Look Both Ways. Pray.

Let me describe to you what crossing the street in Beijing is like.  

First, pretend you’re invisible.

Then, pretend that stop lights and traffic laws are merely suggestions, and don’t need to be obeyed by any vehicle with two or more wheels.

Then, imagine yourself running across 8 lanes of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, bicycles with trailers, tricycles, and motorcycles as traffic swerves within inches, honking and ringing bells and nearly hitting you and other vehicles.

In other words, its pretty pedestrian friendly. 

I'll have what he's having.

We have been advised to limit our consumption of raw fruits and vegetables in China, due to the fact that many farms use human waste as a fertilizer. Yum. But today we forgot ourselves, and ordered a salad at a restaurant. Well, it looked like a salad. It turned out to be a pile of shredded jalapenos and onions, a combination that apparently destroys anything else that might be festering in your stomach, as I have noticed no side effects of the evil raw foods yet. 

The thing to understand about the food ordering process is that all menus are written in Mandarin, so the only way for the non-speakers to order is by pointing at things on other people’s tables. My friend Caitlin has demonstrated the best technique of ordering so far, when she walked around from table to table with the waiter at her side, pointing to plates and alternately flapping her arms like a chicken or mooing like a cow to indicate which meat she preferred in the dish. At one point the restaurant owner was actually flapping along with her, much to the amusement of the other restaurant patrons. I plan to defer to Caitlin for all future ordering endeavors, as the best I can seem to do is accidently ask for three of everything at all the places we go. When its beer, not so bad, but three plates of sliced beef is a little hard to finish.  

Tuesday.

Toured Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City today…an interesting time to be here as its nearly the anniversary of the 1989 protests (June 4), and there’s some concern from the government about possible uprisings. Most young Chinese have never been taught about the event, though, and so don’t even know it happened, let alone the significance of it. We were told in no uncertain terms that we should not go down there on Thursday to document it, as even taking pictures of a police officer might be considered a “crime against the state.” Wowza. If some shit blows up you can bet I’ll be booking it on over though (sorry Mom).

We also had a really cool panel discussion with some foreign correspondents who work in Beijing. They gave us some great insight about what its like working within the constraints of the Chinese media, and gave us a link to a proxy server that gets past the government firewall (clearly the highlight of the day, partly because I can post to my blog, but mainly because I can now use the words “proxy server” in conversation).  

The Great Firewall has been breached.

Thanks to some advice from local journalists, we found a program that overrides the blocked websites (apparently every 5-year-old in China knows about it, we are just slow). So I'm able to post again, and read your excellent comments. Stay tuned!

If You Lived in China...

... this beer would only cost you 50 cents.

Monday.

This is the second day they have taken us on a walking tour of the hutong (that’s a type of old neighborhood with lots of skinny alleys connecting it) where we are staying. While I’m not opposed to tours in principal, they are slightly less enjoyable when taken during the hottest part of the day and in a frantic rush to cover 5 miles in an hour. My group (slackers that we are) finally just stopped at a café and got a beer. We got to meet two of the translators who will be helping us, and they are awesome. Wayne has the greatest knowledge of American television of anyone I’ve ever met, and was actually quoting lines from Friends and Gilmore Girls in the café.  Apparently there is this fantastic network of bilingual television enthusiasts who produce translated versions of every American t.v. show and post them online within minutes of airing in the US, including explanatory notes about the cultural references. Totally amazing.

Bikes are Everywhere