First Weekend

Beijing's strange paradoxes were even more evident this weekend, as within 48 hours we partied and danced with some of China's richest, up-and-coming young people, then walked the impoverished and revealing streets of the city's Songjiazhuang neighborhood. Full of ups and downs, the weekend revealed only one thing for sure: China's going to take a while to figure out.

Friday's 'mixer' at Pyro's was a great success. About 40 kids from our program showed up to have some pizza and hang out. Our Chinese friend Ben, who is a 25-year-old program assistant at PKU, was fun to talk to about Beijingers and life as a real college student in China. Afterwards, Morgan, Elizabeth and I accompanied our friends Zach, Jake, and Jessica (all of whom are in the immersion program and are living with families during the week) to a small ex-pat bar called The Red House. It was good to have some kids with us that could actually speak Chinese and find these off-the-beaten-path locations.

Later that night, Elizabeth, Morgan, Jake and I took a cab across town to a club called Mix. Situated across a massive parking lot from the Beijing Workers' Stadium, Mix was completely alien territory for me. It felt like something out of a movie; extremely dark, extremely loud, extremely smoky, extremely intimidating. Apparently there were 5 floors in the place, but we only made it through the first one, where there were several dancefloors, several bars, and hundreds of strange three-sided booths where Chinese people sat, smoked, drank, and appeared to talk about important things. How they were able to have a conversation with the music that loud, I have no idea. We Americans were quite the curiosity on the dancefloor, but everyone seemed to have a good time. When we left, we noted that the parking lot, not far from some pretty poor looking areas, was packed full of Ferraris, Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, and Mercedes Benzes.

Saturday morning, around 11am, Michael, Morgan, Elizabeth and I headed to the Olympic Village, just a few stops away on the subway. For as many times as it was shown on TV in America during the summer of 2008, the National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, is possibly the most awe-inspiring structure I have ever seen. I probably took about 300 pictures of the building; every angle, every piece, every different way that the light catches its steel exoskeleton seems like a piece of art. We paid to enter the stadium, where the "Beijing Snow Festival" was taking place on the pitch. The same field that 18 months ago had seen Usain Bolt become the fastest human ever now played host to a series of snow-based games and activities. A small band belted out sugar-coated Chinese pop songs, and we enjoyed whipping eachother around in inner-tubes on an ice rink.

Saturday night we went out for Michael's birthday. A great group joined us for karaoke in Wudoukou: Chris, Suzy, José, Sandy, Omar, Emma, Eric, and our normal 4 BC kids. We loved the large, private room they gave us. Singing such classics as Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and several NSync tracks made for a memorable evening. Afterwards we went to a bar/restaurant called Red Rocks for food and drinks.

One of our friends, Eric Nam has been instrumental in showing us how Chinese locals treat waiters and waitresses, which is, in a word, appalling. The waitresses don't come to your table to see if you want anything. Instead, they are summoned with a loud yell of "FUWUYUAN!" "WAITRESS!" If you want the check, you simply scream, whether a waitress is in sight or not: "FUWUYUAN! MAI DAN!" "Waitress! Pay the bill!"

Sunday morning provided one of our most revealing, fascinating looks at Beijing yet. Morgan and Elizabeth are in a class called Beijing's Urban History, taught by an Englishman, Professor Chapman (who, ironically, used to teach at BC). Michael and I asked if we could tag along on the class' once-weekly walking tours of the city, and the girls said we could. When we showed up at the subway at 9am on Sunday, however, the crew was smaller than expected: Morgan, Elizabeth, Michael and I were the only students, to be accompanied by Professor Chapman and a mysterious Chinese woman identified only as something like 'Xuanyue.' We took the subway to the southern edge of the city, Songjiazhuang. Chapman explained that the neighborhood was an interesting case-study in the modern transition period that many Chinese cities are experiencing; it is a neighborhood 'in flux.' Dirty storefronts and homes face massive piles of rubble that look like debris from an earthquake, but are actually giant, state-owned demolition projects. The newly cleared spaces will soon feature the gleaming high-rise apartment buildings that dominate the rest of the city's skyline. We watched as dirty, toothless workers whacked at cement blocks with axes, taking down the older buildings by hand. We walked for about 2 hours, and did not see a single westerner. We passed open-air markets (with every gross food imaginable), barefoot children playing soccer, and massive construction products. We visited Beijing's largest fish market. Professor Chapman, who seems to be England's answer to Anthony Bourdain from the Travel Channel, knows tons of little facts and seems to have contacts everywhere, despite not speaking a word of Chinese. He took us into a strange market where small, family-owned factories produce the wholesale items that go into the production of textiles: zippers, buttons, fabric, thread, etc. We stepped into a small, one-room factory where we spoke with a woman named Agnes, who runs her family's zipper manufacturing business.



Chapman then took us on a 'shortcut' in which we had to duck down and pass underneath a massive, half-finished bridge. The Professor would later reflect on the strange and revealing moment that came next. As we somehow had ended up inside this bridge construction zone, it was surrounded by temporary, 8-foot high walls. And while there was no one at work on Sunday, we scurried up a dirt hill to where the gate and checkpoint appeared to be. I lagged behind with Xuanyue (whose purpose on the trip was still not evident because she spoke no English). An old man in a cheap-looking military outfit and badge opened the gate, and pretended to close me and Xuanyue back inside; he laughed as he reopened the door, a heavy scent of alcohol on his breath. In this new and growing China, millions upon millions of citizens have jobs like his, where their job is to lock and unlock doors, or stand guard at empty construction sites during the night. As the primary reason I'm here is to learn about doing business in China, it's odd and quite sad to put faces to the stats of the impoverished Chinese.

Sunday night was one of my worst lost-in-translation moments yet. After a delicious dinner of dumplings with Zach from American University and the immersion program, I set off on my own to find the bar where I was supposed to meet people to watch the Arsenal soccer game at 9:30pm. I got off at the Weigongcun (way-gong-twen) subway station, and wandered around for 15 minutes, trying to find the address which I had stupidly written in western letters. Eventually I found the right place. I came in, and saw no friendly British faces, no red jerseys, no soccer. Just a bunch of old guys playing cards and smoking. I went to the hostess, who spoke exactly zero (0) English, and stumbled through an embarassing array of broken Mandarin phrases. My best was saying, in Chinese, "I want to look at..." then making a kicking motion and pointing at my Arsenal jersey. She eventually half-understood, and seemed to point for me to go somewhere into the next room. I ignorantly peered around columns and dividers, only to be met with the stares of table after table of Chinese people drinking coffee and tea. There was no other room, I figured out...she was pointing at the big TV that was on the wall, in the off position. She came over and grabbed the remote, and pulled up a TV guide full of Chinese characters. She flipped through the TV guide, and occasionally would stop on a channel and say "okay?" as if I could read the characters. How, after such a miserable display of Mandarin, she could have thought I could read characters is absolutely beyond me. I kept saying "keneng," meaning "maybe," and she would select the channel and some dumb sporting event like golf or billiards or poker would come on the screen. Eventually I saw highlights of the previous night's Wolves v Manchester United game, and thought it might be pre-game or something, so I said okay. I ordered a coke, and the waitress went away. When I realized that the Arsenal game was actually not coming on and that no one was joining me, I started to flip through the channels. I drew a good deal of attention from the locals as I couldn't figure out how to turn down the volume, and channel after channel featured infomercials, music videos, and angry-sounding speeches by communist politicians. Eventually, I gave up and trudged back to campus. It was, as we say, a massive fail.

Check out the video below from the Olympic Village. DISCLAIMER: During this video, I say the phrase "botched it" but it sounds like something else. Sorry.