Thursday March 31st, 2011

Class.

I have been looking at the restaurants at the West Gate all-wrong. This is not a place that I should go merely to get food and satisfy my hunger. It is a checklist. The first foods on my list included donkey sandwiches. They were interesting to say the least, but the sandwiches were not as good as my classmates promised. Some swear by the sandwiches, but I found mine to be more unnerving than enjoyable. The sandwiches were served on a flaming-hot bun, but the meat remained mysteriously cold. I am more curious about how they kept the meat that cold at the restaurant, as this is the first refrigerated item that I have consumed at the West Gate. After three donkey sandwiches – the last one being particularly cold in the center – it was time for me to move on to better cuisine. Despite their dubious cuisine, the restaurant serving the donkey sandwiches is pretty interesting. There are a number of signs expounding upon the merits of the daily consumption of donkey meat, alongside vivid descriptions of the donkey-sandwich-making process.

I supplemented the donkey meat meal with some sort of Taiwanese ham sandwich. The bread was made of some sort of flaky wheat roll, and the bread looks very familiar to me. But for the life of me, I cannot remember where I have eaten that meat before. It will remain a mystery.

My afternoon was spent writing all manner of application for internships, and I was quite tired of applying for them after this day. I cannot apply to any more, it would seem.

I began working on a video of Morgan’s time in Beijing. The process is a little slow, and the iMovie software is a little inflexible on certain points. I had to consult the Internet on more than one occasion about how to use the software.

I rode down KFC for some supper, as it was already 10:00 at night. Nothing but KFC and McDonalds was going to be open this late during the week, so I satisfied myself with a spicy chicken sandwich and some French fries. I would highly recommend that American KFCs model their chicken sandwich after the Chinese sandwich. If they did so, I would visit American KFCs a lot more.

I looked over my notes for the test on the morrow. I have essentially given up studying for the tests, as it seems to have no effect on my grade.

Wednesday March 30th, 2011

Good day, world. Today, it’s my birthday. Before I get started on this journal, I would like to say thank you to everyone who sent me an email! I really do appreciate it. If you didn’t send me an email, or forgot it was my birthday, I know who you are…

This morning, much like every weekday morning that I’ve been in China, begins with class. The other 5^th year teacher, the partner of the new director, has been throwing her weight around in class. She has really stepped up her condescension and criticism of students in class. Whew. Luckily class didn’t last too long, and my debate class and one-on-one teachers for the last two days have been a lot more chill in class.

In celebration for my birthday, I went over to Mala Tang and made myself some soup. The mixture of spinach, baby bok choy, lotus slices, ham, chicken eggs, mushrooms, and noodles was just what I needed after a morning of daydreaming in class.

From there, I headed back to the room to apply to some more internships. So far, internships are a no-go on this end. I would imagine that some of the difficulty that I am having in finding an internship (and I am not alone in this difficulty) has to do with the economy. It would appear that firms are less likely and less willing to hire interns and short-term employees.

I cast aside my doubts of getting an internship and the politics of ACC while I worked out at Bally. It was a good workout, even more so with my rocking new kicks.

After that, I rode back to the dorm and tried to get caught up on some journals. As of current, I am a little overwhelmed by the amount of writing that I need to do. I think I am around a week behind in journals, and that doesn’t count the ones from the last few days that I’ve not even outlined yet. Isn’t this rather strange, writing journals about writing journals? I’ll try to refrain from such irrational behavior in the future.

I sauntered down the hall and stuck my head in Wes’ room. Would he like to get some food? Most certainly; he was quite hungry. We walked down to the West Gate, and determined that we should stop by Xiang Yi Fang for some family style dining. We were both in the mood for spicy food; our meal consisted of numbing and spicy fried squid and chicken; egg over potatoes and rice noodles; and rice. We were both feeling a little weak in the stomach department after the meal, but it was too good to look back in regret now.

I came back to the dorm and wrote. Wes and I decided to watch a movie, and I had nothing preventing such a course of action. My class work was already done. Our dismal choice of movie was entitled Serenity, a sci-fi movie about space. It was as if someone had taken the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, zombie movies, and Bladerunner in one film, and done the whole thing horribly. It had so much potential…

Then, it was time for bed.

I’ll write soon!

Jamey

Monday March 21st, 2011

I got up; showered; packed up my belongings; broke my computer charger (the hotel broke by computer charger); breakfasted; and got on the bus. We were going to see the Great Buddha of E’Mei Mountain. I read a copy of Henry James’ Ghost Stories as we coasted through the countryside.

Around 11:30, our bus stopped in front of a dubious looking restaurant. It was as I feared. ACC had organized this trip through a travel agency, out of a desire to shirk planning such a trip as this, cutting costs, or simply spite for the students. You see, travel agencies in China are run only by the most vile and miserly of the Chinese people – making you eat at horrible restaurants, stay in leaky and electrically faulty hotels, and rushing you through ancient sites at lightning speed while at their disposal. As soon as we sat down at the tables (covered in a fine layer of questionable moisture), odious waitresses emerged from the kitchen carrying dishes of the most repulsive Chinese cuisine. I was appalled. I voiced my concern to the other inmates of the restaurant. We were helpless. I ate rice.

For the rest of the afternoon, my alimentary canal was plagued by the most excruciating of pain. We then bussed to our destination, and we milled around the area for some time, while our tour guide was dispatched on some obscure errand. The situation grew worse as my stomach learned more about the unsavory food that I had consumed. One of the other students came over to me in the persistent rain, and in a matronly tone asked:

Jamey, are you enjoying this trip? You look like you’re not having too much fun…

I’m fine.

Sometimes the truth is too much. We entered the park and I excused myself. The group had disappeared when I began the trip up the mountain, and I trekked up alone. Halfway up, I was again attacked by the unsavory meal. I broke into a cold sweat, shed some clothes, and continued upwards. I was safe. Oh China…

After averting this disaster, I proceeded to take in the surroundings. I looked around the Buddhist temples at the peak of the mountain and examined the largest Buddha statue in existence, sitting at an imposing 200+ feet tall. I met up with Wes and Hannah on the other side of the Great Buddha, and we walked around a lot of the park. We found a “secret” temple and barricaded area, and crossed the fence to look around. I am very glad that we did jump over the stone fence because we saw the most interesting architecture and sculptures there.

From there, we took the bus to the Mount E’Mei Grand Hotel. We were dismissed and directed to our rooms, oh glorious rooms that they turned out to be. The window to the dorm was open and everything in the room was coated with a layer of moisture from the outside. The rooms were also approximately 50 degrees, as they received little sunlight from the small service walkway onto which our hotels looked and due to the fact that we were 1, if not 2, stories underground.

It was time to get some supper after a little while. I supped with Wes, Hannah, and Laura at a Chengdu-style restaurant. The food was amazing after what we had been prompted to eat earlier in the day, and we dined on Bacon with spinach, rice, eggplant, egg and tomato, and spicy beef slices.

We walked back over to the dorm, and I separated from my companions, who intended upon bathing at the “natural” hot springs of the Mount E’Mei Grand Hotel. I doubted the authenticity of the “hot springs.” I declared that I would rather visit the hot springs in Iceland, as they were free. I’m adding Iceland to the list of countries that I need to visit.

I ended up watching a movie with Christina, Alex, and Lee. We sat in Christina’s room and watched a horrible American movie. Before said movie, we caught the tail end of another movie. When the film ended, the screen went blue, and we realized that the TV station we were watching was wired to a DVD player somewhere in the recesses of China, broadcasting cheesy American movies all over the country. I laughed. What was this place?

After the movie, I went to sleep. I am missing my computer, dear reader. I need to write.

I’ll write soon!

Love,

Jamey

Sunday March 20th, 2011

If you will excuse my general laziness and lack of writing initiative, dear readers, I will get caught up on the journals from the great city of Chengdu.

Today was not the best day for waking up. The Grand Harbinger scheduled an alarm for 8:00 in the morning, and we were to meet the rest of the program for a trip to see the great pandas of Chengdu. Unlike the dorm in Beijing, this hotel had hot water on demand at any point during the day. I almost couldn’t contain my excitement at the prospect at showering at a time outside the predetermined times of 6:00 to 8:00 AM and 8:00 to 12:00 PM.

After a shower, I walked over to the dining room of the hotel, where we were destined to eat breakfast. I was certain that breakfast was going to be a wash – cold boiled eggs, non-toasted bread with bad jelly, hardly palatable baozi, pickled vegetables, strange noodles and the like. Sadly, my prediction came true. I ate bread with jelly and about 4 hard-boiled eggs.

After the meal – and a good deal after the scheduled time for meeting on the first floor – we boarded the buses, bound for the Great Panda Center at Chengdu. On the way over, we saw a good bit of Chengdu, and I have to say that I liked what I saw. Chengdu is much warmer than Beijing, and the humidity generally stays around 60-80%. All of the trees had bloomed, and everything was green. It was a great change after the somewhat dreary bare trees of Beijing. Chengdu is also a lot less crowded than Beijing – something else that I like about the city.

When we got to the facility, the immensity of the sprawling complex was impressed upon me. A hotel, large man-made lake, museum, and ritzy restaurants adorn the facility, and the entire complex is landscaped to a T. Soon after arriving at the panda temple, I extricated myself from the group and our negligibly knowledgeable tour guide by lagging behind to take some pictures. I wanted to examine these portly and well-protected creatures on my own time.

First, I visited the red panda housing facility. I immediately liked the red panda, strolling cat-like through their domain, curiously examining the visiting Chinese as they yelled at it and snapped at its face. Red pandas appear to be somewhat more intelligent than their larger, more corpulent taxonomical cousins, although I am no biologist. Red pandas, besides their very cool body design, coloration, and intelligence also possess another trait that I find very intriguing – their preferred sleeping habits. Should you ever come across a red panda in the wild – which I count as highly unlikely – you should immediately look to the trees above. In these trees you will find a multitude of sleeping red pandas peacefully dozing on small limbs at a precarious height.

The great pandas, I am sorry to say, were not as impressive as the red pandas; however, I admit that my analysis may be somewhat skewed. I do have certain criteria for what I consider “good” animals, and that list includes, but is not limited to, the ability to reproduce of their own volition, a desire to raise one’s young and perpetuate the existence of their species, using resources at a rate not more than what an ecosystem can naturally support, physical activity, the act of being interesting, and some level of ferocity that instills in us, the onlookers of said creatures, a sense of admiration and fear. On all of these counts but one pandas to not make the cut. They do perform some interesting behavior, and that includes lying on its back and stuffing bamboo into its mouth with both hands.

I realize that such a harsh analysis of these rotund creatures will illicit some less-than supportive responses from you, dear reader. I do realize that we are preserving these creatures in the name of preserving natural genetic diversity of our planet, but aren’t there other creatures whose homes are being destroyed by mean men in the name of construction and poaching that need our protection, too? For every panda lying on its back and stuffing bamboo into its mouth, I grant you that ten other creatures die in the wilderness due to habitat destruction and the deleterious ways of man.

As we rode back to the dorm, I got a text from Gabe. Remember when I mentioned that the police had barricaded the neighborhood? Well, Gabe said that as of yesterday, a Tibetan monk doused himself in gasoline and burned himself alive in protest of the Beijing government. The protests in north Africa and the Middle East have heartened the ethnic minorities of the Great People’s Republic, and the government was preparing for something big. People all over southeast China were talking about Tibet and the central government retaliation and clampdown in the Tibetans, but Beijing had such a clamp on information that no news of it ever left the country. Away from the capital, however, things were different. People were talking, but no one was rioting. Rioting has gotten them very little but bruised heads, anyway. I kept my eyes peeled for any signs of activity in reaction to this demonstration, but nothing occurred in Chengdu, to my knowledge.

With these thoughts floating through my brain, I fell into a deep and much needed sleep at the hotel.

I woke up at 6:30. I had been asleep for almost 5 hours. It had been raining and drizzling for the last 22 hours, and there was no end to the rain in sight. I shook off sleep and sat down to write. After a little while, I contacted Wes and Hannah to see about their plan for supper. We went out to eat a hot pot restaurant in the neighborhood, but the meal wasn’t nearly as spicy as the teachers had professed.

We called some of the other people in the program who were hanging out in the bar district of the city and took a taxi to what we thought was the bar at which they were hanging out. They gave us the wrong directions. We wandered about in the rain looking for their locale, first in the wrong direction entirely (partly due to faulty directions: we’re in the direction of the street with all the lights. Oh thanks), and we finally found them.

I spent the rest of the evening learning how to play a game called liar’s dice. It is a gambling game of sorts, and involves dice. I’ll have to show you how to play when I return. We left the bar a reasonable hour by ACC standards, 12:30, and I fell right to sleep.

Friday April 1st, 2011

I didn’t tell you, but I got caught by the teachers last night speaking English. That means that my grade is going to drop from a solid a to a meager B. Then, this morning I ran over to Wes’ room to get the laundry soap and a teacher heard me speaking English again. That means that I’m out of here. I have a few days to pack up my stuff, but I’m going to be back home in a few days. I can’t say that I’m that sad about getting kicked out, as that means that I’m going to get to see Morgan earlier… But that also means that I don’t get any credit for this semester, at all. I’m going to need to go to summer school or something, maybe even have to spend another semester at Ole Miss in the fall… I can’t be too mad at the program, I guess.

April Fool’s.

I must say that I haven’t completely given up on studying for the test. After waking up, I spent a sleepy five minutes looking over the study guide, and then I took a shower. It would be the last shower that I took in the dorm for a long time. Why, you ask? I’m building the suspense. But wait.

As I walked to class this morning, I noticed something. Spring has arrived in Beijing, almost overnight. There are blossoms and leaves on the trees (some of them), and a strange neon color to the greenery, further exacerbated by the grayish smog covering the city. It is surprising that everything has decided to bloom today, as the weather is actually comparatively chilly. It is the first day of April, however, and the trees must bloom sometime.

For breakfast, I intended upon eating at the No 5 Café, perhaps getting some eggs easy over, jelly sandwiches, and some dumplings, eaten with a nice warm class of soybean juice. Delicious. That dream wasn’t to be realized. No 5 Café is closed for maintenance for the next three days. I’ll have to get food elsewhere for the next few days, I thought. My plans for the future did little to solve my present situation, and I went hungry for the morning test.

After finishing the test, I walked down to the dumpling shack to see how Li and the crew was faring. As soon as I walked in, Li said, the police came.

Wow! I’m sorry. What happened?

He held out his hand – 5.

Five what?

That’s how much they wanted, he said, 5,000 Yuan.

Holy cow! Are you all right? How is your shop?

I’m fine. It’s just money, right? I can make more money, but if I don’t pay up and give them the bribe, I lose my shop. If that happens, I have no way to make more money. The police aren’t going to demolish my shop. When they came by, all they wanted was a little extra money to eat on, just a little bribe.

I admired his resolution, and the situation got me thinking. Li accepts this situation as normal. Either he does not realize that there is another way of conducting business, not living in fear of having your property confiscated by the police (which is likely when taking into consideration the Great Firewall of China), or he does realize that there is an alternative, but believes that a situation in which people have property rights is unattainable in China. At least for now. Either option is a little disheartening. And a bribe of 5,000 Yuan is no small sum for a shop owner like Li. 5,000 Yuan is about $780, and that is approximately what Li would make in two to three months of business, after production costs.

This phenomenon is not restricted to this section of town either; shop owners all over the city are being milked by the police. It isn’t very difficult to find the people that couldn’t pay up. Look in the cracks of the plywood covering storefronts around the city and take a look at the empty rooms. According to Li, when the police come to collect their bribe, they bring a flatbed truck in tow. If you don’t acquiesce to their bribery, they take your tables, cooking gear, goods, everything on the spot. As if on cue, their neighbor ran over, toothbrush in hand, and said that the police were coming this way. She looked rather distraught. She ran back over to her side, and Li and I looked out the front of the store. Sure enough, there was police truck rolling slowly down the street, emblem reading “Carrying out the laws of Beijing” on the front. A blue flatbed truck followed behind. Li nodded in the direction of his neighbor and said “she can’t pay up. She has no way.”

I imagine that some of you reading this will say, “I’m sure that those people aren’t paying taxes anyway. Those shop owners shouldhave to pay their taxes, and what the police are doing is, in reality, no different from collecting taxes normally, barring that they are paying them all at once.” I agree with this, and the shop owners, if they are going to do business in Beijing, do need to pay their taxes.

However, I there are w a few things that make that rather difficult to do, and these are the primary reasons that I oppose these actions of the police. The act if paying taxes should entitle the storeowners to some public goods provided by the city. There are a number of non-excludable public goods that they do have access to – roads, public restrooms, national security, etc – but beyond these non-excludable goods, these shop owners enjoy no other public goods. According to Chinese law, these shop owners (nearly all of them come from other parts of the country) are not even supposed to be living in Beijing. There still exists a system of registration in your hometown, and Li and his family is still registered in their home province. Any public benefits that they would have received – public healthcare, schooling for their children – are to be gotten back home, not in Beijing. However, the system of public goods outside the large cities is lacking, to say the least, and any benefit that Li would get from paying taxes back home would be dwarfed by the lack of economic opportunity back home. They are essentially non-people in Beijing, in the eyes of the government. China needs migrant workers and shop owners like Li to develop the city, but they are expendable.

Secondly, when the police come to each and every shop in Beijing owned by migrant workers and demands $780, that money is not going to public coffers. That money is padding the pockets of policemen and government officials all over the city, feeding into a giant web of corruption and bribery in the city. The amount of money that has changed hands over the last week is mind numbing, and no one has lifted a finger to oppose the police. Mei ban fa. There is nothing to be done.

Exacerbating the situation is the fact that individuals do not own property in Beijing. Everything is part of the giant state apparatus, and everything is available for confiscation. Would you like to know why Chinese cities look so appealing? Why everything sits balanced, perfectly ordered, in harmony with the surroundings? Because the government can take any property that they see fit to make their own dream cities all over China. Li doesn’t even have a basis for opposing the actions of the police, even if he wanted to.

Granted, the property is worth more than the value of a dumpling shack. Besides being the cultural and political center of China, Beijing is quickly becoming a business hub for China. The business hub of Beijing is a brainchild of the CCP. This area has never been conducive to business, and attempting to transform Beijing into a business center is a rather unnatural turn for this city. I am sure that transforming Beijing into this business hub has accelerated the destruction of hutongs and other historical sections of the city.

That raises the question: why not just condemn these little shops, demolish them, and sell the property to some large Chinese or international firm? My theory is that there is always a bigger fish on the bribery totem pole. As long as the police keep milking their shop owners for some cash every now and then, and nobody squeals – not that they have anyone to squeal to – they can keep their 5,000 Yuan from every shop owner. However, the act of selling a piece of property involves the upper levels of Chinese bureaucracy, and that means that the police don’t collect any more funds. The upper-level government officials will collect their fill, leaving the little fish out to dry. This keeps the ground-level police from doing anything brash to shop owners, and they stay under the radar of the government.

Our class was scheduled to meet on the first floor of the dorm at 10:30, and I rode back to the dorm in the strange half-light of smog and clouds over the city. We were to travel over to the Lu Xun Museum, inside Second Ring Road and in the middle of a hutong I like to visit. I was excited about going to the Lu Xun Museum, and I really do admire his work. However, I had way more to think about, with what just happened with Li. I was in no mood for walking around with our teachers, ignorant to everything going on in this city but the state of our Chinese and the price of Nestle Coffee.

Lu Xun: He was born in 1881 in the backside of nowhere in China. His grandfather was a government official, and like all government officials in China, he took a few bribes on the side. However, at this point in time, the government was a little stricter on bribery than they are now. Lu Xun’s grandfather was found out and everything of value in their household was confiscated by the government. How’s that for justice? Shortly after that, his father and grandfather would both pass away, leaving Lu Xun as the breadwinner of the family. His family moved to Shanghai while he was in his teens, and there he went to school before traveling to Japan to study medicine. There, he realized that he would rather write, and began writing articles, books, essays, and poetry condemning the backwards ways of the Chinese people and exhorting them to do better. He is known as being one of the most prominent modern Chinese writers, and I admire his finesse in the writing sphere. He successfully navigated through the turmoil of the early 1940s, enjoying support from both of the contesting political parties in China – the Nationalists and the Communists.

After that, we went to the Chinese Table with the teachers. We floundered about looking for a place to eat for Chinese Table for some time, and it was quite obvious that they had no idea what was going on… Eventually, we settled on a rather expensive a noodle restaurant, and I dined with Joy, Katie, and Eric.

When I got back to the dorm, I had an email from the program. Someone had been caught cheating on the test this morning, and they wanted to have a meeting at 5:30 to talk about academic honesty. Oh crap. What was going to happen? Was someone getting kicked out?

I rode over to Bally, laughing as a rode. It was raining for the first time in 3 months! I ran long, wishing that I could run outside. I’m not going to try that, though.

I rode straight over to the meeting. After listening to one of the teachers criticize us for our dishonesty and for not keeping the language pledge, Trevor and two other students busted in the room carry three crates of Qingdao beer. April fools! I have to say, it was pretty good.

I came back up to the dorm to write.

I made contact with Wes and Hannah. They had a friend coming to town tonight, and they asked me if I’d like to meet them at hot pot. Most assuredly!

We rode back to the dorm, and then stepped over to a party that my neighbors, James and Trevor, were throwing with the rest of the beer from the April Fool’s prank.

I played Majiang with Wes, Hannah, and their friend for a little while, and then it was time for me to get some sleep.

I’ll write soon!

Love,

Jamey

Tuesday March 29th, 2011

Dear reader, I must declare that nothing exciting happening today.

I went to class. Then, I came back to the room and Skyped home.

Then, I went to one-on-one, class.

I then proceeded to have a meeting with the new director. This is the only thing of interest that has occurred today. The old director has returned to her hometown; she is going to have a child soon. The new director is one of the 5^th year teachers from the program, and she is quite a little feisty thing. She is also very young in comparison to the other teachers at the program, not more than 28, by what I wager. I would imagine that she was chosen to direct the program due to her ideological purity and general businesslike demeanor. I would also surmise that she is a member of the CCP, and that is her ticket to becoming the new interim director of ACC. I’ll have to let you know more later…

Then, I returned to the room and applied for some more internships.

Bally.

For supper, I rode my bike down to the dumpling shack. The team of four was just sitting down for supper, and they invited me to eat with them. The team consists of Mr. Li, his wife, his younger sister, and his sister’s husband. li is their ringleader, and the chief businessman. I like his wife; she is very sassy. His sister and her husband are much quieter, but both have a good sense of humor. Her husband always offers me ZhongNanHaoi cigarettes, which I smoke with a grimace. It would be impolite to turn them down. I gladly accepted their offer of supper, and ate some pickles bamboo shoots, spinach, sautéed onions and rice with them. I was drilled on my Chinese and American culture, and I asked them about live in their home province of Zhejiang. I would like to visit their province sometime, and it sounds very interesting.

While we were talking, Li got very serious and said, “we’ve had some problems with the police.” It turns out that the police have been going to other shops in other neighborhoods demanding bribes from the storeowners. If the people don’t pay up, then the police will demolish the building and take whatever furniture and tools you have inside. One of the neighboring cooks ran over at one point and said, “I just talked to someone up the street! The police are making their way this direction.” Li closed the door to the dumpling shack, and turned off the dumpling steamer, hoping that the police wouldn’t stop by. We ate the rest of the meal tensely, but it appeared that he danger had passed. Who knows what would happen with the family at the dumpling shack.

Studying.

Sleep.

Pictures for ACC Contest

Hey Everyone! Jamey is entering a picture contest for the program he is in. He sent me the pictures that he was entering, so I thought I would show them off to all of you! He has a story to go with all of them, but he said they would take awhile to compile, so I decided to post them anyway. I am so proud of him and the work he has put into these pictures and I hope you all will be proud of him as well! He will be back at home in 21 days YAY!

The first one and the last one are my favorites! I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do! As always Jamey's pulls out some amazing talent with these!