quelquefois

Beijing has an incredible response rate to snow. Immediately after the snow lets up, plows make their way down major roads and avenues to prevent traffic catastrophe (as we all know how bad traffic already is in Beijing); people are out on the streets with 13-foot-long sticks and shaking them in trees; and, most interestingly, teams of people are shoveling snow into trucks and carts. Those who usually collect garbage on the streets are instead collecting snow. Now my biggest question is–where do they take the snow?

Let today be known as the day the Chinese government impaled the internet with its mighty spear of technology and added Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, bing.com, live.com to its repertoire of blocked sites. Other sites blocked in China include: Blogspot, Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress, China Digital Times, and Huffington Post.

56minus1 speculates this may have to do with Ai Weiwei joining Twitter. Lostlaowai says it has to do with that special 20th anniversary on Thursday.

Whatever the reason, this isn’t making my “I hate China” week any better.

Edit: an exhaustive list of all the websites “down for maintenance” has been compiled. Check it out here.

The situation for young Chinese couples is pretty bleak. That is, if they want to have a sex life.

Many young Chinese couples, such as university students, if not living in 4-8 person dormitories at school, are living with their parents at home. If they have a boy or girlfriend, where are they to spend time together? Some opt for hotels that have hourly rates (often dubbed “love hotels,” a popular term in Japan and Korea), some alienate their roommates by fooling around in their dorm room, some wait until their parents aren’t home, and others opt for public spaces such as parks or behind buildings. It’s amusing (albeit also troublesome) that actions meant to be done in private are now done in public.

The dearth of privacy in China was aptly pictured last night on my bike ride home, when I saw a couple on one of the largest streets in Beijing, 建国门外大街, doing it behind some scaffolding. Nevermind all the cars driving by, but there were even construction workers working not even 100 meters away from the couple.

Photo via douban.

does your professor respond to your e-mails by SMSing you.

Today, my roommate Jules and I were biking to the train station, and at a stoplight we ran into an American who was out on a run. Jules and I were speaking English about alternate routes to the train station.

Man: Wow, people who speak English! (then he looks at me) Both of you!
Jules: Yeah, where are you from?
Man: I’m from New York. (directed at Jules) China is great, isn’t it?

Then he proceeds to look at me as if he was saying, “Your country is great!”

I hate that all white people in China think you can’t speak English. And if that isn’t enough, Chinese people don’t believe I speak English well (nor do they think I speak Chinese well enough, either).

Where do I belong in China? Where do I belong in the world?

There’s this man whom I met two months ago named 周杰 (the name is so close to 周杰伦, or Jay Chou, but he couldn’t be further from it). He insists on calling me “小胖子” or “little fatty,” when I’m not even fat, I just (to put it in the words of Vicky Chao) weigh more than 100 pounds. Apparently, he also thinks I’m an idiot. Here is an excerpt of a conversation we had today:

Man: 我吃的是绿色的菜花. (I had a green floral vegetable.)
Me: 西兰花？(Broccoli?)
Man: 哇，对！你怎么知道？我还以为你不知道中文怎么叫呢。(Wow, yeah! How did you know? I didn’t think you knew how to say it in Chinese.)
Me: 开玩笑吗？(Are you kidding me?)

西兰花, xī lán huā: n. broccoli

Who doesn’t know how to say “broccoli” in Chinese? Even foreigners learning their first year of Chinese know how to say it. Is this a jab at my intelligence? Should I be making fun of him for not being able to fit into regular pants (he’s a student at an athletic university in Beijing, and I think his legs are too 粗, thick, to fit into anything but sweatpants)? Should I make fun of him for his st-st-st-stutter?

No, I won’t reduce myself to his level. I’ll just stop picking up his phone calls. I didn’t come to China to have my intelligence underestimated and to feel bad about my body when there’s nothing wrong.

Please do not lean against and touch pieces of artwork in museums. Seriously? Come on. Do you have any respect? Would you want to spend months/years on a report and then have some person piss all over it? Yeah, that’s what it’s like.

The culprits

Sincerely,
Girl who would kick your ass if you touched her artwork

My roommate and I arrive in Wuhan (Wuchang, specifically) and try to find a cheap place to stay that’s close to the train station (unfortunately we both ended up taking trains from the other train station on the other side of town, about a 40 minute drive away). We find this “hotel” (after seeing the bathrooms/showers at this place, though, I don’t know what to call it) that must not see many foreigners. Here is a conversation I had with employees at check-in:

Hotel staff (Chinese): May I have your 身份证 (shen1fen4zheng4, identity card)?
I hand over my passport.
Hotel staff: What is this? Where is the number?
Me: I don’t have a national identity card; that’s my passport. I’m an American citizen.
Hotel staff (to a co-worker): What do we do? Where’s the number? Where’s her name? What should we put?
Me: Can’t you just input my English name and passport number?
Hotel staff: You’re sure you’re not Chinese? Do you have any other form of identification? What’s your Chinese name?
I go on to show them my school ID from last semester, as well as my work ID, neither of which are acceptable. I have no idea what they ended up doing, but I have never seen anyone so confused to see an Asian wielding a foreign passport before.

Two days ago, I went to the bathroom at a mall in Wangfujing. As I came out to wash my hands, an elderly woman was hunched over next to the toilet paper dispenser (some classier malls provide toilet paper for their bathrooms, though there is only one large dispenser before you enter the stalls). I continued to lather and rinse my hands and watched in the mirror as this woman continued to pull toilet paper out of the dispenser. Even after I finished washing my hands, she continued to pull on the seemingly endless roll. Finally, she had accumulated about 1000 feet and was satisfied, so she head into the stalls.

Another woman was waiting to grab some toilet paper. She looked at me with astonishment and said, “What is she doing with all that toilet paper? Is she going to eat it?”

Well, it was funny to me at the time…

Usually in the States, when the stoplight is broken, cars stop at the intersection as if there was a stop sign. Not in China. If anything, it roughly translates into, “There’s no traffic signal denoting cross-traffic and pedestrian crossings, so speed up!” When you try to cross (even when there is a crosswalk), it’s as though you are in their way. They honk and flash their high beams as they zoom past. Would any of them dare to actually hit us?  To test this theory out, a few friends and I attempted to cross. Crossing Running for your life as buses and aggressive taxis speed toward you is not advised.