Eric's Beijing Diary

Melissa quit. She took a job at the Pass By bar down by Houhai Park. Before she left, she made me promise to come down there sometime and visit her. Well, I ride down to Houhai every once in awhile on my bike, so I told her I would drop by sometime. Today, though, I had some work to do on my laptop, so I took the subway to Guloudajie, and looked around for a bicycle rickshaw to take me down to the park. I was immediately approached by a broker for a rickshaw tour company. Probably looking for tourists. He wanted to charge me 20 RMB. That is about twice the going rate for normal rickshaws in other parts of the city. I protested adamantly that I was Chinese, not a foreigner, but he didn't believe me. But I think he could tell that I knew a little more about what those things actually cost than the average tourist. Truthfully, I really don't know that much, because I have never ridden one of those things with another Chinese person. They usually charge me 10 kuai, but they could be charging local people even less. Anyway, he lost his chance when a motorcycle cab driver came up to me and offered to take me there for the same price. Probably a good deal for him; I doubt if he would get more than five from a local person for that trip. But twenty is definitely too much. I could get a taxi for less. Generally, if the rickshaw driver doesn't charge more than a taxi, and the distance is not too long, I will take the rickshaw. It's more interesting. Taxi's always take the main roads. Rickshaws and motorcycle cabs wander among the hutongs. There's just more to see. And somehow, you know they will not be there forever. There used to be 17 million meters of hutongs in Beijing. Now there three million and counting. Down, unfortunately. What can you do? The people who live in these hutongs, with the poor plumbing and all the other problems that come with living in ancient, old-world quarters are dreaming of the day they can move to a nice high-rise. Some of them would like to stay, I am sure, but many of them want to move into something a little more modern. And the companies building the high rises are slightly more interested in making money than in preserving history. Beijing is a fascinating place. It has so much history. But slowly, slowly it is slipping away.

Last night I was on my way back from the Thursday fellowship when I saw some Norwegian young people I have talked to from time to time at the coffee bar. They invited me to an improvisation at the D-22 bar. Turned out to be a Saxophone player who makes weird sounds using a saxophone and another ancient Chinese wind instrument, which I have heard, but can't remember the name of.

Chinese young people are experimenting with all kinds of avant garde music these days, mixing western music with ancient Chinese sounds. Well, some of them. Many of the rock bands pretty much follow the western rock style entirely. You couldn't tell by listening to them that there was anything Chinese about them, except, of course, for the lyrics. Then there are the European rock stars, such as the English Language Danish rock band that is popular here, but which I had never heard of before I came to China. And the French, also. Often you can sit in a restaurant and hear popular French singers. Nobody understands them, but everyone likes to listen to them.

I was entering the coffee bar with my laptop to get some work done last night, and I noticed a sign saying that the coffee bar would be closing early because of a staff party. Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn festival. Well, I wasn't too worried, because "early" turned out to be 11:30, only an hour before the places closes. On a week night, I shouldn't be out that late anyway. So I wasn't worried about getting kicked out before I was ready. As it turned out, I ended up having the opposite problem. They wanted me to stay for the party. I am not one for all night parties on a week night, but I just couldn't say "no."

When I came in last evening, I was just going to have a light salad and call it good. Best laid plans. I ended up pigging out on all the goodies laid out at the party. Lots of talking, music, and some games. They played this one game where you have to put two lollipops in your mouth and blow out some candles while you're saying the name of a fruit. Don't ask me to explain it. I haven't got a clue. But I do like to see these kids having a good time. They deserve it, because they work pretty hard during the day.

Sitting here in the Lush, absorbing the mindlessness of the place. I generally don't like bars, but this place has pretty good food, and this week they have a late dinner special going, so I decided to stop by. During the day, this place is quite a bit less frenzied, and, as I said, the food is good. Techically, it is open 24 hours, but if you get here too early in the morning, the drunks from the night before are still waking up, and it can be a little rowdy. But, as I said, the food is very good here, so I often come here for late breakfast or lunch. But after six in the evening they darken the place up and make it a bar. I don't care for bars. I have never been able to study in a bar. Don't get me wrong--I've never been kicked out of a bar for studying, which is more than I can say for restaurants. The people, both customers and bar tenders are always pretty nice. It's just that bars are so loud it's hard to concentrate. Tonight they are playing one of those quiz games you often see in bars. You know, just something to keep people buying more drinks. The guy is asking a bunch of trivia questions. He just asked, "Who is the current prime minister of Japan." I don't know how to tell this guy that Japan has no prime minister. Abe just resigned. Not sure where this guy has been the past few days--maybe he made up the questions a week ago. Dangerous thing to do when you are dealing with current events. I would say something, but I'm not playing the game. I just came here to get the free mud pie. It's actually pretty good, but you better not eat this every day. I couldn't guess what it was, so I couldn't resist coming here to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, and it's almost killing me. Rich chocolate ice cream and Oreo cookies. Death by chocolate. You really need a stiff cup of coffee to neutralize the callories.

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't like bars. It isn't the people. Most of the folks you meet in bars are pretty nice. Here in Wudaokou, they are mostly kids from various Western countries studying at one of the nearby Universities. I wandered in here one night about a year ago because I got caught in a torrential downpour, and I didn't want to ride home on my bike until the rain let up a little. A Canadian kid took one look at me, reached into his bucket, and handed me a beer. Just now the guy at the next table handed me his mud pie when he saw that I didn't have one. He knew that I had ordered before him. As I said, these are pretty nice kids. But drinking the night away just seems like such a waste of time. I don't know, they would probably think my life is too boring. Solomon said, "of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."

You really can't beat a North China autumn. I'm a bit early, because technically the first day of fall is September 21st if my memory serves me right. But practically speaking, autumn in Beijing starts earlier than that. I don't say that every day in the autumn is sunny. But it really is a pleasant time of the year for the most part. This is especially true if there has been a rain or a little breeze to wash the air. Beijing is not like Western China that way. The government of China has a lot invested in trying to clean up the air for the Olympics. But China also wants to develop the automotive industry. Every day, a thousand new cars are being added to the already strangled traffic in this city. Sure glad I don't have one. Nevertheless, the fall of the year is very pretty. If there is no breeze for several days, then the air gets a little heavy. But I live Northwest of the city, and the prevailing wind is from the Northwest, so it doesn't take long for the fresh air from the countryside to reach me if a breeze comes up.

Fascinating lecture at the Bookworm this evening with Cory Doctorow, a science fiction writer, and blogger with Boingboing.net I was interested in hearing what he had to say, because of his work with copyright issues vis-a-vis Internet publishing. Fortunately for you, there was someone there with a video camera who recorded the entire lecture and put it on Youtube. The guy who does the introduction is Jeremy Goldkorn, a South African blogger from the Danwei blog. I was most interested in how Internet publishing might affect traditional media, especially newspapers. I thought Mr. Doctorow handled this and other questions informatively. I don't know if you can spare sixty minutes right now, but don't put it off too long. This lecture is well worth your time.

Started a new language immersion class again. Slowly but surely, I am getting my arms around this language. I emphasize "slowly," because I have been studying Chinese for almost five years now. The problem, of course, is that I have never been able to study language full time. In some ways, that is good, because, if you are not in a hurry, slow learning is generally better than fast learning. The reason for this if you try to learn in too much of a hurry, you generally have to do a good bit of unlearning down the road. At any rate, the lady in charge of placement talked with me for about 20 minutes in Chinese, and decided to start me in Book 3. That's certainly better than starting at the very beginning, but it still says, "Elementary" on the cover. No matter. This book is not hard, and I can genrally read my way through a chapter in about a day, rather than a week, like the book I have been using.

I am going to Sinoland this time. It's a little more expensive than the previous school I went to, but this school limits class size to no more than 4 students, and follows the "80-20" rule pretty strictly. That means 80 per cent of class time is spent on actual conversation. Over the past five years, what has evolved is a system whereby I go to class for two or three months, then spend many more months studying on my own. If you are going to class for two or three hours a day, you should spend at least another two to four hours studying the material. I just don't have time to do that. So I take the class for awhile, then study on my own for awhile. I have spent my entire adult life developing self-teaching methods. I prefer self-study, because it is generally much more time efficient. But that efficiency begins to diminsh when the material you are studying reaches frustration level. So I try to strike a balance between classroom learning and self-study. When it comes right down to it, that's what any student has to do. We'll see how it goes.