More miscellaneous China thoughts

Language
I am quite proud of my Mandarin development over the past few weeks. I can now do such useful things as: get the waiter and the check (fu yen, my dan), say I am feeling “ok” (ma ma hu hu), and of course order ice cream (bing ji ling).

I can also very consistently tell a taxi driver where I live (near Xujiahui, at Tianyaoquio Lu and Nandan Lu). This morning, it was raining, and I had left both my umbrella and map at the office. I had not successfully taken a cab to the office without the map but I felt confident and hopped in a taxi.

My office is at Guanyuan Xi Lu and Huashan Lu. I struggle with the Yua and Hua sounds. But I tell the driver the address and think I get the point across and we set off. 20 minutes later we are at Guanyuan Lu and Hengshan Lu. Not right. I try again, and we set off again. 10 minutes later we are at Guanyuan Xi Lu and Hongqiao Lu. Not right either. Finally, I convince the driver to just go to Xujiahui. Going to Xujiahui, we pass my intersection. I tell the driver to stop and he says “Oh, Huashan Lu!!” 45 minutes later, I am at the office.

Pollution
The World Bank released a report on pollution in China today that is summarized in the Financial Times. They claim 750,000 people die a year due to the air pollution, though Beijing forced the World Bank to cut that statistic from the final version of the report, saying it would cause “social unrest”. It does say the China has made improvements at curbing pollution over the last few years.

Sino-Japanese relations
I think most people know that Chinese people and Japanese people do not get along. But I did not appreciate how tense the relationship is. Many Chinese truly hate Japanese people after the war crimes that were committed in WWII. In Xi’an, one of our friends joked that he was Japanese and that was why he didn’t speak Mandarin (he actually is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese). It went over very badly. Our friends told him to not even joke about that. I have also on several occasions seen World War II referred to as “The War of Defending against the Japanese Invasion”. I don’t think it was used as lightly as the War of Northern Aggression is sometimes used today in the US.

Three small transportation stories

Online booking
I booked a flight “online” yesterday for a trip to Xi’an for next weekend. I used Ctrip.com, the equivalent of Orbitz or Expedia in the US. For the booking process, everything proceeded fairly normally at first. I sorted through a bunch of options, chose my flights and proceeded to booking. Then the payment choices came up. The choices were: (1) pay with a Chinese credit card, or (2) pay cash. I of course had to choose cash, both because I do not have a Chinese credit card and because I needed to see how that would work. I got to choose a two-hour window during the next day during which a Ctrip representative would come to my office and we would make an exchange. Sure enough, he brought me a paper ticket and I paid him in cash.

Error Messages
One of the best Chinese phrasings I have seen. An error message when searching for a flight:

Shanghai - Diqing None of direct flights in this time.

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If you can accept the way turn in other airports,The following is the Shanghai that we recommend for you to fly to the Diqing of in turn(onward flight) the flight path.Please choose you feel quite the cheese in turn the city, we will search the service for you

Taxis
I have written before about how difficult it is to take taxis here. It is such a problem that I will write again. First, it is almost impossible to pronounce the address of where you want to go, and taxi drivers never understand what you are saying. So Westerners need to bring a Chinese map and the address written in Chinese of wherever they want to go. But even so, it is still a big question of whether you will actually get where you are going. I have heard a few reasons for that – one being that many taxi drivers don’t read that well, and the other being that since entire areas of town can be seized, torn down, and rebuilt, the landscape changes so fast that taxi drivers can’t keep up. Whatever the case, it is a huge pain to take a taxi anywhere and at all times I keep a Chinese map of my hotel in my pocket and still often don’t get exactly where I want to go.

But, last night I got into a cab after dinner and reached into my pocket. Somehow I did not have my map with me. So we went through a two minute exchange where I tried to say Xujiahui (pronounced something like shoe-jah-hway) and the cab driver stared blankly at me. Finally, he said “Ah! Xujiahui” (to me, exactly the same as I had been saying for two minutes) and off we went. Xujiahui is the metro station about 10 minutes from my hotel and the only landmark I know. We successfully made it to the metro station and then I was able to point and grunt and guide us to the hotel. A huge victory!

Impressions of Beijing

Beijing is not my favorite place. I would rate it a 2 out of 14 on the pH scale. Tons and tons of traffic. Dirty, hot, overcrowded, extremely polluted, very little culture or feel to it (which is odd, since historically the city has been so important to China). But there is so much destruction and reconstruction going on now that the city doesn’t feel like much of anything.

Some highlights were a very fat man riding me around on the back of his bicycle through a bunch of hutongs (small traditional, alleys). Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven were all OK. Some of the less touristy parks and padogas were cooler. But all in all, nothing awesome to report (except the Great Wall).

The pollution in Beijing is unbelievably terrible. It is permanently gray outside. You climb to the top of something to see a view and you can barely see the buildings a few hundred yards away. The sun shines a creepy orange color. I was coughing and sneezing the entire time I was there. I also had my first asthma attack since I was like 12 years old and had to sit down on a bench and try to catch my breath after walking around outside for only about 6 hours. They say that spending a day in Beijing is the equivalent of smoking 70 cigarettes. I am not sure what they will do when the Olympics are here. Somebody said that they may ban people from driving during that time, though that seems crazy (but maybe not so crazy for China).

Also, taxi drivers are ridiculously bad. First, I started off by taking the name of the place that I was going written in Chinese. Taxi drivers either would not or could not take me where I wanted to go - even to major attractions. Then I started bringing both a Chinese map and the Chinese name of where I wanted to go. Still, we would circle around, ask questions, and take forever to get where I was going. And I was not much better on my own. My hotel the last night was in a little dilapidated alley (too small for cars, people sold melons out of carts pulled by donkeys and fried up fresh dumplings outside my hotel, which was kind of cool). Since it was a small street though, nobody knew the name of it and I could almost never find it. I got dropped off by taxis twice very close to it, walked the wrong way, and ended up spending over an hour both times trying to find my hotel again. Very frustrating, especially in summer heat. I was definitely the sweaty American in Beijing.

On a good note though, since there has been so much deforestation to the west of Beijing, in the spring there are these massive sandstorms that come from the new deserts and blow sand all over the city. I am pleased to report that while it was in the high 90s when I was there, the skies were sand-free.

Will try to post some pictures when I can.