Tokyo Trip

I've posted pictures here. The pictures are much easier to see if you run the slideshow; also you can read the captions (some of them are cut off on the summary page).

Enjoy!

On Liability

Giant, easy-to-fall-into pits along the sidewalk; single lane roads through the mountains; low, knee-high walls several stories up. A far cry from the plexiglas and beware signs, indicative of a market economy that permits-money making by litigious means.

From the AP (Updated 2007-02-12): 80 vehicles collide in south China; 10 people die.

From our trip to Xi'an: Rick la-la-la-ing tunelessly but loudly, to keep our hotel driver awake on the nearly empty afternoon Airport Expressway.

A Whole Lotta Terra Cotta

We spent the weekend in Xi’an, a 90 minute flight southwest from Beijing.

A (very) brief history, courtesy of our tour guide Michael and Discovery Channel: 2200 years ago, Emperor Qin was the first to unite the eight provinces of China. Unlike his father and grandfather, he also realized that if he wanted his dynasty to continue, it wouldn’t help to bury his closest lieutentants and advisors with him when he died, as was the tradition. But, like the Egyptians, he still believed he would need all the same support in the afterlife, so he built an entire army – 8100 soldiers and horses – to protect him when he got there.

The terra cotta soldiers were discovered in 1974 by some farmers digging a well. The original well site is marked in the excavation pit – at the very edge. Had they been just a few feet off they would have missed the site entirely. Including the Army pits, which are located some distance from Emperor’s necropolis, the entire tomb covers about 22 square miles. It took 38 years and, if ancient historians are to be believed, 700,000 workers and artists to construct. (More at Wikipedia.)

There are a few artifacts from the tomb that are housed in traditional museum-style glass cases. But because the dig sites are so huge, and archaeological work is still incomplete, the Chinese government has built the exhibits on top of the pits. From the outside, they look like regular museum buildings – high-walled and high-windowed with fancy facades. On the inside, they look like warehouses built on top of exposed earth.

Five years after the Emperor died, there was a rebellion. The rebel leader found out about the army and unearthed it in order to steal the (battle-ready) weapons the terra cotta soldiers held. Then he set fire to the wooden beams that served as the “roof” for the underground army. Later, the pits were re-buried, but the weakened roof collapsed, crushing the soldiers. Every one of the soldiers you see in these pictures have been pieced together from fragments in what our tour guided called the “terra cotta hospital” here at one end of Pit #1.

Sometimes a cigar is just . . . really terrible.

7:30 this morning found us down at the end of Guanghua Lu for the Super Bowl party at Tim’s Texas Barbecue. The place has an interesting history: it only recently changed its name and its concept from John Bull’s pub, Beijing’s first non-hotel bar, which opened 16 years ago (if my sources are reliable). The rough framed walls are covered in Texas tokens: license plates, beer bottles, long horns, and sports gear from A&M, U. Texas, and the Dallas Cowboys. (Verdict on the bbq: not bad. The baked beans need some work.)

A free breakfast buffet was laid out upstairs (scrambled eggs, greasy bacon, potatoes, fruit and sauteed mushrooms and tomatoes); so it should not have been surprising to find that’s where most of the people were too. We headed back downstairs, with a decidedly shabbier crowd, where it turned out our friends J. and C. had saved us a table.

C. and I were surrounded by white men, including of course J. and R. (and the odd Chinese-American, also male.) At the table next to us sat younger man with dark hair and blue eyes and pale skin, wearing a green Rugby t-shirt. Likely no one was surprised when he turned out to have an Irish accent. In the corner opposite of us sat two trendy guys, one with short cropped dark hair and the other with longer blond hair tucked under a baseball cap, drinking margaritas. Later in the game, after half-time, they would both bring out their laptops (a tiny Vaio and giant Mac). I thought at first they were just not all that into the game, but now that I’ve finally been able to identify the logo on blondie's hat (1914 Chicago Cubs – I love Google!), I now understand that actually they may just have been bummed out by the progress of the game.

They might also have been trying to get away from a Nasty Little Man who came and sat down with the Unfortunate Irish Kid, since he was sitting alone with the last two available chairs in the joint. Nasty Little Man was short, wearing a black velour jump suit and a really bad wig. He had a voice that pierced the room like Joe Pesci’s, but without the sense of humor.

During the commercial breaks ESPN International showed Amazing Games, which their website describes as “the world’s most exotic sporting events”. While we watched a clip of two Asian men of unidentified nationality, stripped to the waist, their ribs showing, fighting each other with canes and flimsy looking shields, Nasty Little Man said, without a trace of irony, “Hey, did you know Prince is doing the half-time show?” This was followed by several barks of laughter and an uncomfortable silence. “What?” N.L.M. said. “What did I say?”

A few minutes into the second quarter N.L.M started trying pass around his cigars, which, he said, would be on the shelves in Beijing next month. Several people took them, including the Unfortunate Irish Kid. The Chicago Fan took one too, but refused to light it, giving as an excuse when pressured, over and over, by N.L.M.: "I'm working up to it." And finally: "It's against my religion."

It turned out Nasty Little Man was the factory owner. He described his cigars enthusiastically as “Cuban-seeded Dominican tobacco, wrapped in Sumatra, flavored with vanilla. You’ll never smoke a better tasting cigar!”

Judging by the sickening sweet smell, I tend to doubt it.

Dreaming in Chinese

This morning my husband tells me that, some point in the middle of the night, he woke up to find me up on one elbow, leaning over him, eyes wide open. “What is it?” he said. I responded, he says, in a string of Chinese. When he said something like, “I can’t understand you,” I repeated the phrases. We went back and forth until finally he said, “Stop!” at which point, he reports, I rolled over and went back to ‘sleep’.

The only word he could make out in my sleep-talk was ‘ganbei’ which means ‘cheers’ or ‘bottoms up’. He said the rest sounded legitimate – we’ll never know. I have no memory of the event, though I have a long history of somniloquy. If only I could tap into that fluency in my language class. . .

Back in the land of green tea and yellow cranes

By which I mean construction cranes. The avian kind are white, even in China.

Beijing is about the same as I left it four weeks ago, with a few exceptions. Five or six more floors have been added to the growing high-rise across the street. The building represents Phase Three of the already enormous China World Trade Centre, a complex of offices, two hotels, and a giant subterranean shopping mall that takes up three square blocks. It has it’s own subway station and is known as Guomao to everyone except English-speakers. Our confusion can be forgiven since all the buildings shout “China World” in red-lit signs.

The garish and sometimes inexplicable Christmas decorations (a string of lights on one high rise depicted a windmill over the words Merry Christmas) have been replaced by more authentic (and therefore more tasteful) decorations for Chinese New Year, which falls this year on February 18. 2007 will be the Year of the Pig and so of course there are pigs on sale everywhere: stuffed, gilded, painted and embroidered. The pigs are always fat and nearly round, their sweet faces flat against the stylized curve of their bodies, thereby obfuscating the slightly sinister look that real pigs have, with their long snouts, powerful oblong bodies and those mythic cloven hooves.

Otherwise, Beijing is it’s charming old self, dry, dusty, delightfully gastronomical. Last night we went to a new (to us) restaurant in China World (oops, Guomao) called Chamate, where there are plush cushions in all the chairs and the food arrives on wooden trays. Their specialty is the hot pot, a soup tureen that sits on top of a flame, like fondue. Included on the tray are small bowls of rice, cold edamame and diced veggies, hot minced pork and three slices of pear. Loose leaf tea is served in a small glass pot and a server dressed in a traditional white silk tunic and pants (I think called pien fu) refreshed the hot water with what what looked like a giant, ornate watering can, with a spout about 4 feet long. With a flourish, he swung the pitcher up and around so that, with his arm extended up and behind him, the long spout descended over his shoulder. He lunged forward and bent from the waist, holding the tiny glass tea pot in one hand while the thin stream of hot water filled it.

The Longest Wednesday

It's been Wednesday for almost 27 hours so far, with another 10 hours still to go. Our flight from Beijing to San Fransisco had to be some kind of record, coming in right at 10 hours. (Testament to our new perspective that we consider it "only" 10 hours.) We had tail winds of 170 miles per hour, which put us on the ground here 90 minutes early. Ground speed topped out at 780 mph. The air was so clear and dark (nearly-new moon) that it was like flying through the stars.

That's been the best part of our trip so far. SFO was a cluster as usual, from rude Customs officials (eye-rolling when the Customs Declaration form wasn't handy), to clueless ticket counter reps (who couldn't seem to find Rick's ticket), to obnoxious TSA employees. (Can anyone say line management? No one here, apparently.)

The Baggie Approach to Airline Security

Permit me a rant on the ridiculous new requirements for carry-on luggage. The regulation states that toiletries and liquid make-up can be transported as long as they bottles are 3 fluid ounces or less, are packed in a quart-sized, transparent zip-top plastic bag, and that each passenger is only permitted one such baggie.

On the one hand, I'd like to say with confidence that the feds know more than we do about the UK bomb plot. They well may, but this smacks of overkill. (Much like the x-raying of shoes.) In the case of the UK bomb plot, isn't that sort of plan better foiled by data modeling? In the case of the Shoe Bomber. . . well, the best way to stop a crazy man is by the vigilance and action of a fellow passenger.

To bring this back to China: it is, for all it's modern conveniences and capitalist-lite economy, a police state. The government seems to know where you are and when you got there. They know where you live. They are paying much more attention to who, rather than what. There is no removing of shoes, or restrictions of liquids or gels, or gel-like liquids or liquid-like gels. One wonders if the security measures we implement here in the US would be feasible in a country with a population of 1.3 billion.