unintended consequences
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 11, 2007
And while I’m rambling on incoherently when I should be getting lunch:
We’ve somehow managed to cause the mosquitoes in our place to mutate.
One of lzh’s more serious problems is that she’s a mosquito magnet. Seriously, if you ever need mosquitoes, just stand near lzh, you’ll get plenty of them. This means that over the warmer, mosquito-friendlier months, much 蚊å?香 (mosquito-repelling incense) is burnt.
The result? We’re more likely to see mosquitoes flying around our apartment in the daytime.
forever
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 11, 2007
An interesting post from Kevin: “Forever Kevin’s Girlfriend“, in which he describes a conversation between his wife and a former student who could not get the concept of Kevin’s marriage into her head. The post and the comments, especially the first comment, through some light on the ‘Otherness’ that us foreigners in China experience.
I don’t know. I long since got used to being a permanent outsider. I always felt like a bit of an outsider back in New Zealand, anyway, so I guess it never really bothered me that I’d never be accepted as ‘Chinese’, that so long as I’m here, and no matter how long I’m here, how well I learn the language, culture, history, whatever, I’ll always be just a foreigner in China. Some measure of legal acceptance, say permanent residence or perhaps even dual citizenship, would be nice. There are also ways in which China could improve its economic and social acceptance of foreigners, too. But on the one hand, I’m perfectly comfortable with my identity as a Kiwi, and on the other, I’m quite happy for the Chinese people to decide who does or does not get to be accepted as ‘Chinese’ and to what extent.
But as Kevin’s post suggests, one of the ways China could improve its social acceptance of foreigners is a greater acceptance of, umm, Sino-Foreign marriages.
It’s odd, though, that Chinese people seem to view “mixed-race” babies, or at least Chinese-Caucasion mixes, so favourably, and yet the most common assumption on seeing the infamous white man-Chinese woman combination is that something must be wrong.
And it’s not just Chinese people who assume the worst, a lot of our fellow foreigners do too.
Anyway, enough rambling. It’s lunch time.
[this should not be an update, ‘cos I read this yesterday, but anyway, check out Big White Guy’s Letting the Side Down. Kinda relevant.]
Finch dialects
This Language Log post reminded me of a recent conversation at the currently blocked other Green Bamboo. Anyway, it would seem, judging from the contents of the Language Log post, that finches might perhaps have something like dialects. Or at least Flemish finches do. Or something. I don’t know, go read it yourself.
rumbling
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 10, 2007
There’s a weird rumbling going on upstairs, as if there’s a rugby game under way in one of the fourth floor AV rooms.
Just so you know.
it’s not my fault…
I wish I wasn’t so surprised to read this:
“The new president of impoverished Mauritania and his cabinet have taken 25 per cent pay cuts because of a drop in oil production.“
Really, it’s not my fault I’m so cynical.
æ°´
Posted by wangbo in news, tilting at windmills on June 10, 2007
I think I’ve said before, probably on a previous blog, that one of the things that concerns me most about China’s future is water.
Well, the Taihu crisis appears to be over. Now they’re keeping an eye on Chaohu. Apparently there’s a small algal bloom there, but it’s not threatening anyone’s water supply. But still, there are a few things in that article that have alarms ringing in the back of my mind:
“A woman who’s been working for years at a waterside restaurant said the algae along the banks was actually “thinner” than the previous years. And a speed boat runner gave a nod.”
Well, I’ll resist the temptation to make snarky remarks about the “speed boat runner”. but this woman’s remark suggests that algal blooms in Chaohu are actually quite common and that it’s only drawing attention this year because of the Taihu crisis. Confirmation comes later:
“Xiao Pu, a local environment official in Chaohu, said the lake suffers algae bloom every June and July and he saw no sign of deterioration this year.”
Aha. So it is a very common occurence. In fact, according to this article, Chaohu suffered a massive algal bloom back in 2004.
“But Zhang Zhiyuan warns there could still be chances for massive algae bloom in Chaohu Lake, which has suffered high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus for years. “It’s not possible to eradicate all the algae anytime soon.””
“…high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus for years.” Yep, that would cause serious problems with water quality. Makes you wonder just how local tap water supplies manage to meet the national standard.
Well, clearly the best thing to come out of the Taihu crisis is increased attention to the health of China’s lakes and rivers. I just hope that attention lasts and is translated into action. As it is, one third of China’s rural residents have no access to safe drinking water. That’s 300 million people- the population of the United States, more or less, if you prefer your statistics in that form.
“Some 300 million rural residents are coping with unsafe drinking water, while more than 133,333 hectares of farmland are covered by trash heaps or garbage dumps,”
Thus spake Wu Xiaoqing, vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration. Well, it’s not much of an article, that one, just the usual quick review of China’s massive problems with environmental pollution as they apply to the water supply in rural areas. I like the last quote, though:
“Environmental pollution in some areas has led to a sharp rise in cases of certain diseases, and farmland irrigated with polluted water and overuse of farm pesticide in other areas have worsened the quality and quantity of farm crops”
It’s not good to have one third of the rural population with no access to clean water. And thanks to Taihu, the threats to the urban water supply have become very, very clear indeed. So far there’s no sign of the situation improving, only talk of how bad it is and occasional first aid when things like the Taihu crisis happen. And so you see why it’s water that scares me most.
[update: More on the Taihu crisis.]
茴香酒
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 10, 2007
So I went down to Gulou last night to meet an old friend who has just come back from wandering through the jungles of Laos for several weeks. We’ll call him Frog. Why? Because he’s French.
Anyway, so Frog recommended a place apparently called “Balls” where Pastis (the 茴香酒 of the title) can be bought for ten kuai a glass or seventy kuai a bottle. As I told Frog last night, there were some serious holes in my education, and Pastis was one of them, so I was keen to try. So we got a bottle, we drank, and…. Wow, it’s really good stuff. So we continued drinking. And then disaster struck- the bottle was empty. So we got another one.
And when I got home, I fell very fast asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and didn’t even come close to waking up until some time after nine. And I wasn’t even out that late. Well, late enough that I had to bang on the gate and wake up Daye to get back inside, meaning I got back after 10:30, but that doesn’t mean much. lzh was still wide awake when I got home, and she’s never been a night owl, so I got back some time after 10:30, but certainly not late. And I still feel like I could go back to sleep for another few hours, but these days once I’m awake, that’s it, no going back to sleep.
So that Pastis was good.
So was the bar. Well, I trust Frog’s taste in bars, but still, I was impressed. Well set up, and quiet and relaxed, a place where you can actually sit and chat, the way a bar should be. Strange thing was, it seemed like we were the only two foreigners there, which is certainly not what I expected of that part of town.
Altogether a good time.
foreign workers and class?
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on June 9, 2007
An interesting post from Scott Sommers about foreign workers and social class. He is describing the expat society of Taiwan, of course, but there are obvious similarities with the Mainland, and I’m wondering how much of what he writes can be applied here.
Well, first up, culture workers (teachers, translators, performers, etc) definitely are the lower class, no doubt about that. There are exceptions, of course, but for most of us, that’s how it is: we’re the bottom of the heap.
The questions he raises in the last two paragraphs are definitely worth considering:
“Many of the questions I have about the class structure of foreigners here concern mobility within and between classes. How much mobility is there? How are mobile people aware of the change in their class status? What are the conditions that make mobility possible?
One of the main aspects of life in Taiwan is entrepreneurship. How is this involved in the lives of foreign teachers and their place in the class structure? Am I correct that entrepreneurial English teachers are still part of the culture industry no matter what their income? Is it necessary to expand outside of the recognized culture industries to gain legitimate status as a businessman? If this is true, it might explain the expansion of foreigners into operating restaurants and bars, which, while ethnic, are not defined as the traditional scope of the culture industry.“
The comments are also well worth a read.
He also has a post about the family lives of foreign teachers in Taiwan that looks interesting.
if you’ve flown in or out of Beijing recently….
If you’ve flown in or out of Beijing recently and found the experience somewhat hair-raising, this may explain why.
not complaining
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on June 9, 2007
Now I really do have too much spare time. One class just finished, one class was given to some part-timer a couple of weeks ago, and the last class I have here will be given to another part-timer starting Monday. Which leaves me with only my weekly trip to Yizhuang to justify this month’s salary. Which means I’ve wound up with a three-month summer holiday, basically.
Alright with me. Only thing is I’ve got to find something to fill all this spare time with. I’m sure I’ll cope, though, I’m really good at killing time.
I think I’ll avoid going out too much, though. The summer heat has arrived with a vengeance. Thirty-eight degrees yesterday, according to the forecast, and it felt like it. The weather’s a bit more bearable today, though, only in the mid-thirties and the smothering humidity of the last couple of days has finally lifted.
Lunch with the students yesterday was good. It was especially good that I had no class to rush off to in the afternoon. The only hassle was the getting there and back. The restaurant the school always uses for such occasions isn’t even a kilometre away, but the heat and humidity were suffocating. Still, we managed it.
It’s kind of odd, though, that while the school hires two part-time teachers and the other full-timer here has a ridiculous amount of overtime, I’m left doing virtually nothing. Still, I won’t complain.