I can’t believe that it’s only the end of day 2. I’ve been keeping some very full days and meeting a lot of people.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Beijing is the first place that I’ve actually been around long enough to dig in. And dig in I have, by virtue of hanging out here at Microsoft and also knowing a couple of folks, I’ve gotten myself plugged into the expat network and everyone has wide-open arms, it’s really cool.

To give a summary—

• I spent last night hanging out with Eden at this place called the Bed Bar over near Houhai. Neat little place with a lot of atmosphere (Dave and Bram, we should go there). I met the owner, who spoke great English, and chatted it up with him about his various projects, including a “modern Chinese restaurant” called Paper (that we should also check out when you get here).
• One of the guys I’ve met seems to be a party guy and has invited me to join him this weekend.
• I’ve met a UW grad that’s working in our text-to-speech area and we’re going to check out some local jazz on Saturday night.
• Another one of the people I’ve met with turns out to be a Christian and offered to take me to church on Sunday. As I’m sure you’ve all heard, there’s a lot of regulation around religion in China. BICF apparently requires that you hold a foreign passport, which means they’re not subject to the regulations. There are local registered churches in the area, but the pastors are government assigned and there are limitations on worship. I’m told there’s also other underground practices as well.
• I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me at lunch, who’s invited me to join him and his friends at either African or Korean food tonight for dinner.
• I was reading That’s Beijing, an expat magazine, last night and discovered that there’s a few spots to go climbing here in Beijing. (SOLD!) One of them is apparently a bouldering wall that’s conveniently also a bar. You might find me there tomorrow.

In other news, the first batch of pictures have been posted, mainly from the Microsoft offices here in Beijing. More soon!

I love what I eat. This should really be no surprise to anyone that knows me. Though, honestly, it’s a cultural thing, the Chinese are very prideful of their food. Ordering food here at a restaurant in China is not just a matter of getting what sounds good, it’s a skill and an art. After the host is done placing his order and the waitress reads back the list for the whole table to hear, you might hear comments like (translated), “wow, good order, good order,” accompanied by various Mmm’s and sounds of approval.

Such was the case when my host here at Microsoft, Ye Xu, placed the order for the rather kingly feast we had at lunch today (I’m going to start taking a camera around to the places I eat at). We ended up with a braised fish covered in green onions, hot and sour soup, some stir-fried spinach, some other vegetarian dish, deep-fried seasoned beef in a basket with a bunch of red chilies (Bo, this is pretty much the same thing we had at 老四川with Melissa), and a couple of cold appetizer dishes.

Huge contrast to my ordering skills last night. The folks at the hostel had a hankering for some Peking Duck (北京烤鸭) and we headed to a fancy local restaurant recommended by the hostel. I’m sure it looked absolutely hilarious as the waitress and I hashed out our order, where the waitress tried to explain the question she was trying to ask me in four different ways, none of which I knew the vocabulary for, before giving up and deciding for us. As a result, we ended up with a Peking Duck cut in a really weird way, a bunch of meat dishes, and one veggie dish—severely far from the supposedly desired proportion of 2/3rds vegetable dishes and 1/3rd meat dishes.

But, though I complain about my ordering finesse, I certainly can’t complain about the taste of the food. Mmmm. Chinese food in China is divine. As Bo is infamous for saying, “I could eat.”

I’m in Beijing!
I’ve wanted to post in my blog for some weeks now, but life has been a complete whirlwind as I made my preparations to go. Most of my preparations centered around my work and required me to handoff various areas I owned to temporary owners during my month long absence. Yes, I’m doing a whole month in China! To quote my dad, “well, you’ve done it again!”

Taking off for a month is not something to be taken lightly, especially being the corporate citizen that I am. But as much as I value my career, I also value my travels and especially the empathy for the world that come with the experiences, the part most profound to me. This is a trip I have to do.

It’s hit me about every six months since the Vagabond Tour in 2005. I get antsy and feel like I’m losing touch with what things are like outside of Seattle, the US, and my world. I build this strong urge to bring back and broaden those horizons again. Previous trips on my six month interval have included Brazil, Vienna/Munich/Budapest, and Costa Rica. Each of those trips lasted about 10 days, but there’s something about my traveling where I don’t really feel like I’m quite into the backpacking swing until about day 6 or 7. And on 10 day trips, the trip home is always just around the corner.

This trip is different. For one thing, I couldn’t totally get away with a month of vacation, so I will be working for a week or so out of our Beijing offices before officially starting my travels. This means that I will be spending nearly two weeks in a single city, which is not something I’ve done. For once in my travels, I will concentrate on depth and not breadth. I’m excited to see what this will hold.

Dave and Bram will be joining me in Beijing and after a few days we will be heading to Chengdu and the Sichuan province. I visited Chengdu on an overnighter on the Vagabond tour and have always wanted to go back. Chengdu is the jumping point for several amazing things I’ve heard amazing things about from fellow travelers—horse treks out of Songpan, the national park at Jiuzaigou, and a taking the 48-hour train to Lhasa and the Tibetan plateau.

Finally, this trip is the big chance for me to exercise the Mandarin I’ve been studying for over a year. I’m writing this on the plane and I can already tell this is going to be amazing. On my flight from Seattle to SFO I sat next to a girl that was visiting her boyfriend at UW and returning to Beijing. She spoke almost no English, so we spoke for the entire two hour flight in Mandarin! Certainly, I understood only a fraction of what all she was saying and my sentences were pigeon, but we discussed everything from work, to movies, to the perception of homosexuality in China.

Bu cuo. Not bad. I think I’ll survive.

“Is that the show where that hipster know-it-all finds ordinary life so fascinating?”

Back around Christmas 2004, I found myself bored with the Top 40 hits and my dial settled on Public Radio. Three days later I realized I was hooked–I wanted to listen to nothing else while I was in the car. It turns out that this is a very Seattle thing, my bus rides in the morning are filled with NPR listeners and NPR is regularly sourced in conversation. It wouldn’t surprise me if Seattle has one of the highest population to NPR listener ratios in the nation. This American Life, one of my favorite shows on Public Radio, is doing a limited tour in only five cities to promote their new TV show on Showtime. Seattle was one of them. (Others were New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles.)

I first heard that TAL was coming about a month ago while listening to NPR and on the bus. Fifteen minutes later I was at Vivace, out of breath from running there, and my laptop open to the Ticketmaster website, only to find that there was not a single ticket to buy! I was so bummed!

Two days ago, I had dinner with Nell, who dropped the fact that she was going to go see TAL on Wednesday night. Boy, I was green with envy. How I wished that she would have called me to say TAL was coming when she found out! But then Nell told me that the person she was going with had a history of bailing and that’d I could go if she couldn’t. Well, this morning, just before 8am, I received a text message—Nell’s friend bailed! I made like a lion and pounced, I was going to This American Life!

I think that watching TAL on stage is just about the most hilarious thing thing I’ve ever watched in a theatre. It was also the most lively–the crowd was yelling remarks out to the stage and Ira talked to the audience. So cool. The show itself was an actual taping with some live-only stuff thrown in. Mates of State provided the music and the interludes while David Rakoff, Dan Savage, Chris Wilcha, and Ira Glass himself provided the content. They previewed some footage from the show, which I didn’t know they were making until today. I’m really excited about the show. It’s true to the radio program and the cinematography is in a style similar my favorite photography.

In Seattle, the taping of tonight’s show will be broadcasted on 94.9 KUOW on Saturday, March 11th at 11am. It should be available as a podcast for a week after that. Check local listings elsewhere.

For those of you new to the show, check out the favorites at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/pages/favorites.html.