Panda watch 2008!

Meet Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, whose combined names means reunion. These two national treasures are goodwill gifts to Taiwan, where the pandas will live in the island's most visited zoo.

A plane arrived in Chengdu, the "hometown of the Giant panda" according to the CCTV advertisements, to pick up the pandas about midday today. CCTV's foreign language news channel has been following the story since midday with hourly updates. READ MORE HERE

Two handlers will accompany Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan on their trying 3-hour flight to Taiwan with comfort food like steamed corn buns and motion sickness pills, according to Xinhua.net.

The Giant Panda, otherwise known as China's obsession, is among the most endangered animals in the world, with only about 1,500 left alive. Most pandas, or 熊猫 xiong mao (literally bear cat), live in Sichuan and areas that were hard hit by the Spring earthquake. The bear cat needs basically untouched wilderness and calm to feel comfortable mating with other bear cats. This means the earthquake has upturned the mating cycle of the already endangered animal.

It's easy to understand Chinese people's love affair with the Giant panda; I mean, they're stupidly cute. However, the extent of love for this coddled animal that would probably be extinct if left to its own devices is incredible. Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan will get a week's supply of steamed corn buns--a delicacy difficult to find in the wilderness of the Sichuanese mountains. My tutor, Liu Xiao Qian, collects everything panda-related and now is on the hunt for a back pack that actually looks like a panda is hugging you from behind. When she hasn't slept and gets dark circles under her eyes, she tells me, "Look! I look like a panda!" I've heard from at least one student and a few other friends that foreigners are compared to pandas because, like the Great Panda, we're both helpless, fat and kind of stupid.

Pandas may be cuter than foreigners, but at least we're not terrible at mating.

First snow in Tianjin!

Last night we had Tianjin's first snow fall of the year. A thick flurry of snow fell throughout the night, gaining intensity until morning, when we all awoke to find the usually dust covered city temporarily clean and white. What I like even more than Tianjin's snow bath is the enthusiasm everyone shows for the snow. It's not often that Tianjin gets snow, but when it does one of the most popular pastimes is making snow men. They're a bit different from home; instead of three separately molded and hand-patted balls, Tianjingers favor impromptu snowmen sculpted out of the piles shoveled off the sidewalks. Here's just a sample of the model men down Bin Jiang Dao. See more at my photo sharing site, www.AmericanFair.shutterfly.com.

China blocks New York Times Web site

This taken from yesterday's Wall Street Journal--

BEIJING -- China has blocked access to the New York Times Web site, the newspaper said Saturday, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.

Computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message that the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning, the paper said. Some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening, it said.

The Web site remained inaccessible from Beijing Saturday.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said they do not deal with Web sites. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the Internet, could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended China's right to censor Web sites that have material deemed illegal by the government, saying that other countries regulate their Internet usage too.

During the Summer Games held in August, China allowed access to long-barred Web sites such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Human Rights Watch after an outcry from foreign reporters who complained that Beijing was failing to live up to its pledges of greater media freedom.

The New York Times said Beijing had blocked the Chinese-language Web site of the BBC, and Web sites of Voice of America, Asiaweek, and Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, earlier in the week. But apart from Ming Pao the sites were all accessible Friday, it said.

Ming Pao's online site was still inaccessible Saturday in Beijing, but the others were accessible.

China has the most online users in the world with more than 250 million, but it has also put in place a sophisticated system to police Web sites for sensitive material and routinely blocks Web sites that are pro-Tibetan independence or the Dalai Lama.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, told the paper that there did not appear to be a technical issue. Users in Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. were also not experiencing difficulties, the paper said.

Where I find the Christmas spirit

Bin Jiang Dao, the massive pedestrian shopping street, is the only place in Tianjin that feels like Christmas. It's mostly because of the church at the south end of the street. St. Joseph's Catholic Church is an ironic anchor to Tianjin's shopping district, but it's the only place I've been where people remember and understand what Christmas feels like.

Read more about it in my column from this Sunday's Post-Tribune.

Jumping shoes!

Youngsters have exercise with their power shoes, or the jumping shoes, at the People's Square of Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou province, Dec. 8, 2008. The jumping shoes that were used in the performance of the 29th Beijing Olympics closing ceremony became very popular among youngsters in Guiyang recently. Taken from http://english.china.com/zh_cn/news/china/11020307/20081210/15228846.html

These shoes are now No. 1 on my Christmas wish list.

Dalai does it again

Photos: Top Left: a conspicuously empty Carrefour today. Bottom: an average day at Carrefour before Sarkozy's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama looks like it's sparking the second French product boycott this year.

A story on the front of today's China Daily, the communist party newspaper, quoted online comments by angry Chinese citizens urging a nationwide boycott of French products and Carrefour, the French, international version of Walmart. I have no idea if the nationwide Carrefour boycott has actually caught on, but Carrefour is usually about as busy as the Shanghai subway. However, the store I visited tonight, photographed above, was noticeably empty.

"By the way, an advice for the surprised French - do not mistake spontaneous grassroots expressions of discontent for alleged government instigation," wrote the editorial staff in Sunday's China Daily. "Government preference may determine the purchase of Airbuses, or Boeings. But it cannot force people to travel to places they dislike, be it Paris, or Provence. Nor can it make consumers buy from brand names they feel bad about, be it Louis Vuitton, or Carrefour." Read more

Sarkozy, current president of the European Union, met with the Dalai Lama Saturday just prior to scheduled talks between the EU and China on the global financial crisis. Since Saturday's meeting, China postponed the EU-China talks indefinitely.

Sound familiar? It is, but slightly different from the April riots outside Chinese Carrefours. People are angry, but the government is formally telling people to stay calm. Comments made on China Daily's Web site, Chinese netizens said Sarkozy "hurt Chinese feelings," call Sarkozy "ignorant," "arrogant," and accuse him of "using the human rights card" too many times.

This issue doesn't seem to be the talk of the town, as French-China relations were in April, but it's certainly an issue worth following.

Read the CD article here.

Merry Christma-tine's day!

In a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas, national idol Jackie Chan takes it upon himself to post directions for how to celebrate Christmas on his Web site. Christmas seems largely irrelevant to Chinese people, save the Christmas trees in malls capitalizing on a chance to push people to spend. The church on shopping street Bin Jiang Dao may be overflowing on the 24th, but it's more out of fascination for a strange culture than worship or tradition.

This much was obvious. Little did I know Christmas is for lovers.

The 25th is one of the busiest days of the year at Bin Jiang Dao's movie theaters, my friend Liu Xiao Qian told me. Couples will make a quick stop by the Catholic church on the south end of the shopping street, laughingly take pictures in front of the church and Christmas trees flashing the "V" victory sign (or the peace sign as we know it), then catch a movie or some one-on-one time, with the million other young Chinese doing the same thing.

It's like Valentine's Day, Liu said. During our discussion, Liu said people don't identify it with family or religion but more as a holiday you prepare one day in advance for, like Mother's Day or other Hallmark holidays.

From my view, it seems the only people who feel Christmas is important work in the shopping industry. Sure, when you look at it as an excuse to sing songs, decorate and buy something little, why not celebrate. This form of Christmas seems to be getting more popular as more focus and attention is given to commerialism. If this grows more popular, it will certainly change the Christmas spirit world wide.

Dealing with cold heats up issue of waste

In addition to teaching at Nankai University, I write a bi-weekly column for the Sun-Times News Group newspaper, The Post-Tribune. My old staff at the Post has been terrible at putting these columns online; however, this week they did. Here's a taste.
---------------------

For the month of October and half of November, I taught while wearing my coat, scarf, gloves and later, my hat.

When I attended Chinese classes, as I do four days a week for three hours a day, I’d wear long underwear under my pants and try to write traditional Chinese characters while wearing mittens.

owards the end of the month, my teacher, Liu Xiao Qian, thought it appropriate to teach me to say, "I urgently need to buy warm clothes" (Xian zai wo yao mai hou de yifu) and "I am cold to death," (Wo leng si le).

The reason I risked frostbite in my classrooms and ‘da de feng’ or big wind in the hallways was because there was no heat until Nov. 15.

read the rest of this article here

'Toy factory dispute settled'--wait, what? But in that photo...

This was the leading photo in yesterday's China Daily for a story headlined, 'Toy factory dispute settled.' Taken in southern Guandong Province, this car had been overturned when 500 employees rioted after being laid off with only one month's compensation.

The workers started rallying at the gate, but were soon joined by others. "About 1,000 police and security guards were called in to disperse the crowd. This infuriated the protesters, who overturned a police vehicle, smashed at least four police motorcycles and broke windows and damaged computers in the company's office building," according to the article. READ THE STORY HERE.

Regardless of this actual story, which apparently got resolved and workers were justly compensated, this photo knocked me out. The image was in the center spot of page 4, with a teaser on page 1. It took up one-third of the page! It looks so much like something out of Iraq that I actually laughed out loud when I read the headline, 'dispute settled.'

I think my journalism friends will agree that this photo just doesn't scream "resolved."

I see this in the China Daily all the time: a glaring disconnect between the headline and the photo, or the headline and the actual article. I think it's fair to say the placement of this photo was poor, but there may be several reasons for this.

1) There is no competition for the China Daily, the Party paper, so they don't have to be good.
2) This paper uses a journalism of assertion. This Party report tells you the problem is fixed. Maybe this is why the editors didn't see the disconnect between the photo and the report as a problem; the gov't is saying it's resolved, so it's resolved.
3) The audience for the China Daily largely consists of expats who are on rotation in China; when they leave after two years, different expats come in. They're not the kind of audience to even get the daily paper, let alone demand higher quality from their paper.

It's certainly a different kind of journalism.

What's in a name?

Since meeting my student Dracula in Shanghai, I've been consistently surprised and usually amused by the English names Chinese and Korean students choose. These students, like any foreign language students, pick English names based on how they sound, what they mean and the translation or transliteration of their original name. However, my favorite names are the ones chosen by students who want to live more colorfully through their English names than their original names permit. I've compiled a list of several English names chosen by my and other American teachers' students. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Red
Paradox
Insomnia
Quicker
Lock Lee
Jummpy (yes, with two m's)
Theory
Runner
Bright
Wolf
Silence
Pluto
Skip
Hawke
Beonly
Sharper
Pizza
Alien
Dictionary
Wood
Rocky Cefinil
PP
Worm

BLOCKED: Web sites I can't load in China

In the past two weeks, I experienced first-time problems accessing many Web sites. I lost access to every communication tool that uses the Internet and my blog last week, which is why this is the first blog post in two weeks. Here's the full list of sites I couldn't access:

1) Skype. I downloaded it in America in May and have used it in China until last week when it stopped working. My Taiwanese-American friend lost his Skype a month ago; the rest of the Americans in my building lost it last week. Those who figured out how to make it work had to uninstall the international Skype and redownload the Tom.com, Chinese formatted Skype program.
2) Call2. I started using Call2 when the Internet in China was too slow to run Skype. It hasn't worked for a week either.
3) Google Gchat video. After Skype and Call2 stopped working, I thought I'd try the new Gchat application, google video chat. It doesn't work here, but that could be for a few reasons: the shoddy Internet connection, Google hasn't made a format Chinese authorities have agreed to allow, etc.
4) My blog. I couldn't access my blog either in my apartment through my Internet connection, any of my neighbors' Internet connections, or through the Internet connection at my favorite coffee shop. The last post I wrote was about the changing political landscape in Taiwan.
5) Wikipedia. Doesn't work anymore without using my proxy, but I was told to expect this.
6) Google. Seriously. The most popular search engine in America, and likely one of the most popular in the world, could not load for several days. It works now, but I think not being able to access Google for several days made me feel more isolated than anything else since I've been in China.

I think it's likely that a combination of Internet connection problems, software formatting problems and government censorship are blocking these sites. My question is, why now? Has anyone has read articles (that I may not have seen on the Internet over here) on Internet issues in China? Did the Great firewall of China get updated last week? I wrote this post hoping I could find out why I lost access these sites now, not before, and what I can do to communicate with family back home. So if anyone has suggestions, HELP! I'm feeling a little boxed in lately.

Taiwan: changing political landscape

The changing relations between Taiwan and the mainland are essential news around here. Improvements in diplomacy seemed to be heading full steam ahead with direct flights to Taiwan, elimination of heavy taxes on items shipped between Taiwan and the mainland and Taiwan even offering to acknowledge the credentials of college graduates educated on the mainland.

Now this: TAIPEI (from Reuters) - Former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, a strong advocate of independence from China, was formally arrested on Wednesday over money-laundering allegations he has described as political persecution.

Read the Reuters article HERE.

Here's the mainland government's response: (from China Daily) BEIJING - A Chinese mainland official on Wednesday refuted Taiwan former leader Chen Shui-bian's claims of being persecuted by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China as "a sheer fabrication".

Read the China Daily article HERE.

He'll leave your ass for a white girl

I'm working for an expat entertainment and lifestyle magazine in Tianjin now. I was recently assigned to rewrite an interview with one of Tianjin's leading steel development expats for the Japanese version of the magazine.

The source decided we should do it over dinner.

I checked with my American editor first to see if this was kosher behavior, and found that he and the rest of the staff already RSVP'd. At dinner, I took the wine offered me, but kept pace with what my editor was drinking until he started doing shots with our source. When the source started asking me, "Elizabeth, who's the most attractive man at the table?" I tried to keep my grace and abstain from answering.

But none of this decorum saved me when Jessica, whom I had been introduced to as my source's Chinese personal assistant, began screaming at her boss, my source. You've been talking to her all night, you like white women better, the foreigner better watch out, she yelled.

I crawled into a cab to escape with a coworker, but the source joined us. "She knows it's just a contract, I don't love her and she knows I do prefer white women," said the source, an American scoundrel in the greatest.

Jealousy between white, foreign women and Asian women is common. In just one Google search I found a blog titled White Women Suck. One post addressed why white women tend to look down on interracial relationships between white men and Asian women. It's an inflammatory read, check it out here.

I had heard of tensions going the other way, Chinese women confronting foreign women, but this was my first introduction. It's not unlike the Black women White women issues I saw growing up in Gary, Ind. Once, a white girl friend faced a group of black women threatening to beat her up if she didn't split with "the brother" she was dating.

It's all very interesting, but there's one more detail to this story that really takes the cake.

Jessica, the Chinese personal assistant and my source's vigilante mistress, is technically dead in Latvia. Apparently she married the last man she worked for and had to die to escape.

Church in China

Father Francis Jose Cruz is a Filipino man with a Spanish name, educated in Boston who evangelizes in China.

"And the strangest thing is that we're official!"

Father Francis is referring to the official appointment he enjoys from the Religious Bureau of the Patriotic Church (the Communist Party's religious arm) and the Catholic Patriotic Association (which, despite it's name, has actual ties to the government and no actual ties to the Catholic Church).

Father Francis found himself in Tianjin because Beijing was looking for an English-speaking priest to hold service at Tianjin's "Official Olympic Church." The government wanted to have an English-language mass available for foreigners wishing to worship during their Olympic vacation, never mind that it might be a Catholic mass for a Mormon.

Cruz is preparing for his first Christmas in China and finds himself struggling with first time issues like how to keep people out of Christmas Eve mass.

Many non-Catholics and non-religious Chinese people attend service because the cathedral is like a museum from a strange culture, Father Francis said. He would like Christmas Eve to have some of the dignity and solemnity it would other places. But considering Christmas Eve is a bit of a sideshow to the hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people who flood the church on the 24th, Father Francis is worried there won't be seats for those actually hoping to worship.

But he says he feels company in these and other struggles.

"Many of the foreigners who worship here aren't Catholic and that's very strange for a Catholic Priest," Father Francis said. "But we're all struggling in the fact that you are looking for something familiar because we want to feel comfortable. If you don't get that sense of home, than we can't get that sense of Christian community."

Photos: Our Lady of China at St. Joseph's Cathedral is the largest and most well-attended Patriotic Church in Tianjin. Above: The French Catholic-style cathedral is at the Southern end of Bin Jiang Dao, the largest pedestrian shopping street in Tianjin. Right: Father Francis from afar. Bottom right: Inside St. Joseph's.

Clean Kanye MC'd to sitting fans, soldiers' orders

No cursing, no standing and your curfew is 9 p.m.! No, that's not your father speaking, it was the orders of the Chinese soldiers managing Kanye West's Glow in the Dark tour show on Nov. 1 at the Worker's Stadium in Beijing.

I admit, I didn't see the show--Kanye priced his tickets at 780 kuai a pop, more than a quarter of my monthly salary. However, I did celebrate the day after Halloween about a short distance away and saw the disappointed fans filter onto bar street, Sanlitun.

Kim, an American from Massachusetts, said she was ordered to sit down by a armed soldier after standing up to dance during "All Falls Down."

The Beijinger reviewers were pretty tough on the show too, calling Kanye's performance half-hearted and sanitized. (Kanye didn't swear, didn't perform "Jesus Walks" and didn't speak to the crowd once.) Read the review here.

If this is indicative of Western musicians performances in China, I think I'll wait to see them back home.

CCTV anchor burps on TV

The Beijinger expat Web site is abuzz with the news that another CCTV news anchor has been caught on TV and put on trial on the web doing making a blooper.

"Zhang Hongmin's burp is the latest in a long line of gaffes from CCTV presenters and below we’ve gathered together clips and images of some recent on-air bloopers that have led many to bemoan the decline in standards over at CCTV."--taken from the Beijinger Be sure to watch this video.

For a country that assesses the proficiency of your language speaking based on how well the anchors of CCTV speak, this on-air deterioration of decorum is a social humorous crisis.

"What makes him so...?"

Sitting in my office hours, I was expecting students to ask questions about their persuasive essay due next week. When Fatima (featured in the middle, wearing a purple jacket) walked in her first question was:

"So Mr. Obama, what makes him so.....charismatic?"

I was rather shocked. My sophomores have a midterm 4-page persuasive paper due soon, but it was the day the election results were announced and word had spread that I ended class early to see Obama's acceptance speech.

"I decided I want to know why Americans find this man fascinating so I have printed two of his speeches. I will memorize them. Do you think it will help my English too?"

I think this summarizes the Chinese response to Obama's election: fascination in a distancing way. My students were and are interested, but I don't think they feel President Obama will greatly impact their lives or even China's policies.

That said, the headline of today's China Daily, the English language Communist party newspaper, read Change has come, with a three-fourths page close-up of Barack grinning. Below the story on Obama's election--which focused on this representing America's final departure from rascism and then moved quickly to the perpetual economic woes--was a blurb on President Hu Jintao congratulating Mr. Obama.

"China and the United States share broad common interests and important responsibilities on a wide range of major issues concerning the well-being of humanity," Hu said. (The first part said a lot, but everything pas interests is standard Chinese non-speak--like he needs an editor to eliminate the speech where he says nothing.)

Here's a China Daily article on the world response. Interestingly, Obama Japan celebrated with Obama Hope emblem rice cakes. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-11/06/content_7178141.htm

New Yorker blogger agrees with Chinese: a walk a day keeps the canary doc away

I've written before here about the habit Chinese men of taking your canaries to the park. Every morning in Zhabei Park, Shanghai, I'd watch more than 30 men sit and smoke cigarettes while their caged canaries enjoyed the fresh air, hanging in cages in the trees. It seems New Yorker cartoonist and writer Donna Barstow likes to do the same.

In a recent post on her blog Why I did it, Barstow mentioned an American Fair post I wrote on Chinese men taking their canaries to the park. Canaries need more Vitamin D (created in the body when exposed to natural sunlight) than many other common birds, like parakeets. Barstow wrote this is the primary reason she takes her canary on outings. Though I think the men in Zhabei Park enjoy these social morning outings just as much if not more than their canaries enjoy the sunlight, I appreciate the mention on Barstow's blog.

China charges into credit cards

Taken from the L..A. Times:

Banks are stepping up their marketing of plastic, but the penalties are harsh on delinquent payers.

By Don Lee, reporting from shanghai
October 22, 2008

Imagine there was a law that said if you missed two credit card payments in a row, you had to pay the full balance immediately, with heavy penalties. And if you didn't, your bank would take out an ad in your local newspaper, calling you a deadbeat. Or worse, thugs in suits might show up at your office, haul you down to the bank and keep you there for hours until you signed a promise to pay.

Welcome to the world of plastic -- Chinese style.

Read more

Bloomberg on China's economic worries

I've been asked to post more on the Chinese economy. But I was at the bottom of my micro economics class, so I'll just refer economic questions to Bloomberg. This is a good summation of China's slowing GDP growth in a nutshell. The big worries are a possible burst in the housing bubble and and a lower than average demand for Chinese-made toys during the Christmas season. TAKE A LOOK HERE

Qingdao is for fishers

I traveled to Qingdao, the home of Tsingtao Beer and the site of the Olympics sailing events, over the Golden Week holiday the first week of October. I'm finally getting around to posting my pictures and have put up a few here, and many more on my shutterfly site at http://americanfair.shutterfly.com/

Qingdao's beaches are known for the small minnow-like fish and quarter-sized crabs that live in the rocks on the shore. Tourists come and rent sieves and sand pales to search through the rocks for these little sea creatures.

But the week's main attraction was the Tsingtao International Beer Fest, which is held every year during Golden Week. Though my American friends and I really brought the international to the International Beer Fest, it was a wonderful experience with Chinese characteristics.

Construction cranes, the national bird of China

A student asked me recently about the word progress. During preparation for the Test of English as Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, she came across the word in a writing prompt that asked for the positives and negatives of progress.

"But I don't understand," she said. "If progress means buildings and streets, than when isn't progress good?"

Much has been written in Western media about the rapid infrastructure growth in China, a good deal of it negative. Most notably was the rash of negative coverage when the construction of Olympic buildings displaced nearly 1.5 million Chinese residents, a figure reported in USA Today.

It seems there are three rings of opinions on China's construction. The first, inner most ring is represented by my student's insular, traditional opinion taught to her and promoted by the state. My student's gut reaction was progress means new infrastructure and new infrastructure means increased standard of living.

If you move one ring out to the more inclusive world view of an academic, China's construction is talked about in a tongue in cheek way. A Chinese economics professor at Peking University coined the phrase the national bird of China is the construction crane.

The outer most ring is the world view China's diplomats confront on a daily basis. The international community seems constantly amazed by the breakneck speed of progress in China, taking turns criticizing and acclaiming it.

It's not the opinions I find fascinating, it's differences between them. It's just one issue that shows the stark differences in values, East to West. Take a look at these pictures and if you feel inclined to tell me your opinions on the matter, please do. As always, more photos are posted here.

The Dirty Thirty free-for-all

With doomsday warnings keeping most of the world's shoppers at home, Beijingers nearly stampeded a Diesel jeans store in Shin Kong shopping mall Thursday to get a pair of Diesel's "Dirty Thirty" jeans. The limited release jeans, there are only 30,000 worldwide, were Diesel's "gift" to fans--they were sold for a mere 390 RMB (compared to a normal price tag of 1,000+ RMB). Customers were "screaming, shouting," and punching security officers to snatch the coveted denim, according to the Beijinger expat blog. Read more here. 

Though the "Dirty Thirty" jeans are cheaper than the normally extravagant price tag, they're still out of the price range of most Chinese people. This microcosm of extravagant consumerism is rare, but it does give light to a small cadre of consumers who are unaffected in spite of the global financial crisis. 

Did China buy the American Dream?

When I called for information about Chinese classes, I got offered a job teaching English.

While admiring a friend’s calligraphy scroll in the university foreign affairs office, a school marketing person asked if she could hire me to pose for pictures holding the scroll.

When I was late to my friend’s TV show appearance and got a nosebleed seat with no view, the director asked me to move to the front row so I “could be seen.”

Many things come with difficulty in China, but jobs and networking opportunities aren't among them. Flocks of Americans are traveling to China for jobs, higher than average incomes and a wealth of foreigner-only opportunities. I’m starting to wonder if China bought the American Dream when it bought two-thirds of our bad debt.

Take me for instance: I came to China to travel with an income. I may stay because the income and opportunities are better than I’d get in the states, especially in the current American economy.

And I’m not the only one. 

Tianjin is a mega-city with a scant population of foreigners. Still, there’s an American style coffee shop that plays Janis Joplin and serves Earl Grey tea. The Spot Cafe is owned by Daygan Sobotka, a 30-year-old Virginian who’s lived in China for three years. Sobotka said he came here to learn Chinese, got hired as a Chinese TV actor, and then wanted to own his own business. 

He stays because no where else in the world could he have so many options in so many career fields.

Then there’s Hank, a gruff, former Chicago stock exchange worker from the Southside. He came to China nine years ago on business and “just never went back.”

He now owns Hank's Sports Bar, which serves real cheeseburgers and Italian sausage, packed by Hank himself. On Sunday’s, Hank opens the bar at 8 a.m. for an American all-you-can-eat breakfast and he does city-wide catering on Thanksgiving with real stuffed turkeys.

It’s not the same story for Chinese, as my Chinese friend Sarah reminded me. 

When she graduates, the best she can do with her English degree in China is work in tourism, Sarah said. Pretty Chinese girls with English fluency look great in front of tourists.

I know my weekly job offers exemplify the unequal playing field, but I’m taking advantage of the American Dream in China as long as I can, lest the bubble burst here too.

Avril in China

Avril Lavigne's career may be waning in the States, but support for her music is alive and well, even riotous, in China. The Beijinger Expatriate Blog reported a near stampede Avril's Beijing concert last night, ending her six-show China tour. Read more here.

Pollution solution, Beijing style

During the Olympics, 400,000 Beijingers went online to vote for keeping the Olympic car restrictions that took nearly half of all cars off the road for two months, clearing the streets and the skies.

The verdict is in: all private cars will be banned from the roads one day a week and license plate restrictions will again take about 30 percent of cars off the roads each day. 

Within two hours of publishing the news, 2,400 Beijing citizens complained on China Daily's Web site. Some said it is unfair to require private cars to be taken off the roads one day a week. Some said the restrictions force law abiding citizens to buy more cars. Most said city officials won't follow the law anyway, making it a restriction only obeyed by people it hurts.

Read more at China Daily.

"Honey, where'd we park the bike?"

The car isn't quite king in China yet and with a looming global recession, car sales are slowing, while bicycle retention and electric bike sales are sky-high.

The photo here is the "parking lot" outside a downtown Carrefour in Heping District, Tianjin. There is a parking lot attendant here who tells people where to put their bike for the small fee of two Mao, or about three cents.

Car sales are high by Western standards; sales rose 19 percent in the first half of this year as car makers sold 5.18 million vehicles, according to this Bloomberg article. But that's down from last year's 23 percent growth.

From my micro view here in Tianjin, bicycles are widely used and more convenient for students because streets are congested with public buses and taxis. Old fashioned pedal bikes are by far the most common, but electric bikes are gaining popularity. One source predicts every household in China will have an electric bike by 2009.

I just wanted to touch on this very interesting, deep and fluctuating issue. Here's a few links to read more: Two Wheels or Four Wheels? Humble bicycle still rules Chinese roads-hearts Kick-starting the ebike

The Tianjin Variety Show!

When it comes to the fantasy world of television and movie production, it's reassuring to find out China is the same as Hollyweird.

I attended the filming of the Tianjin version of American Idol Thursday, except this is a misnomer because any Western concept introduced in China quickly loses its recognizable traits. Instead of the sexually ambiguous Clay Aiken singing sensitive pop music, it was a sexually ambiguous man dressed in traditional Peking opera costume with full face paint singing the cherry blossom love song of a young woman in Springtime. The winner wasn't an American girl singing music from the heartland, she was a Chinese girl (age 7) singing Peking opera from the dynastic court. 

The show also featured a co-ed dance troupe of 50 to 52-year-olds and a young man singing the typical Chinese pop cheese. I'd love to tell the story, but the photos and video really do it for me. Visit www.AmericanFair.shutterfly.com to see more photos of the show.

Teacher's Day in Tianjin

I teach on the fourth floor of a four-story building. After my classes ended on a regular Wednesday, I was walked down the main staircase toward a large group of students. 

I didn’t think anything of the packed first floor lobby, until the 40-some students burst into applause. 

I was bum rushed by someone with a bouquet of lilies. A wall of teenage girls were flashing cameras and yelling “Chieza!” (the Chinese version of “say cheese”). Confused, flustered and clueless on how to gracefully behave, I finally got an answer to my internal question of ‘What the hell is going on?’

“Happy Teacher’s Day!” the students all yelled.

Teacher’s Day in China, celebrated every Sept. 10, is an official working-holiday to show appreciation and respect for educators. This year, the 24th anniversary of Teacher’s Day, President Hu Jintao traveled to a school for deaf students in Henan Province. Premiere Wen Jiabao dined with eight teachers in Zhongnanhai and told them, “Teaching is the most splendid profession under the sun.” Both stories made front page news (click on links for stories).

The reason for all the pomp and flattery is out of historical respect for teachers. Confucius, the father of all teachers, taught more than 3,000 students in spite of the turbulent Spring and Autumn period. During these times, Confucius traveled the warring states promoting peace by teaching the merits of a moral life and rewriting the ancient texts. 

These rewritten texts form the foundation of Chinese civilization. 

There’s definitely an air of reverence in my students’ rapt attention. They stand to answer in-class questions. When I speak rapid-fire American English, my students apologize for not being smart enough to keep up.

I read that Teacher’s Day originally fell on Confucius’ birthday, but was moved later to fit the government’s holiday schedule. In America, this would be the death of a holiday. Within four years, even the flower shops would forget to advertise for it.

But in China, gratitude for and pride in teaching is obvious. When I was struggling to open my apartment door that day because of the two cases of mooncakes and carnations my students gave me, I didn’t mind that I feeling like I’m Anna in "The King and I." 

'Halfpats, the new expats'

I recently had a talk with one of my few American friends who actually got a job in America after we graduated. It was only three weeks into the new job, a copy editing position at a decent big-city magazine, but already the honeymoon was over.

"It's going OK, I guess. I don't know, I have an appointment at the Peace Corps office tomorrow."

It's just that simple. If work doesn't work out, maybe it's not the job you need to change. Maybe it's the country.

At least that's what a growing number of recent American graduates think. There are more than 6 million American expats living abroad now and according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the most entrepreneurial among them are young, unattached travelers willing to wander until the right career track finds them.

We're "halfpats," according to this article, or local for-hire expatriates that are younger, cheaper and more willing to take risks, thus the meandering that lead us so far from home. Not only am I surprised to find myself among this workforce, I had no idea I chose one of the best destinations for halfpat hiring. (My halfpat friends and I are pictured above. The smaller photo is another halfpat friend, Kelsey, embracing the Malaysian therapy of being lit on fire.)

The Beijing area and China have been boom territories for these marketable expats, according to the WSJ article. In lieu of the previous economic slowdown and now crisis, people see strength in China; 44 percent of Americans already think China is the world's leading economic power, according to a February Gallup poll.

We kids are marketable because we don't come with the costs of transportation, family relocation or housing. In most cases, halfpats have a cultural understanding and better language skills because they often come during college or right after, Richard Brubaker, blogger and manager of China Strategic Development Partners, said.

"Halfpats, with prior work experience of 3-4 years, and prior in-country experience of 3+ years, have already proven their ability, desire and commitment to operate in China," Brubaker wrote in an article for China Success Stories, a business Web site. Brubaker sees this "widely available talent pool" as a great resource for business management in China.

I've seen evidence of the "halfpat" phenomenon in my own microcosm of under experienced, over educated and thus unemployed friends. I know four History majors moving to Spain, one political science major already in Turkey, a marketing major maybe in Paris and myself, a wannabe journalist and English teacher in China. But in three weeks, I've gotten job offers over the phone, taken up tutoring and looked at opportunities hosting a radio show, writing bar reviews and acting. (Yes, acting. Foreigners with little or no acting experience in China are often sources for movie or TV show extras, when a role calls for that Western face. Read more here)

My friends are having trouble just getting apartments in the also slow economies of the European Union, let alone extra tutoring jobs to supplement a meager 700 Euro/month income.

It seems the gap year halfpats can actually make money, and forgo the calls home for cash typical for the last 20 years. That is, as long as you're in China.

Collections of Conversations #1

I've taken notes on comments that sounded pithy, profound or insightful even though they were in common conversation. I've included names for comments taken from conversations with friends, acquaintances and other adults. I have not included names in cases where I took quotes from my class or my friends' classes. Here's a few: 

-"What is your opinion of Christ?" -Benjamin, the American name of a Shanghainese man who asked me this question within the first hour of our flight from Chicago to Shanghai.

-This comment was made during a conversation about Bjork's outspoken support for Tibet at a music concert in Shanghai during the National Holiday in October 2007, and the government's subsequent wariness to permit foreign musicians to perform in China.

"She came on stage and said, 'Tibet! Tibet! with her (fist pumping) in the air like that and now some people don't like her simply because of that. I think music is music. But I think there are so many people, maybe the government needs to be strict." -Viola, who chose her name because it was the name of a strong-willed, unmindful woman, and the name of Shakespeare's lover.

-"China and America are friends." -Sui, or the man on the bus to Cuandixia

-After being asked to describe the ideal place to live: "Do you mean anywhere in China? or anywhere outside of China?"

-"If she could change one thing about herself it would be the color of her skin."

-A comment made after I fielded the omnipresent question, who do you support in the U.S. election? "I must see you again, because you are one American who believes in change." -Prince, a Frenchman who's soul was born in Congo.

-"You'd be surprised how far a kiss can go." -Kiley, an Australian expat coaching my friend on how to utilize her foreign appeal.

-"So American women aren't like in 'Sex and the City'?"-Viola

Sense of Self in Cuandixia

Do a quick google search for “trying to find myself.” The search will return Web sites about Thai students traveling abroad, husbands in danger of losing wives and families and, yes, English as Second Language teachers lost in mind and self on every continent. 

I did this search because the overwhelming feeling that I am lost 8,000 miles across the planet drove me to a remote tourist village five hours, two trains, two taxis and a bus away from “home,” or Tianjin. Instead of “finding myself,” I found peace in good company and new friends in Chinese courtyard houses.

The village of Cuandixia has the best preserved collection of courtyard houses from the Ming and Qing dynaties. The town is one of the China's historical heritage sites, but is not heavily visited by tourists and on the day I went, I was the only American in town. The centuries-old village has moved into the 21st century, with adequate hot and cold running water, electricity and karaoke set-ups in some houses where visitors can rent overnight beds. But it is still an old-fashioned small village in that there's not much to do.

After climbing the mountain staircases to every viewing platform in the mountain valley, I started to feel a little bored and actually lonely on what I'd romantically thought would be my first solo adventure. It was my first Mid-Autumn Fest and my 23rd birthday comes shortly after and this was my present for both.

Re-entering the village, I passed more friendly townsfolk and ended more conversations in embarrassed muttering and looking at the ground. I finally chose a courtyard house because there was music coming out of it and I wanted, needed to be around people. As soon as I entered, a young Chinese woman handed me a microphone and asked (in English!), "Do you want to sing?" Viola, and her friends Jiang Nan, Yuan Bo and Deng Rui Teng (pictured here), saved my trip and taught me the first lesson of traveling alone: be an extrovert.

I stayed in the extra bed in my new friends' room, ate new dishes while laughing over Chinglish, sang a terrible rendition of "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" at their and the other guests' express desire to hear me sing a Western song, and shared mooncakes. We played "games" that seemed more like theater, and at midnight they sang me Happy Birthday. Viola gave me birthday presents of face wash samples (very handy) and a lime. My mechanical hanzi was critiqued by a man who opened Tsingtao beers with chopsticks, but he, with Viola translating, taught me the meaning of single happiness. 

The name of the courtyard house we stayed in was named for the character that means single happiness. The character describes the happiness of a woman when she gets married. When the woman and her husband have a baby, the character is written twice, to convey double happiness.

Forget finding yourself, it's better in the company of others. The night I spent in Cuandixia was one of single happiness, but the memories will give me double happiness to come. 

China smells

Petter Hessler wrote in River Town that, at first, China was just sounds to him. He described the sounds of freighter ships passing through the Yantgze River channel locks at Fuling, the sound of the 24-7 Peking Opera station inevitably blaring out of some cabbie's stick-shift, King Long jalopy and the sound of sandaled feet padding up the mountains of stairs in the river town.  

If Peter Hessler's river town was sounds, mine just smells.

The Haihe River,  called the "Mother River of Tianjin" by locals, dissects the city and surrounds my campus. Walking over the bridge that leads out to a six-lane thoroughfare, I pass through clouds of algae plume/seaweed vapor, the sulfur smell of underground sewers and exhaust from the perpetually congested Weijin Lu. 

During the afternoon, the river attracts grandfathers who fish while their grandchildren are in school. The old men smell like mold; it is a warm climate with some sweaty days and older men seem to wear a uniform of dress slacks pulled up to the naval and stretched out white, tank-top undershirts. Washing clothes is not done as frequently here because almost all clothes are line dried (dryers are considered selfish wastes of electricity). Chinese people also don't use deodorant because, as a Chinese friend told me in Shanghai, "Only white people sweat."

There are sporadic clouds of cigarette smoke, but not as many as Western media encouraged me to expect. Women rarely smoke because, like drinking, smoking is improper for ladies. Most men, like the one in this picture, smoke a pack a day.

With far fewer street vendors than Shanghai, Weijin Lu mostly smells warm, like sweet tofu, cooked in cylindrical, steel drums and sold underneath the overpass. It's here that young Chinese teenagers roll out blankets of faux jade and amber jewelry.  The smell here is more a feeling of dinginess because these hard-working people live in a city where the dirty air leaves dust behind.

Peter Hessler may have had a romantic depiction of pleasant sounds, but I enjoy every one of the unpleasant smells in Tianjin. Tianjin is often called a real Chinese city, a working city, and the smells are comforting in their Earthiness.