Remembrance of four-car pileups past

Before you read any further, I will warn you: this post is about Beijing. I’m not in Beijing at the moment. The last time I was there was two months ago. And it’s not even really about Beijing; it’s about a tiny hamlet in rural Hebei, the kind whose American equivalent I would describe as being in the ass end of nowhere. I don’t know its name and I don’t know if it even has a name, or if it’s big enough to warrant mention on a map.

At the moment, I’m thousands of miles from that hamlet in pretty much every way and I’m looking at my left foot, which apparently is not full broken, but one of the bones in there has been ‘chipped’. ‘What do you mean, “chipped”?’ I asked the NHS nurse. ‘Like a coat of paint. Nicked, if you will,’ she replied, and sent me away with instructions to ice it, load up on pain pills and maybe be more careful next time. To be fair, the poor foot has taken a real beating—the big toe was broken in a particularly forceful high speed ski crash when I was seventeen, and then I managed to fracture the fifth metatarsal in the autumn of my first year. The combination of the foot, the pile of coursework and job applications sitting in front of me and the sleet forecast for the next few days suggests that my immediate future does not hold anything terribly exciting.

Which is why I found myself reminiscing about my flying visit to Beijing and the Great Wall a couple of months ago (fondly, I might add). Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Wall itself were all spectacular, of course; they’re famous for very good reasons. But one of the most enjoyable afternoons I spent up north was in that hamlet straddling a minor motorway—a lazy, sweet afternoon that could have only happened by accident.

We were on the road from Beijing to Simatai, where our traditional Chinese guesthouse was nestled at the foot of the crumbling Wall, and had managed to pack an unlikely number of people into the back of a rattling van. Jess, Prudence, Pae and I were squashed into the very back row, whose batik print-upholstered seat was dubiously attached to the rest of the car and had a tendency to fly loose and launch us all into the air every time we hit a bump. At two and a half hours into the drive, I could feel the metal framework digging into my spine (the cushions were long gone) and my arms had grown tired from awkwardly propping up my book in front of me. The others felt much the same way, and when the van slowed to a crawl, and then shuddered to a complete halt, we all gave an inward groan. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why there would be traffic in, well, the middle of nowhere. A herd of goats or sheep had perhaps escaped. Maybe there was a dead cow on the road (a dead cow apparently held up a train in Lincolnshire for four hours the other day—they’re bigger than you think, and surprisingly hard to move apparently).

Our driver, a wizened little Northern woman whose head was wrapped in a balaclava, grumbled something, put the car into park and hopped out. She returned a few minutes later and informed us that, up ahead, there had been a car accident. And not just any accident, either, a four-car pileup. How four cars managed to collide with each other—we’re talking a head on collision—on a clearly divided road with such minimal traffic was beyond me. At any rate, the mess was blocking both sides of the motorway, bringing everyone, northbound and southbound, to a dead stop. This being rural northeast China, there were no policemen or tow trucks in sight. The van, with the late afternoon sun beating on its roof, was marooned in a tiny but impenetrable sea of cars and lorries for the time being. Around us, we heard car doors being flung open and then slammed shut as people spilled out of their vehicles to observe the wreckage, take guzzles of water or tea in the open air, or just weave leisurely through the stopped traffic and take a look at the surrounding village.















Gorgeous day for a four-car pileup

I could feel a bruise blooming on my spine where one of the vertebrae had been pressed up against the metal skeleton of the seat, my limbs were stiff and prickling from being folded up for so long, and it was a beautiful summer afternoon, so I, too, opted to clamber out of the van. Prudence and I ambled down the motorway for a hundred metres or so and scoped out the village shop, where we were greeted by two grinning and wrinkly old men and a jolly elderly woman with great fanfare and much laughter. What were the chances of foreigners ever having set foot in that shop, let alone two blonde girls who spoke a smattering of funny-sounding Chinese? we wondered. As the massive fan in the corner blew around warm air, we slowly scanned the aisles, our sandals lightly slapping at the concrete floor. ‘My God, everything here is so cheap compared to Shanghai!’ I exclaimed, examining a tube of toothpaste that cost 5rmb. ‘I feel like I should do a massive shop, as long as we’re here.’ I realised what a loser I sounded like—was that how I got my kicks and giggles now, a bargain on toothpaste?—and put it back. It is easy to forget, though, that Shanghai, which those of us who live in the West consider one massive bargain, really is the most expensive place in mainland China.

After the obligatory ‘ni men shi na guo ren?’ (‘where are you from?’) conversation with the shopkeeper and his two friends/relatives/whoever they were, we strolled back into the open air to take a look at the wreck itself. Sure enough, there were three cars and a lorry all smashed together, doors bent off their hinges and windows shattered, glass thrown all over the tarmac and glittering in the sun like razor-edged confetti. There were plenty of people milling around, very much without urgency and very much without any idea what to do. It was clear that none of them were policemen or tow truck drivers, which meant we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Fine with me, really. As we wandered on packed-dirt lanes through the rest of the hamlet and watched kids weave unsteadily on their bicycles, trailed by a couple of loping dogs, I personally thought that it couldn’t have happened on a better afternoon. Above us was a thrown-open blue sky, and the air, drier than in Shanghai, was both gloriously hot and fresh. The mountains of Hebei, steep, high and jagged, were a deep green where they rose around us from all sides. With traffic brought to a halt, the only noise came from the chatter of those waiting idly for the jam to be resolved, the birds and cicadas in the surrounding trees and the occasional bark of a dog (and to clear this up for those less informed about life in modern China, no, I did not eat dog whilst there; end of discussion). This far out of Beijing, the air was sweet and clean, and this, along with the stunningly blue sky, brought to mind the myriad summers of my youth spent at Lake Tahoe, high in the Sierra Nevadas. The lazy summer afternoon: it’s the same everywhere, really.
















This is how I spent a lot of summers too, minus the whole being Chinese thing

We made our way out of the village and back to the van; unsurprisingly, no progress had been made in moving the pileup. I ducked back into the car for a second to pluck my book off the seat and then sat myself down on the roadside, where I spent the next hour trying to make sense of Haruki Murakami and munching on the dried sweet potato sticks I had bought at the shop (which pretty much everyone I knew seemed to find distinctly unappealing). To my left a few men stood with their hands tucked behind their backs, heads turned to the pileup and watching to see if anything would happen. To my right, another handful were engaged in a lively card game in the middle of the road. There was an atmosphere almost like that of a carnival, or a 1950s American block party.















Haruki Murakami: writing for crackheads since 1979

Eventually the owners of the cars and lorry found a tractor to tow the mess off the road, and a lone policeman even showed up. He didn’t do much, as far as I could tell, mostly waved his arms around without saying anything. As people hopped back in the cars and started to weave through the stopped traffic, slowly untangling the mess, chaos reigned briefly. Cue much inching forward and braking abruptly on the part of our balaclava-wearing driver. I was blissed out and full of fresh air and sun, however, and hardly minded as I was alternately thrown backwards and then jammed into the seat in front of me. I knew we’d get to Simatai in the end.

There was something so simple and enjoyable about those hours spent on the northern roadside that I can still remember it all in vivid detail, even as I’m cocooned in my duvet up here in Scotland and watching the icy rain fall outside my window. A dozen job applications, a few hundred pages of reading and a daunting five thousand-word essay on Malaysian political and economic involvement in sub-Saharan Africa await me. I wouldn’t mind a warm, sunny afternoon waiting for a traffic jam to clear.

A few brief things:

-Last Saturday, when Zoe was visiting from Glasgow (yay!), we were walking up Alexandra Place when we saw a girl riding a unicycle. I kid you not. She was pedalling her way down the pavement perfectly steadily, and her face gave no indication that it was anything other than completely normal. I, personally, have always wanted to learn to ride a unicycle, so this blew my mind.

-In preparation for my little holiday in Krakow, I am teaching myself to read Polish. I don’t know why we even bother using the same alphabet.

-We have a pair of regular buskers here in St Andrews: the accordion guy, who's usually somewhere near the Subway, and the flute guy, who stations himself outside what used to be a wine shop (thank you, recession). Even though I've never given either of them money, I've always liked the accordion guy because for some reason he reminds me of Christmas. The flute guy is also okay, I guess. My issue is: does he EVER play any other song than the Beatles' 'Yesterday'? Walking past an abandoned wine shop on a grey, drizzly day to hear a particularly mournful rendition of 'Yesterday' is the definition of 'downer'. Maybe if he played something a bit less depressing people would be more inclined to throw him money.

-Winter has come to the UK so early this year that it is cruel. When I say ‘winter’, I don’t even mean my definition of winter (10 degrees, overcast and a slight breeze), I mean SNOW. Well, not in St Andrews, but quite close by. I’m already wearing my heaviest sheepskin coat, but I haven’t yet brought out the ski socks, gloves or hats. I’ll confess that I’ve worn my black fleece-lined jodhpurs, though. It’s not obvious that they’re riding trousers—they just look like thick leggings with black patches on the inside of the knees—and they’re just so warm. Needless to say, whenever I speak to someone back in California and they tell me how it’s been NINETY DEGREES! (somewhere around thirty) and sunny, I want to throw something breakable at the wall. I do love you, St Andrews, but I also love vitamin D and looking as though I live above ground.

Beijing, take two

I should have posted this weeks ago, really-I've been back from Beijing for some time now. Sigh. Such is life.

The first time I went to Beijing, and indeed my very first time on the Asian continent, I was seventeen. The year was 2007-China's much-talked about coming out party of the Olympics was still a while away, Sarkozy, Obama and Cameron weren't yet in office, the financial crisis was only just brewing and my little mind hadn't yet been blown wide open by the sensory smorgasbord of the Far East. Needless to say, I loved my brief time in the capital and am still immensely grateful to the Buies for making it possible and for our Mandarin class at Branson for making it so much fun. Landing at SFO, though, I couldn't help but feel genuinely sad-and normally I love coming back to its silent sterile emptiness (not sure why, but I do). When, I wondered, would I get the chance to come back? I could have easily stayed in Beijing for months more and felt that I had barely scratched the surface of the behemoth of the People's Republic, and the UK-which would be my new home in a few months' time-was just as far away as California.

Really, I have such amazing memories of that first visit, and they've hardly faded since then. I still remember how the late winter air felt, the dusky early morning light over Tiananmen Square at the flag raising ceremony, the gritty black tickle in my throat I developed after just a few days and, at the foot of the Great Wall, laughing over something that was distinctly un-funny so hard that we were all in tears. Plus, I brought back loads of STUFF-souvenirs, I guess, but not much in the way of 'I went to Beijing and all I bought was this stupid t-shirt!' sort of things. The massive brass Tibetan ceremonial dagger still resides on my mother's coffee table, the Cultural Revolution-era propaganda posters are folded up in storage boxes in St Andrews as I type this and I still lounge around in my mint green and navy silk bathrobes. In short, that trip to Beijing has stayed with me, and I couldn't wait to go back. I just didn't know when I would be able to; as hard as I tried to think like General Patton ('I shall return'), it's not easy when you're a just a dumb seventeen-year-old.

So fast forward a bit to me in Shanghai Hongqiao train station, getting ready to board the night train to the capital, and you can imagine that I was rather excited. The train, first off, was so pristine and white that it kind of looked like a mental hospital-a bit different from the lovable but grimy third class cars in which Natasha and I trundled around Rajasthan. I could wax poetic about the downy white comforters and bottled water in our private compartment, but, so as not to sound like a country bumpkin/weird train afficionado, I won't. Despite having lived in Britain for three years, in which the trains are overpriced, often delayed and generally a bit crap, I still find train travel novel, which I suppose comes from growing up in California. The sleeper train had me excited enough as it was, and when I opened my eyes to the early morning fog, birch trees and low blocky buildings, it brought to mind my first glimpse of northern China from the plane and had me raring to go.




















Yours truly getting way too excited over how clean the train was

Beijing and I have both changed a lot since 2007-they had the Olympics, and I moved to a tiny wind-blasted town in Scotland (though I suppose some other stuff has happened too). Anyone who's experienced pre- and post-Olympics Beijing will tell you this, but it really is striking how much cleaner the whole city is-the air, the sidewalks, the streets, the buildings. In my Chinese politics module last spring, our tutor (the famous Marc Lanteigne) told us that, in the months leading up to the opening ceremony, the government kept running tally of all the 'blue sky' days in the capital. 'Blue sky' didn't actually mean perky blue expanses with puffy white clouds; 'blue sky' meant looking at the pavement and being able to see a faint shadow. Kind of misleading. When we were there three years ago, we had quite a clear first morning, but mostly it was mottled grey haze of varying thickness. Even out by the Great Wall at Mutianyu the sky was the colour of dust. By the time we headed back to California, most everyone had a low hacking cough that sounded terrible, which was particularly unfortunate considering that this was the height of the avian flu epidemic. US customs is notorious for holding people for hours at a time, and I think that the combination of death-cough and 'I've just been in China' would have set off some alarm bells. (Ahh, the memories.)

So when that early morning haze burned off to reveal crystal-blue skies overhead, I was pleasantly shocked. No more black lung for me! Up at the Great Wall at Simatai, the difference was even more pronounced. Up in the lush and verdant mountains, I felt as though I was in Tahoe-not the country that boasts seven of the world's ten most polluted cities. Not to digress, but I'm looking over a list of the planet's most polluted places right now, and it's making my stomach turn over (though that might also be last night taking its toll, oops). When I did a paper on the impact of environmental problems in China, I looked over a photo essay of some of the cities in the rust belt up north. And let me tell you, Jesus Christ, it simultaneously made the bile rise in my throat and brought tears to my eyes. Photos of places like Linfen make Guatemala City look like a garden spot. Very distressing.

Anyway-it wasn't just the air that seemed so much cleaner; everything generally looked as though it had been hosed off and given a new coat of paint. Even the hutongs looked as though they'd been spruced up a bit...which, to be honest, made me a bit sad. I really do love the sleek, spotless efficiency of Geneva and Singapore, but I'm a big fan of chaos as well. I love hectic markets with monkeys running around and people selling mysterious meat on sticks and haggling and dilapidated buildings festooned with clotheslines. The Beijing government certainly did what it set out to do for China's coming out party, but I hope they leave the hutongs alone now.

It's also a lot quieter in Beijing now, as people actually seem to be taking notice of the no horn signs all over the city (yes, the ones that I first thought meant 'no playing trumpets here'...embarrassing). Rather than the cacophonous symphony I remember, it just seems to be occasional beeps now. My mother, who literally jumps when she hears loud or sudden noises because I've 'shattered her nerves', will be relieved to know this (because I WILL drag you to Beijing one day, Mom).

Another difference is that the streets are no longer mobbed by the same throngs of bicycles anymore. There are still loads, of course, but it's nothing compared to the swarms I remember. Our flat in Embassy House back in 2007 looked out onto a massive intersection, and I remember that we could watch the frenzied dance of trucks, cars, people and bicycles for a good twenty minutes at a time. The bicycles were like locusts, threading in and out of cars and somehow avoiding getting flattened. I suppose it's not just Beijing, though-China is going car-crazy at the moment. Think 1950s America, but with 1.3 billion people. Kind of frightening, actually.

But so much of Beijing is exactly the same-the stunning monuments of the imperial past, the wholly delicious kao ya (roast duck!), the heavy curly sound of the northern accent. It's impossible not to be blown away by the splendour of the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace or the Great Wall. Tiananmen Square-the very very first emblematic place I went in China-was just as I remembered it, which is to say HUGE. Pictures can't capture the scale of the place. And looking at Mao's portrait gave me history-geek chills-another thing that was just the same. Oh, Mao-'cult of personality' doesn't do him justice. Even after doing a lot of really stupid s*** and being dead for 30 years, he's got a larger-than-life portrait in the nerve centre of the world's burgeoning superpower. It sort of floors me that one guy with poufy hair and poor dental hygiene was able to alter the course of human history this much. Historiography as an academic discipline tends to sneer at using individuals as the primary unit of analysis-you know, the whole idea that history has been determined by a succession of kings and emperors-but when you look at people like Mao Zedong, it makes you think. And in Beijing, you definitely feel his presence more than you do in Shanghai (though I'm sure there's a less creepy way to say that).



















There he is!

One nice difference about this time around? It was a lot easier to say goodbye, because I know for sure, like General Patton, that I shall return.

Up in the sky there is heaven; here below on earth we have Hangzhou

Everyone seems to know this quote; I'm not sure who said it first, but when one sees Hangzhou and its beautiful West Lake (Hu Xi) in the flesh, it seems fitting. The place is so beautiful as to make you feel as though you're in a different century (or planet) and makes for a lovely escape from the relative chaos of Shanghai...though I still find it quite clean and orderly here compared to, say, India, where the chorus of car horns never ends, cows walk into restaurants and white clothing turns into fawn clothing in record time.

Luckily for Jessica, Prudence and me, our Mandarin teacher Lisa is from Hangzhou and was going home for the weekend, so we were fortunate enough to have a tour guide and translator. Lisa is also incredibly sweet-I'm so glad to have her teaching me Chinese! Anyway, we all piled in a taxi, crossed the river into Pudong to get on our long-distance bus, and watched the industrial outskirts of Shanghai slowly fade into older towns surrounded by verdant rice paddies, where people wearing those iconic cone hats tended and harvested. The bus, by the way, was far nicer than what we have in Scotland-leather seats, air conditioning, and even little personal TVs, which I didn't end up watching because a) my Mandarin is limited to colours, countries and numbers and b) I passed out asleep. About two and a half hours later-Hangzhou is about 200km south of Shanghai-we rolled into the downtown bus station, which is flanked by these MASSIVE apartment buildings decorated with everyone's drying laundry. Hangzhou is a decently-sized city, but the 'heaven on earth' part makes up just one area, so we hopped in another taxi to Qinghefang Old Street. Qinghefang is nice in a Disney sort of way-very very clean, bright and freshly painted-though a pickpocket did try and make off with my wallet (luckily I was able to grab him by the wrist and he grudgingly gave it back). Lisa, Prudence and I also bought some fans, as it was mid-morning and already we felt like we were being steamed.

Our next stop was the Lingyin Buddhist temple, which is perched on a forest hillside about two green leafy miles west of Hu Xi. The temple and its grounds really are stunning; it's hard not to be amazed by them, even if your own sweat is blinding you. In front of the main complex is this bamboo-sheltered grey-green little river that snakes through some black rocks, which are full of carved buddhas. All kind of buddhas too-fat happy ones, thin pensive ones, kind ones, vengeful ones. After having photographed about twenty of them, I stopped taking pictures because I realised that few people back home would be lose interest after the first half hour.

What happened next can only be described as the manifestation of mob mentality. Prudence and I are both tall, blonde and white, but what with Shanghai having the Expo on and being a very cosmopolitan city, we get stares and occasional 'halloo's but nothing more. Hangzhou is not Shanghai. As the only foreigners (waiguoren, or the more old-fashioned laowai-foreign devil) at the temple that day, we had felt hundreds of pairs of eyes on us from the moment we got out of the taxi. As we were all admiring the buddhas, one woman finally took the plunge and asked, 'May I take picture with you?' Prudence and I said yes, of course, because it was no skin off our teeth, so she stood between the two of us with a huge open-mouthed smile while her friend got the photo. The next thing we knew, a noisy, heaving crowd yelling for pictures surrounded us and cameras beeped, flashed and whirred from every direction. One after another groups stood next to us as we grinned and held up our own peace signs to match theirs. Lisa and Jessica (who's shorter and brunette and therefore is viewed as less of a freak here) stood by and laughed as the mob swelled. Finally we managed to extricate ourselves, but by then a good fifteen minutes had passed and our smile muscles were aching.

Not to sound unbelievably narcissistic or anything, but over the years I've had foreign randoms take pictures of me more times than I can count-it's not because they think I'm attractive, it's because they think my blue eyes, big feet, blonde hair, pasty skin and five foot ten inches make me look like an alien. Or the devil. I find it funny.

If anything, it was even steamier under the thick forest of broadleaf trees and bamboo as we climbed the steps up to the various temple buildings, but the crowds thinned and I really got a sense of how timeless the whole thing was. Lingyin is so pretty in this serene kind of way, almost hidden in the trees and perfumed with plumes of incense. Here are some photos-I loved the circular dragon windows in particular:





















By the time we had posed for pictures and climbed up all those stairs, we were all starving, wilting and in need of a good long session in somewhere-anywhere-with air conditioning. Again, though, Hangzhou is not exactly the world city that its northerly neighbour is, so, there being no English to be found on any menu, Prudence, Jess and I put our fate in Lisa's hands when it came to ordering food. Being a Hangzhou local, she ordered us some of the city's signature dishes, like this absolutely delicious sort of chestnut smoked cube of pork and (wait for it) SNAKE! The snake's head had been chopped off (that probably would have been a bit much, even for me), and the rest of it was cut up into pieces and fried. It had a nice light meaty taste; I will definitely be ordering it again. I'm not a big fan of snakes when they're alive and slithering/hissing/eating small dogs so I don't feel all that guilty. Well...maybe a bit. Sorry, Mr Snake.

Following lunch we tried in vain to flag down a taxi-something that is nearly IMPOSSIBLE during Shanghai's rush hours, by the way!-so instead we ended up walking to Hu Xi, which was actually really lovely because it was so green. Of course, by this time it was into the afternoon, meaning that the air was so thick with humidity that I could feel it pressing on my skin, and the sun was beating down with a ferocity to rival midday in Qatar. I don't think I actually stopped fanning myself for more than ten seconds on our walk to Hu Xi in a vain attempt to keep the sweat from forming on my face. Still, even the intense heat can't dim the beauty of Hu Xi. When I first set eyes on the Taj Mahal, it was imbued with such a sense of loveliness that all I could do was sigh. Hu Xi is the same way; truly the best way to describe it is that it is resplendent in all its loveliness. With its weeping willows, arched stone bridges, thickets of lotus flowers, and delicate teahouses, it is archetypal classical Han China. It's easy to imagine Confucius or Lao Tzu sitting cross-legged on the grass under a willow pondering the deepest questions of humanity.

Pictures hardly do it justice, but I've put some here anyway:





















After a leisurely stroll around one part of the lake (the whole thing is enormous), Lisa took us back to the bus station, where she would bid us goodbye and then head home for the weekend. This is where the fun started: as we queued up to get our 7 pm coach back to Shanghai, the ticket taker asked us for our passports. Que?! Considering that we weren't staying overnight and Hangzhou is all of 190km away from where we live, we hadn't brought them and instead offered up some drivers licences. No, we were told, ONLY PASSPORTS (said in such a way that brought to mind all the cliches about Chinese authoritarianism). Apparently, because of the Expo, the CCP has put a new law into place that says that foreigners must carry their passports at all times. For the first time ever, I called an American consulate, spoke to an extremely unhelpful man with a flat Midwestern accent, and eventually got through to a woman who explained that the buses were getting stopped on the motorways and inspected, so they were being extra careful about foreigners regarding passports. The train, however, might work, because they wouldn't have to deal with motorway inspections. To the train station!

Lisa went home at this point as the station was in the opposite direction, and I'm proud to say that I managed to use my scant knowledge of the Chinese language to get us three tickets back to Shanghai (it's not that impressive, really; I told the cashier 'san ge shang hai', which translates to 'three Shanghai'). The next train we could get was at about 10 pm, and until then, we crossed our fingers that they wouldn't ask for passports and went to the lovely Dumpling King, where, continuing my eating-weird-things streak, I ordered ox innard soup along with my pork dumplings. It was tasty, despite how very unappealing it may sound. The three of us also passed the time by musing about how, if we did need our passports to get on the train, we would get a hold of them, or, alternatively, how we could get back to Shanghai not using either the train or road. We did discuss hiring someone to drive us in their car, hide us in the back and cover us with blankets, but all agreed to try the train first.

I'll admit, my heart was thumping well above its usual freakish 39 beats per minute (the average person's is around 70, which explains why everyone else seems to weather the cold better than I do). Standing in the queue to hand over our tickets and get into the waiting room, I was really, really hoping they didn't ask for our passports. I didn't dare look any of the ticket inspectors in the eye, as though I was worried they would spy the blue colour and yell, 'Laowai! Where is your passport?!' And thank God, none of that happened. We were on our way back home, albeit a few hours later than originally planned. The train itself was sleek, spacious and modern, and, after a day of going all over old Hangzhou, the perfect place to fall deeply and contentedly asleep.

Odds and ends:

-Joined a gym down at the other end of Xinzha Lu the day before yesterday and just came back from my first workout there. Cardio in the strength-sapping humidity is a challenge, but the heat is simply GREAT for flexibility training! I hadn't stretched my splits out for at least two weeks, but I found I could drop to the floor with no trouble. The gym, MOB Fitness, is conveniently located across the street from my Mandarin school, and it feels fantastic to be able to work out again!
-I looked at the Bain and McKinsey websites for their Shanghai offices, and apparently they require applicants to speak Mandarin. And by 'Mandarin', they mean more than just colours, countries and numbers. Buzzkill.
-There's a little hole-in-the-wall street food place about a block south of the flat where they sell vegetarian bao and tea eggs, and I've been getting dinner there for the past few days. The man that runs it has yet to say a word to me, despite the fact that I speak to him in Chinese and offer up my winningest smile. He does not respond to either, and I kind of get the feeling that he hates me.
-A lot of the work I do at Riviera involves googling things that, trust me, I would not normally be googling. This is very entertaining; I couldn't come up with some of this stuff if I tried. Today, for example, I typed 'voodoo', 'flamingo on a lead' and 'can you hire a monk?', amongst other things, into the search bar. Hilarity ensued. My favourite result for 'voodoo' was this bright orange knife block in the shape of a voodoo doll, so that when all your knives are in place, it looks as though the little guy is being stabbed. It's kind of cool (and how often can you say that about a knife block?) but I don't think I'd want it in my kitchen.
-My little bit of high school Mandarin is coming back, thanks to the fact that I hear it 24/7. It's exciting-now I can make small talk with taxi drivers.