a guy on one of the "teaching in China" lists who mentioned something about a shop somewhere in Beijing that builds shoes to order. I wrote to him right away and asked for the address, but he somehow never got around to getting it to me.

Well, I have an old pair of military oxfords that I picked up for five bucks years ago at a thrift store in Tempe or Mesa. I have been replacing heels over the years, but a few months ago, the leather uppers split open. The split wasn't very big at first, so I tried to ignore it. But now it's getting to the point where you can see my sock through the hole in my shoe. Not good.

Today, I took my shoe to a local shoe repair guy, and he managed to patch it up pretty good. I was not sure how it was going to look, because he used a brown patch on a black shoe, but the patch is on the inside, and doesn't show through. It is glued and stitched thoroughly. The "battle scar" on the outside doesn't really show up that much if you don't look to close.

When I lived in the States, I used to do somewhat the same kind of thing. I would buy old leather shoes (the kind that are very well made) at thrift stores, and then take them to a shoe repair place to be fixed up. The shoes would cost me five to ten dollars, and the repair would usually be 40 to 50 dollars. These were often shoes you can't buy in a store. Military oxfords are government issue. You have to wait until some retired officer's wife cleans out the closet and brings his shoes down to Goodwill. So for 50 bucks you could basically have a new pair of shoes. But I think they would have laughed at me today. In America, these shoes would have been garbage. I think the best plan would be to buy the shoes in America and have them fixed up by a street-side cobbler here in China. The cost was two yuan. About twenty-five cents.

It takes me back. When I was in college, there was an old German cobbler in the small college town where I lived during my college days. Every time I took a pair of shoes to him to get repaired, his price was the same. The first time I asked him how much he wanted I almost fell over,

"Twenty-five cents."

Now, that was quite a few years ago. I graduated from college in the late seventies. But twenty-five cents was not very much money even at that time. Otto Bedler was an Old World craftsman from the days in Europe when people made things because they needed to be made. Craftsmanship in that world was not a novel luxury. It was the norm.

One of the things I really like about China is that craftsmanship still thrives here. It is taken for granted. Craftsmanship is not totally dead in America, but it is by no means assumed, so the cost is at a premium.

Just discovered that there is a new book starting on Christian Classics. It is the biography of Jonathan Goforth by his wife. Jonathan Goforth was a Canadian missionary to China during the late eighteen hundred's and early nineteen hundred's. Starting date was Thursday, March 2. This is going to be a good one, folks. Don't miss it.

Got my tax stuff from the IRS today. This time they sent me a booklet especially designed for overseas filers. Last time I had to download all the forms from the Internet. Not that big a deal, but this is a lot handier. Handier still would be filing online, using something like Turbo Tax, which I might be inclined to recommend if you have income from more than one country, or if your income exceeds the exclusion. Fortunately (Fortunately??), I don't make enough money to make such software that useful. I have one income from one employer, so my situation is pretty straightforward. It takes me a few minutes to do my taxes.

Basically, if you live and work overseas, your income is excluded from US taxes if you make less than 80,000 US dollars. Needless to say, it will be quite some time before I need to worry about that particular ceiling. Things do get complicated a bit if you are self-employed, because under American law, everyone who is self-employed must pay self-employment tax, no matter where they live. Since I work for a university, I don't have to pay Social Security, which is a relief, because it comes to 15% of income.

Generally, working people in China do not have to file income taxes. It is the company's responsibility to do this. China is a cash oriented society. I have never gotten a paycheck. Once a month, someone comes to me with an envelope containing a wad of bills, and asks me to count them and sign. That's it. The amount they give me is my salary minus Chinese taxes, which are not too bad at my income level. The US government does allow deduction for taxes paid to a foreign government, but for someone in my position, those deductions are irrelevant. Since my income is excluded, I don't need deductions. My US tax liability is 0 dollars and 0 cents.

There is another benefit of living overseas. Expats are automatically given a two month extension. Filing deadline for expats is June 15, not April 15. There are probably lots of American teachers who don't even bother to file income taxes. I think it is a good idea, though, even if you don't have to pay taxes. Don't know how much it matters, because the IRS would have a hard time proving that you had income you weren't reporting, since there are no W2 forms, or anything like it. When I report my income, the IRS has to take my word for it. I have no paycheck, no check stubs, no statement, no nothing. Everything is cash on the barrelhead.

This morning, after church, Claire and Raymond and I went to McDonald's for coffee. Before we went, I wanted to stop at a familiar street vendor and get a Xianburger. I call them Xianburgers because they come from Xi'an. They are kinda like sloppy joes, but the meat is freshly cut off a large piece, and the spices they use cannot be matched. Very tasty and very healthy. I bought one and started to eat it right away, but Claire and Raymond were betting I could get by with eating it at McDonald's if we bought some other stuff, like coffee. I told them we probably would not get by with this, but I went along with it. Sure enough, one of the fuwuyuan came up to Claire (who also had one) and told her that she could not bring food in from somewhere else. I really don't blame them for enforcing this rule. What kind of business would they have (especially in China!) if they allowed anyone to bring in other food. I can't even imagine it.

This meeting of old and new is very interesting in China, especially in relation to food. There are lots and lots of little restaurants that serve many varieties of delicious food. Yet, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken both do very well in this country. One reason is because they do have pretty strict discipline about making sure that people who come are there to buy McDonald's.

Another innovation that sometimes exposes the conflict between the old way and the new way is the buffet restaurant. There are several varieties, but they are similar. Some people call these "cafeterias," because that is how the arrangement strikes them. Basically, you pay a flat price for all you can eat. Most of these places advertise a specialty like pizza or fried chicken. The price is usually in the high thirties, just under 40 RMB. That is about five US dollars, which doesn't seem bad, but for a minimum wage worker, it is not cheap. The first time I went, I couldn't understand why there was never any fried chicken available. Then I noticed a guy carrying his plate with a mountain of fried chicken on it. He had cleaned out the supply. These guys come in from the countryside and pay what, to them, is a high price and they are determined to get their money's worth! One time, I actually heard an announcement in the restaurant that those who take more than they can eat will be fined. It's going to take the laobaixing a little while to get used to this arrangement.

Raymond told me that Beethoven's best work was only equal to Mozart's average work. I got curious, so I found a website that allows you to play five pieces a day for free. Somehow, Mozart's stuff doesn't move me like the Blue Danube Waltz, or the Piano Quintet in A Major by Shubert, but maybe it will with time.

Listen to me. I am talking as if I actually know something about classical music. Boy do I have you fooled! Actually, I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to music. I like a pretty broad variety. It's really hard to say what is my favorite.

The Chinese are great music lovers. If you like concerts and music performances, then Beijing is the place for you. I have already written about Handel's Messiah, which I like to see once a year, but there are many others. Concerts, ballet performances, and variety shows of every kind. Drums, orchestrations, traditional Peking Opera...you name it.

Finally bought a bicycle today. I have been on foot for a couple days. I did that before once. It was just after I moved to Beijing in January of 2004. I did look for a bicycle the first week I was in town, but I didn't find exactly what I was looking for. Spring festival started a week later, and everything was closed up for a week, so walking was my primary means of transportation for a couple weeks until I could finally get wheels. I did a lot of walking in those first two weeks, and developed a inflammation of come kind in one of my feet..probably a tendon or something. Anyway, walking was very, very painful. I must have managed to hide it, because students kept telling me how much energy I had. But I was really hurting. As soon as I got my bicycle, the situation changed. Didn't heal right away, but the pain was gone when I was in the saddle and off my feet. Of course, I remembered the injury again as soon as I started walking, but the overall situation had changed, and my body was slowly able to heal.

But it isn't just the injury. Walking is good exercise, but when it comes to the day to day process of living in Beijing, walking is just not time efficient. Without a bicycle, the day becomes longer, and you just don't seem to get much done.

This time, the monster chain lock I bought cost half as much as the bicycle. That thing is very heavy. I have never seen it used on bikes before. Looks like a motorcycle lock. I hate to keep moving in that direction. Bigger locks just call for bigger thieves. But at least it won't be cut by the puny wire cutter they used to cut my cable lock. Cable locks are an invitation to thieves. I let myself be talked into that one because it was cheap. You get what you pay for.