I’ve been back in the US for the last 2.5 weeks on business–an interesting respite from the hustle and bustle of Beijing.
I got back yesterday afternoon and many things feel different. The city feels calm and relaxed, the weather cool and comfortable, and a nice breeze blowing around the decently clear air.
They say that Autumn is the best time to be in Beijing–I’m beginning to see why.
It’s always been a dream of mine to go to the Olympics. When I was young I was known to be glued to the TV and hum the NBC Olympics theme music constantly. I’ve been to two former Olympic sites — Athens and Munich, but now I am finally in one during the Olympics!
Yesterday was a back-to-back day of Beach Volleyball from 9a-3p, Swimming from 6:30p-9:30p, and then stopping off in a bar to watch USA v. China basketball before heading home. Along the way it rained on and off, including one last epic thunderstorm outburst after swimming, where me and all my gear got completely soaked.
The soaking was justified though. Swimming is held in the “Water Cube” which is on the Olympic Green. This area is completely sealed to non-ticket holders, which made my $30 swimming ticket so immensely worth it just to see the Bird’s Nest, THE TORCH, Water Cube, the other National Stadiums, the International Broadcast Center, and all the hubbub around.
OK–here we go, a couple of HDR treats.
Live blogging off my iPhone from Chaoyang Park’s Beach Volleyball Stadium. It just stopped raining here after two matches and I’m soaked. But no matter–the music is pumping, the players are bumping, and China just demolished Austria! 中国加油！
(BTW,, beach volleyball has a reputation of being the party sport and this place is awesome. Does anyone make a Choayang Park Party Mix album? I’m there.)
Add another event to the list! Katya and Andy, who are visiting me from Seattle had some incredible preserverence checking the CoSports website and landed tickets to the swimming prelims on Sunday night!!
Yay! I get to to inside the water cube!
Greetings from Beijing!
I’m (a little) behind on my blog, but as the saying goes, better late than never!
A month ago I officially moved to Beijing, China to pursue an adventure and a dream of living/working abroad and studying Chinese. I’m still with Microsoft–just working for the China portion of the Surface team (YouTube it). Things have been incredible and busy since I arrived. On top of a full workload, I’m also taking 2 hr Chinese private lessons three times a week, playing ultimate frisbee on Tuesday nights, making new friends, and rabidly exploring different parts of the city when I’ve had some free time.
Basically, it’s great. And tells why I haven’t had time to write until 3:30a after the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Oh yeah. The Olympics–the event that’s taken Beijing into daily conversation and debate all the way around the world. Well, let me tell you one thing–don’t miss the opening ceremony. Find your friend with the HDTV and make sure you catch at least the first hour. It’s mind blowing. Though I didn’t have tickets to go to the event, I watched it in a park with thousands of other folks on big screens set up for the purpose.
I’ve always wanted to go to an Olympics in person–I love international competitions like this. Though it doesn’t look like I’ll have a chance to go to my favorites–Gymnastics and Diving–I do have tickets to Beach Volleyball and Table Tennis prelims. 
I’ll keep you all posted. At least, I’ll try.
Photos!
Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Early Days in China
I love China. I’ve been catching up on unread items in my RSS reader, especially those in my China category. There’s some stuff here I just can’t resist passing on.
I love China.
Chalk up another one on the board of Life Experiences™.
I just got back from a short trip to Hong Kong and Seoul, respectively. I was invited to be a presenter at Tech Ed Hong Kong after being a presenter earlier this summer at Tech Ed Orlando, where my presentation scores were apparently high enough to score an invite. On the way back, I decided to stop over in Seoul. Korea was never really on my list of destinations, but Dave will be there for the next two months living there and practicing his language skills. Never one to turn down hanging out with people living aboard, I took advantage of some cheap airfare and hopped up north before my return. As luck would have it, Suk-Hyun, Dave’s girlfriend, is also in Seoul right now, and offered to put me up in her home. I love getting the local flair, so I graciously accepted.
Beyond meeting Suk-Hyun’s friends from college, eating tons of good food (see photos), and copious amounts of alcohol, I can also honestly say that I’ve been nibbled on by fish.
Dave came across an article on the Internets about these fish from China (yay China!) that feed on dead skin cells. They’re using them in spas as a way to “rejuvenate” the skin. After China, Dave and I don’t turn down a good experience at the spa and to be honest, we were totally fascinated. Suk-Hyun did some research for us and we went to Termeden with her mom and family friend. They call it “Doctor Fish” (it’s really fun if you say it with a Chinglish twang) and it costs an extra 5 bucks to get in.
You hop in the pool and you wait. After a couple minutes, a few fish start gathering at your feet and literally start nibbling at them. And if you don’t move, more and more will come.
So those of you who’ve known me for awhile know that I’m extremely ticklish. Just imagine how badly I’m squirming and whimpering with tens of little mouths, who’s scrape of miniature teeth you can feel against your skin, are nibbling at your feet. It was like being an 11-year old girl, it was bad. After about ten minutes of this, I finally calmed down enough to sit still (Marcie, you would be proud!) and eventually probably had 100+ fish, mainly concentrated on my feet, nibbling away.
Here’s the Korean article:
http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200701/wk2007011015090737990.htm
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| Hong Kong and Korea |
As much as we hear about China sucking down the world’s resources and polluting our world, there are surprisingly some ways where China is ahead of us in environmental attitude.
One such area: light bulbs. You can’t find incandescent light bulbs. I walked into a B&Q, the Chinese equivalent of a Home Depot, and all they sold were fluorescents. Fluorescent lighting produces more light, lasts longer, and consumes far less energy. However, the typical complaint (including my own) is that fluorescent lights produce a harsh blue light that just sucks the warmth out of a room. They’re great for offices and stores, but a real mood-killer at home.
Reddit recently had an article on how fluorescent bulbs have thus far been unsuccessful in the US, but the article also goes on to mention the improvements in the technology to improve the general gripes—especially around warm up time and light color. I still wasn’t totally convinced, but I was at Costco the other day and they had a killer deal on fluorescent floodlamp blubs. $12.39 for a pack of 4, less a $9 rebate, for a grand total that’s less than a buck a bulb. Considering that The Den is filled with recessed floodlamps that tend to be left on (drives me crazy), I figure it was worth a shot. (Hey, it’s Costco, I can always return them.)
I happened to have a burnt bulb in our dining room and swapped in a new bulb as soon as I got home. And I’m impressed…really impressed! The light is pretty much spot on in color as the incandescent next to it. There’s a warm up time, but its equivalent in brightness to the old bulb almost immediately and after it’s warm it’s actually a bit brighter. I’m sold and considering there’s a limit of 6 for the rebate, I’ll be heading back for more.
We’ve been back almost a week now and I still feel like I’m catching up from jetlag. This is the first time I’ve returned from Asia and not from Europe and the 16 hour time difference is proving hard to get over for me.
It’s been a different world since we got back. Capitol Hill, our usual high-energy haunt, feels empty and bland in comparison to the hustle and bustle of Chinese streets. Bikes aren’t racing up and down the sides of streets and I can walk down the sidewalk without rubbing shoulders with anyone. It’s like I’m an individual again.
We’ve still got a little bit of China left in us though. The day we returned, Bram told the woman selling “Real Change” outside of QFC, “不要!” (bu yao!), which is like saying ‘no’ to all the street vendors in China. It took me a couple seconds to register before I doubled over laughing. Ahh China, how I miss thee…
I’ve got all my photos posted up now—a month’s worth of travel in 158 shots. Enjoy!
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| Beijing (北京) - Microsoft Offices |
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| Beijing (北京) - Gawking |
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| Chengdu (成都) - Sichuan and loving it! |
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| Leshan (乐山) - Giant Buddha |
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| Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) - They're so bluue! |
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| Songpan (松潘) - Horse Trekking |
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| Hong Kong (香港) - Back in the west |
One of the comments that I keep getting goes along the lines of, “your Mandarin must be getting really good!”
Yes and no. Now that we’ve made it to Hong Kong, where Cantonese is king and everyone speaks English anyway, I can look back in hindsight about my Mandarin experience in mainland China. Admittedly, I think I’m feeling a little disappointed.
Mandarin is a tough language, especially in the reading and writing department, which consists largely of rote memorization. After a year+ of studying it, I feel that I can only speak well enough to travel on and my writing and reading are atrocious from lack of (time to) practice. In comparison to a language like Spanish, this is depressing—it only took me two months of self-study in Europe to get enough of the language to travel on. Maybe I’m being a little harsh on myself, but I had hoped to be a little stronger.
In many ways, this is apples and oranges and an unfair comparison, Mandarin really is a tougher language. The biggest benefit to my Mandarin has been the confidence boost that I’ve received from using this language day in and day out—I can actually get my point across in most situations and people understand me. I’m going to return home with a willingness to actually use and actively practice my language skills with native speakers, instead of being meek about my untested skills.
At this point, I feel that the biggest overall barrier for me is vocabulary. While I’ve been gaining new words at a rapid rate and my listening comprehension improving by the day, I find myself guessing at the gist of conversations and picking out known phrases and words more than I like. A few days ago, a realization struck me. I’ve been walking around with a Berlitz Chinese-English Dictionary, filled with over 40,000 entries across both languages. As I thumbed through the English portion of the dictionary, it dawned on me that there wasn’t an English single word I didn’t know and a great many of which I consider core to my English skills. At best, I only know a few hundred words in Chinese. The path to fluency looks so long! They say that you need to know about 1500 unique Chinese characters before you’re at a totally fluent level. This is actually several orders of magnitude more in vocabulary—1500 characters don’t include the various permutations and combinations that form words.
I’m excited to get back and continue my studies. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.