Merry Christmas and Return to Kunming

I know it’s been a while since I added an entry. My parents came,
and I was spending a lot of time with them, traveling and just hanging
out. Afterwards, I’ve been blizzarded with papers that I have to write
in Chinese.

But I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least
for this semester. In less than a month, I’ll be leaving Nanjing and
the University. And I guess that’s most of what this email is about.

But first, I should update yall. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to be getting
a Dvd copy of my performance on the game show. I’m guessing some
people weren’t able to get through all the Chinese and get to see my
performance.

A few of yall might be interested to hear that, while I was with my
parents in Hong Kong and Macao, I happened upon a little bank called
Banco Delta Asia. It’s a small bank that’s only in Macua. What makes
it special? This bank was at the center of a problem that brought us
closer to nuclear war than at any other incident in this decade. This
bank was part of North Korea’s laundering operation printing amazingly
good counterfeit dollars. During discussions on denuclearizing the
Korean peninsula, the Bush administration froze all of North Korea’s
counterfeit money inside this little bank, and Korea threw a
diplomatic fit. To make a long story short, the North Koreans tested
their first nuclear weapon, making it the ninth nuclear power,
partially because of this bank. Anyways, I got a picture of the bank
and asked them how I could open an account (they said I had to do
something evil before I could open an account).

But enough about that. Yall may remember that after my semester here
at Nanjing University, I have a semester doing an internship. I
finally got my assignment. I’ll be returning to Kunming. I guess yall
probably remember, this was the first place I lived in China, in 2006.
I had a good time there, and am happy to return, even if it wasn’t the
first place that I have chosen to live, it was the second or third
place on that list.

What will I be doing? It may sound a little strange at first, but I
will be working with a company that makes exhibits for museums on
China’s ethnic minorities, particularly the minorities around Kunming,
in the province of Yunnan. Other than that, I am still not sure
exactly what they will have me doing.

You might wonder, “Why the heck are you doing that?” Well, in fact, I
had done some stuff with ethnicity while working on my master’s
degree, and I’m considering doing more work, down the line, on Chinese
nationalism and Chinese nationalities. So, this is actually a really
cool opportunity to look at what Chinese people think it means to be
Chinese.

That work won’t start until later in February, after the Chinese New
Year. Until then, I’ll be, not surprisingly, traveling some. Right
now, Lisa is coming out to visit me and we are going to the
Philippines for three weeks. After that I’ve still got about two weeks
before I have to start work. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing during
that time. I may go and hang out with a friend for Chinese New Year or
I may take off to Laos for a little while, since Laos is so close to
Kunming.

I guess that’s about it. Don’t want to bore yall for too long.

Merry Christmas

Journal Entries - Closed Doors

Entry 1
So, Ni Laoshi gave us two topics for our midterm paper. One was called Fall Travel (秋游), and since I had just gone to Korea for the Fall break, I decided to go for that topic. I wrote a paper, I think it is decent enough. It was mostly about traveling around Korea, making friends with several different people.
But today in class, it was clear there was a problem with the content of my paper. Although she did not explain this when giving the topic, the term “Fall Travel” in Chinese implies that you will discuss the changing of the seasons. Of course, I say “she did not explain this” as if she was supposed to explain it, but it is more complicated than that. Chinese culture emphasize the beauty of the changing seasons, particularly in literature, much more than American culture does, so there is an expectation to write include the season as a part of my essay in the Chinese context.
Linguistically, this expectation is etched into the language. “Of course, you have to write about the changing of the season. Why else would I have made the topic ‘Fall Travel’?” Ni Laoshi told me. Of course, in English this sounds a little absurd, but there is a very clear logic.
This is clearly a cultural and a translation problem, but its left me with a low grade for my midterm. But, in the spirit of trying to be more Chinese, I am going to try and concern myself less with grades. I suppose this serves as a notice.

Journal Entry 2

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Huangshan. While we were climbing down, one of my friends started talking to one of the workers, and he dismissively said, “We do not like Americans.” My friend came over and told us what he said. I, half curious, half belligerent, went over to chat with him.
“So you do not like Americans? Why not?”
At this point, his friend, a fellow worker, stepped in. “Oh that, that was just a joke. We were just joking about that.”
I could not really take the conversation any further, but I did try to open it from a few other angles with them. I was not successful and had to go back and sit down with my hiking buddies.
My friend was pretty sure that when he first approached them, the guy was completely serious about not liking Americans.
Why would he suddenly change? I seriously doubt it was the threat of violence. My friend is much taller than me, and he had already left by the time I came to ask them once again. If it was just for face saving, it seems strange that he would have brought up the topic originally.

Journal Entry 3
At the front of our building, the one made for foreigners to study at, are four sets of glass doors. The first day I arrived, late in August, three sets were closed, leaving only one set open. I had seen this before in China, but I still wanted to hear how the security guard, the guy who was in charge of these doors, would explain it. He said, they were closed because classes had not yet started up.
The first day of classes two sets of doors were open. The next day it was back to just one set of doors, and I have not seen them open more than one since then.
I asked my roommate why they do not open the doors, and he said they would open all the sets of doors if, for example Wen Jiabao came to the school for a visit. Otherwise, they would keep them closed because of laziness. He said that having all the doors open was a sign of welcomingness, that if they did not want to offer that message of welcome. Did that mean that to keep all but one of the doors closed was to suggest that they did not really care whether anyone came or went, but they were going to let you come in anyways. He shook his head and dismissed this thought out of hand, but I was not convinced that I was not partially right.

Journal Entry 5
In my last entry, I mentioned that my roommate said the reason the only one door was opened was because the security guards are too lazy. I do not buy that explanation. It takes an extra twenty seconds to open take the locks off the doors. Furthermore, I have seen this elsewhere in China. At Yunnan Normal University, they also had four glass doors and they also only opened one of them. I have since this elsewhere; at the Shanghai South Railway station, three out of every four doors is locked. This is a national phenomenon, not the result of a couple of security guard’s laziness.
Furthermore, if this really is the result of the all of China’s security guards being lazy, there is a real disconnect between China’s architects and it’s security guards. These architects must realize that their doors are not opened, so why do they continue to insists on building them?
After I did not accept his first explanation about laziness, my roommate offered up another explanation. He said it was probably just because Chinese were used to keeping gates closed in their home, so that custom has been transferred to various levels of Chinese society, saying that this is something that came out of traditional Chinese life in rural China. That is true, space in village China is defined by gates and fences. But is it really this rural lifestyle has made its way into this very different part of China’s modern urban lifestyle?

Journal Entry 6
I am suspicious of this “transfer to various levels of society” explanation. If that is the case, I would be surprised that I have not seen this anywhere else in China’s periphery. I spent a summer in Japan and I do not remember anything like what I saw in China. I went to Korea and looked specifically for this phenomenon, but found nothing like it. My friends have not seen similar things in Taiwan. I just went to Hong Kong and Macao, and there was nothing like it there. Hong Kong and Macau were quite similar to the Chinatowns that I have seen in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Bangkok.
One could argue that these were not built by Chinese, but that does not really hold water. Korea and Japan were built by their own nationals, but they often followed Chinese rural tradition, sometimes so well that they preserve things that are no longer available in China today. Some of Hong Kong and Macao’s large government buildings were built by the British and the Portuguese, but most of their apartments and other buildings were clearly built by Chinese people, and they resemble Penang’s apartments. Penang and Bangkok’s Chinatowns were also built entirely by Chinese people, and I do not even need to address who built Taiwanese buildings.
So, this proves that it was not just external influences acting on these areas’ architecture (and door locking habits), but that they all share something and it most necessarily be from their shared Chinese origin (except perhaps for the Japanese and Korean examples), and that my roommate’s explanation does not pass muster. So why do security guards all over China (but only mainland China) keep three out of four doors locked?
That will have to wait until my next set of journal entries.

Journal Entry 5 - Libraries, Scheduling and more TV

Entry One
Today’s weather was rainy, the first rain we have had since August. Combined with the sunsets getting earlier and earlier, the night came particularly early.
I went to the philosophy library today. As I explained in an earlier journal, this library has the only English copy of a book that I am supposed to read. I was almost done with it, and I should have had enough time to finish it.
Just as I was about to finish the book, the librarian came into the room. “Everybody else has left. I’m closing up.” It was still ten minutes shy of the official closing time. I tried to ask her if I could finish my book. She laughed nervously, hoping that I would give into her request-command. “If you finish it now, you won’t return tomorrow?” She agreed half-heartedly, but I gave in too, realizing that I wanted to finish the book slowly, to collect my thoughts.
I asked her whether they were closing up earlier for the rest of the semester. “No just today, because it’s raining. Returning home would be particularly inconvenient if I waited for you to finish reading.”
No matter how much you read it, it does not really sink in until it happens to you; from this example, I was able to realize how much China and Chinese society is focused not on regulations, but on personal relationships. Following the regulation was inconvenient to the person in charge, so the regulation was abandoned.
Her request was quite reasonable. Sometimes I wish America thought more about people than regulations. But is this the best way to run a modern society? That is what I am chewing on.

Entry 2
Drrrrrrring, Drrrrrring. “Oh, I am sorry,” my professor says as his phone goes off. This kind of apology would seem too perfunctory in the United States. Having a phone go during class is almost a crime for students. Most of my teachers take points off your final grade if your phone rings during class. The professor generally considers it rude and disruptive. But for a professor to have his or her phone go off, I do not think that I have every had that happen.
But what happened next would never happen in the United States. My professor answered the call. “I am in class now.” He went on to answer his wife’s questions about some issues with their house, clearly trying to get her to hurry up and finish the conversation.
Why is this so acceptable in China and so unacceptable in America? Is it because they don’t care about disturbing class? I have heard some suggests that it is a result of Chinese people historically not being used to telephones. Just thirty years ago, telephones were rare in China, and to receive a call was necessarily important. So it is important to take every phone call you get.
I was considering it as a part of the “我有事”idea. You say “I’ve got something,” because you do not want them to tell them what is more important than them, i.e. you don’t want to say I have to go to class because it would mean that class is more important than them. In the same way, even if you are teaching a class, you cannot not answer your phone because it would be tantamount to admitting that class is more important than taking that call.

Entry 3
I think I mentioned this in one of my previous email, but one of my classes was originally supposed to be taught by two teachers on Tuesday night, one teacher taking the first half, the other taking the later half. We had been told that both classes will probably end in the beginning of the second half of the semester. Today, I asked a Chinese student when the class was going to finish up. She looked a little nonplussed; she did not know, and she did not seem concerned. I tried to explain to them about the class being taught by two teacher, and the logic that both halves of the course would end sometime in November. She asked some other students, but none of them knew either. They all just said, “Ask the teacher.”
First, I do not think teachers just changing the schedule around could ever occur in America, not just for cultural reasons and our analness about scheduling, but also because student’s schedules are so controlled. Everyone in the same major takes the same classes at the same times, so a change is as problematic as the United States when everyone has different schedules.
But I also think that if it were possible, students would be certain of the date that the classes were supposed to end. That date would have been set at the beginning of classes, and most students would have known about it.

Entry 4
Scheduling Issues – Part II
So I did talk with the teacher about the scheduling issues mentioned before. The teacher who teaches the Monday class (the one that was supposed to occupy the latter half of the semester) will have his final class this week, the Tuesday teacher has decided to just keep teaching until the semester ends.
How is that possible? Does that mean that his course is in fact its own separate course? It is de facto its own course because its taking up my Tuesday night for the whole semester.
The question I want to know is why are these Chinese students so unconcerned? They did not really want to know when the class ended, and when they heard that it had been doubled in length, no one said anything.
I think the reason for this has to do with the role of the administration in the hierarchy in the university. They are not really in control of their schedule, their schedules are passed down to them from the administration or by teacher’s arbitrary changes, and the students are used to just accepting what is handed down. Thus, they are not really concerned with when the class ends. It will end when it ends. And if the teacher decides to add another nine weeks to the class, they all know he has the authority to do this. They play a very passive role in all this.

Entry 5
So I am doing another one of the tv shows. When I did the tv show last month, I noticed something while watching the program online. The three black people on the program were all kind of exociticized, especially in their introductions. Two of them were dancing to rap music, one of them did a tango. At the time I did not notice it, but someone pointed this out to me, saying the producers probably were trying to present these black guys in a way that matched with what Chinese viewers thought of black people, always dancing in crazy ways. I did not buy this person’s argument. I told him that I had been there, and that this image of blacks dancing was just coincidental. The producers had not pushed the black contestants to dance, when we were volunteering to do stuff, these contestants volunteered to dance for themselves.
But yesterday I went to the meeting with the television producers there was a South African girl, and they were urging her to do some sort of African dance for her introduction. She agreed reluctantly. They also asked her to wear colorful, African dress for her introduction.
After seeing this, I began to believe that the producer was actively trying to present the Africans on the show as exotic creatures, something out of Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Entry 6
I know you must be getting tired of reading my problems with the libraries here, but I find these issues to be important to my understanding of China.
Today I went to the library in for the foreign studies school, the school that we belong to. There was an HSK grammar book that I wanted.
The two librarians who are there everyday from 8-11 and 2-530 were there with a heater in between them, talking to each other about the cold, recommending how to keep warm, looking at things on the computer. I had to turn the computer on to look up a book. I could not find it in the stacks, so I returned and asked the librarian to help me find it.
She responded, “If it is not on the shelf, it has been checked out.”
“It cannot be checked out. It is a reference book.”
“Really? What is the name of the book?”
I told her the name of the book.
“Oh that book, it’s been checked out. One of the teachers checked it out.”
Although I questioned her further, she did not really tell me how she knew that specific book had been checked out. She said a teacher had come and checked out a bunch of HSK books, and though the book is a reference book, teachers can check them out for as long as they need them. She did not really know whether that specific book had been checked out, but she guessed it had. She also said there was no way to know when the teacher would return it.
Not only is this a real pain, but it also supports the point that I have been trying to make about libraries in China throughout these journal entries. They are very concerned with rank, and they are not really made to serve the students, as they say they are. I also believe that these librarians are basically sinecures, with the librarians not spending the day not really doing anything but chatting with each other. I will have more on what I think this means for China’s future.

Journal - Fighting, Library, Presentations

11-6 – Lee Moore – Journal

Entry 1
While I was down in the southern part of Nanjing, I decided to go to a temple, and there was a tourist market next to this temple. When I walked into the market, there was one woman in the center of the market yelling at another woman on the side of the market. The other woman was silent at first, but she soon started yelling back. Then the man standing by this other woman also started yelling. At some point in this donnybrook, the first woman called her husband and told him what had happened (I don’t actually know what happened, I got there a little too late).
Finally both the man and the woman walked over to the first woman and the yelling match got intense. The man got into the first woman’s face, and then the man’s wife came at her with a small wooden stool, swinging it at the first woman’s head. The first woman grabbed a larger chair and swung it at the second woman’s hair, with the man in between. At this point, the man quit arguing and tried to separate the women. He finally pulled his wife back to the place they had been standing when I first entered.
There was so more yelling, but no more fighting. The man had to keep his wife from charging the first woman. Finally, the first woman’s husband arrived, and he went to talk to the other man to try and resolve the problem.
I think that the problem was between the two women and the man only got involved for the sake of his wife. When the first woman’s husband arrived, he and the other man resolved the problem calmly, keeping the women separate. Like all problems in China, it had to be resolved through an intermediary.
The security guard was totally worthless. He stood behind me, afraid to get too close. The only people who stopped the fight were the second woman’s husband and other observers.

Entry 2
I had more library problems. Now, when I enter one of the reference rooms in the library, they make you scan your card. This is strange, because they make you scan your card just to get in the library. Why would they make you scan your card again, just to enter a room? What is strange is that none of the other rooms in the library do this. More strange is that they just started this in the middle of the semester. Two weeks they did not make you do this, but now they suddenly started doing it.
I asked the librarian about this. She said it was for statistics, for figuring out how many people come into that reference room and how many people from each department enter.
It is possible that her explanation is the real reason that they added this little rule, but I do not think that is really necessary. At first, I suspected it was just something invented to control people going into this room or a rule for the sake of having more rules.
But I guess I just have to take their explanation at face value. This is one library problem that I will just have to write off. It is not as problematic as some of the other things that I discussed.

Entry 3
One night, I left the library just as it was closing. There was a flood of other students leaving at the same time. I noticed that the library had posted something on a bulletin board, and almost every person stopped and carefully read it before they left.
Another night that same week, I was riding my bike to class. On one of the main arteries through campus, a notice had been posted on a bulletin board announcing the death of a professor. Almost all the passers-by stopped to read over the notice.
One thing I have noticed this year about Chinese people is that they find the posts on bulletins and other forms of writing in the public sphere. In America, important things are rarely posted on bulletin boards. Bulletin boards are for selling skateboards and finding a summer lease on an apartment. But here, important things are put on bulletin boards, and they are important.
When I asked, one of my teachers suggested that was because everything important in America is sent out as an email. I do not think this is a good explanation. I do not remember bulletin boards being that important when I was in elementary school. I think it has to do with the importance of writing in the public sphere for Chinese people, in the same way that Chinese often paint slogans on walls or hang red slogan banners across the road. I am still trying to figure it out though.

Entry 4
This weekend we went hiking at Huangshan. It was me, Gloria, Carl, Ryan, his wife, Cherise, and his two children, Mosiah and Nabahi. Mosiah is two and a half, and Nabahi is only nine months old. Nabahi has to be carried in a backpack specially made for babies. This draws a lot of attention, so whenever we were walking people would stare, and pull on their cheeks (without Cherise’s permission, of course). There was this guy who would not stop talking to us, and he commented on how everyone was very curious and enjoyed looking at the kids.
I commented, “Yea almost like they are animals at a zoo.” He got this, he got a little angry. “No, no, they are just curious, your comment was rude.” At this point, someone sat down on my other side and asked what was rude. In order to save face, the guy who before would not stop talking now said, “Oh he was just joking, just a joke, that is all.” Not much was said before he left.
I do feel the curiosity that many mainlander Chinese have towards foreigners is similar to the kind of curiosity that Southerners in movies have towards carnival sideshows (as a Southerner, I have not experienced this personally). It is not a polite curiosity, as the man above asserted. It is a gawking-curiosity. This is probably a topic for another article, but I also feel that it is the same kind of curiosity that they regard minorities with.

Entry 5
It has been hard penetrating the social sphere of my Chinese classmates. They have all known each other for at least a year, and all of their classes are the same. I think most of them also live in the same dorms, so they spend the whole day together.
That said, I’ve made some progress. In one of my classes, I got the phone number of several classmates, asking them if they meet outside of class to study. Of course, they do not study because there are no tests. That said, I did not want to study, I just wanted to get to know them better. A few weeks later, I heard them joking around about paying someone back. I jumped in and asked one of them to pay me back as well (it was funny in context).
At that point, I made a step into the social structure of the class. They invited me to go on a trip with them to Hangzhou. I had the HSK, so I could not accept the invitation, but it was nice to be invited. Since then the report between myself and my classmates has been less of an outsider and more of a classmate.

Entry 6
In one of my classes, the main requirement is to read a book and then give a thirty minute presentation on it. Two students read the same book, and each of them gets up for thirty minutes to speak about it. In the second hour of class, the teacher gives his thoughts on the class and asks the students who did not read the book to ask questions. I have already discussed how the students have problems with these presentations and handle these presentations quite differently than American students would.
But last week, I saw something that was quite funny. Apparently, the teacher really does not know how to deal with these presentations either. Last week, when one of the students was giving his presentation and monotonely reading off his slides, I looked over and notice the professor was nodding off. He slipped in and out of sleep, and then was asleep pretty much completely for about five minutes. I was not the only one to think this was funny; another student noticed it, and we both looked at each other, giggling under our breath.
In the US, I do not think that this would be acceptable. If this had happened to me, I think I would have either paniced, gotten angry or both. However, my Chinese classmate did not appear to notice.
Another aspect of this that I do not understand is why the teacher assigns these presentations if he does not value them enough to stay awake.

Journal - Library

Entry 1
One last thing concerning my experience with the television show that I wanted to talk about was nationalism and the sensitivity of the media. At our first meeting, we were told that we could not say anything concerning. I was not surprised at this.
What was surprising was the way they kept emphasizing it, and the level that they took this. Obviously, I knew when they were interviewing me, I couldn’t say something like, “Tibet should be a free country,” or “The communist party has more problems than a British person’s dental record.
However, on the day of the recording the tv show, they reminded us repeatedly. I thought that was a little excessive, but was not really surprised.
What was strange was extend that they carried this thing to. They asked me if I could sing any Chinese songs. “Umm, I know this song by a “台湾的各家,” and then I said the name of the song. They said, “Now, we cannot say that on the show remember, we can’t talk about politics or Taiwan or anything like that, at all. How about just saying, ‘I know this singer from China.’” We ended up not doing the song, which was good, because I was not going to say that.
They were asking a guy where he had been in China. Of course, his list included places like Xinjiang.
“No, no, don’t say Xinjiang.”
“But I’ve been there.”
“Well, don’t say it. Where else have you been in China? “
“Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong.”
“No, no don’t say Hong Kong either.” Apparently, Hong Kong, which had been returned to Chinese control over ten years ago, was still too big of a problem to even mention it (even to mention it as a part of China.)

Entry 2
In one of my classes, we have to give powerpoint presentations on books that we read. The teacher gave us twelve books to choose from, with two students doing a presentation on each of the books. These two students are each supposed to take thirty minutes to give their presentation. Then, in the second hour of class, the professor talks about his impression of the book for about thirty minutes. Afterwards, we, the students are supposed to discuss the book.
These presentations have brought some interesting insights into Chinese culture.
As far as the presentations are concerned, there have been two things I thought were strange. The first presentation was fifty three minutes, when it was only supposed to be thirty. The teacher was slightly angry and he said some things intended to cause a loss of face for the student.
Another issue was that one of the presentations was basically just the girl summarizing large portions of the book. Her powerpoint had lots of written material but no pictures, and she basically read her presentation out loud very fast. Not only was this a little difficult for me, but it was also not at all interesting. The teacher nodded off during the presentation, but he wasn’t at all critical of her presentation.
During the question and answer period, there are two things I have found interesting: no one volunteers themselves to answer questions, but the teacher has to call on people (although he insists he expects us to willingly participate). Based on what I know about Chinese culture, I expected this. It confirms what I know about Chinese culture.
The other interesting thing is that, after one student asks a questions and the other student answers it, the teacher inevitably adds his two cents. In the US, the student would be more of a guide for the conversation, not necessarily injecting his opinion after each person speaks. Despite the fact that he is encouraging students to express themselves. But no matter how he encourages the students to express their opinion, the teacher’s opinion is still important.
Entry 3
I am not sure if Dr. Christiansen is reading these or Justin. If not Dr. Christensen, I should probably give a little background. I have had several problems with getting books from libraries in China, so libraries are something that I really pay attention to, particularly how they relate to Chinese culture.
I’ve had some more library issues here. In the next couple of entries, I’ll discuss them one by one.
The main library requires a library card to even get in. It took a long time for them to get this card to us (over a month, more than one fourth of the semester). I was able to use my student card to get in at first. But after a while, I stopped caring and the security guard does not really care. Sometimes when I enter, I let him see my card, sometimes I don’t go to the effort. They haven’t stopped me yet.
The library has a big room full of English books. I knew I couldn’t check them out without a library card, but I thought I could once I got the library card. Nope. They were all ‘reference books’ which meant that they couldn’t be checked out (although they had a machine for checking them out). Most of these books were just regular English books, I couldn’t figure out why they were regarded as ‘reference books.’ I wanted to check out Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night’ as relaxing reading, but the copy they had, I couldn’t check out, and the other three copies were all in the English Department (which I can’t check out).

Entry 4
Another issue that I’ve had related to the library is something that I didn’t realize until recently: Every department (系) pretty much has its own library. The foreign language studies department also has its own library.
On the surface, I thought this would be a good idea. I could go to the library in the building where I had classes.
Of course, these separate libraries are really just a big pain in the glutumos maximus.
The department library in our building, like the other department libraries I will discuss, is only open from 8:30 to 11:30 and from 2:30 to 5:30. Most people have classes during that time, so that’s incredibly inconvenient. What I have trouble understanding is how they take off three hours for lunch. Most people in China get off two hours (12-2) for lunch and an afternoon nap. There are no classes from 12-2 at the University. This makes sense. But why do these guys think they are so special they can leave thirty minutes before everyone and get back thirty minutes after everyone.
Supposedly, these departmental libraries are supposed to be more convenient for students of that department, but I think it would be more convenient for them (and others) if they just put all the books in the main library, students could go whenever, during lunch or whenever they were out of class.

Entry 5
One of my classes requires me to read a book and give a presentation on it in front of the class. Surprisingly, ten of the twelve books were originally written by Americans in English. I picked one of the English books, one about the history of the Qing Dynasty, and found that book in the philosophy library. These departmental libraries are supposed to contain more specialized departments, and the philosophy department does certainly have some specialized materials, but it also has a lot of historical books, material unrelated to the department.
I have the same issues with this library as I do with the other department libraries. It’s hours are the same, meaning it’s difficult to get there. Also, if you are not a student in the philosophy department, you cannot check any of the books out, so that just means most of the students at the school can’t use the materials.
I will have to say, that I am glad that they let me read the book. The history department would not even let me into their library since I was not a student in their department (but I am in a history class).

Entry 6
I guess you can tell that I’ve been thinking about libraries a lot, maybe too much.
It’s not just because libraries are important for me, but it’s because I think the structure of libraries is particularly important to understanding Chinese culture and China’s future.
I think there is a tendency in Chinese culture to build something specifically for the purpose of denying it to others, and I think that is part of why every department has its own library.
I’ve already discussed some of the advantages that these departments are supposed to have. They make sure their departments students have books that they can check out, and they are supposedly more specialized, so they are supposed to be more convenient. I don’t think that they are really that much more convenient, but that is my opinion.
What is clear is that these deparment libraries are built in order to make sure your department can check out books and that other departments cannot check them out. I think that this tendency to divide up into little groups and specifically promote that group at the expense of all the other groups.
This tendency, specifically in academia, is a problem. Academia and related fields depend on the willingness to spread knowledge to others . This is what drives knowledge acquisition and technological innovation. I’ve been wondering if this tendency to limit peoples access to libraries will affect China’s ability to participate in the 21st Century even as its manufacturing economy grows at phenomenal rates.
I’ll probably consider this problem more in later entries.

Game Shows and Game Theories

Hey Yall,
Winter has come quickly. A two weeks ago the weather was in the sixties, and I was walking in a tshirt during the daytime. But on Monday came the earliest snow in a generation. The leaves on the trees were still green, but they became heavy and glazed in white with the southern snow. The streets became a cocktail of muddy slush and trash. Still, life goes on, class continues.
Another note, thanks to yall’s help (yall checked out my pictures which sent me up in the rankings on this website), I won second place in a contest on Mapvivo.com . My journeys for Nepal and Southeast Asia were selected at some of the best on the web site. Unfortunately, I did not get first place, a prize of $1000, and instead, I only get two travel books, but you take what you can get and keep going. If yall want to see the ‘prize-winning’ journeys and didn’t see them, go to these sites:
Nepal: http://mapvivo.com/journey/8588
Southeast Asia: http://mapvivo.com/journey/8746
Also, I have just added some of my pictures from Korea and Qingdao in journeys. Here are their sites:
South Korea: http://mapvivo.com/journey/10276
Qingdao: http://mapvivo.com/journey/10162
I don’t know if yall have been checking out the blog, but I have been putting some of those journal entries online. If yall want to read everything I love and hate about this country (mostly hate), check it out. I’ll add some of the journal entries to the end of this email.
Finally, I also participated in another TV show. The good news is that I hope to get a DVD of this show and the previous one, and bring it back to the US. The bad news is that it won’t air until December or so, so they haven’t put it online yet.
The show is basically the same as the one that I had participated in September. They have changed the name to “Happy Foreigners” and the changed the games around. This time everyone got to participate in a game, making it fairer than the last one.
For my game, I had to dress up in a crab suit with a friend and try and pop balloons in between us by hugging each other (without using our hands). To make it a little harder, they have a bungee cord attached to our backs and they had two people pulling on each of the bungee cords, trying to hold us back. We won this game easily, because the other contestant was deathly afraid of balloons popping.
It didn’t matter that I won. We had already rigged the entire gameshow before it started. You see, this game show took the six players and, through elimination, choose one player to play for a final prize of a thousand dollars. This final player did this through a high jump. So I convinced everyone that we would all be better off if we choose the person who could jump the highest and let him win, and afterwards we could split the money.
That’s exactly what we did. For those of yall who don’t know, this is a problem in Game Theory (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory ), and I’m listening to a podcast on Game Theory. Making sure everyone was going to buy into our rigging this game show was a little experiment in Game Theory. I thought it would be a little difficult, but it worked out in the end. Every one threw the games that they were supposed, and the guy who won was still willing to split the money.
We got to the end of the show, and the guy we had rigged to win did win. After the show was over, we all split the money and ended up with about US$240. Not a bad.
A little richer and a lot wiser.

Journal Entries - TV Show

Week 3 and 4
Journal Entry 1
For the last assignment, I talked a lot about the gap between when school starts and when most of my classes start. For these entries, I am going to focus on getting used to the classes and how I was received in the classes.
The one class that actually started during the first week was one called “Modern and Contemporary Chinese Political Systems and Thought Research.” I had wanted to go to this class and another class at the same time, but I talked with Lauren, a University of Oregon student, and she said she would go to the diplomacy class and I could go to the other class. We reported to each other on our classes after the end of each of them.
Earle came with me to the class. I think he was in over his head, but I kept treading water. This teacher was interesting, and he spoke clearly though quickly. He is talking about a different topic related to Chinese government every week, and our only assignment is to read a book and do an hour long presentation on it with another student. Ten out of the twelve books he gave us were originally written in English, so I just found a copy of one of them in the philosophy library in the original. Not too shabby.


Journal Entry 2
So, the next few entries will be on this experience with the television show.
We had just had some activity coordinated by the Flagship program. I had to meet up with some of my friends who had come from Germany, and my bike was messed up. I went to the bike repair guy at the University’s north gate. The guy was fixing my tire, and I was talking with this guy about China and how corrupt things were.
He first asked if Western media had something against Chinese people. I didn’t really think American media had anything against Chinese people, but they thought that the Chinese government was pretty cruel. He said that that was true, but it was also necessary to maintain a cruel government so that China’s problems, like corruption. I pointed out that China’s corruption was getting better and not worse since the 1970’s. He was surprised I realized this and thought that I was very clever to have seen this. I told him that I am not clever, and it is something that anyone could have known.
At this point of our conversation, it just so happened that two ladies from one of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation were driving by, and they saw me. They were looking for some foreigners to do a gameshow in next Sunday and I told them that I could do it.

Journal Entry 3
Later, I went to talk with some of the representatives about the meeting. I was waiting for them down in the lobby of the main building of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation. While I was waiting for them in the giant lobby, I noticed something that helped me understand the Chinese media. There were people moving about in the fairly empty lobby. There was a Starbucks, a fancy bakery and a bank all on the first floor of this building, surprising considering that people from outside did not generally come in. But, the most interesting thing was the way you had to get in the rest of the building. You had to walk through a small turnstile to get to the elevator. Next to that elevator was a PLA officer standing on a wide, circular metal stool. To me, he felt like he was out of place, but the other people moving in and out of the turnstile, women in pretty, knee-length skirts that looked like something out of the Sears catalogue and men in dry-cleaned suits, did not seem to think anything was strange.
I mentioned this experience to some Chinese people. They tried to offer other explanations, but no of them really seemed to hold water. One person said that may the PLA officer was perhaps the reason he had been placed there was to protect from a terrorist attack or some sort of robbery. Of course, it would be impossible for him to do anything in the event of a terrorist attack, since there was only one person and he only had a pistol.
I have concluded that the PLA officer was put there just to embody the Party’s control over the media, that he was an actual symbol of their power, stuck in the middle of this Westernized media operation and this lobby filled to the brim with the symbols of American capitalism like Starbucks to make sure the people walking through the turnstile never forgot who was really in charge.

Journal Entry 4
The day of the filming of the television show was Sunday. I had to show up at ten thirty in the morning to start preparing for the show at that evening at eight thirty. We meet in the VIP room and were talking about the content of the program. We had meet on the Wednesday to discuss these topics. I thought we had already worked this out. Why were we doing this again? Wednesday, they had asked me if I could do anything special like sing a Chinese song or do a Chinese tongue twister. I told them I can’t do English tongue twisters, much less Chinese, so we agreed to do a Chinese song, “我的中国心.”
But the day of the show, the director who had wanted me to do the tongue twister before asked me again if I could do it. I said know, but he asked me to say it out loud, just to see whether I could actually do it. Then, he said when the host was interviewing me he was going to ask me a question about what I liked about China. I was supposed to say that I liked Sichuan dishes, and then I was supposed to list them off. Finally the host was supposed to ask me what dish I could cook, and I was supposed to say “西红柿炒鸡蛋.” It was the directors idea of a joke. Not funny.
The host also didn’t find it funny, because he totally ignored him. But the host did ask me if I try and do a tongue twister. He said one line and I repeated it after him. That was fun.
I was left wondering whether this was like the production of an American television show and why they kept insisting I do a tongue twister. In the end, I realized that a lot of the stuff going on in this TV show was not something that was well planned out, but it happened more organically.

Journal Entry 5
After thinking about why they wanted me to say the Chinese tongue twister, I realized pretty quickly that it was about Chinese pumping themselves up about their own self image. At the start of the program, the host talked about the topic of how now a lot of foreigners were coming to China to study the Chinese in nationalistic terms, and how that was connected with the increasing importance of China in the world.
I think one of the reasons they insisted that I do the tongue twister because directors and the host wanted emphasize how foreigners are learning Chinese at a very high level, and that was supposed to show the audience that China (and Nanjing to a certain degree) has attained an important place in the world. I also think that it is related to the tributary system, where the importance of the emperor was confirmed by the amount of foreigners who would come to pay tribute to the emperor. The more foreigners you could bring and the more foreign they were, the more powerful you were. Discussions on the Tang Dynasty often emphasize who many foreigners were living in Chang’an. I think we were viewed by the Chinese in these terms, particularly since half of the players were black, particularly foreign to Chinese.



Journal Entry 6
As for classes, one of the most interesting (and frustrating) problems I have had since classes started is that one of my class’ schedules changed. Originally, my class on Chinese minorities was originally supposed to be taught by two different teachers, one teaching the first part of the semester and the other teaching in the second half of the smester, each teaching on Tuesday night.
But apparently, they changed the schedule after they printed out the schedule we have in the Flagship Office. Now, both teachers are teaching the class in the first half of the semester, one teaching it in the original Tuesday night time slot and the other taking a Monday night time slot. Fortunately, I did not have a class during that period, but it was kind of a pain that no one had told me. They had told the other American in the class when he signed up for classes (he’s a regular graduate student).
It’s not a big deal, but I was a little annoyed and surprised that they were just able to change the time. Of course, it makes sense, everybody in that class should all have the same classes. But then, I guess because they did not really know what I was doing there, what role I played in their class, so they did not really know that I was also supposed to come to that other part of the class.

Journal Entry - Starting Classes

Week 1 and 2
Entry 1
I guess the first thing that I should talk about for one of these learning journals is probably the first two weeks of class and how we didn’t really have class for many of the classes that I was looking at taking or auditing. Dr. Christensen, I think you had mentioned something about this before in our internship preparation course, but I think yall should tell students about it a bit more in depth or let them read some of the previous journals so that they know exactly what they are getting into.
Its really not that complicated, but I do think it’s a little unnecessary. The first two weeks are for first year masters students, but for those who have already been here before, classes do not start until the third week. I’m not sure why they do this, and I don’t think its particularly necessary. However, in China’s defense, I was venting with my friend who finished his masters degree in India, and he said they do something similar. Maybe all crappy third-world education systems do this because they are based on the Soviet Model. Or maybe they actually have a good reason and I just haven’t figured it out.

Entry 2
I’m going to keep talking about the one week three week split, since it is the most interesting thing that has occurred over these past two weeks (since most of my classes didn’t start meeting until today).
This split is not as straight forward as it would seem though. It is not just first year classes meet week one and other classes meet week three. In the course catalog, they listed classes as 08级 and 09级, the first being those that started the first week and the latter being those that started during the third week. But almost all the classes that I wanted to take were in the level 8 or were unclear in how they were designated in the course catalog. So I just went to them.
The first one I went to was a success, which is strange because it was not a first year class. Huh? Everyone in the class knew each other, and the professor had taught them all before. But it meet on the first week? I’m really not sure what’s going on, and I don’t know that I will ever be able to now. But its been kind of interesting trying to learn.

Entry 3
I realize this must be boring for you to read three entries on the same topic, but it has been a study in Chinese culture, trying to figure this class thing out. The next few entries will probably be about this topic.
So today, I went to a class with Thomas, from BYU, and Lauren, a girl from the University of Oregon who I got to know at the OSU Qingdao Center. The class was on China’s political systems and it was listed not listed as an 08 or an 09 class. We got there a little early, talked with some of the students in the class. But the teacher didn’t show up. We waited for fifteen, then twenty minutes, and we started to wonder if they had a fifteen minute rule in Chinese Universities. No one else left, so we dared not leave either. But around the fifteen minute mark, some of the students got on their phones. They were calling friends to see who had the number of the teacher. Eventually they called enough people and found the teachers number. Once they talked with the teacher, he said, “Oh no, class doesn’t start until the third week.” I don’t know why everybody got it wrong except for him, but it made me feel a little bit better that I was not just a stupid foreigner.

Entry 4
The fourth day of my classes, I went to another class in the morning. The classroom was full of students who were sleeping on books, busy looking over some of their notes or surreptiously chating. I sat down at the front of the class, near the only electrical outlet so that I could plug my computer in. And then I waited. About fifteen minutes into when I thought the class was supposed to start, I looked around and realized that I was doing something wrong. Unlike the other class, no one seemed perplexed by the teacher’s tardiness. I leaned over and asked a girl in front of me if she knew when the teacher was coming. She had no idea what I was talking about. I asked again, rearrange my sentence hoping to make my question clearer.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t my bad Chinese that was the problem. She, along with most of the people in the classroom, were not students in the class I wanted to take. Fortunately, she turned out to be the daughter of a professor in the history department, the same department my class was in. I gave her my phone number, and she said she would call me with more information on the classes.

Entry 5
The next day, that girl sitting in front of me eventually called me back with the numbers of some students in the history department who could help me. I took down their numbers and thanked her, and started calling the numbers she gave me. The first was a number from a professor, and he did not answer. I am kind of glad that he did not answer because I would have felt awkward talking to a professor, asking him when some other professors class was supposed to start.
The next person I called was a student. She picked up and I immediately asked her if she knew when the class was going to start. This was a mistake. I could tell she was a little put off because I had not introduced myself really. Nevertheless, she gave me the number of another person who should probably know (she was a student of ancient Chinese history and the class was on Taiwan-mainland history, so she did not know).
Finally, I called the next girl, this time making sure to explain who I was and what my situation was. She seemed quite happy to tell me that the class would not be starting until the third week, and that it was a three hour class, not a two hour class.

Entry 6
For my final entry for this assignment, I’m going to talk about the final problem I had with classes starting. I went to a class that was supposed to start during the first week (like all the others), but I did not expect it to. It was difficult to find the building. No one had ever heard of the Center for the Study of Chinese Philosophers. It turned out to be squirreled away in a small house behind another building.
I went to that building. It was abandoned except for janitor/secretary in there. I mentioned the class, and she said that the teacher was in a meeting this week so it would not start until the second week, and that the time had been changed from Friday morning to Thursday afternoon. Really? Next week, I went to the class on Thursday afternoon and the teacher and another student were there, just as she had said. But the classes eight other students were not there. Just as I thought I had gotten the hang of it, I lost it, but, like the time we meet and the teacher was the only one who did not show up, this time it was not really might fault. Someone else had messed up too, a comforting thought for an American trying to figure this whole thing out.

Nanjing

First off, I haven’t been doing much with my blog up until now other than putting the stories from these emails on the blog. I’m going to change that some starting now. This semester, one of my assignments is to write a ‘journal entry’ about my experiences in China three times every week. These journal entries are all about issues that I’m having over here and what some of these experiences have taught me about China. So, I’m going to be putting every one of these assignments onto my blog, and I’ll tag some of them on to the end of these emails under the label “Assignments – Journal Entries.”

So if yall want to see more of these little tidbits about problems I’m having here in China, how I’m seeing Chinese culture, check out my blog at:

www.free-roaming.blogspot.com

Also, I don’t know how many of yall have been checking, but I have not updated my picture site much. The Chinese government had been working even harder than normal for a while to prevent me from getting access to those sorts of things, so for a while, it was difficult to upload pictures. Now, I’ve found a way around the “Great Firewall of China,” so I’ve updated my picture page. Check it out, there are a ton of new pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee

For those concerned, I finally had to get a haircut. All of my mormon friends like the hair cut, which means I look like a good mormon missionary. So it’s a bad haircut. You can see the results on the above picture site, in the folder titled “Suzhou.”



And now for something completely different: This email is going to kind of be light on content. A lot has happened, but most of it may be even less interesting than my normal emails, so I’m not going to bother yall with it unless I get really desperate for stories. My parents are coming soon, so I thought it would be good for them and yall to get a little introduction into where I’m studying.

Nanjing is located just a few hours from Shanghai along the Yangze River. It’s an old city, considered one of the four ancient capitals of China. Unfortunately, everytime someone tries to build their capital here in Nanjing, they screw up, so it has become known as a kind of unlucky place to make your capital, with only short dynasties making their capital in Nanjing.

The most recent idiot to make his capital in Nanjing was Chiang Kai-Shek, the megalomaniac who ruled China from 1927 until 1949. He fought the Japanese and sat next to FDR and Churchhill in some of the conferences towards the end of World War II. But his regime was less than successful. He tried to eliminate the Communist all the while the Japanese empire of the 1930’s was expanding into China. In 1937, the Japanese invaded most of China, Chiang Kai-Shek’s government was forced to leave Nanjing and set up a government in exile in inner China, several thousand miles upriver on the Yangze. At this time, the Japanese entered Nanjing unopposed and slaughtered several hundred thousand innocent civilians, raping women and skewering infants on bayonets. This marked a low point in human history.

Before that, one of history’s bloodiest civil wars was focused on this area. A Chinese guy, Hong Xiuquan, read a pamphlet from a Christian missionary and studied the bible. He then had a vision that he was Jesus’ little brother and that he had to purge China of its demons. Long story short, he built up his own government, took over the southern half of China, and almost toppled the dynasty, leaving some twenty million dead in the wake of the conflict.

And there is a lot more history, but I’ll skip it I’ve been told that my emails can often become to “dissertation-like.” Now, Nanjing is no longer the capital of failed dynasties. Instead, Nanjing is the provincial capital of one of the country’s richest provinces, the breadbasket of China. It is also a center of education in the country, with only Beijing and Shanghai being able to challenge Nanjing with having more famous colleges in their city. And that’s where it comes to me; I’m at Nanjing University, one of the top five schools in the country, studying Chinese government and culture. The city has become a major center of commerce, my apartment sitting in the shadow of the seventh tallest building in the world, the Nanjing Greenland Financial Center.

TV Superstar - How to watch

So as I said in the email, I would explain how to watch the whole show for those who wanted.

I would just like to reemphasize two things:
1. Your browser may tell you that this website is dangerous, but I have not had any trouble with it so far.
2. You may not find it all that interesting if you don't speak Chinese. I don't really have a big part in anything after the first one.

First Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60953

Second Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60954

Third Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60955

Fourth Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60956

Happy Watching,
Lee

TV Superstar - How to watch

TV Superstar

A couple of emails ago, I mentioned that I had some exciting news, but I couldn’t share it with yall at the time. The news is that a couple of weeks ago I got invited to participate in a local game show. By game show, I mean a real, straight-up crazy game show with slimy fish and buckets dropping things on people. Although I didn’t win much money, just $75, and I didn’t even get to participate in any of the real games, but I still had a lot of fun. And don’t worry, it looks like I’ve already been invited on to do another game show, so maybe I’ve got another chance.

One day, I was getting my bike fixed and talking to the repairman about Chinese politics. Two TV directors just happened to be driving by and they noticed me talking with the repairman. They pulled over their car and asked me if I wanted to participate in a gameshow where I could win $1000 and I needed to speak Chinese.
This email is mostly about the game and its structure, so that when yall watch it yall can try and understand.

There are 6 players, all of us foreigners (2 Atlantans, 1 Kenyan, 1 Brit, 1 German, and one Spaniard). There were main three games that we could compete in to get money, but only two people could compete in each main game. How did they choose those two games? You had to win a kind of musical chairs to compete in the main game.I didn’t win any of these, so I didn’t get to compete in any of the main games.

These games were pretty crazy. The first game had one of the contestants with two of his friends on three stairs. On each of their heads is a bucket helmet. They have to pour water in to the bucket helmet, and then pour it into the helmet of the guy on the step below him, and again into the guy with the bucket helmet below that. The final guy was to pour the water into a giant measuring cup, the team with the most water in the measuring cup won. Contestants are also made to stand in buckets of water with little fish in them that nibble on your feet. I asked them what the point of the little minnows that you stepped on was. They said, “They make the game more fun.”

The second game was on a giant treadmill. The contestant got on the treadmill, and two of his friends were down below with fishing poles and a marshmallow on the end. The friends had to take the fishing pole and dangle it in the person’s mouth so that the contestant could eat it. This is going on while the person is running on a giant treadmill that keeps speeding up (if you fall, you drop into a giant pit of playground balls). The person who eats the most marshmallows wins.

The final game has contestants carry a pole with two buckets on either end of the pole (a traditional rural carrying mechanism still used in China and Vietnam today). A friend of the contestant had to put a live fish in each bucket, a total of two fish. The contestant then had to walk across a slippery, 15-yard long trampoline. Finally, dump the fish in a bucket at the other end of the trampoline, run back and do it again. Of course, if the fish jumped out of the bucket you had to pick them up off the trampoline and put them back in your bucket, all while trying to keep balance on the soapy-trampline.

But then, once you win $100, $200, or $300 they make you gamble with it. After each of these main games, these twelve very scantily clad ladies come out, each of them carrying a small scroll. The winner of the main game takes a hula-hoop and throws it around the one of the girls and then they open the scroll. The scroll is basically like rolling a dice. Your money could be halved or doubled. You might have to give it to your opponent or an audience member. Whatever the scroll the model is holding tells you to do, you have to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it was crazy. I didn’t participate in any of the main games, but I got to be interviewed and I did kind of sing a Chinese song for the intro (lip-sing, we had tapped it earlier that day). If you watch it, I’m dressed in a golden, Chinese shirt and singing with the German dude.


Instructions:

When you go to this website, your browser may say it’s dangerous or it’s infected with malware. So far, neither I nor anyone I’ve given this to has had any problem. I think it is just an issue with the Chinese site.

Those of yall who don’t speak Chinese probably won’t notice it, but the sound does not match with the video, so when you see me say something, my voice will come about ten seconds later.

The show was about 90 minutes and online they have divided that up into 4 videos: the website below will take you to the first video, which has most of the cool stuff:

http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60953

The other videos are not of much interest unless you speak Chinese. If you want to watch the other videos, please check out my blog for further instructions:

www.free-roaming.blogspot.com

Finally, I’ve noted the times of some points of interest in the first video:
Minute 1: Nationalistic show
Minute 2: Lee lip-singing a Chinese song with a German dude.
Minute 3-4.5 : Other contestants introduction.
Minute 8.20-10: Lee loses musical chairs.
Minute 12-14: Lee gets interviewed by the host, has to do a Chinese tongue twister.
Minute 15-22: First competition, with the bucket helmets.
Minute 22-25: Gambling the prize money.

If you watch the next video (how to find that on my blog), then you can see what the winner actually gets, but it’s hard to figure out what’s going on unless you speak Chinese.

I’ll probably write another email on this later, but until then...

KKorean Odyssey

When we Last saw our hero, Lee, he was in the ancient Silla capital of Gyeongju, in the south of the country, near Pusan. Lee had already been spent five days in this nation of 50 million people, the world’s 10th largest economy, and, though he knew they were there, he had still not yet seen a Krispy Kreme. Will Lee find that sugary treat before he has to return to the Kremeless land of China? Now, for the exciting conclusion of the KKorean Odyssey:

Hey Yall
I left Gyeongju and went to a city called Daegu, where I had to transfer on his way to Sokcho and Seuranksan National Park. Nothing interesting in Daegu, but while I was trying to find the right bus station, I saw a women hurrying off to work. As she scurried down the subway stairs, I noticed she was wearing Krispy Kreme uniform. Before I could ask here where the Krispy Kreme was, I was accosted by a Korean Jehovah’s Witness, handing me “The Watchtower.” Before I could get away, the girl in the uniform had disappeared.
Sokcho, the place I was going to, is a small city on the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, too small to have a Krispy Kreme. Sokcho is quite close to North Korea. In fact, it was a part of North Korea before 1950, but it became part of South Korea in the deadly back and forth that costs the lives of millions of Americans and Chinese at the end of the Korean war. While there, I went to hike in Seuraksan National Park.
Originally, I wanted to hike to the top of the mountain and sleep in a shelter in the park, but it was raining, so they actually closed most of the park. Instead of climbing a mountain, I climbed into a gorge and then climbed a smaller mountain. The park was really pretty, mostly made up of a series of prominent granite mountains surging out of the Sea of Japan.
When I started the hike, I meet up with these two local taxi drivers who also happened to be hiking the same route. They couldn’t speak much (any) English, so we had to communicate through charades. Nevertheless, they were really cool and let me share in their lunch (kimchi and rice) while the cold rain sprinkled down on us.
That night, because I couldn’t sleep on the mountain, I decided to stay in a Jjimjibang. A Jjimjibang is kind of like a spa or a sauna attached to a clubhouse. When you arrive, men and women are separated into two different locker rooms. Here, you strip down butt naked and put your things in a locker. Then, you go into the main room which is filled with showers, several jacuzzis, an ice pool and a couple of saunas. I would sit in one jacuzzi for ten minutes, then jump into a hotter one for another ten minutes. The trick though, is to go from there to the ice pool, which is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving your body totally numb (and comfortable) after a minute or so. Then it’s back into the hot jacuzzi.
After about half an hour I would pop out of the pool room back to my locker, put on the pajamas they provide and go into the common area, where men and women can come together, watch tv, play games, sit in the common saunas, go online or sleep. It’s here that I would lay down on a mat in the middle of the floor and get some sleep. The next morning I would get up, do the jacuzzi thing all over again, and then head out to do some sightseeing. The pools and the place to stay cost about $6 for the whole night, so the way I looked at it, it was a cheap hotel with an awesome bath.
But before I could go sightseeing, I wanted to try to get to a Krispy Kreme. I had found one on the map, just outside of Sinchon Subway Station. Just two more days left in Seoul, so I decided to try and hit the hot now then. I bought a ticket for Sincheon Station, traveled about 45 minutes, changing trains twice, but when I got to Sincheon I couldn’t find the KK. I asked someone, they looked on my map and informed me that I was at the wrong station. I had gone to Sincheon Station, the KK was at Sinchon. Damn Dipthongs!
Despondent, I regrouped, eating breakfast at a bakery and deciding to take the subway to the southern suburbs of Seoul to see a giant fort. On subways, people regularly come by and try to sell things, sometimes the crazy people just come and yell, only to leave a minute or two later. This time, an old lady came in, yelling and waving a book. I thought she was another crazy, so I tried to mind my own business. When she was done yelling, she came up, stopped just in front of me and shook my hand, saying in English, “thank you.”
As she went into the next car to yell again, I realized the book she was waving was the Bible. I was a little disturbed that she thanked me. I guess she thought that, because I was white, she owed me something for bringing Christianity to Korea. That’s not particularly good for Korean Christianity if they still think its that white man religion.
The next morning was my last day in Korea. I double checked to make sure that I was going to the right station. I bought my ticket, and in fifteen minutes, I was at the right station. But, when I got to where it was supposed to be on the map, it wasn’t there. I asked around, but no one seemed to know where it was. I walked across the street, anxious, but then I noticed a sign for Coffee and Doughnuts.
Found it!
I bought half a dozen, for $7 (more than my accommodations the previous night). At first, she just grabbed them from the pile of glazed doughnuts, but I quickly let her know that I wanted the hot ones. After I scarfed down the six doughnuts, I went and did the only healthy thing you could do after eating KK: I climbed a mountain.
Korea was a pretty cool place. I was surprised at how much it was like Japan, where I had spent a summer in 2005. I meet a lot of cool people, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, American. Also, during my ten days of travel, I spent a grand total $30 on accommodations because I stayed in these Jjimjibangs, airports, or at the dorm of a Chinese friend. Pretty good for a country where a cheap motel costs about $30.
Best,
Lee
'He will tell you history and no lies.'" Book 3, line 24, Homer’s Odyssey

Korea

So I had wanted to email yall earlier, about something that had happened while I was still in Nanjing, China. Unfortunately, that email will have to wait until I can find the video of what happened online.

As my subject title may imply, I'm in Korea. There was a break throughout China for a little over a week. I wanted to do some traveling, but this is the busiest time of travel for China. For one week, almost half of the country is on break, and anywhere that you might want to go is going to be crazy busy, oceans of Chinese people at every tourist spot.

So I decided to leave the country. I've been in China since June, so I kind of need the break anyways. China was starting to get to me too, so its probably best that I left.

So, I left Nanjing on October first with just three shirts, two pairs of pants, three pairs of socks and three pairs of boxers, along with a few other things, some books and my ipod. My flight left from Shanghai only, 2.5 hours away from where I'm living in Nanjing. Unfortunately, I had an overnight layover in Beijing, so I had to stay the night. I found a comfy spot to sleep and got to Korea the next day.

Korea's a pretty small, but there is a ton of stuff to do. Since I've only got nine or ten days, I'm having to split my time carefully. I'm doing three places: Seoul, the capital and the center of Korean culture. Gyeongju, a city called the "museum without walls" because its scattered with so many relics from its time as the first Korean capital in the 6th Century. And finally, Sokcho and Seodraksan National Park, a cool collection of granite mountains shooting out of the ground not far from the East coast of Korea.

Flying into Seoul I spent a day there, seeing some palace or something. Like some many things in this country, the palace looks like they were trying to copy China (60% of Korea's vocabulary comes from Chinese, 20% from English and 20% from Korean). While exploring that palace, I ran into some cool American teachers, so I tagged along with them for the rest of the day.

The American teachers and I went to eat at a little back-alley Korean place, and then, they took me to this park in Seoul where jam bands meet semi-legally most nights. That night, it was one of the most famous bands on the circuit, a reggae-tapdancing band. I know it sounds crazy but, it was one of the cooler things I saw that day. I thought the band's bongo drummer looked higher than a cloud flying a kite for most of the songs, but then I saw him tap dance the rhythm section on a Bob Marley song, and it was a lot of fun.

In Gyeongju, the 'museum without walls,' I biked around the countryside, passing by tombs that were a millennium and a half old, climbing up to see giant stone buddhas and a giant temple. While there, I stayed with a Chinese exchange student from Nanjing, who I meet on couchsurfing.org, a site that lets you meet up with people while traveling and stay with them for free. I'm practicing my Chinese more here than in China.

I'll tell yall about my rainy hiking with some Korean cab drivers and the rest of my trip later.

But there is something I should mention. Some of yall may know of one of my other loves, a love that my fiance puts up with with only a slightly disguised disgust: hot-now Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I generally don't eat them in the US, because I'd get crazy fat, and when I'm in Asia I don't generally have the opportunity. But Korea has about 50 KK's and I've made it my mission to scarf down a dozen hot one's before I leave the peninsula. Dunkin' Doughnuts are all over here, but I haven't yet seen a KK. The closest I came was I saw a lady with a KK jacket on, but I didn't have time to find the store as I had to catch a bus. I'll update yall on my search.

Nanjing

I apologize for it having been so long since I wrote. I’ve been in the middle of moving and getting used to a new environment, Nanjing. I’ve also been starting classes, so that’s sucked up a lot of my time.

I noticed that a lot of people asked me what I was doing in Qingdao and what I would be doing in Nanjing, so I guess I should probably go ahead explain that pretty well.

In Qingdao, when I wasn’t at the museum teaching kids about Halloween or eating at ‘Brothers,’ I was always in the Qingdao Center, an office that The Ohio State University maintained. The office sits over the bay where the 2008 Olympic sailing event was held. During the day, you could watch small sailboats sail into the bay beneath the entire Qingdao skyline, a fairly impressive skyline as that Qingdao was one of the largest ports in northern China. At night, when I was staying back to study, the bay would be lit up by the Olympic colors, a fountain below would spit out tall streams of water in the center of the bay and tourists in the May 4th Square below would take these small kites shaped like lanterns, and put a candle inside the lantern-kite. The candle would heat the air in the kite up like a hot air balloon, and, when they let the kite go, it would float up from the square and meander into the sky, along its way, bumping into the window of the office as I tried to read an article on the May 4th Movement.

It was in this office and the conference room next door where we had class. In the morning, I had a Chinese class that focused on this test that I have to take in October. It was kind of boring, and most of the people were online while the teacher talked about grammar or something. In the afternoons, I meet with a ‘tutor.’ My ‘tutor’ was a retired professor, and I think he’s a little famous in the academic world. He writes articles about Chinese political thought and literature. Most of the times we meet, I would read one of his articles, and then critique it, pointing out things I thought were wrong. This was quite intimidating. He was an expert, and I was trying to read his articles in Chinese, find problems, and then point out his mistakes using my inadequate Chinese. But it was really great for learning, particularly for my Chinese arguing skills, and it’s really gotten me used to talking about political topics that I’m studying in Chinese.

I should probably tell yall about Nanjing too. I’ve now moved to this city on the Yangze River, just a little ways from Shanghai, but quite different culturally. It’s a pretty old city, older than Beijing, a former capital of about six short dynasties. It’s known as one of China’s ‘Ovens’ because of the summer heat, but since I’ve been here, its been cloudy and rainy on and off, mostly with pleasant weather. I think I got lucky and missed the heat of August. The cityscape is pleasant since its full of trees that shade the road, keeping it cool or protecting you from the rain as you pedal to class.

Maybe I’ll tell yall more about Nanjing in another email, but I should explain what I’m doing here. I’m here at Nanjing University. Unlike my studies two years ago, I’m not really studying Chinese. I’m studying political science and historical stuff in Chinese. The two classes I’ve decided to take for credit are “Modern Chinese Political Systems and Thought” and “Research on China’s Ethnic Minorities.” I’m also sitting in on a couple of classes, “Yuan Dynasty,” “Chinese Political Systems,” “America-Chinese Relations,” “China-Taiwan relations,” and “Historical Source Research.” We also have two other classes that I’m required to take with people from BYU, Arizona State, and University of Oregon, all students participating in the Flagship Program, the program I’m in. One of these classes is on Chinese Media, and the other is a Writing Class.

My living conditions are much better. I know some people expressed concern over my previous apartment, but my apartment now is decent enough. The toilet is not a squatter, and the bathroom is clean. My bedroom is actually pretty big, and it’s got a TV, not that I watch it. It’s actually a pretty nice place.

I guess that’s it for now. I should have some more things to tell yall in the coming weeks, and I suspect that they’ll be more interesting, but I won’t say more.

My Favorite Restaurant

As I’m finishing up my program here in Qingdao, China, I’ve probably got one more email after this, and then I’ll be off to Nanjing, China, to start classes at Nanjing University.

As some of yall may remember, part of my work here in Qingdao was to do some sort of community service project. Saturday before last, I completed that project at the Qingdao Museum. My project was to teach a short Saturday course on American holidays for some kids. The kids came to the museum every Saturday for a couple of weeks. Before me, there had been a Texan who had taught them about Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, but she had to leave, so she couldn’t teach the class on Halloween.

That’s where I come in. I wrapped myself in toilet paper to pretend that I was a mummy, and taught them the history of Halloween and how kids in the US trick or treat. The toilet paper didn’t really hold up on my legs and arms, but it survived on my chest and head. See the pictures in picasa for the frightening results:

As I’m finishing up with my work here in Qingdao, I’d like to tell yall about my favorite restaurant here. Its Chinese name is Brother’s Quick Dishes, but they miss spelled the Chinese word for “dishes.” I’m not sure the guy who owns it graduated from elementary school, so the spelling error is excusable. It’s near my apartment, a friend who lives near me joins me for a meal, generally on the weekends. In the eight weeks we’ve been here in Qingdao, we’ve eaten at this restaurant about twenty times total, trying to get there at least once a week, but usually more often.

Some of my friends asked me for the address so that they could go sometime. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an address. They asked me how to get there, and I had trouble telling them. “Its in a little dirty alley behind some apartments. You’ll see a sign with misspelled Chinese on it, and a little shack and you’ll just know you’re there.” Those were the best directions I could give them.

“Brothers” is on a little dirt street that runs behind several apartment complexes. The ‘street’ is lined on both sides with shack-stores built from left over plywood and roofed with blue, plastic tarps. These shack-stalls sell everything from fairly attractive but extremely cheaply made women’s high heels to buckets, and most things in between. Brothers is located where the street stalls open up into a wider, dirtier market area. Just across from the restaurant, there is a man sleeping in a selling live fish, chickens and other birds, and a chopping block where he’ll kill them for you fresh.

The restaurant’s facilities are not all that much better. The restaurant was built out of left over construction supplies. The walls are made out of old wooden doors and plywood, the roof is made from sheets of metal and a large tarp. The structure is enforced with steel rods. One of the windows is just a large hole where they decided not to put any material. The floors are dirt, leaving it quite messy after it rains. The smell of smoke from the patrons competes with the smell sewage coming in from the market, fighting to see who can get to you first.

The kitchen facilities are also not particularly nice, either. Behind the seven or eight tables that occupy the middle of the room’s space (I hesitate to call it a room), within eyesight, there are a couple of tables for preparation and only two woks for cooking. You really can’t go to Brothers when its busy otherwise you’ll have to wait since they only have two woks and one cook. The water from the kitchen comes down for a little pvc pipe in the ceiling and, like the electricity, is probably being stolen from the nearby construction site.

But the food is seriously the best Chinese food we have ever eaten. The sweet and sour chicken is to die for. Better than anything you would pay for in a fancy restaurant downtown, better than anything you could get in Beijing or Shanghai.

This restaurant has two workers: the cook and the boss/waitor. When we first started coming here the cook had burnt his foot bad, some of the hot coals from one of the two woks falling on him. He had to keep it wrapped in bandages. Those would get dirty with the muddy floor, so he kept his foot encased in a beer box, hobbling around with the thing attached to his leg.

The boss is kind of dim as far as I could tell, but his son goes to Qinghua University, the closest thing China has to an MIT.

The place is mostly frequented by construction workers and sailors. Behind the alley, the Chinese are building eight or ten apartment buildings, each 40 stories high. It’s crazy to watch so much building going on in this economy.

For the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee

"A day at the Museum" has my Mummy pictures and "Brothers – The restaurant" has the other pictures

Anyways, that’s about it for now.

Bon Appétit,

Village People

I apologize for not emailing yall sooner. I’ve kept meaning to, but I’m pretty busy. I generally don’t leave school until 10 or 11 at night, and even when I leave, I generally go out to a street-side Shishkabob place and spend another hour or two eating and reading some Chinese political science articles for class.
But that’s for another article. As for news, the biggest thing that has happened is that I got interviewed by the Amatuer Traveler podcast. For those of yall who don’t know, a podcast is kind of like a radio broadcast, but you can do it on your own and you just put it online for people to download. I’ve listened to the Amatuer Traveler podcast for over a year, and I contacted the host to see if I could help him out with anything in China. He asked me to come on the show and talk about Beijing as an independent traveler. So, for those of yall who want to hear what I’ve got to say about Beijing, check it out:
http://amateurtraveler.com/
Click on the above link and then look for my picture and the words “Independent Travel to Beijing, China – Episode 193. Just above the word “podcast,” you can see a play button. Press that, and the program will start up. (Let me know if yall have any issues with this). It’s a pretty big show, getting about four to five thousand downloads a week.
And now for something completely different: this Saturday, I went to my friend’s house and hung out in his village for the weekend. His village is on the northern part of the Shandong peninsula (I live on the southern part of the peninsula). I took a crappy bus made by a company called Iveco (combining the reliability of Russian engineering with everything you love about the “Made in China” brand). After about five hours of bumping across Shandong, I arrived at my friend’s village.
I’ve been to Chinese villages before. In January 2007, I went to a different friend’s village on the border of Yunnan and Guizhou province, in some of the poorest areas of China. I’ve also been to a village outside of Beijing, where my host family owns a vacation home, a richer locale. Each area I’ve been to was pretty different, and this one was no exception: it was not really a village, instead it was more like a series of small factories mixed with farming communities.
When you think of the word ‘village,’ you probably imagine huts made out of mud with straw roofs. There is some of that in China, but not much where I was. My friend was from the poorest village in the area, so it was more like that than any of the other areas. Most of the houses in his village were built with bricks made in a factory just outside the village. The inside of the house was all tiles and concrete. In the center of the house, like most other village houses throughout China, is a roofless courtyard. The rooms of the house are arranged around this courtyard, a little garage, three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. In one of the corners of the courtyard, there is a cocker spaniel and a couple of birds in cages. I’m putting pictures of the place online.
This village is the poorest in the area, that’s because they don’t have many factories in their village. Nearby this village is a defunct brick factory and a small plastics factory. Surrounding the village is farmland, with corn, peanuts and their most famous product, strawberries.
I’m not sure how long this can continue though. The pollution is starting to have a real effect. The creek that separates this village from a neighboring village is completely black. Trash is piling up on both sides and the banks are the local dump. I saw some ducks were bathing in the black creek, and I told my friend that we had better not be having duck for dinner. My friend said “It used to not be a problem, but in the last 10 years pollution has become a really noticeable problem.” Really? The pollution is beginning seep into the aquifer so that the water from wells is undrinkable.
The other villages in the areas are a lot richer and a lot less traditional than my friend’s. Most have a couple of factories, and much more modern houses, i.e. not made of bricks. One of the villages nearby is one of the richest in all of China. It has almost 10 big factories. As far as villages go, this place is in the money. They have their own mall and their own stadium and they are one of the only villages in China with a KFC (that’s a huge honor. In this country, KFC is where you take your hot date when you’re getting to know her).
Hanging out in the villages was a lot of fun, giving me a chance to relax. The pace is real laid-back. I enjoyed it a lot and I may get to do a lot more of it later depending on where I do my internship next spring. I’ll keep yall informed.
Here are those pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
I’ll try and send emails more frequently as I’m finishing up my program in Qingdao.

Arrival in Qingdao

Sorry its been a while since I wrote. I haven’t really been traveling, so my activities these last couple of weeks maybe be less interesting. Still, there has been a lot going on as I settle down here in Qingdao, a major port in the north of China and a former German colony, and get started with my classes.

I spent my first weekend here in Shanghai, meeting up with an old friend. This was my first time in Shanghai, and I didn’t like, but then, I’ve always hated Shanghai, even before I went there. Beijing and Shanghai hate each other, and I liked Beijing when I lived there two and a half years ago.

From Shanghai, I took an overnight train to Qingdao. I had arranged to stay with a Chinese guy, Bob, I meet online through couchsurfing.net, a website that connects travelers with people who have a place to stay and an inclination to meet people. The idea is that you let someone stay on your couch and you get to meet them and show them around town or whatever.

I rolled off the train that morning in Qingdao, emerging onto the streets from the Bavarian-style train station. I meet him at the main entrance to the university later that morning, and he grabbed one of my bags and helped me drag them to his dorm, up seven flights of steps.

He had arranged for me to stay in an extra bed in his dorm, three rooms crammed with 12 guys on bunk beds. I got there at around 9:30 in the morning. In the center of the largest room, there were four computers, surrounded by several bottles of open beer and cigarettes burnt down to the end half put-out in the ash trays.

Everybody except for Bob were just in their underwear. Some of them had not yet woken up, others were just on their computers, playing Warcraft, a computer game some of my roommates at UGA had been addicted to.

Staying with them was a fun experience, a real look at college life in China, something I had only seen glimpses of before. In the two nights that I stayed in their dorm, three of the 12 guys didn’t go to class once. These were the guys playing Warcraft in their underwear. As far as I could tell, these guys never left their room except to get food, and even this they did fairly efficiently: while the other two continued playing Warcraft, one of them would go pick up something and bring it back to the room, where the three of them could continue to play while eating.

After staying in the dorm for two days, I left to find my own apartment. It was kind of difficult to find a lease for just two months. I did the best I could, but I could only real find one place that worked out. It hasn’t been remodeled since the 70’s. The ‘kitchen’ doesn’t have anything for cooking, except some random piece of plywood, which is fine because I was born without the ability to cook. I found a couch in the second bedroom, under some more plywood and a desk.

Apparently there was some water damage, and the walls have been spoiled by mold. I scrubbed that off with bleach, and it looks like I killed it all. The bathroom is pretty messy, but there’s not much I can do with that. The circuit breaker is a little loose. Before, when I wanted power I had to take a stick and smack the circuit board until the lights came on. I think I’ve fixed it because I haven’t had that problem for the last week or so.

Finally, I have a trash can that was here when I got the lease, but some of the previous residents appeared to not have one. Instead of taking the trash out to the pile of trash in the parking lot, they just dumped it out the back window. Not entirely sure why, but the area outside my back window is completely covered in what looks like a foot or more of ramen noodle packages, plastic bags and pieces of paper. Not that it matters. The area behind my apartment is a little brick wall and, behind that, construction.

The bathroom is also lacking. It’s pretty dirty, and I don’t have a hot water heater. The landlord said that they had fixed it, but it still doesn’t work. I didn’t want to bother with it, so I just fill a bucket with water and use that to shower. It may sound bad to those of yall who’ve never been to India, but it’s not really that bad. Kind of refreshing in fact.

My bedroom is alright, good enough for me at least. Overall, my apartment is good enough for me for two months.

If you want pictures, I’ve put some up on my new picture site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee

I’ve also put a lot more of my pictures from the trip online.

Writer's Block

For those of yall who do keep up with this, I apologize for not keeping up with things. I'm in China now and it appears this website is blocked. It took me a little while to figure out what I was going to do about that. Now, I'm sending the things I want to say to someone in the US and they are updating the site. I'll put the post the things I meant to update, and the date on there will be the time that I meant to update them for.

Paradise Recounted and Addendums

So my journey is over. At least, the part where I travel around aimlessly is over. Now, I’m going to be getting down to business, doing some work on my Chinese. I went through four countries (unless you count Holland, where I had a four hour layover) and the one feature that has unified them has been that they all drove on the left side of the road, a weird coincidence. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite make it to Singapore. Instead, I chose to go to a little island paradise about three hours away from Singapore. Still, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be traveling around southeast Asia some in the upcoming year, so I’ll get there.

This island paradise was pretty sweet. I’ve heard its where they filmed the movie “Blue Lagoon,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Still, it was fairly unspoilt, having some guesthouse bungalows along the three or four miles of beach, along with a small town in the middle. The rest was mountain jungle and sweet snorkeling beaches. It felt kind of like living in a zoo with all the animals we saw. There were Monitor Lizards, these big lizards with long claws that grew up to about 10 feet long, half of that tail. There were lots of bats hanging up in the pine trees lining one of the beaches near the town. At night they would swirl around me while I read outside my bungalow, swooping in to catch bugs hanging out at the florescent light. Pythons hung out in the trees, and monkeys jumped around on some of the ships harassing tourist and going crazy when one of the Monitor Lizards approached them.

We also did some snorkeling, which is what the island is known for. It was some of the best snorkeling that I had ever done, which surprised me because we originally thought it was just a place for lame Malaysian families to put on life jackets and wade out into the ocean. But when we got in there, there were some giant fish coming right up to the beach. All colors, all sizes just swarming around you. Some of the Malaysian tourist were feeding the schools of fish entire loafs of bread, causing them to swarm around the dock. Out away from the Malaysian tourist, there were some small reefs along a point, and smaller but more colorful fish darted in and out between the rocks and coral.

All and all it was a pretty cool place, and I’m glad I skipped Singapore to go there.

If you want to see the pictures from the island and the rest of the trip, check out:

http://mapvivo.com/journey/8746

As for the addendums, I wanted to mention a couple of things I had forgotten or had intentionally left out of the other emails.

The first was when I was discussing what was wrong with India, I mentioned the fat main in the black jacket who worked for the railway as bad case of Indian bureaucratic no-think. I have a better example. When we were hanging out in Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges, we wanted to store our bags in the train station’s left luggage office, but they had a regulation: you had to put a little lock on the main opening of your luggage. Of course, Robby and I had hiking backpacks, so you can’t really lock them. We argued with him for a little while, explaining that they wouldn’t be held responsible if anything was stolen from the bag, but that they were responsible if the bag was gone. He refused to comprehend the logic that the little lock on the bag would not prevent someone from walking out with the bag. We debated for about fifteen minutes until he signaled he wouldn’t help us. I was getting pretty annoyed, and since he wasn’t going to help us, I decided to send him a little message: I took a ruler on his desk and broke it in half. I gathered my bags up quickly and left.

Take that Indian bureaucracy. For the rest of the trip, Robby and I argued over whether my violent protest at the bureaucrats stupidity was right or wrong. Let me know what yall think.

The other thing was about the Nepalese government. I mentioned that the communist had abandoned the government after trying democracy for a year. The communist leaving the government was more than an article in the newspaper for us. Coming into Nepal, our bus got caught in the tail end of some protests after the son of a communist leader was run over. I meet a British guy who said he had been there for six hours just sitting. But get this: Nepal is so dependent on tourism (I think 70-90% of its GDP comes from tourism), that the communist protesters agreed to stop and allow tourist buses through during the middle of the day but continued to dam up Nepalese traffic. Later that night, as we ploughed through the darkness towards our destination I noticed a fire burning in the middle of the road up ahead. I was worried. The bus slowed down and pulled off to pass it. As we went by, I saw teenagers standing around the fire looking agitated and wearing red clothes. The watched us go by but didn’t do anything. I asked one guy if that had to do with the communist, but he said he didn’t know.

Anyways, it was a really cool trip. Learned a little, saw a lot and had fun along the way. Glad to be back in China where they drive on the right side of the road.

Best,
Lee