III. First day in Asia (part 1)

It still catches me off guard every once in a while: I'm living in Asia. As you can guess, this thought recurred often throughout the course of my first day in China.

I got about 12 solid hours of sleep after arriving in Beijing, so I woke up around 6 am, and I needed to leave for the airport at 4pm. What would you do in Beijing if you had about 10 hours to kill? Well first off, I definitely needed to solve the problem of not being able to reach my contact by phone, as he was supposed to pick me up from the airport in Wuhan that night. That was still secondary to the overwhelming fact that I was in China, so the first thing I did after I woke up was I went outside and walked around the streets. In about 45 minutes of walking I started to get a headache because there were so many different things I was trying to focus on. Here's a glimpse at what my inner monologue sounded like: “A Peugeot! A Citroen! Some brand of car I cant read... right, that's going to constantly be an issue. What type of tree is that? Is that a weed in the US? Oooo I wonder what's in that alley? How old is that lady? I wonder what wars or crazy Chinese historical events she's witnessed, or how she feels about Mao Zedong or Sun Yat-Sen or Genghis Khan. Maybe she was at Tianenmen Square in '89. Speaking of, I need to see tha... hey look at that dog! (laugh at how adorable it is).”

So once my head started thumpin from all the activity, I decided to get some down time. I went back in the hotel and found a computer to send an e-mail to my contact telling him that I couldn't reach his phone and that everything was going as planned. I then sent my little sis an e-mail telling her I was alive, and then checked facebook. Old habits die hard. An old friend who I was in contact with about getting an ESL teaching job in Asia (Emily, she is teaching in Pyeongchang, S. Korea, not to be confused with Pyongyang, N. Korea) had posted on my wall sometime during my travel. Anyway it was an odd coincidence -- she didn't know exactly when I was arriving in China, but it basically summarized the crazy experience I just had about 10 minutes before of walking around the streets of Beijing. It was also nice to know that I wasn't the only one who was feeling a bit out of place...

After finishing that task, I still had oodles of time to do whatever I wanted in Beijing. The guy who helped me bring my luggage to my room the night before, Michael (definitely not his real name), told me he could hold my stuff for me at the hotel concierge while I toured the city. So I dropped my luggage off with my new buddy, grabbed a free McDonald's brand map that showed all of their locations in Beijing and headed out.

Mission 1: find Tianenmen Square
Mission 2: find something cool to bring back.
Mission 3: eat in a McDonald's.
Mission 4: take a bunch of pictures.
Mission 5: get back in time to go to the airport without having a watch or cell phone to help.
Mission 6: Try not to look like a tourist.


Mission 1 was also priority #1. The McDonald's map clearly labelled where it was, and Michael indicated where the hotel was, so I was really confident that I'd be able to find it despite the obstacles of being illiterate and Beijing being huge as hell. About being illiterate though, I always felt that products or maps, really anything involving directions were always designed for dumb people (e.g. directions for making ramen noodles, with pictures of boiling water and then putting the noodles into the water). So, I was fairly certain there would be maps along the sides of the road to help people like me figure out where I was going, especially since Beijing is probably the biggest international tourism city in China. And indeed there were, so I just followed those and kept track of where I was by finding the big red "you are here" spot. What made these maps hilarious though was that to get from the hotel to Tianenmen Square, it was about 5 blocks east, and then 1 block south. Not far right? Far as fuck. Walking one block in Pittsburgh takes, on average, between 1-2 minutes. In Beijing it takes about 10 minutes; to get to Tianenmen Square it took a little under an hour. The roads are also wide as hell. Crossing for the inexperienced should be limited to only intersections or designated crossing points, the number of which the city tries to limit by putting a fence between both sides of the road (the picture to the right was taken on the way to Tianenmen Square). If you're really uneasy there are also pedestrian bridges or tunnels for you at major intersections or on streets with an absurd number of lanes.


It didn't take me long, though, to learn the subtle nuances of walking the streets like the Chinese do. I've always been one to overanalyze the art of being a pedestrian, being a 5-year veteran of Oakland city walking, so I was quickly able to adjust. But the codes of Oakland and Beijing walking are vastly different. In Oakland, pedestrians have the right of way, all the time. If you're driving and get a green light, you expect college students to walk blindly in front of you. However, the pedestrians are pretty patient, and many will wait for a walk sign to begin crossing the street. In Beijing, you aren't patient, and you don't walk blindly in front of cars or you will get hit. Traffic in Beijing can be best correlated to the motion of fish in an ocean. The busses do whatever the hell they want, because they're the biggest. Cars come next and they are more plentiful than busses, but yield only to them. Motorcycles, Mopeds, and Bikes are after cars in the food chain, but have access to their own lanes in the streets. People are definitely at the bottom, and in Beijing it really does look like a school of fish avoiding a bigger fish whenever a car makes a right turn across a pedestrian lane that's giving the "walk" sign.


Anyway the walk to accomplish mission 1 was, as you can guess, overstimulating. Along the way I only took one picture, what I believe was probably an old gate to the Forbidden City. It was the first place I saw Chinese people taking pictures of, so I decided to take one as well (to the right). It was also the first place I saw a military presence in the city. A little further down the road there was a much larger presence.

Two minutes further down Chang'an avenue was my destination. I tried to take pictures of all four sides of the square, but because I arrived from the north side of the street on the northwest corner of the square (and crossing Chang'an ave. was going to actually be impossible), I visited the north side of the square first. This is where the Tian'anmen is, a gate that leads to the Forbidden City. It's also very famous for the picture of Mao on its facade. Tons of people were taking pictures of their friends or family standing in front of the gate (see picture on right). I still haven't figured out if the people take pictures like this (i.e. near pictures or statues of Chairman Mao, of which there are a ton) because of the obvious historical significance that Mao has himself imposed upon the country of China, or because they look up to his image. This guy is probably the biggest historical figure to the Chinese; his presence still pervades many levels of their society. The fact that his picture adorns the Tian'anmen is example enough. If you see a statue though, chances are it's of Mao. The currency is probably the most obvious example of his omnipresence. Guess which value of RMB his image is on -- 1, 10, 20, 50, or 100? Answer: all of them. I'm sure in China's thousands of years old history, there's someone else they could honor with a headshot on the 10 RMB bill. But like I said, I haven't asked anyone if it's something they're OK with or not -- I've always understood Mao's image as one of controversy; but given the survival of these images and statues, he is clearly still a very big deal here.


Anyway, Tiananmen Square is frickin huge. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest open air city square in the world; this doesn't surprise me at all. Chang'an Avenue divides it from the Tian'anmen north gate, a road that by my count is between 16-20 lanes wide (see left). Thus, the only way to get into the square is through a tunnel that goes underneath a street. That tunnel also exists because tons of people are always visiting this place (I learned later on that it's often said that every Chinese person needs to see two places: the Great Wall and Tian'anmen Square).


I tried to take as many pictures to give ya'll an idea of how bonkers this place is and how crowded it was. To the east was a probably very famous museum, the west was probably a very important government building, to the south was a relatively smaller building which was obviously a big tourist attraction, and in the center was a monument to war heroes (A little research indicates that the museum is The National Museum of China, the government building is The Great Hall of the People, the smaller building to the south is The Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, and the monument is the Monument of the People's Heroes).



Here are some pictures I took standing still in the square:

in front:
to my right:


to my left:
behind me:

II. Getting there

The picture you see above is cropped from the one to the right. It's one of a few that I've been able to take, but I like it a lot. It was taken around dusk in the Beijing airport, an absolutely mind-blowingly large airport I might add. The picture was also taken about 4 minutes before the sun totally disappeared behind the thickness of the atmosphere, even though (as you can see) it was still fairly high in the sky. I think the main colors in this picture, though, represent very accurately what it looks like in a big city here like Beijing or Wuhan. In the day time it's obviously a bit brighter, but blue skies, white clouds, nice sunrises and sunsets are always filtered through a translucent grey. It definitely takes a little away from the beauty of the city of Wuhan. I think cities are generally beautiful things, too. Traffic, people, interactions, buildings, the layout of a city, the way its been planned and developed, even the smells (like the smell that wafts into your nose when you first step on a bus..) -- These are all things I love about city living. But in this case I feel (and I think most people here would agree) that the layer of pollution here is something that could use a little work. Anyway I bring this photo up cuz it's a good introduction to what this entry is about, namely getting here.

First, I should mention that my last weekend in Pittsburgh was a great sendoff. Friday night was generally a good night of kickin it with a lot of my buddies. On Saturday I spent the daytime getting over a hangover and working on getting my ESL certification. Saturday night was a throwdown of epic proportions on the South side....thanks so much to everyone for entertaining my desire to do that. I gotta specifically name (SORRY) four dudes for ballin up for this -- phamm, dtr, wes, and most importantly Murderzmarek. He really wouldnt accept anything less than a total throwdown, and it was exactly that. Granted, I was a force in creating a lot of the weird and hilarious situations myself, but those dudes were the spark, so thanks.

Sunday was the Steelers opener against the Houston Texans, a game I'd been looking forward to for many months. And, to make it better, I had made plans to watch it with an old friend, Dan, from my Mt. Lebanon days. Well my phone had died, so I needed to wake up under my own power and then find someone in Oakland with a charger, all while hungover as hell. I woke up successfully, and then killed two birds with one stone by 1. finding a phone charger and 2. waking up an Eagles fan. I tried to call Dan but it failed. Then I found that I had 3 voicemails, so I checked them. The first one was the one I expected, Dan trying to find out where the hell I was. The second one was Dan dropping a bomb on me by telling me that he had frickin tickets to the Steelers game, and wanted to know if I was able to go. The third was Dan again, telling me what I feared. He got a mutual friend of ours to go to the game instead...well the "mutual friend" was Krebs, who I'm sure many of you know. Now, I'm a big Krebs fan; Krebs and I have a love-hate, "constantly trying to be jerks to each other but in a nice way"-relationship. So it was totally cool when I told Dan to give Krebs the shaft and let me go with him instead. Anyway so he gave Krebs the shaft, and I went to my first ever "in the stands" Steelers game! I was in shock the whole time; the experience is one that I insist every Steelers fan must have. The icing on the cake was that we won the game, and the cherry on top was that I found a terrible towel that someone lost on my way back home.

So the week following was basically spent getting ready for the trip, i.e. finalizing visa crap, ESL certification, packing, saying the goodbyes, etc. The whole time, the gravity of the fact that I was about to leave for China for a year wasn't really sinking in. My theory is that this is a result of the fact that recently it's been a very comfortable notion to feel a sense of apathy regarding most subjects... a notion which is almost certainly a result of having been around totally naive, ignorant, but for some reason motivated college students for the past five years (read the pitt news sometime). Granted, I've never been a "wave maker," nor do I really want to become one. But I also want to revive the ambition and energy I had in my younger days, and to do so I think might require the opposite of apathy, and the desire to "wave make." In other words, I think what I want is a paradox. The goal, however, is to create a balance without going over the spill point and becoming an ignorant college student... something I feel like is a very difficult thing to do, based on the statistics.

Back to the story, my flight was to leave at 6:00am Friday morning, so I just stayed up all of Thursday night and felt like hell during my traveling. Travelling honestly took forever, and I couldn't fall asleep for any longer than a period of two hours. My flights went to Chicago, then to Toronto (where I had to go through customs for some reason.... Yeah, there was a question about whether I'd be visiting a farm in Canada. I checked no cuz, like I said, I don't make waves), then finally to Beijing. The layover in Toronto lasted about 6 hours, so mostly I tried sleeping or talking to the 5-ish people working in the terminal. One of the ladies warned me about the smell of Beijing and the fact that people spit. To this I was finally able to use the phrase "when in rome" correctly. I was also about to buy the Toronto newspaper, but then realized I don't know anything about Canada. That's about all that's interesting to say about traveling, it honestly sucked. 22 hours!

But then I got to Beijing, and was very happy. However, it soon became clear that not speaking any Chinese was going to be a problem for a long time. I needed to find a cab to the hotel, but first I needed to find someone to write something down that would explain to a cab driver where to go. At the help desk there were people who could help people like me, but they said they'd arrange a cab for me for 250 RMB (about $35). Thankfully, some British dude overheard this and quietly told me that it actually costs about 80 RMB to get into the city. This would be my first experience with the Chinese trying to hustle me, a battle which continues to this day (don't worry I'm winning).

So I took the address they'd written down and hitched a cab. I was pretty psyched about going into Beijing, so once I got into the cab I did the classic Jenkins "chat it up with the cab driver" routine. Unfortunately this stopped after about 10 seconds of trying, the cabbie didn't say a word or emote. The seconds of conversation peaked when the robotic cab voice said a word that I recognized "Qi che," and I said "Hey! Qi che!" and pointed to a car. Super grizzled asian driver just pointed at a car, didn't smile or say anything, and then continued driving.

Important note: This ride was also my first experience with driving in China.

There were about three very clear moments where I thought I was going to die. Two involving a bus merging, and the cabbie not giving a fuck. The lanes on a highway are recommendations. There is also a fine art to being a pedestrian, which I will explain later. Basically, the main principle of being a pedestrian isn't to get from point A to point B, it's to not get killed, but to push the envelope as much as possible.

Anyway I was riding in the cab, laughing about everytime I almost got killed. Riding in the city was mind-blowing...everything was shocking to me. The architechture of the buildings, number of buildings, number of people, the cars, plants, sky, geography, road signs in Chinese.... it was like that scene in the Godfather where the brother of Al Pacino gets riddled with bullets in his car... that's kinda like how I felt, except the bullets weren't real.

I arrived at my hotel after a little more than 24 total hours of travel. This being my first ever professional reason for a hotel room, I decided to document it by taking a picture. It was actually pretty nice, they gave me fruit and cookies and a robe and slippers. The bed was so comfortable.. you know how after a really long day, getting into bed is almost like the bed is taking you into it? That's how it felt. Then I watched TV for about 15 minutes (cuz they had college football on and I figured I wouldn't be seeing that for a while, which so far has been true) and then crashed. I'd need a lot of rest, cuz I planned to tour Beijing the next morning and then leave for Wuhan in the evening. (note: many pictures to follow)

I. Pre-China

Well I guess I should say what I've agreed to do here....

About a week ago I signed a one-year contract with a school called Wuhan University. Located in central China (specifically Wuhan City, Hubei Province), it's one of the top universities in the country.

Why? Well I'm never really sure of anything I do, so doing somethin crazy like this is no more crazy to me than continuing what I've been doing. I've been thinking about this for a really long time though, and there were a few big reasons why this made sense. First, I just needed a long break from being a student -- not only because it was becoming monotonous, but also because teaching others might help me reevaluate education and appreciate it to a greater degree. Second, I've always been interested in asian history, culture, food, art, language, etc., so it was exciting to think about immersing myself in it. Thankfully, my laid back nature has made acquiescence into the culture a relatively smooth process, but I still find myself freaking out a lot. Another plus is that it's a decent resume builder. Oh, and the fact that I've always wanted to do something like this, and that this is probably my last chance to do something crazy like this before I'm forced to commit to some crazy life-long desk job....

But what sealed the deal was that the whole process of trying to get this job was almost mystical. First, Wuhan is just like Pittsburgh.....except that it's in a developing nation, everyone's Chinese, and it's about 25 times bigger. But other than that, it's just like Pittsburgh. I mean, Wuhan is sister cities with Pittsburgh. It's also located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han Rivers, two major rivers in China,

(tell me that doesn't look like an upside down, backwards Pittsburgh!)

and has a long history of being a major steel producing city. It's also well known for it's colleges and universities, and is home to one of the top medical schools in the country. But what made this job even more crazily mystical was this: I applied for the job and did the phone interview about 5 days later. Then, two days after the phone interview, I was golfing in New Jersey (visiting my grandfolks) and I was golfing with a really cool guy named Ning. Later in the round, I found out that he had graduated from -- that's right --Wuhan University. No joke! Anyway I forced this guy write me a letter of recommendation and that's probably what set me apart from the rest of the candidates for the job. (It apparently wasn't an easy job to get either -- I was told about 20 other people applied!)

So, thanks to an adequate resume and a lot of luck, I was offered the job. This gave me about three weeks to get ready to leave. In that amount of time, I needed to:

• Get a tourist visa
• Get a plane ticket
• Reserve a hotel room
• Sell my monitor
• Get my security deposit back
• Get 40-hour ESL certification
• Learn as much Chinese as possible
• Say the goodbyes
• Uhh watch the olympics!
• Ditto any Steelers coverage
• Play as much golf with my dad as I could
• Pack
• Try to pay people back
• Get a laptop

Those last two things I wasn't able to do really well (checks are on the way, I swear!); but needless to say, I was swamped. It was a busy time, but I worked hard so I could have one last really great throwdown weekend with the dudes and then head on my way...

Foreword

Hey. If you're reading this you might be interested in the fact that I've moved to China. If not, feel free to not read this ever. I've set up this blog so I don't have to bother anyone if they don't want to be. If you wish to recieve updates, I'm pretty sure there's a way to have google send you an e-mail everytime the blog is updated.

I'm going to try to keep posts general, i.e. no inside crap., name dropping, etc.; the reason is that I would like a lot of people to be able to read about what I'm doing. It should be readable even (hypothetically) to people whom I might not know, but who might be interested in what it's like to live here.

Additionally, this is very much a sanity-keeping project, as no one here speaks English very well. Even my boss, who has lived in Toronto for 10 years and is the best English speaker I've met so far, has trouble understanding me at times. Anyway my point is, if you have a question or comment about something, put it up! I'd like to keep in touch with everyone as much as possible, and i think this blog could facilitate that.