Report #27

Consider this Report as notice that Reports From Beijing is currently on vacation. Ellen and I are walking the Camino de Santiago for a second time and I will be migrating over to that blog, which is also linked at the top of Reports From Beijing...just follow Peregrino on the Camino: a 500 mile walk across northern spain. Once there, please sign up for email delivery, which will feed each entry into your inbox when I make a post. If I can get really advanced...I will make a new domain name, like theamateurcanaffordtolose.com and point the blog that I´m currently operating under to the home page. More on that later. But for now, please follow peregrino on the camino, and sign up via email. And so it begins....

Report #25

As a creature of the night you’re either prey or predator. At least that’s how I feel during my long walks around Beijing. I’m training for the Camino and my evening strolls are pushing the three-hour mark at this stage in the schedule. By the time I finish with work, go home, eat dinner and check my email, I’m hitting the streets past nine or ten at night. And with that, I’ve really learned my area, which I won’t deem as a neighborhood because there is nothing remarkably characteristic of it, just never ending sameness. My area covers roughly an 8 mile diameter, and is growing wider as my schedule demands more time.

The area is surprisingly quiet past 11p. The traffic wanes, pedestrians are few, and often I’m the only one on the sidewalk. This is especially true if I let my route take me through a park, like it did tonight. I wasn’t feeling like charting new territory beyond the current boundary so I stayed close to home winding through the long park that runs parallel to the airport expressway. The parks in Beijing are well manicured with brick-paved paths and pruned shrubs. Despite the tamed landscape there is still something wild about the isolation it affords in such a bustling city.

On this particular night just after a long rainy day, the park was foggy and smelled clean like a forest. Headlights from cars shone through the trees and cast jesus style beams in the air. I turned along one of the meandering curves and spotted a small sapling that I mistook for a person. Chills ran through my body and I wondered to myself, why am I so freaked out?

I was, like I always am during these walks, listening to This American Life podcasts through headphones. My brother gave me all 400 episodes that he downloaded and I started at the bottom working my way up. The nightly walks have me moving through the episodes at a steady clip. But as a creature of the night, and as a species’ with poor nocturnal eyesight, my only other worthwhile sense is sound, which I’ve obfuscated through this podcast habit, and most certainly rendered myself as prey. My body knows this.

It wouldn’t take much for me to kick into full flight mode and shriek like a schoolgirl if someone or something jumped out of the bushes. I actually consider this a possibility and speculate on the availability of weapons the park has to offer like stacks of old paving bricks. I also question my ability to run, to run really fast, faster than most predators. Would I even notice the weight of my own backpack? Or would I chug along the way an obese person is encumbered by excess? Of the few stray cats that crossed my path tonight, each one gave my heart some extra juice. This got me thinking as I looped back and forth along the linear park. What would it be to take up the role of the predator? Speed? Yes. Arms flailing? Yes. Growling? Yes.

On my long walks there are others like me too. Often it’s a couple, enamored with one another on a park bench feeling like they have the whole place to themselves, and I approach stealthily only breaking the silence with the scuff of my boot on a lump in the path or kicking a stone to cause them to jump. Arrrghhhhhrrrrooowllllllalalalalala! I run towards them, flailing. That’s all it would take. That’s all you need to simulate a predator, and then I’d just keep walking like nothing happened, while they considered death in a gust of fear. A boogie man, who prowls at night boogifying unsuspecting strangers; feigning an attack, but swooping away reducing his victims to nervous rodents narrowly missed by the grasps of talons. I could do that. I could really scare people in the park, and I would no longer be prey.

Jesus. What two hours in a desolate park will do to the mind.

I think I’ll stick to the streets next time….

Report #24

(This story makes the most sense if you listen to part 2 of my last podcast)

It’s funny how we put things off…like the battery that you know your car needs and promise you’ll get soon, just after the engine barely turns over. You accept this lurking threat but keep hitting the snooze button of ‘later’ to prolong the inevitable. And then, when you go out one morning, it just clicks when you turn the key…and you think, damn, why didn’t I get the battery?

To append my last report, Podcast #3, the saga of the electro-magnetic door continues: it started working again. I noticed the LCD display next to the keypad was turned on last week. Someone had also taped cardboard over the metal part of the doorframe to keep the electromagnet from engaging. It seemed appropriately tailored to my needs; my key swab still didn’t work as I verified by swiping across the sensor and confirmed the audible quadruple-beep as ‘denied’. No problem, that’s why the cardboard is there…

A day later the big piece of cardboard had been traded for a smaller piece that wasn’t taped to anything, just wedged into a little gap in the frame. It still did the job, but looked sneaky and far less official. The next morning on my way to work the door was locked and the only way to exit the building was to hit the button to release the door for a few seconds. I looked down and saw the hopeless piece of cardboard on the ground. I naively wedged it back into its previous home, tested the door a few times, and left for the office. We were in the middle of deadline for the Lagos Hotel.

Snooze.

It’s one in the morning, and I’m in the exact same predicament as before. This time there are only two neighbors with lights on: the annoying neighbor and someone two floors below him. Now that I’m explicitly aware of my two neighbors apartment numbers I make sure to get it right this time. I dial the annoying neighbor and it just rings and rings and rings. I hang up, hating him even more. I sit. I think. I think about climbing. I think about electrical wires and why my building has so many and how they could be old and frayed. I call the annoying neighbor again and nothing happens. Then I watch his light go off and stay off. I try calling the neighbor at 303 and it rings and rings, and then someone picks up…

“Eh?”
I run my script, the same one that worked last time.
“Ni hao, wo joo zai wu bai r how, kuyea kai ma?” (Hello, I live at 501, could you open?)
“Huh?”
“Um, Ni hao, wo joo—“

Click. He hangs up.

I sat out front for thirty minutes not ready to accept the fact that I had put off the inevitable; that this wasn’t going to work, not twice. I had actually gone home early that night. Back at the office, 4 of my co-workers were still going hard. T.T, a Chinese girl with hair down to her waist, was acting as DJ and rocking out to her death metal music, which is basically fast drums and lots of growling. The other three, Flavia, Liqiang, and Ben just sat there motionless, staring at their computer screens, clicking away as if there was no music at all. It felt like I had walked into a dream. It was loud and certainly not conducive to sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to do work, at least not real work. Instead I cranked out an essay for an internship application that was due the next day, one that I had threatened myself I would get to but kept hitting the snooze button on.

Locked out of my apartment, sleep deprived, satanic growling in the background. Snoozing was no longer an option.

This story continues….

Report #22

Dear Chinese Neighbor,

Our walls are thin and you must know this. I can hear your TV so you should be able to hear mine. I find this acoustic problem troubling because one night when I angrily banged on the wall I nearly crippled my hand against the concrete. Yes! Concrete! You’d think we’d be sealed up like prisoners in solitary confinement alone with only our thoughts behind walls like these. Maybe our ceiling is made of straw. I don’t know. In any case I need you to pipe down a bit, especially that girlfriend of yours. How can you stand her whiny voice? I liken it to a mosquito or a crow cawing at sunrise. You’ve been inviting her over more frequently these past few months and I can tell it’s not going very well. She seems to do all the talking and sometimes her whininess becomes so intense it sounds like you’re arguing with a child over there. I suppose with all that stress you’ve taken to smoking an occasional cigarette in the hallway. This is the real purpose of my letter, to inform you that our little platform at the top of the stairs is no lounge. Actually it’s not the street either, so for god sake don’t spit on the ground and don’t ash your entire cigarette where we walk. I should also inform you that in addition to our building’s thin walls we have large cracks under our doors, which act like high-powered air intakes. I get about 25% of your cigarette under my door if the little window in the stairwell is shut. Damn you for this. I’ve tried to catch you in the act, but when I smell the scent and explode out of my door unprepared for what I might say to you, you’re gone, just a plume of smoke, ashes, and spit.

I have little hope for correcting this cultural fault of yours, but do note that in 40 years or so this act will be considered a faux pas and with luck will get you kicked out of the building. You see, in America, we used to be able to smoke everywhere too, in airports, grocery stores, restaurants, even bars! But then people realized that only smokers like smoke. Your days are numbered.

Sincerely,

Your neighbor

Report #21

It is rare to find individuals who are uniquely their own character. I think the Coen brothers can say this better than me:

Now this story I'm about to unfold took place back in the early nineties--just about the time of our conflict with Sad'm and the Eye-rackies. I only mention it 'cause some- times there's a man--I won't say a hee-ro, 'cause what's a hee-ro?--but sometimes there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here-- sometimes there's a man who, wal, he's the man for his time'n place, he fits right in there--and that's the Dude, in Los Angeles.

I went out on the 2nd ring again, this time to the Northwest section at Xizhimen. There is a large public plaza that spans across the entire highway as it dips below grade. On top of this land bridge are kite-flyers scattered throughout the square and a few kite vendors. There were also inline skaters blasting dub-step through a tiny boom-box while they weaved in and out of plastic cones and did fancier versions of hockey-stops. Four or five tricycles with boxed enclosures rolled up and began unloading dozens of roller skates and inline skates, laying them out in an orderly array. These were mobile roller skate vendors, unaffiliated with one another, but cooperative in that they kept their prices fixed: 5 RMB for a pair of skates for the evening.

The real treasure of the visit was this Dude, an old Beijing man who also had a tricycle (pickup truck style, no box) with four ‘Wangtong Birds’ tethered to a homemade perch on the handlebars. At first I was drawn to the birds, which are a cobalt blue and grey with bright yellow beaks, a little bigger than a cardinal. It wasn’t clear whom they belonged to until Jenny spotted a man casually strolling about 10 feet away from the tricycle who was wearing, not by accident, a blue and yellow jumpsuit. This man was in his 70’s, his white hair wind-blown, but he was fit and the jumpsuit and fanny pack he wore made him look the part too. He had the swagger of guy who was completely at home.

We wanted to get a photo of him with the birds to show the matching outfits, but his purposeful vibe made him seem unapproachable. Then he walked over to his four birds and took one off from the perch, grasping its body in his hand. He took out some sort wooden tube, which he stuck under his bottom lip pointing it up in the air. With both hands he hurled the bird into the air and it began to fly about 30 feet up. He blew into the tube and bird came flying back to his hand. It was though the bird was attached to string like a yo-yo. Once it returned to his hand he fed it some seeds. We watched this routine several times until it was clear that the tube was actually a miniature blowgun and there were no strings attached, the bird is trained to catch a plastic bead that the man fired into the air, return it to his hand, and get a reward of seeds.

The man went through his birds one by one, giving each one a turn. He put away the blowgun and took out a slingshot from his fanny pack, and hurled the bird into the air. This time the bird really took off. It flew about 100 feet up in the air making large circles around the plaza. The man walked about 20 paces away from his trike and fired the sling shot straight up just as the bird was circling around. Its wings flapped haphazardly for a moment and it maneuvered off course, then loyally flew back to the man’s hand as he walked back with his arm extended not even looking as the bird approached from behind.

This was his act. He didn’t have a tip jar asking for money, he just did his thing, and then rode home. Jenny and I tried to interview him, but he wasn’t very talkative, which my white face and long microphone didn’t make any better. We did manage to get a few tidbits out of him: he’s retired, he just does this when he feels like it, he lives in the neighborhood, it takes a year to train one of the birds, and his birds are about 4 years old. There wasn’t enough time before he began riding away to ask: How did you become so cool? Do you wear the jumpsuit all the time or just during your routine? Are you a wizard? Do you want an apprentice?

Report #18

Hong Liang came to work for OPEN shortly after Stardy was fired. Both interns have made appearances in Reports from Beijing; most recently Hong Liang was a guinea pig for my first podcast interview. Unlike Stardy, whose charm and confidence made for fast friends, Hong Liang was slow to emerge from his shell. At first he was quiet, very serious, and I only knew him as the guy that picked out all the peanuts from the salad at our evening dinners. His English wasn’t very good, actually the worst in the office. During his first three weeks he was hunkered down over a model with the overbearing supervision of Li Hu. He was modeling Li Hu’s personal house that had already been built. This was just fluff to have in the office, an object to photograph for the website, and therefore had to be perfect. And three weeks later it was. Hong Liang was then freed up and ready to be put on another project; that’s when I got him.

We had a weird project come into the office for a large development in Ordos, Mongolia called 20+10, code named for twenty architects to build twenty buildings in 2010. They had an impressive line up of a well know architects. OPEN was asked to participate later, which is like being the unpopular kid that gets invited to the party to fill in space. We were given a tortured site, severely eroded from years of rain and hastily routed drainage from the adjacent highway. Li Hu saw this and was enamored by the “nature”. It was a gorge to be sure, and he wanted to preserve it. This wasn’t a real project for us, no money in it up front. The developer was the Ordos government itself, and they wanted to create enough hype to attract private investors. So this thing was kind of joke, which is how I got put in charge.

In architecture school you’re taught to work iteratively. You make a sketch, build a model, sketch the model, draw in the computer, make a diagram, and on and on. It’s like the way a cow chews cud. The process is supposed to refine the design. In my situation, Li Hu delivers a vague sketch and we start chewing cud. The first few days were a little bumpy. I didn’t really know how to deal with Hong Liang.

We quickly moved into the model making stage, which was like a vacation in the office, and easily my most enjoyable time thus far. It was one of those rare moments when you think wow I’m actually getting paid for this (albeit not very much). Hong Liang and I cranked out model after model. It was easy to communicate with him over such basic tasks like ‘make this drawing into a model’ as opposed to trying to simplify the instructions to make a collage in the computer that has the look and feel of ‘nature’…

After awhile Hong Liang came out of his shell and his funny sense of humor emerged out of a very limited vocabulary. It was fun working with him, and I was sad to him return to school just before the Chinese New Year. He had made a lot of friends in the office, and before he left we urged him to make a facebook account so we could stay in touch. And that’s when he asked me to name him.

Hong Liang wanted an American name for his facebook account. I tried to persuade him to keep his Chinese name.

“Hong Liang, you don’t want an American name. Your name is good. It sounds weird when I meet a Chinese person and they say, ‘hellro, I’m Paul’. It seems fake.”

He wasn’t convinced.

I have also gone through the naming process, but stood my ground and held onto my American name, which sounds like ‘Marc-uhh’ in Chinese. Ying was the biggest proponent in the campaign to give me a Chinese name.

“But Marc-uhh doesn’t really mean anything.” She protested.
“Neither does Marc.”
“It doesn’t?” She seemed disappointed. Chinese names are notorious for translating into warrior like poems, like ‘Strong Horse Lucky Tiger’, things like that.
“No Ying, my name is just Marc. I was named after a metal recycler, I guess.”
“What? What does that mean.”
“My mom’s friend. He spelled his name with a C.”
(Silence)
“But in Chinese Marc-uhh means like a marker, or a mark on the wall.”
“Yeah, it’s the same in English.” I think Ying felt embarrassed after that, and I am to this day known in the office as Marc-uhh, or sometimes Mar-gong, which means ‘architect marc’…not really a warrior or anything.

Usually when you name a person it’s at the beginning and the name bears an optimism of who the person will become. It’s hard to say whether or not a person lives up to their name, but often enough there seems to be some correlation, I think. My first instinct was to find a name that bore some resemblance to the sound of ‘Hong Liang’, and I wrote down Homer, and Javier for some reason. Then I thought whom does he look like, who is his character? Simon. No, maybe an Alex. I read off my list of names none of which he liked, except for Alex, but he couldn’t really pronounce it.

“Arrex”? He asked.
“No, Alllllex, la, la, llllllllaaa, Alex.” I tried correcting.
“Arex” he said confidently.

I imagined him introducing himself to people, using his American name, and the problems that would ensue. It’s like when you meet someone with an unusual name in a noisy bar, and it takes several exchanges before you get it right. That should be avoided if possible.

Mengyi shouted out “Toby!”
“Yes!” I said in agreement. She hit the nail on the head. Hong Liang is a Toby, through and through. He seemed to like it, and he could say it fairly well.

We took him out dinner as a going away celebration before the Chinese New Year and before I left for the states. We went to his favorite restaurant ,which he always talked about being ‘sooo delishurrrrse’, and it usually came up during his criticism of the food Ying orders for the office dinners….because ‘that food is not so delishurrrrse’.

A couple weeks later I got a friend request from (Toby) Hong Liang Shen.

Accept.

Report #16

Other Jobs I’ve heard about in China, and Imagine myself Pursuing:

1) I’m dressed in a slick black suit that was hand made to fit me by a child with nimble hands. I feel overly proud for once in my life, to be white. My only task today is to be present, because, after all I’m a business escort. Not the kind that performs unspeakable things for cash, but the kind that accompanies Chinese businessmen to meetings in order to gain credibility. I’m the symbol for western modernity, a white face, and for this I charge 1200 yuan / hour. Riding around in the black Audis is nice, except for all the smoking. This I’ve had to adopt because it’s customary for cigarettes to be exchanged during a business deal. While I thought this career move would eventually lead to a deeper understanding of high stakes business I’ve absorbed nothing because most negotiations occur in Chinese. During these talks I drink bitter green tea and burn my mouth.

2) Before me are eager adult faces ready to learn like children. I teach English as a second language and make four times as much as a junior architect. I cannot speak Chinese and feel sheepish that my students are gossiping about me under my nose. I embrace myself for the call that will get there attention “Hi yo Ho Hello!” This is gibberish and means nothing but it sounds like a mix between English and Chinese and quiets them down nonetheless. I zero in a younger student giggling and feel uncomfortably warm like I’m turning red.

3) I borrowed $40,000 to buy a BMW in the States and sent it to China. I can do this once with the right kind of visa. Back in China I sell it to a nouveaux riche Chinese guy who is willing to pay $60,000 because BMW’s are in short supply, and he can’t easily go to the States like I can. This job is easy, and has earned me two years of comfortable, work-free life in Beijing. Now I spend my time like a free-spirited artist unencumbered by everyday affairs. I make strange things out of fabric and take photographs as though I am a visitor from another planet. This mushy life has both softened my palms and my speech. I can also touch my toes once again.