Rewind that, once.

My belly is full.

My dinner tonight, comprised of two hot cups of fresh soymilk, one big portion of rice, two portions of bok choy with sesame seeds and one red bean bun cost me a total of 43 cents. It’s more than I usually get.

The is air warm, sticky, and damp. On my computer playing is G. Love and Special Sauce, before which was the Sound Providers (who instead of soothing my headaches now make me melancholy), before whom was Cool Calm Pete (because what else do I listen to, really?). On my mind is irritation at the dichotomy, the two sides of life in China, presented to me unmistakably by my campus everyday. This and the beautification of the city of Beijing.

Let’s start with a little rundown of my daily sights and sounds.

My campus is beautiful. The parks in Beijing do the parks in America to absolute shame. Nature here is holistic. Thriving, they exemplify the carefully studied, articulated green thumb of China. The style is overgrown and interaction between nature’s creation and man’s is the goal. Paths made of irregular stone, through whose gaps thrive lush and vibrant grass, meander through slopes and valleys while sun light is filtered through the overhanging leaves growing so low as to grace the heads of passing admirers. My brief description does these lovely parks no justice- I could go on for a good few pages at least and still tickle the top of the subject (and I’d dip into too many trite similes, so I’ll save us all). Theyre all over, easily accessible, well used. The walkways around campus are mainly wide, tree lined boulevards, shady and European inspired. They show students exactly the face of Beijing that China would most want to present to foreigners and leave a lasting impression on those Chinese students working towards travelling abroad.

What the campus doesn’t let us see are the slums and shanty towns our construction workers live in. Their sounds, however, belie their existence. At all hours (all. As in, two in the afternoon and two in the morning) the construction and repairs upon various campus buildings can be heard. Currently on campus, as around all of Beijing, a process of beautification is being pushed to breakneck speeds. With the Olympics around the corner buildings are being refurbished, fences painted, fines for loitering and littering imposed. This brings in the need for additional workers, many of whom live within spitting distance of those whose businesses and homes they work on. On my campus, the workers lodgings are often within 200 feet of any given path, though disregarded and out of view. Walking around campus they appear suddenly as you turn an unexpected corner, and vanish just as quickly as you continue on to class. These meager abodes are hidden behind the large tarp walls that do double time shielding construction areas and construction quarters. They are in the farther corners of the school, away from the main gate and the foreign student housing. They are often tents made of canvas propped over a pole, three cots to a tent. Sometimes less, and sometimes the conditions just cannot be hidden. Case in point, the view out a class buildings window:

Of course, I can see examples of this when I step into the roads around my school to buy fruit or go for a bubble tea. The streets are the homes of hawkers and laborers, squatting between jobs for a cigarette or proffering wares to all who pass. I want to make it clear that I in no way disdain these people of the city, in fact I have much more respect for them than the people who zip past in dark tinted imported mercedes and bmws. These people, they work for their living. They are the living, breathing soul of the city of Beijing. And they are unapologetic. I think one of the things I love most about Beijing is the human feel of the city. The dirty, hand built, human feel. This feeling has long since been washed away from most American cities- they’ve been disinfected, air cooled, sprayed with febreze and checked for child safety. But now that’s what Beijing wants too. The Olympics are coming, and Beijing is busy waxing away those unseemingly hairs and putting on it’s best party dress.

As this is getting lengthy (or, at least, I feel like youre probably getting tired of reading it), I’m going to treat it as the prep in an installation on my opinions of the beautification of Beijing for the Olympics. Now you have a basic understanding of the dichotomy presented everyday by my university, and the tactile flavors of the streets. Ruminate on that. Dust in your nose, hot honey textured air on your skin, and the crack sizzle of raw meat grilling over a setup propane griddle to your left- you should buy one. When homeboy closes down his 4x6 foot grease covered kitchen for the night, he pulls out his cot, business becomes bedroom, and he catches some rest before the morning starts the cycle over.

Love&luz

Where was I?

Ah yes, the shopping adventure.


Needless to say, Beijing’s electronic center is both massive and daunting. Matt Damon and I price checked and wandered through several of the seven buildings before I settled on a Chinese brand called “爱国” which directly translates to love country, and more figuratively means patriotism. Camera + all of the fixings came out to somewhere right around 150$. Year long warranty, ten days to exchange for whatever I want.

It’s a good thing it comes with ten days, cause the little bugger started acting up on me and I’m hauling it in for that exchange tomorrow. Shame. (I'm taking Mongolian homeboy with me to make sure it gets taken care of the right way. huzzah!)


Next on the fateful shopping day was a trip with the lovely Risbeth to the Silk Market. Not so much a market as an enormous building with floor after floor of well done knock off goods at cut rate ghetto prices, the place was packed. Now, not all the goods were knockoffs. Though the bottom most floor was filled with fake Sevens and True Religions (and Joes, R&R, Citizens..) and the floor after that the same, there was an entire floor dedicated to silk, above which was the jewelry floor- fully half of which was jade.

Just a comment on the fakes: really, really well done. I’m not sure they’re so good they could have gotten past Shane back at Nordstrom, but I definitely would have let a couple slip past me without noticing. [then Shane or Rose would have found them in the return pile and scolded me for not paying more attention, but that’s ancient history now :) ]


What did I buy? Oh, well, I picked up a gorgeous silk scarf, pale and creamy with scenes of provincial life, enormous envy green D&G knock off shades, flats, a guanyin bodhisattva jade necklace, and a jade bracelet akin to the one Alea gave me (small jade discs connect by string).
Let me dwell for a moment upon the importance of bargaining (and of using your Chinese when you bargain. I am utterly convinced that you can get a lower price in Mandarin than in English)

Scarf
Asking: 160rmb After Bargaining: 20rmb
Shades
Asking: 180rmb After Bargaining: 30rmb
Flats
Asking: 260rmb After Bargainig: 60rmb
Necklace
Asking: 250rmb After Bargaining: 50rmb
Bracelet
Asking: 140rmb Paid: 30rmb


Total I spent 190rmb, which equals roughly $27. For everything.


So, what is the lesson of today? When in China, bargain. Hard. Be prepared to walk away if they won’t match your price. If they say 160, counter with 16 and go up from there. Why were the flats so relatively expensive? I don’t know, all the shoes I price matched were priced that way. But that was my Sunday in a nutshell. How did i feel about the enormous building dedicated to the spectre of consumerism? Well, i liked it more than shopping centers im used to because the exploitation was more thinly veiled. If I'm going to be participating in consumerism I'd like to see my exploitation upfront- not only does it cut down on middle man costs but it allows me to own up to the fact that this great machine called capitalism is a living, breathing, human relfection (cause lets face it, Communist or not China is one of the biggest hitters on Capitalism's starting line). I'd like to look this demon in the proverbial face. When you shop in a big department store (or the dainty specialty shops) it's easy to ignore everything that goes into your end product. It's easy to ignore that human stain on the products you buy. At the Silk Market, not so much.

Does that make sense, or is it all socialist drivel?

I'll expand later. My bus is leaving for the Great Wall.
Yea, I'm pretty disgusted by that too. I'll talk about historical sites being turned into amusement parks when i get back.

<3

Radio Silence

Sorry for the hiatus, guys. Jessie’s been super busy running around Beijing.
I really appreciated everyone who said they like my blog. You guys are super sweet, and I definitely want to keep updating now. Yay!

So this weekend, what a weekend. I did, as promised, purchase a camera. In order to attain said camera, I road through the streets of Beijing at breakneck speed on the back of a tiny scooter capable of going 70 miles an hour. Harrowing? Death defying? Thrill of a lifetime? Oh, all those rolled into one, plus convenient and economical! In addition, I made it out to the silk district with liz. We hopped a bus, then the subway, and made it (without incident!) to the silk market.

Oh, you wanted details? And pictures? Well, I guess we can do that.

So, to start off with. Camera shopping at the technological center of Beijing. 7 towers filled with floor after floor of electronics. Matt Damon (real name: Matt Diemer. Reason for nickname: coordinator of our group cannot pronounce his name and refers to him, in all seriousness, as Matt Damon) started off the day by picking me up from my bus stop with his scooter. Note; this scooter could kick some serious ass. I’m not talking little moped vroom vroom beep beep type thing, I’m talking just short of a racing motorcycle type vehicle.

[warning: you might learn something in the next paragraph]

Lets talk for a minute about the layout of the city of Beijing and how this affects the transportation situation (haha, I rhymed!) There is a lot of traffic here, a lot, and a significant lack of traffic law. Beijing is built in a series of rings, with the innermost being where the Forbbiden City is located. The districts of Beijing then radiate outward from this ring in concentric rings- as of right now there are five rings (with more, as the city expands). The pattern is as though you dropped a stone into a pond, with the radiating ripples being the main districts of Beijing. Each of these rings is delineated by a huge highway called a ring road- I live directly on the third ring road. Each ring road is such that if you hop on in front of my university you can go all the way around and come back to where you started- cause it’s a ring. Just thought I’d clarify that. Of course, Beijing is so huge that within each ring road there are many different districts, but we don’t care about that right now. What we care about is the traffic law. There is some, and it obeyed mostly (kind of…sort of..) on the ring roads, but when it comes down to side streets its every woman for herself. Cars go where they want, people cross where they want, bikes bike where they want…you get the picture. There are traffic lights and lanes and crosswalks, but in all honesty none of it matters. As long as you’ve got a bigger clit (that’s right, I didn’t say bigger balls, cause why should I? down with the patriarchy!) than the drivers, and can tell which ones really would run you over, you’ll do fine.

[we now return to our regularly scheduled program]

So theres a large number of bikes and scooters that wind their way daringly through the haphazard cars. More specifically, I was going to comment on Matt Damon’s scooter and the way it winds, with me on the back, in and out of this seemingly careless jumble of vehicles. The thing about the whole thing is that there is a definitive method to the madness. For all of the incredibly close calls I’ve witnessed (and been part of) No one has actually hit anyone. Cars go on reds, people cross against signals, bikes dart into the middle of moving traffic, and it all occurs with a kind of common understanding. It amazes me, like a symphony moving just ahead of the beat, you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the inevitable train wreck but it doesn’t quite come.

As I’m reading over what I’ve written, I’ve come to the conclusion that I lied to you guys when I said I’d elaborate on my escapades and provide pictures in this post. This has already gotten longer than I anticipated and in order to elaborate adequately I’d have to more than double it.
So we’ll leave it till next time.

For now, ponder the city layout of Beijing. (I promise I’ll update in the morning)


love&luz

ps. i just tried to tack some pictures on to the bottom of this, but m internet is being funny. sorry!

Volumized.

Good evening to you all, lovelies.

The picture above is outside one of the food hovels i mentioned in a previous post, where the proprietress pulls out a fold out table and stools when you walk up before delivering bamboo trays of steaming fresh dumplings. What am i eating? Black rice porridge, the kind you can get at Phoenix only a whole lot better.

What? Oh, you like the fro? Yeah, i know its hot. Thanks.

Just how difficult is it to deal with a bus system in a language you don't really understand in a city you're not really familiar with? Doable. Today I ventured forth and made my first excursion on beijing's public transport. Economical and cleanly, i must say so far so good. Of course, i have no real grasp of how to navigate the system, but i've purchased a bus/subway pass and will be putting it to good use. Were it not for the friends I had to lead me where it was i was going would i have gotten lost? Probably. Will i get lost next time? Oh, defiantely. Will i have fun doing it? You bet.

The goal of this bus-tastic excursion was the procurement of a celluar phone. I am happy to relate that this was a success and i've now got a chinese cell phone. I sit it next to my America phone and pretend like they're making cross cultural friends. Everything on this phone is in Chinese and whenever i want to do something on i have to navigate the chinese menu. Earlier today i missed a call and had to go down stairs to the lobby, approach the hostess, ask her if she spoke english, and then ask her to tell me what my phone was trying to tell me. You'd think that after years of using a cell phone I'd be able to at least recognize most of a menu, but not so. Sigh.

How much was it? Total, with a sim card and prepaid minutes, it was 40 dollars. Oh, and the bus ride was 15 cents each way. so i guess, 40.30 for the whole trip.

Ahahahah. that rocks.

Beijing is, as i write, turning humid and soupy, perpetually enshrined in what from my vantage point appears as the grey and dismal inside of a woolen bowler cap.

In other words, the air is thick and smoggy.

Love you guys, i'm going to go prance the streets. this sunday i'll be buying a camera so look forward to fun filled posts with a more expansive visual component.

love&luz

jess

Badass Mother-watch yo mouth!

this man rocks some serious socks.
his instrument is called a 'ma tou' which means horse's head- the top of it is carved into...you guessed it, the shape of a horses head. take a look.

Follow the link to Liz's video of the mongolian serenade we got over beer and dumplings a few nights ago. the image quality is poor, but the audio is where its at any way. (he really takes off after the second pause.)





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhxPWRjPXC4

<3

ps. a long haired tattoo artist i met a few days ago saw me on the street, smiled and said hello.
oh yeah, hes as good as mine. too bad i have the vocabulary of a second grader. if only my draw lay in suggestive sluttiness and not my razor sharp wit. (those of you who are drawn to my suggestive sluttiness would do well to keep quiet right about now. thank you)

Three lets go!

So, my internet access is such that I can sign into blogger, blog, and publish, but cannot view my own blog site. Nor can i view the blogs of anyone else who has blogs on blogger. For this reason, if my formatting is horribly off I apologize, leave me a comment and i'll see what i can do.



So today was pretty kickass, as far as the classes in china in chinese about chinese calligraphy go.

yep. we had class today with du laoshi, an artist of much talent and reknown. in addition to showing us his art book, he explained (via our bilingual teacher from hawaii) that he had done the calligraphy on all of the school's entry arches, banners, pamphlets, tshirts, whatnot.

he then lectured on how calligraphy is similar to tai chi, you must find the stillness within before you can create stillness without.



i have to admit, it was incredibly beautiful- not only the end product, but the theory and practice behind it. once the brushes came out and we had a go at it, my respect for the formidable art of calligraphy only grew.



in other words, yo, i'll stick to the abstract.



on a more utilitarian note, our teacher also let us know that if anyone wants scrolls he will do them personally for us, with whatever we want on them. So if any of you out there in reader/friend/stalker land would like a personalized scroll done by my beijing calligraphy professor, let me know and i'll let him know and get a price quoted. he quoted some out today and they were very much on the cheap side of the spectrum, considering he also gets them mounted. if any of you would like to get mounted, however, we'll have to discuss that on a person to person basis: i also reserve the right to refuse service. That is, of course, if we're talking about mounting and servicing. The scrolls i'll get for anyone :)



I know that a lot of you want pictures, and no worries, a camera is next on my list of things to buy. not that the camera that braddica gave me doesnt completely and utterly rock my dust covered socks, but i think i want a new one all for myself.



Now i'ma go eat my less than a dollar dinner. My tasty, tasty, filling filling less than a dollar dinner.



love&luz

Two for the Money

So today is day 5 in beijing.
It is also the first day of my classes, which consist of a 3 hour language chunk in the morning and a 2 hour culture chunk (in english) in the afternoons. Not too bad.

So far so good as far as cultural interactions go. We've been here only a weekend and have already made friends with a group of extremely talented mongolian music students, been out to the pricey, europeantastic art district, and pranced the streets near our university. Lots of street food, cute clothes, dust and pollution. And all at cut rate, ghetto prices!

As of yet, i still have no camera and am thusly unable to supply you with sexy pictures of dirty, cheap beijing- and if beijing is anything, its dirty and cheap. So dirty and cheap, in fact, that it has made me dirtier and cheaper than i already was. [I know, who thought it possible? Surely, i assure you, not I.] Though on the plus side i do now shower daily, each day before crawling into bed :) In conjuction with that, my bathroom is a no-barrier-between-shower-and-rest-of-bathroom type deal. At first I wasnt so hot on flooding my bathroom with water everytime i showered, but now i dig on it. No worries about getting the floor wet or drip drip dripping on all my business. Also, le bathroom is configured in such a way that my mirror is directly across from my shower head, so i get to watch myself get hosed down. If my back wound and various nasty bruises didnt make me look so...battered, i'd enjoy it.

I bet that feature will make the dirty dirty just a little bit dirtier. blaow!

Also, i get hot water delivered every morning in this huge metal hot water holder/keeper-warm thing. Such a nice treat to have hot water for tea all day long. I feel very spoiled, and very european.

Not a whole lot on this one about beijing, but it will come my lovelies, it will come. :)
Tomorrow i'll be making my way to Beijing Vegan Social Club's biweekly vegan dinner. I have no idea how to get to the restaurant (it's in a different ring than i am in) and will attempt to take the subway system. Yes! I will most likely end up in some outer district, meet some more mongolians who will kidnap me, escape, and then make my way to southern china, doing espionage work for the german government.

Or, I'll just hop a cab. Either way, good times shall ensue.

Until next time, loves.

Insertion of Visual Pleasure.

Bao Jie Eating Inari
Taken by Rizbeth
Narita Airport
Land of the Rising Sun

First, a reason.

so, i get these requests.

they say, jessie we want you to make a blog while youre gone because, because we can't live without you and really want to be kept up to date on every engaging facet of your scintillating life.*

and what can i do in the face of such seductive solicitations but give in and create a little piece of me, just for you, on the web?

in case anyone wandered over here who doesnt know me in person, my name is jessie, i live in honolulu, i'm from LA (word), and in 4 days i move to China. I'm also vegan, sexy, and, well, charming in the extreme.
thats enough egotism for now, i'll leave you kids until something interesting happens.

*even though you guys didn't exactly verbalize the last part of that, i know its what you meant. i know.