Prison Break

I just got out of my morning one-on-one class, where my professor actually thought my paper wasn't bad - he wanted to know if I had written it myself, which is sort of a compliment, I guess... actually, I was kind of annoyed, and showed him my outline.  I may have taken more sentences from the book than I should have, but it was me taking them!

 

In any case, the highlight of my day yesterday by far was watching "Prison Break" for four hours straight - one of my roommate's friends had dropped off a super-pirated copy in our room a few days ago, and not having anything better to do last night (and not wanting to re-read my paper at ALL), I decided to start watching it and see if it was any good - and also try to figure out why every Chinese person I've ever talked to about it is just totally addicted.  I had to make myself stop watching it at 2:00 AM and go to bed... it's really, really good!  The picture quality was pretty bad, and it was all subtitled in Chinese, but it was still impossible to turn off.  I was talking about it in class this morning with my teacher, and he said he's going to head across the street later this morning and buy a pirated copy himself.  My roommate and I have plans to watch it again tonight - we both really like 迈克尔-斯科菲尔德!

 

Now off to get lunch, and (possibly) watch another Prison Break episode.  SO much more fun than studying!

Techno Motorcycle

This morning started off with me going for my first real run since getting sick last week - made all the more auspicious by the motorcycle blasting techno music REALLY LOUDLY which passed by right at the beginning of the run.  I mean, I like techno as much as the next person (probably more), but not really at 6:45 in the morning.  And on a motorcycle.  The weather was perfect, though, and the guy with the saxophone was out again, accompanied by a number of people singing what sounded like traditional Chinese folk songs.  Didn't really jive with the saxophone, but then again, it didn't really matter. 

 

The definite lowlight of my day was sitting down and pounding out a 2500 character essay on intellectual property rights.  Back in college, I used to have this thing where I'd compare papers to ski races - a ten page paper was like a 10k race - you needed to have some basic aerobic conditioning and the right wax in order to have it not be too painful ( i.e., you needed to do at least some research and have some idea of what you were trying to say).  A two page paper, on the other hand, was like a sprint.  Even if you had no idea what you were doing, you could still just double pole your way through.  I decided today that a 2500 character essay is like a 25k race - a skate race.  Like Middlebury Carnival my sophomore (?) year, where it was about 38 degrees with new snow, and it seemed like the hills never ended.  Just endless marching through snow the texture of mashed potatoes, where every stride was agony.  Writing the paper today wasn't quite as physically painful, but I can hardly see straight right now from staring at the computer screen (and characters!) all day, and the horrible insult to the Chinese language I've managed to crank out is small comfort.  I've adopted a new writing style while in China, called "Taking It Almost Directly From The Book"... we'll see what my teacher says tomorrow!  The thing is, Chinese teachers tend to have a very black and white approach to right and wrong - the book is right, therefore whatever is taken directly from the book is also right.  The minute you start changing things around and adding your own personal viewpoint is the minute you start veering into "wrong" territory.  I did add a little bit of my own opinion regarding intellectual property rights in China, but I guarantee you it will be the part of my paper which my teacher likes the least.

 

Man, it's so liberating to be able to write stuff in English!  Writing in Chinese feels like building walls with Legos, only they're enormous, cumbersome Legos, and you're not sure if they have any solid foundation at all.  I'm heading over now to print out what I've written, but I have more than a little trepidation about showing it to my roommate tonight.  I'm a 29 year old writing like a 12 year old, but hey - I'm writing in Chinese, which is still kind of cool!

 

So, off to enjoy the last of the perfect weather evening - the chicks were out in force outside the computer lab earlier today - it's amazing how fast they're growing, and how quickly their "big" feathers are coming in!  In other news, the water was turned off in the dorm again last night with no warning, from 11:00 until midnight.  No one knows why.  I have stopped questioning the logic behind the decisions around here, and just accepted that there really is no logic - and somehow, that just makes things easier.  As long as the water comes back on eventually... well, that's all you can hope for.

Why Is There A Donkey In Front of the Trademark Office?

People back home often ask me what the biggest difference is between China and the United States, and most of the time it's hard to even start comparing.  On the most basic level, there are a lot of similarities -- human societies tend to function in much the same way.  We build apartment buildings, streets, schoools.  People wake up in the mornings, eat breakfast, take the kids to school and then go work in an office.  There are hospitals, firemen, and police. 

 

All the most basic stuff is the same, it's just... in China, added on top of everything are donkeys and cars with three wheels.  There are tractors pulling carts loaded with watermelon.  There are enormous trenches dug in streets and then covered over for no apparent reason.  And to top it off, the people driving the tractors, and digging the trenches, and grooming the donkeys will all look at YOU like YOU'RE the one who's doing something really strange, just because you're standing on the sidewalk in a place that feels like it's a million miles from home -- a place where you feel like there must be rules that make it all make sense... if you could only figure out what they were.

 

This morning I went to the Harbin City Trademark Office with my one-on-one teacher and one classmate.  It was located in a nondescript office building in the Harbin Economic Development zone -- and, as the title indicates, there was a donkey parked in front of it.  It was a rather mangey donkey, and its owner kept pulling enormous hunks of fur out of it as he watched us get out of the car.  I really felt bad for the donkey -- it didn't look too happy.  In any case, after a brief staring contest with the donkey's owner we went into the building and walked up to my teacher's friend's office.  It was a rather disorganized meeting, as I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to ask, and my classmate isn't studying trademark law at all and just kept reading the newspaper, but I did manage to learn some interesting, if not exactly relevant stuff.

 

For instance, did you know that in China it is illegal to name your dog Hu Jintao?  We were talking about what you can and cannot use as a trademark in China, and while in the US it's OK to plaster American flags all over everything, in China the use of the national flag is strictly controlled, and cannot be casually used on clothing or packaging.  I then tried to make a joke involving "Hu Jintao Cookies", which turns out is also illegal - the names of politicians cannot be used for anything, including pet names.  However, you CAN name your dog Chen Shuibian (the Taiwanese president).  Naming your dog after the current prime minister of Japan is also OK.  Celebrity names are fair game, however, which makes me wonder: how come no one has come out with "Jackie Chan Cookies"?  hmmm....

 

I also found out where the illegal sock capital in China is located - it's in Wenzhou.  This came from me asking what the most common sort of trademark infringement was that they dealt with - interestingly enough, it's people ripping off the Nike logo.  My classmate helpfully demonstrated how prevalent fake Nike logos are in China by showing off the socks he was wearing, which he bought outside the school gates.  I've also seen "NKIE" brand stuff, but his socks were spelled correctly.  From our conversation, I gathered that cracking down on that kind of trademark infringement is like fighting a forest fire with a garden hose - they know it exists, they know it's illegal, but there's nothing they can (or will) do about it.  Apparently, the factories in Wenzhou are starting to legally register their own trademarks, so progress is being made (if slowly), but how can you resist fake Nike socks at four pairs for 10 kuai (about $1.50)?  The woman whose office we visited didn't seem incredibly overworked - the biggest trademark violators are in the south, and I never learned exactly what it is that they're up to in Harbin - got too distracted by the sock story.

 

They go after trademark infringers through a combination of their own sleuthing and people turning other people in.  Apparently, if you report someone for trademark infringement, you get 13% of the reward money.  I didn't ask the obvious follow-up questions - how often this happens and how much the reward money is - but I think it has to do with the severity of the case.  There was a huge scandal involving a factory producing fake medicine at the end of last year which the trademark office was involved in - though I think the matter was passed up to the Public Security Bureau when it became apparent that the matter was criminal instead of administrative in nature.  (As the trademark office, they have the power to fine people for trademark infringement and improper use of trademarks, but don't have the power to impose criminal penalties.)  I asked the woman to give me an example of improper trademark use, and she gave me the example of someone changing the color of their trademark from red to yellow, which could cause a consumer to confuse that trademark with a competitor's.  It sounded a little too minor to me, when there is so much rampant trademark infringement going on of a much more insidious nature, but maybe they're just trying to focus on the stuff they can easily target.

 

When we left her office to go get lunch, we discovered that our teacher had locked his keys inside his car.  No problem, he said - he was going to call the local police station and have a police officer come unlock his car for him.  Seeing our confusion, he explained: the police in China have keys that can unlock every car, and every apartment in the city (to assist them with searches).  I don't know if I believe this, or if I heard him correctly, but that's what I think he said.  To him, it made perfect sense: how can the police search an apartment if they can't get in?  I guess the police having a key to every car is a lot more efficient than calling AAA or breaking a window... but also kind of scary, in a way.

 

So, all in all, a very worthwhile trip, but unlike anything I was expecting - pretty much a normal day in Harbin.  Off now to go to my last class of the day - going to try not to fall in the enormous trench they've just dug outside the computer center.  Repairs are in full swing on campus -- I actually am going to one-on-two class a bit late today, as my classmate showed up at my dorm room earlier to ask me if he could switch class times with me.  "They're using a blow torch in my bathroom," he said.  "I'm scared.  Can I go to class now, and you go later?"  China may be many things, but it's never boring...

two weeks...

Despite the fact that my roommate keeps asking me if she can take me to the hospital, my cold is actually a lot better now (I spent all afternoon napping, which helped a lot!)  I can't remember if I've mentioned this before in my blog or not, but the Chinese have a very different attitude towards hospitals and doctors than we do.  They'll go to the hospital with what we would consider to be incredibly minor ailments, and will see nothing wrong with bothering a doctor to get a prescription for medicine to help treat a sore throat.  As for me, I can't imagine walking into a hospital and telling a doctor, "My throat hurts."  I mean, it's only a cold.  I ran in a track meet on Saturday (which is probably contraindicated for cold treatment) - but the point is, colds are inconvenient things, and make you feel pretty cruddy at times, but they're nothing you need to go to a hospital for.  I've got enough cough drops, Robitussin, Nyquil, Dayquil and Benadryl stockpiled in my room to treat a small army... I'm going to be OK!  Now if only I can convince my roommate of this....

 

As an aside, it rained all day today (again), and there was no water in the dorm (again) - but they tore out all the rusty pipes from our bathrooms and dumped them in the hallway - pretty interesting to see how corroded they all got, and I was going to take pictures earlier today but forgot - hopefully they'll still be there when I get back.  I'm getting more and more immune to the no-water phenomenon, and pretty unfazed by the rain as well -- was just thinking today how much easier life in the US is going to seem when I get back (two weeks from today! can't believe it's gone so fast...)  I was thinking as I was walking to dinner that what I really want is cranberry juice and lemonade... cranberry juice is what I really missed when I was in Germany, and what I still miss here in China.  Kind of random, the things that pop into your head at the most unexpected times... I hope they have cranberry juice at the Chicago airport.

 

My one-on-one teacher just called, and I am going to be meeting him at 10:10 tomorrow morning (and not a minute later!) to drive over to the Harbin copyright office.  I've been looking forward to this trip for a while - unlike the court, I think we're officially allowed to be there, or at least, no one's empowered to kick us out - and they know we're coming, which is also good.  I really don't know what there will be to see, or to talk about, but I'm going to head back to my room now and look over my copyright notes, both in preparation for tomorrow and in preparation for the horribly long paper we have to write (due on Thursday, in my case).  off now to start working - copyright report to follow tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

Track and Field Craziness

I have secretly always wanted to be part of a mass Communist-style rally -- the pageantry, the kitschiness, the marching.  I think the closest I'll ever come to that goal was on Saturday morning, when I got roped into participating in the opening ceremonies for the school's annual track and field meet.  Only Communists would schedule opening ceremonies for 7:30 in the morning, and only Communists would require everyone to meet up an hour beforehand, to "organize".  The few Americans who managed to crawl out of bed and show up at 6:30 AM, upon finding out that the thing wasn't going to start for another hour, immediately revolted and escaped to go get breakfast.  When we made it back to the staging area, we discovered that the teachers in charge of the Foreign Students Center were giving everyone balloons (the idea was to have every department in the school march in as separate teams, everyone wearing different uniforms).  If you want to see a picture of all the foreign students holding balloons, and the athletes wearing our warmup uniforms, check out this page, and scroll down to the fourth picture from the top: http://news.hit.edu.cn/articles/2007/05-26/05184915.htm.  I'm easy to spot, as I'm pretty much the only person with blond hair.

 

People kept asking me if we had this kind of track and field meet in the US.  It really wasn't that easy a question to answer, as we have plenty of track and field meets in the US, but none at all like the one I participated in yesterday.  For instance, you would NEVER get Americans out of bed at 7:30 in the morning to come watch an opening ceremony like the one that was held on Saturday, but yet the stadium here in Harbin was packed - all because everyone who was there basically had no choice.  Faced with dire threats of course failure and doom, you're going to be in your seat in the stands at 7:30, even if you're there reading a newspaper (as many students were).  That being said, there were really a number of students who got fairly into it, and a lot of people cheered for me when I was out running (which I really needed, especially in the last leg of the 4x400) -- all in all, it was pretty cool to get cheered for, even if running in front of all those people did make me really nervous!

 

The best part about the whole thing is that I think we're going to get to keep the uniforms they gave us - at least, they haven't said anything to us yet about turning them back in.  I was one of the fortunate people whose uniform fit, and while the shorts are really really a bit too SHORT, the top is fine, and the warmups fit great.  It just seemed like an incredible amount of energy spent on organizing what in the US would be a pretty routine event - just minus the marching-filled opening ceremonies and the tug-of-war (which we didn't wind up participating in because we all had class - who schedules a tug-of-war for 8:30 in the morning on a Friday?  Communists).

 

I am now off to head back to my room, and possibly venture out this afternoon in search of presents.  My departure date from Harbin is all-too-rapidly approaching, and I'm realizing now that I've got to figure out what I'm going to bring back to give to people!  off to see what's out there...

Chinese Thunderstorm

I was getting ready to head out to the computer lab when I heard a strange rumbling.  Really, it was unlike anything I'd ever heard before - just a low growl coming from the sky.  It wasn't until I got outside that I saw flashes of lightning in the clouds, and realized that it was a thunderstorm - but a constant, rumbling thunderstorm, not at all like what I'm used to hearing at home.  Maybe it's the fact that I have a slight sore throat (and possibly a fever) that's making what I'm writing not make any sense, but it was really kind of creepy!  I hurried up the street to the computer lab as fast as I could, passing lots of people huddling in doorways waiting for the rain to pass.  It was POURING by the time I got here, and I am just passing time right now, waiting for it all to end.

 

This week is just flying by... can't believe I only have a little over two weeks left in China, and then I'm home!  I just checked the Red Sox schedule, and they're going to be at Fenway the week after I get back -- my plan right now is to fly back to NH, spend a week at home wtih the parents recovering from the jet lag, and then drive my car back June 17th.  don't even want to THINK about having to unpack all my stuff again - it was such a hassle packing in the first place, and I was so stressed and chaotic at the time I don't know where half the stuff went -- I have all these grand schemes about making sure everything is perfectly organized this time, but I'm sure I'm just going to wind up chucking it all in my closet again and forgetting about it... how am I ever going to find anything again???

 

The one disappointment is that I'm not going to be able to run the mile in the university track meet - as it turns out, it's on Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday, and I have a class conflict.  I will, however, be able to participate in the tug-of-war, which should be fun, provided we can drag enough people out of bed - who on earth schedules a tug-of-war competition for 8:30 Friday morning?  Hopefully I will have recovered from my sore throat by then - I have a ton of throat drops and some tea, and just napped all afternoon, so now feel much better... we need four girls to form a team, so I've got to show up!

 

Other than the throat, life in China is moving along as usual - when I got back to the dorm yesterday, there was a Chinese worker calmly smoking a cigarrette while leaning on the "No Smoking" sign - they've been using torches attached to highly explosive tanks of gas to cut through the rusty iron pipes they're replacing in the dorm... but he didn't seem too worried.  I really wanted to go grab my camera and take a picture, but by the time I got back he was gone. 

 

What else?  My roommate taught me to put up my hair in a twist and secure it with a chopstick - it actually looks really cool!  We had a lot of fun playing with my hair - it was very pajama-party-like.  Much more fun than homework!

 

Nuts - I just remembered I have calligraphy class in ten minutes.  I'm not planning on going - I'm still kind of sick - but I still need to head over there and tell the teacher I'm not coming.  that's all for now!

Where the Cute Chicks Are...

...is right outside the computer lab.  I saw eight of them last Friday, and there were five of them hopping around as I walked in today.  Also two big chickens out front looking incredibly disinterested.  The chicks' big feathers are just starting to grow in, although they're really only about five inches long still.  SO cute!

 

I was thinking this morning, as I was out running, about the random stuff you (quite literally sometimes) run into when you venture outside in Harbin.  This morning I saw several motorcycles veering all-too-close to the pedestrians on the bike path, two carts piled high with sacks of indeterminate nature, and passed underneath the railway bridge where yesterday I saw teenagers throwing rocks into the muck below with unabashed glee (the rain last week, combined with the city shutting off the water for two days, has turned the drainage ditch which runs parallel to the bike path into nothing less than an open sewer.  The rocks the kids were throwing yesterday made a horrible "SPLAT!" sound, which the kids thought was absolutely second-to-none).  The bike path I run on leads to a city park, which at quarter-to-seven this morning was full of people singing in chorus, practicing tai chi, playing badminton, just out walking, or in one guy's case, playing the saxophone in a run-down pavilion overlooking the river (the park at this point is more of a river and less of a drainage ditch, the more noxious stuff having settled downstream).  The saxophone really made me wonder -- where did he get it?  Who taught him to play it?  It's not every day you see a saxophone in China.

 

The more I think about it, the more I realize how likely you are to run into totally random things here, and how normal crazy randomness has become -- and also, how we as students have become more open to the possibility of just about anything happening, the impossibility of doing much to control it, and just accepting what we get and making the most of it.  If you like to complain about the small stuff, you'd have a hell of a time here.  A lot of the time, the general attitude is like that of a stewardess I once overheard telling a passenger on a plane what his dinner choices were: "Well, you have two choices.  You can eat it, or not eat it."  You just sort of have to do the best you can with what you've got.

 

One final note: a group of us CET'ers are currently getting ready to participate in a HIT track meet to be held this weekend - apparently, every department in the school is sending a representative team, and a couple of us are going to help represent the foreign students (and CET as well).  We had an incredibly disorganized "tryout" today at noon, which meant that we were supposed to run 100 meters to see who was the fastest foreign student (in order to form relay teams).  I surprised myself by being the fastest girl (not bad, 29 year old!), but the victory was tempered by the fact that most of my competitors were wearing jeans.  There was one Russian girl who showed up later who looked fast, but she was also very clearly a cheater (those Russians!).  Anyway, it should be an interesting time this weekend - I'll be running in the 4x400, the 1500, and possibly also the 4x100.  They are going to give us all special "track uniforms" to wear -- we'll see what those look like.  In China, if you are going to participate in a track meet, proper attire is requested!

A Question of Ethnicity

For the record, the water came on again just after I wrote the last blog post.  It is still on as of now.  However, they are in the process of replacing all the pipes in the dorm (there are pipes lying around EVERYWHERE in the hallways), so who knows how reliable the water will be in the next few weeks.  I was woken up this morning by what sounded like sledgehammers attempting to pound through cement on the floor above me... it's a bit of an adventure.  From looking at the condition of the pipes they're replacing, though, it's obvious why they're ripping them all out.  For now, I'm just going to try and get a run and a shower in this afternoon before the water goes off again!

 

Yesterday morning we had a CET "language practicum" where we all piled into a bus and headed out to a local ethnic Korean village.  The story behind the village, from what I understood, is despite the fact that the forebears of the current residents arrived in China several hundred years ago (though some arrived later), due to cultural differences between the Koreans and Chinese, they were never able to fully integrate into the surrounding rural area, and so were allocated their own village to live in.  They have preserved their heritage, customs, and language, which meant that it was difficult to talk to the older residents (the local school teaches classes in Chinese, so the little kids were actually the easiest to talk to - that is, if you could get them to stand still!)  It wasn't the best organized trip - we wound up just  wandering around the village looking for people to talk to, and there just weren't that many people around.  There were grandparents and small children, but everyone from age 15-45 seemed to have left to either go to Korea or bigger cities in China to look for work.  The money they send home is funding the major renovations going on in the village - it's very obvious that a major portion of the town has been newly rebuilt within the last ten years.

 

As a language practicum, it was pretty much a failure, at least for me (though some other students found people willing to talk to them) - there was one guy who took some time out from renovating his house to talk to us about his life, and also how the Chinese government policies vary with respect to ethnic minorities - the people in this village are exempt from the one-child policy, and are allowed to have two children, four years apart.  I learned that in other parts of rural China, the one-child policy has been revised to allow couples to have two children, eight years apart -- but only if the first child is a girl.  If the first child is a boy, the one-child policy remains in force. 

 

After patting some dogs, chasing some kids around, and getting some lunch at the local restaurant, we headed to the village community center for an afternoon of skits and games.  It was kind of a long afternoon, but the skits were fun to watch, and my combined "special class" won an prize for using the most vocabulary words... none of them spoken by me, I don't think.  (I always tell people to just give me a few, very simple lines, because I get horrible stage fright and tend to forget everything I'm supposed to say immediately after the skit starts.)  All in all, it was an OK day, but I would have way rather have gone to Shanghai (my original plan for this weekend, until our language practicum got rescheduled).  Shanghai will have to wait... I am currently thinking about going to Inner Mongolia two weekends from now -- one of my friends from here wants to go and ride horses and live in a yurt on the grasslands... it's kind of a feasible weekend trip from Harbin, but I'm still debating it in my head... we'll see!

The People's Court

OK, just to get this out of the way first: THERE IS STILL NO WATER.  There hasn't been running water since 10:00 PM the night before last.  Everything here is starting to smell, including me.  Rumor has it that the water will be turned on at 11:00 this morning - that was over an hour ago, and there is still no water.  I know that replacing lead pipes is important, but why can't they do it, say, over a series of three nights instead of one 36 hour period?  The sketchiest thing is that all the restaurants are still open for business as usual... I think I'm going to go to the supermarket and get some bread, and have a peanut-butter-and-jelly dinner tonight -- although I'm REALLY hoping the water will get turned on by then!

 

The trip to court today was kind of anticlimatic, as we didn't actually get to hear a case.  There wasn't any scandal or issue with us being Americans -- the plaintiff and defendant just simply didn't show up -- apparently, the case was settled just before trial.  There weren't any other trials going on that we could see (our teacher didn't have any other connections he could use to get us in), so we just headed back out about 20 minutes after we arrived.

 

Despite the disappointment at not being able to hear a case, getting into the building was pretty cool just in itself.  Not that there was anything special about it, but it was just special in its ordinariness.  The building itself was a normal high-rise - the classic granite-clad government building, much the same as any American courthouse (save the truly cool court buildings, like the federal court building in Boston).  I walked through the metal detector, then had to turn in my camera at the desk (but they let me keep my cell phone).  The most interesting thing about signing in my camera was that they asked me to use my Chinese name - I thought for sure that in an official place like a courthouse, they'd want my real legal name, but no -- 江文兰worked just fine for signing-in-camera purposes. 

 

After that was done, we headed up the back stairs to the courtroom.  One more thing about the lobby where we entered: it was a very busy place.  We were by no means the only people there (but clearly the only foreigners).  There was a LED board with the names of all the court cases on it, and the courtrooms in which they were being tried.  It was clearly a place open to the public... the Chinese public.  Boy, did we get stared at like we had just fallen out of the sky!

 

The courtroom itself was smaller than I was used to, but I think that's because the only other courtrooms I've been in have been for jury trials, and there are no jury trials in China.  There were three judges who sat in chairs in the front (all women, interestingly enough), and then a court reporter / clerk who sat in front of the judges, typing away on a computer (according to my teacher, all of the court reporters in China have received legal training and passed an exam, and serving as a court reporter / clerk is a necessary pre-requirement for becoming a judge).  The judges looked slightly askance at us as we entered the courtroom, and it soon became obvious why -- my teacher had only told them that we were students, conveniently leaving out the fact that we were American students.  They were not exactly thrilled to see us, but let us stay, especially after my teacher told them that we had only been in China for two months, and probably wouldn't be able to understand anything.  They seemed to relax a bit after being told this, and I tried my best to look clueless and stare out the window at this point.  It was sort of an interesting dynamic -- my teacher was lying through his teeth at this point about us not being able to understand anything, and the judges were letting us stay, knowingly breaking the rule about no Americans being allowed inside.  It was really too bad that no one showed up, as I was really getting excited to actually hear a case.  After the whole thing fell through, there was no hope of just walking into another courtroom -- I felt a bit like a bull in a china shop at this point, because we were just making people nervous simply by our presence. 

 

After retrieving our cameras, we walked outside to take pictures in front of the building.  I also took a picture of the TV tower right across the street, famous (according to my teacher) for being the highest steel tower in Asia - who knew?  I might try and see if I can go up it at some point, though I'm starting to realize that my time here is starting to run out all-too fast... only three more weekends left in Harbin, then off for one day in Beijing, and then I'm getting on a plane to go back!  hard to believe it's all gone by so fast.  I'm off now to go to afternoon class, where (hopefully) there will be water in the academic building.  keeping fingers crossed!

Water outside, not inside

To clarify the above title: it's pouring rain outside, and they've turned off the water again.  There was a sign posted in the dorm lobby downstairs yesterday warning us that the water would be (again) turned off from 7:00 AM until 10:00 PM today.  What they forgot to mention was that what they really meant was that the water was going to be turned off at 10:00 PM last night.  This caused no end of consternation on my part.  I'm usually pretty flexible, and willing to go with the flow, but I just got fed up last night... for crying out loud, I just wanted to flush the damn toilet.  My reaction to the non-flushing toilet was a very loud "AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!" which my roommate correctly interpreted as the universal language for "%$^&*^%^!!!!!!"  I then told her that I was going to write a letter to the mayor to complain, to which she responded, "You'll never be able to find him."  I told her that if this were America, the mayor would be forced to leave.  Her response?  "Helena, this is China.  They'll make you leave."  (For those of you who speak Chinese, what I actually said was, "在美国，我们会让他走。" "文兰，这是中国，他们会让你走..."  A brief but interesting insight into Chinese politics, and the futility of it all.  Long story short, I filled a bunch of buckets with water, and am just dealing with it... this afternoon I went to the local coffee place and got a strawberry-banana smoothie, which helped matters immensely.

 

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the water does in fact get turned back on tonight, as I have a court date tomorrow... hooray!  A fellow student and I are meeting my teacher at 8:20 AM tomorrow morning, and heading over to the courthouse.  I have to remember to bring my student ID and a copy of my passport (I will probably bring the real thing as well, just for good measure).  I'm supposed to dress up and look respectable, which hopefully includes showering (and not standing outside underneath the downspout with a towel).  They may or may not let me take pictures (there are no specific rules regarding taking photos in a Chinese courtroom - it's just according to the whim of the judge).  I still don't know exactly what the case I'm going to be hearing is regarding, but I do know that it's an intellectual property rights case of some sort.  After lunch, I'm going to be heading over to the Harbin copyright office to meet with a friend of my teacher's who works there.  Apparently she's preparing a bunch of materials for me to read, which should be really interesting.  I'm just really psyched to get to see the inside of a Chinese office, and I know this sounds kind of geeky, but copyright protection is SO vital for sustainable economic development, and just so important in general... anyway, I just hope I'm able to understand what they're all saying.

 

OK... time to brave the rain and head back to the dorm.  I've heard a rumor that the large chickens outside the computer lab have been replaced with tiny baby chicks, which I'm really excited to see... but they're probably inside right now staying dry.  more later!

Escape from Harbin

I am so, so tired right now, so I'll just say this as a disclaimer: We got back to Harbin around 3:45 this morning, which means that from about 3:15 until 4:30, I was awake.  Not to mention the earlier part of the night, when I was kept awake by the enormous man snoring in the bunk right next to me.  But from 4:30 to 8:00 this morning, and later from 1:00 to 3:00 this afternoon and from 4:00 to 6:00 this evening, I slept just great.  Just to warn you, though: if this entry sounds a little disconnected, it's because I'm still not sure if my brain has really started working again... still pretty groggy!

 

This weekend was great fun (enormous snoring man excepted).  Thursday night we headed out of town - I had dinner with three other Chinese roommates.  It was really pretty interesting to be a fly on the wall and just listen to what Chinese college students talk about when they're still getting to know eachother, which included various culinary specialties from their respective hometowns ( i.e. "Do you have this up where you live?" and "I'll ask my dad to bring some down the next time he visits.")  It's amazing how divided China is regionally - these were three students from three different parts of Heilongjiang (the northernmost province in China, where I'm currently living).  I found out Thursday night that Heilongjiang is actually shaped like a chicken - to better understand where the towns they were from were located, the students were saying what part of the chicken they lived in.  (Harbin is located near the feet.)  They waited until the food arrived to change the subject - the second part of the meal was spent describing gruesome injuries they themselves had suffered, or had seen other people suffer.  I found out that my roommate got two of her fingers smashed in a bus door when she was younger, and had to wear a cast where she was permanently flashing other people the "peace" sign.  Fortunately, my Chinese isn't good enough yet to get totally grossed out, so I was still able to enjoy my dinner.

 

After dinner we went to the convenience store to get a 24 pack of beer (vital for long train rides - and it was to SHARE!) and then headed to the train station.  Train stations in China all seem to remind me of Ellis Island in reverse - it all seems like mad chaos, except that there is sort of a system in place, and people all seem to make it onto the right train in the end.  We wound up going "hard sleeper", which is a car with rows of cabins open to the hallway, all of them with six bunks.  People tend to sit on the lower bunk to chat (or drink beer), and retire to the upper bunks to sleep.  The lights all get turned out at 9:30 sharp, which is why they tell you to bring a flashlight (which I didn't, but I will next time).  I don't like to sleep on trains, because all the rocking back and forth makes me afraid the whole thing is just going to fall over.  I know that doesn't make any sense, but I still worry.

 

We got to Dandong around 9:00, and after heading to the grocery store to stock up on provisions (my roommate pointed out that the grocery store we went to was a Taiwanese chain, and I wasn't sure if she meant anything by it, so I didn't say anything -- it seemed like a normal grocery store to me...) we headed to the bus, and from there drove down the coast to get on the boat to the island where we spent Friday night.  To say that the ocean was a bit choppy would be a severe understatement - they put us in two speedboats with enormous outboard motors, and the driver we had seemed perfectly happy to rev the engine and head straight out into the waves - I was very happy to be in the back, so didn't have to bounce around nearly as much as the people in the front - but it was still far from a smooth ride.  After we landed on the island, we transferred to another bus which brought us to our hotel on the far shore - I was lucky to be roommates with the program director, which meant that we got the best room (very nice ocean view!) 

 

Put Americans next to the ocean, and the first thing they want to do is swim in it - despite the fact that it was about 60 degrees and threatening rain, and who knows how cold the water was... foot numbingly cold at the very least (one of those times when you're really glad you're not a guy!)  My roommate took some great pictures of us all splashing around, followed by pictures of us all running out of the water as fast as we could.  The coldest part of the whole thing wasn't swimming in the ocean - it was getting back to the room to discover that there was no more hot water.  I took the coldest shower in the history of cold showers, wrapped myself up in my duvet wearing all the clothes I had brought with me, and tried to get warm.  Our director had brought hot chocolate along, and I swear, nothing has ever tasted so good!

 

It was kind of a gross day - it rained all afternoon, and after exploring the town for a bit, and climbing up to a pagoda on top of a small hill, we headed back to the hotel.  I took a nap, and other people played cards until dinnertime.  The original plan was to have a bonfire on the beach and roast a sheep - but since it was pouring rain, the plan was changed to roasting small cubes of meat over coal fires indoors (the windows were open to prevent immediate carbon monoxide poisoning, but it was still pretty smoky).  After dinner we played more cards (free Yalu River beer until 9:00 - the Yalu River being the border between China and North Korea - I still think "Drink the Border!" would be an excellent advertising slogan, but I digress...)  In any case, it was a fun night.

 

The next morning dawned all-too early, and we all trooped back onto the bus, back over the island, clambered out to the boats (low tide, so much calmer water this time), and then made it back to the mainland for the bus to our next destination, the name of which I have completely forgotten (this is what happens when you find yourself on a group tour - you don't need to know where you're going, because you just follow everyone else).  In any case, it has a real Chinese name which I will look up when I get home, but I kept calling it "Happy Valley" in my head, because that just made it easier for me to remember.  In any case, Happy Valley is actually managed by a private company, which is leasing it on a long-term (40 years?) basis from the Liaoning provincial government.  It looks like there's been some serious water-management done in the past - there were dams everywhere - but the water was a very nice deep-green color, and after a brief cloudburst the sun came out, and after hiking up a very steep trail to the top of one of the mountains, we were greeted with a beautiful view on all sides.  I haven't really gotten out in the woods much since I've been in China, and it was so nice just to be in a place where the trees outnumbered the people - even though there were horribly ugly condo developments, and golf carts racing around at unstable speeds, it was still just nice to not be surrounded by buildings on all sides. 

 

We stayed at a "rural farmhouse" on the eastern side of Happy Valley, which was kind of a trip in itself - as soon as we got back a group of neigboring farmers showed up at the back gate offering horse rides - for 10 kuai, I got about a 15 minute round trip on the back of a horse which kept stopping to eat grass on the side of the trail - it was still pretty fun, though.  After dinner our hosts built us a bonfire - nothing unites students from diverse cultures like the universal human fascination with fire.  Not really feeling like drinking more of the border, I went to bed pretty early - but not before my roommate made me switch beds, threatening me with slow, lingering sickness and death from cold (if not evil spirits) if I didn't switch rooms and sleep on the kang down the hall, instead of my originally selected cot.  For those of you who don't know, Chinese have traditionally slept on a bed known as a kang, which is very wide (about four people across), and it actually not so much a bed as an oven - it is made out of earthen clay, and a fire is stoked underneath, which makes it very warm and cozy.  The drawback of the kang, however, is that you are basically sleeping on a rock, but my arguments to my roommate about how I wanted to sleep on my cot with three blankets, that I wouldn't be too cold, that I grew up in New Hampshire and I KNOW what cold is, etc. etc. etc.... all in vain.  I slept on the rock (but it was a very warm and cozy rock!)

 

Sunday morning we drove up to Dandong, and took a speedboat tour of the Yalu River.  The most exciting part of the tour was when our motor stalled, and we started drifting slowly over to the North Korean side.  A couple excited cell phone calls from our pilot later, the motor started up again, and we continued our journey down the safe side of the middle. 

 

I can't tell you how eerie it was to see North Korea.  There were no people there.  The Chinese side is packed with skyscrapers and sightseers.  The North Korean side seemed to be empty warehouses, empty boats pulled up on the bank, and one forlorn Ferris wheel with no one on it.  There was only one barge I saw loaded with anything, and it was loaded with Red Cross food supplies.  As soon as I saw the Red Cross logo and realized what it was, I just felt sick to my stomach.  The only North Koreans we saw were two soldiers on a boat who waved to us. 

 

For some reason, I thought that there would be more traffic back and forth between the two sides, but that was very much not the case.  North Korea is completely closed - any North Korean who escapes into China and is found by the Chinese authorities is immediately returned and executed.  From listening to the Chinese talk about it, what we saw right next to the border is the "nice" part, the part they dress up for the outsiders to see.  The situation inland is indescribably worse.  The most interesting part was hearing how the one working bridge across the border (the one that wasn't bombed by the Americans during the Korean War) is pre-wired for detonation, should Chinese-Korean relations take a sudden turn for the worse (I don't know if this is true or not, but it makes an interesting story).  I kept looking around for North Korean-manufactured souvenirs, only to realize that North Korea doesn't seem to really export anything except stamps and counterfeit versions of its own currency.  I got some postcards and Kim Jong Il stamps - the only souvenirs I could find.

 

OK - I'm ending this now, because I'm hungry.  Long story short: took the train, nice scenery, snoring man, abrupt awakening, went back to sleep, major brain fog, lots of napping.  more later!

I Hate Communism

The water in our dorm was turned off AGAIN today, and they did it 45 minutes earlier than they said they were going to, which meant that after I got back from running this morning (first time at the track - a pretty busy place!), instead of having plenty of time to shower, I was just plain out of luck - for some reason, the water in the sink was still working, so I sort of damp-toweled myself off, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they're going to turn the water on again at 4:30 like the sign downstairs says, so I'll still have time to shower before getting on the train tonight.  Such are the vagaries of an ever-aging infrastructure.

 

Another thing that didn't make any sense at all today was going to the post office to mail letters.  I had two birthday cards to send - one pretty light, and one slightly oversized.  The lighter one was no problem - 6 kuai in stamps, and I'm all set.  The woman then put the heavier one on the scale.  A good three minutes of looking at the scale, looking at her computer, and looking back at the scale, she finally said to me, "算不出来", which translated roughly into English, means, "I can't calculate it."  She then told me I'd have to go to the main post office if I wanted to send it.  Harbin is a city of roughly three million people, many, many branch post offices, and ONE main post office where you can send slightly oversized letters to the United States.  ARGH!

 

Along with the bad always comes the good, though - this morning, my one-on-one teacher showed me pictures of his new baby (his wife gave birth last week).  There is nothing like a proud dad, and my favorite pictures were of him with his son - as he said, "I'm still not very good at holding him yet."  Some things are universal.

 

Speaking of universal, there are a lot of things that my roommate and I don't agree on (like Marxist interpretations of history), but one thing we do: before we get on the train tonight, we are going to the supermarket to get beer, and to KFC to get a bucket of chicken.  There are some things here I really can't stand, but as long as there's beer and KFC, well... sometimes, you've just got to focus on the little things (and Chinese KFC is MUCH better than the American version).  More when I return from Dandong!

11 Hours to Pyongyang

This weekend our program is organizing a trip to Dandong, a tourist destination really only because of its location directly across the river from North Korea.  According to Lonely Planet, there's a train which passes by about four days a week from Moscow to Pyongyang, going through Dandong at 7:30 in the morning.  If you were a citizen of a country which North Korea grants visas to, (which I'm most definitely not), you could be in Pyongyang in time for dinner.  Kind of a crazy thought!  In any case, I'm not planning on taking any long swims in uncharted waters.

 

Classes are going on much the same as always, though I wish it were tomorrow right now and not today, because I still have to write a 500 character essay tonight, and I currently have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write about.  I mean, I have kind of a general idea, but that's still a long ways away from putting words on paper.  Especially when they're Chinese words, and half the battle is figuring out not only what you want to say, but if you even know how to say it.  We're leaving Harbin at 7:45 tomorrow night and taking the night train to Dandong - getting the day off from classes on Friday, which is nice. 

 

We've been studying the Chinese legal system (or lack thereof) in "special class" recently, and today's discussion really threw me for a loop.  Really, it's not only today's discussion, but the discussion I had with my one-on-one teacher yesterday as well.  I know I've said before that the whole Chinese system of government is based more on whim than law, but you really don't comprehend it until you see how it affects people personally.  In my case, my one-on-one teacher's attempts to arrange for me and another student to tour a Chinese courthouse are becoming more and more frustrating - it is difficult to get permission for foreigners to visit courtrooms (my teacher, in a rare moment of candor, told me "there are a lot of things that go on in Chinese courtrooms that normal people don't know about...") -- in any case, visits need to be arranged beforehand, to ensure that nothing is seen that shouldn't be, and ever since the American government started cracking down on intellectual property rights violations in China, Americans are no longer welcome in Chinese courtrooms.  My "special class" teacher thought I was making this up when I told her, but I repeated to her what my teacher told me: "If you were Canadian or British it would be no problem, but you've got an American passport, so they're not going to let you in."  Apparently, Microsoft has started alerting users when they're using pirated software by asking them to upgrade to a newer version on the Microsoft website, which then installs some kind of blue star on the screen which tells the user, in no uncertain terms, "YOU ARE USING PIRATED SOFTWARE!"  My teacher knew about this from his own first-hand experience - apparently, being an intellectual property rights instructor for the Harbin city police department is no excuse for not buying pirated software yourself.  He's kind of annoyed about the new blue star, though, and apparently so is the Chinese government (or whoever made the totally arbitrary decision to bar all Americans from the courts).  My teacher rather jokingly suggested that the only way I would get to see the inside of a Chinese courtroom was if I went out and stole a car - my counter-suggestion was to accuse my classmate of stealing a car, and then we BOTH would be able to get inside - probably the best solution for all parties, if it weren't so ludicrous.  It's just one of many things here where you think, "that can't possibly be true..." "that can't possibly be a dog sitting in a cage attached to the back of that bicycle..." "that can't possibly be a guy with a yellow purse around his neck pedaling a bicycle while his girlfriend rides sideways on the back holding onto a computer..." and those are just examples of the things I've seen TODAY.

 

It's funny to joke about the enormous gaps in the legal system here, and the arbitrariness of it all, and how the Chinese only know what Miranda rights are from watching American television shows... until you realize that in China, there are no Miranda rights at all.  There is no right to remain silent, there is no right to a court-appointed lawyer, and criminals are presumed guilty until proven innocent.  Suspects can be jailed for an indefinite period before being brought to trial - in the case we studied in class today, a man was held for 13 years before being brought to trial and found innocent.  (if you want more info on him, google "xu jingxiang" and look for http://hric-newsbrief.blogspot.com/2005_05_29_archive.html).  He is now suing the state.  Less fortunate was another 21-year-old man accused of murdering his wife, and executed before DNA evidence was able to exonerate him of the crime.  My teacher's only comments on the above cases? "If only that man had had a lawyer in court, he might not have been executed!  If only he hadn't been tortured into a confession by the police!"  Such things happen in China, and they happen all too frequently.  The fact that Xinhua is writing about it, however, suggests (maybe?) that reform is possible.  I don't know.  It's all too easy to get incredibly frustrated with all the things that happen here that shouldn't - there's just really not a lot of room for error in a system as unforgiving as this one.  For example, I recently found out from our program leader that the student who pulled the fire extinguisher on Saturday night, had he been Chinese, would have faced immediate expulsion from the university and police charges.  Being expelled from school is virtually the equivalent of a death sentence here - under Chinese law, you cannot reapply to college, and with no college degree... what are you going to do?  According to my roommate, committing suicide after flunking out of school here is hardly unheard of - it's just also very rarely discussed. 

 

There are a lot of things here that don't make sense - some of them funny, and a lot of them less so.  As I sit here, though, staring at my computer screen and trying to figure out all the things I don't understand, I start realizing the things I do.  I'm hungry, I need to do homework, and I need to make it back to the dorm without being run over by a bus.  I'm going to stay on the right side of the border, the right side of the law, and somewhere along the way try and learn some Chinese.  What can you do?  You do what you can.

paintball and fire extinguishers

Have you ever wondered what the inside of a Chinese fire extinguisher looks like?  After the events of last night, I no longer have to.  One of my classmates, not in the soberest of conditions, decided to see what would happen when he pulled the pin out - the result being a fierce discharge of light pink powder ALL OVER the fourth floor hallway.  I was in my room at the time, and heard a noise like steam being let out of a pipe - I opened my door, only to discover I couldn't see across the hallway due to the intense pink powdery fog in front of me.  I quickly shut my door, but not before getting a nice light powdery coating all on the floor of my room.  I was annoyed.

 

I was even more annoyed ten minutes later, when I opened my door again to find that the pink fog had settled down into a fairly even coating of the hallway.  The custodian from downstairs arrived on the scene, and was indescribably unhappy - I only wish I had understood the words he used.  He went to go call the university police, and I decided the best thing to do was to go downstairs and start cleaning the mess up before the investigators started arriving.  It took ten students more than an hour to get all the powdered dust swept up and thrown into trash cans.  We were sweeping up inch-high piles about a foot in diameter, and then using a beat-up aluminum dust pan that somebody scavenged from somewhere to try and collect it all.  After the initial collecting, we went on mop detail.  The final touch was using washcloths to wipe down the walls, (you could write your name in the dust), and we finished just as two policemen arrived.  I was mopping the stairs down to the third floor as they were walking up, and you could just see their confusion, as they arrived to absolutely no mess at all (oh, but you should have seen it before!!!)  They stood there for a while, watched us put the mops away, and then told us not to do anything like that again.  The hall was almost back to normal this morning, though there's still a light pink tinge on the wall.  All in all, yet another good reason to stay away from the baijiu...

 

My roommate and the roommate next door pulled together an amazing last-minute trip to go play paintball this morning, which turned out to be a lot of fun - we piled into a bus at 8:00 this morning, and arrived at a provincial park in what seemed like the middle of nowhere about two hours later.  The place is a ski area in winter - notable was the fact that this was the first ski area I've been here where the chairlift actually goes over the snowmaking pond on its way up the mountain.  This naturally implies that you have to ski over the snowmaking pond to access the chairlift, which just goes to show you how cold it gets here in winter - you just naturally assume that the pond is always going to be frozen.

 

After we got all our gear (some of the pants fit better than others), we headed up the hill to start playing.  One team would hide in a random maze of old tires, wood fences, and an abandoned car (basically, your typical West Virginia backyard), while the other team would charge up the hill and try and track people down.  As much as the thought of shooting at your classmates and Chinese roommates is kind of disturbing, the disturbing part wore off pretty fast, and it was just kind of fun to try and hit people with bright red dots of paint.  I wound up camping out behind a fence with my next-door neighbor for awhile, and it was just cool to look around and see everyone yelling at eachother in random mixes of Chinese and English.  Everyone learned the words for "behind", "in front", and "My gun is broken" (the equipment was kind of sketchy).  I think everyone had a pretty good time, though, even though there weren't nearly enough paintballs, and I had to listen about a billion times to people saying how many more you get in the US, and how much cheaper they are, and what happens when you freeze them, and one time, this guy got hit, and... etc. etc. etc.  I think every American guy has some kind of story regarding getting injured playing paintball... fortunately, we all made it out okay!

 

speaking of making it out, I need to leave the internet bar right now and start doing reading for class before I fall asleep.  more tomorrow!

 

 

Lazarus iPod

Yesterday, as the blog I wrote can attest, started off really well.  Then about 3:00 in the afternoon, the sky went dark, then turned a weird shade of yellow.  The wind started to blow, and enormous raindrops started to fall.  At the same time, hidden away in my bag, unbeknownst to me, my iPod quietly died.

 

It wasn't until last night at around 8:30 when I wanted to listen to some music that I discovered that my iPod wasn't waking up like it should.  At first, I figured the battery had just died, so I plugged it in, went and put some laundry in the machine, and hung out with my next-door neighbors for a while.  (In case anyone is interested, the price of North Korean brides is currently about RMB 2000, down from RMB 10,000 a couple of years ago.  It came up in conversation).  In any case, after getting my laundry out of the machine, I tried yet again to turn my iPod on.  No luck.  The screen stayed stubbornly, obstinately black.  I started to worry.

 

I really, really like my iPod.  Not so much the thing itself, as the fact that it lets me listen to songs from back home, reminds me of the friends I'm missing, and the experiences I've shared with them.  I have a ten minute version of "Call On Me" from the time I spent living in Williamstown, and a TON of random German/Austrian music from the time I spent over there.  I have been told many times by many different people that my iPod is way too random, even, "Helena, I feel sorry for your iPod, because it has your music on it..."  But it's MY music, and I know what it means!  and the thought that it might all be gone, my memories of home trapped inside an unresponsive piece of plastic, was really, really upsetting.

 

My next course of action, which seems kind of dumb now that I think about it, was to pry the thing apart to see if the battery might somehow have gotten disconnected.  The dumbness of this idea became incredibly obvious once I had the thing in pieces, only to realize that I had no idea what the battery actually looked like.  And then these little rubber pieces started to fall on the floor.  Getting kind of scared at this point, I tried to fit it back together, little rubber pieces included.  It all clicked back into place, but it still wouldn't turn on.  I ran downstairs to hook it up to my friend's computer, and the computer didn't recognize it.  At this point, there was only one possible course of action left.

 

I called my dad.

 

At this point, I was just going to mail it back to him and have him send it in to Apple under warranty.  But just when there seemed like there was no hope left, my iPod suddenly came back to life.  A small white apple blinked, then reappeared.  The apple grew brighter.  My iPod had risen from the dead!  This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I was viciously squeezing it for the entire time that I had been talking to my dad on the phone - I know you're only supposed to push the top and bottom buttons to restart it, but I had decided to push them all at once to see what would happen.  I don't know if that's the most scientific method, but it worked, and it made me really, really happy.  maybe yesterday was a good day after all...!

 

I am now off to sidestep some chickens on my way to class - for some reason, I've started seeing chickens outside the computer lab on a more and more regular basis.  Maybe the chickens like exploring around in the warm weather - I don't know.  In any case, that's it for now!

A Good Day

So far, today has been a really good day.  Of course, it's not even 11:00 in the morning yet, but the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the 8:00 class that I didn't prepare for (because I was making pancakes! more on the pancakes later...) was cancelled, because the teacher's wife went into labor.  I mean, how many times do you show up for class completely unprepared only to find out that there is no class?  Today is a good day.

 

After finding out that there was no class, I decided to use my extra two hours of freedom to go pay my mobile phone bill.  In China, at the beginning of every month, you get a couple of text messages telling you what your balance is.  Then you get the text message telling you to pay your balance sooner rather than later.  THEN you get the text message telling you that you can no longer send anything, or make outgoing calls, and if you don't pay your balance by the next day, you won't be able to receive anything, either.  This is the point at which you start walking around your neighborhood in search of China Mobile branches.  The university office was closed due to the May 1st holiday (Chinese businesses and universities celebrate International Labor Day by taking a week off from work) - I wasn't too upset, though, because it spared me from having to deal with the horrible women who work in that office.  I ventured off campus, and found another China Mobile branch which I remembered having driven by on the way back from the clothing market yesterday (more on the clothing market later).  After throwing some elbows to keep people from cutting in front of me in line (line-cutting in China is a well-practiced sport...) I got to the counter, told the woman my phone number, paid my bill in cash, and got my phone turned back on immediately.  Some things in China don't work at all, and some things work oddly well.  Cell phones are one of the latter.

 

Yesterday afternoon I went with my roommate and two of my friends to a clothing market that isn't so much a clothing market as a cloth-and-tailoring market - you go and pick out the bolt of cloth that you like, pick out a clothing design, get measured by a tailor, and then are told to come back a week later to get fitted.  One of my friends ordered a qipao, which is a traditional Chinese dress - I decided to go for a jacket, which I thought I would get a bit more use out of - but still, probably mostly at office Christmas parties.  It's not the sort of thing you can just wear out on the street.  The market was just incredible, though - everything from pure silk to fake fur, glitter, pleather, cotton, wool Burberry patterns... just, anything you could ever want is all there.  After getting measured for the qipao and jacket, my friends and I continued looking around, and stumbled on a woman selling fleece and silky pajama material - we all wound up getting blue "funky monkey" print pajama pants - that is, a print of little monkeys eating bananas with the words "funky monkey" interspersed at random intervals.  I am very psyched to be getting tailored "funky monkey" pajama pants!

 

It's sort of a tradition at CET that every Wednesday evening a student hosts a study break.  Last night I decided to try and make chocolate chip pancakes for everyone.  I had chocolate chips and maple syrup from home, and two boxes of pancake mix that I had bought at the local Carrefour (the French answer to Wal-Mart which is currently expanding rapidly in China).  It wound up going really, really well, despite a minor/major crisis at the beginning: a self-professed "pancake expert" who was brought in as a batter-mixing consultant at the beginning wound up adding about two gallons of water to the mix, resulting not so much in batter as in soup... fortunately, the crisis was easily resolved, as the time of the study break was pushed back an hour, he raced off to Carrefour to buy more mix, and I used the extra time to go to the supermarket for beer.  I tend to have a beer in the kitchen while I'm making dinner, and it was great to be able to hold a beer in one hand while flipping pancakes with the other - though I had to assure the Chinese roommates that this is not typical American behavior - pancakes are served as a breakfast food, and Americans don't drink beer for breakfast (most of us, anyways...)  After the batter crisis was resolved, it was just really fun - there were about 20 people in the kitchen at one point, it smelled like pancakes, which made me really homesick, and I got to watch the Chinese roommates learn how to flip pancakes for the first time - they thought it was great fun, and the pancakes tasted really good, too, which was even better.  We had enough batter to make 66 pancakes (according to the box), and there were only five left at the end - a mark of a successful evening!  I had a leftover one this morning - still good, though pancakes aren't one of those things which tend to improve with age.

 

I am now off to the coffee shop to prepare for class this afternoon - any day which features real coffee is also, by definition, a very good day!  if only the weather will just keep staying this warm!