oh, technology
Time for a little rant:
It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks technology-wise. Apart from the usual hassles trying to persuade poorly maintained classroom computers to let me teach my lessons, I mean. Fortunately I have a student who is an absolute genius with computers.
Let’s start with our office computers. There are four. Until recently, only two were really useable, and one of them painfully slow. One is ancient, and needed some serious cleaning up. One is fairly old, and the problem with that is that technically naive and incompetent former colleagues got it stuffed so full of malware that it was simply unuseable. I had finally had enough of this situation and talked to my student the genius. He got me a new copy of XP and the product key, and I sat down with a colleague, we reinstalled XP on the malware-ridden and super-slow machines and cleaned up the ancient one. It was a long and frustrating process getting the malware-ridden machine fixed. Simply persuading it to let us see the desktop was hard enough. The other two simply required time and patience. The malware-ridden machine required some serious anger management. But we got there, eventually.
Fine, except that the formally malware-ridden machine simply refused to set up a network connection, meaning we couldn’t get online to “activate” Windows. And somewhere in the process of trying to get this thing working, my portable harddrive acquired a bunch of viruses. Brilliant.
So I had another talk to the genius, and he came by the office and fixed the computer, in the process having to reinstall XP again.
Anyways, now we have four functional computers.
But the troubles continued. A couple of nights ago, during a Windows update that came suspiciously soon after the previous update, Vista crashed and ate my computer. Everything, all gone. Unfortunately, not everything was backed up. A lot, including the important stuff, was, but still, we’ve lost a fair bit, including photos and videos from our trip to New Zealand in February. Some of that stuff was backed up on the portable harddrive that just acquired a bunch of viruses. I hope I can recover that….
I consulted my student the genius, wanting to know if perhaps there was some magic trick to recover all that lost stuff. His advice was, “Install Windows 7”. He’ll bring me a copy.
And then, just to add insult to injury, we were watching the Argentina – Nigeria game the other night. The TV kept showing Maradonna, which was bad enough. Argentina were playing hard-out, aggressive, and brilliant football. They scored. Then <BANG>, the TV went dead, with an odd buzzing sound coming out the back, and the smell of burning plastic wafted through the room. Attempts to revive the TV were futile. I blame Maradonna, or whoever decided to spend so much time broadcasting his ugly mug instead of the football.
The repairman came this morning and fixed it, so assuming nothing else goes wrong, we’ll be able to watch New Zealand’s first game tomorrow. 7:15pm on CCTV 5.
And would Firefox please stop checking my spelling like I told it to? ‘Zealand’ is perfectly correct, dammit!
Here’s hoping my run of bad luck with technology has ended.
Ip Man 2, Huang Feihong…..
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study, tilting at windmills on May 23, 2010
Yeah, this one’s been brewing for a while….
Back during the May Day holiday, up at the farm, I watched Once Upon a Time in China/《黄飞鸿》 1, 2, and 3. I was reminded of a certain phenomenon I have noticed in the films of both Bruce Lee and Jet Li.
When we got back to Beijing, I noticed this short piece about Ip Man/《叶问》 2 (scroll down to 015: Ip Man and Chinese Nationalism).
And then I finally got around to watching Ip Man 2. And my wife remembered that good, old Scottish word “Sassenach” and used it to great effect.
still here
Posted by wangbo in beijing public transport, tilting at windmills on May 5, 2010
It’s shaping up to be quite an interesting year. Fortunately, the situation that was proving to be very draining is now dealt with. With a bit of luck, the rest of the semester will be a lot easier.
So May Day, and a much-needed rest, came, and we headed out to Yanqing as usual. Peace and quiet. And excavators digging up the village roads. Apparently the water pipes are to be fixed up. But even with the excavators, it was nice and quiet. Warm, too.
And as is our habit, we came back on May 2, trying to beat the holiday rush. We get to the bus station and saw a huge, long line of people and no buses. Apparently holiday traffic meant the buses were stuck down at the Beijing end of the expressway and couldn’t get back to Yanqing fast enough. A “taxi” driver (not a regular, legal taxi) was offering rides to the train station at 5 kuai per person – it would normally be 5 kuai all up, but we weren’t in the best bargaining position – and so, figuring it was better to get a train than stand in the sun for hours only to get stuck in traffic on the expressway, we jumped in.
I absolutely do not recommend taking that train. Certainly not on a public holiday, anyway. The train itself is fine, a fairly standard CRH train, but it is considerably more expensive and less frequent than the bus, the new Yanqing station it stops at is not in the most convenient location (great for the “taxi” drivers, though), and if you’re taking the train from Yanqing, the station is a big, empty nothing. A large hall with an electronic screen showing the next couple of scheduled trains, a few seats, and toilets. That’s it. No concession stands, nowhere to get a drink or snack or newspaper, no entertainment of any kind, not even a TV. Nothing. So we walked outside. The neighbouring petrol station had a sign announcing a convenience store, but there was no convenience store. We crossed the road and found a petrol station that did sell more than just petrol, though, and got some drinks and snacks. We wandered around a bit to see if there was anywhere better to wait for the train, perhaps a restaurant – it was, after all, almost dinner time. There must’ve been something around, I mean, there was a housing estate behind the petrol station, but we couldn’t find anything. So back to the train station to wait.
Eventually we got on the train. There weren’t many people and it was comfortable. But then we get to the really big problem with taking the train: Badaling. Of the stations we stopped at where I could see the platform, only Badaling had barriers. Barriers and hordes of tourists. Opening the train doors was something akin to bursting a dam, and within seconds the train was grossly overcrowded and uncomfortable. Still, that is holiday travel.
Nice train, pity about the price, infrequent service, crappy station, and overcrowding. Still better than standing in the sun waiting for buses stuck in traffic, though.
While I’m ranting, I might as well get this one out of my system, too, although it is completely unrelated: I like Sogou’s Pinyin IME. I like that it updates automatically on a very regular basis, it’s easy to use, and it does a pretty good job of ‘guessing’ which words I want. What I do not like is that on its latest update, it also downloaded and installed Sogou’s browser and set that as my default browser. No, Sogou, no. I will be the one to decide which browser(s) I will use and which will be my default browser.
Oh well, now that I have the Sogou browser, I suppose I should at least try it and see how it compares to the competition. But I would have appreciated being offered some choice in the matter.
Might as well continue the string of unrelated rants: Kaixin001’s farm game is giving me far too much free 枸杞 (gǒuqǐ, Chinese wolfberry – only just learned what that is in English just now)!
Ah, I feel much better now.
And with the end of that rather draining situation and a good rest, I should be able to get stuck into the multitude of projects that have had to be put on hold for a lack of energy. That should mean, among other things, a resusscitation of this blog – or at least a little less neglect.
on the edge of a storm
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on April 5, 2010
I’d finished my lesson prep so far as I could – one of those frustrating ones where you know what you want to do with the class, but you’re struggling to figure out how to put it all together – and I was sitting there, fidgeting, nameless, directionless, frustrated energy bubbling away just beneath the surface. I decided to get up and go for a walk and burn some of it off.
Get outside, bump into a colleague, chat for a bit. The sky was grey, the sun was sinking, nothing unusual. A few raindrops fell, and I said, well, I better go, meaning I’ve got to get some fresh air before the weather turns nasty and night falls. Out the gate, down the road, I was crossing the next intersection, a quarter of the way out into the road, looked back, and
SHIT!
Big, black, ugly, menacing cloud bearing down, the kind you see on one of those really disturbed summer days, days when the air is filled with tension that snaps into a violent squall that scours the city then disappears as quickly as it came, leaving the place beaten about, but calm. A slightly over-the-top description, perhaps, but if you remember the summers in Beijing between, say, 5 and 8 years ago, you’ll have seen more than a few of the squalls I’m referring to, and you’ll know that they can be as violent as they are sudden.
And so I crossed the road and continued on the route I had planned, thinking, I’ve got to get some exercise, and I’ve got to figure out what to do about this weather. And so I, zipped up my jacket, flipped on my hood, and continued, one eye on the weather, one eye on hazards, like our friendly, local high-tension powerline and on places to shelter should that cloud’s threat turn into reality. People were zipping around with extra urgency, hawkers quickly packing up their fruit and veges, everybody keen for shelter.
I stopped in the little Jingkelong about halfway along the weather-shortened version of my stroll (I had been thinking of adding another loop into the route, but that didn’t look like the best idea, having less potential shelter along the way), but they had no Yanjings in the fridge as they have for the last couple of weeks. So I walked to the shelf, and settled on splashing out on a couple of cans of Tiger – it’s no different from the rest, just a cooler-looking can and higher price, but might as well. I opened one can and put the other in my pocket, sipped and watched the weather. Wind and a bit of rain, not too bad, looks like we’re only copping the edge of the squall this time, might as well head for home.
A nothing story, but a reminder of the weather that is likely to come in the next few months. Last week I saw the first blossoms of the spring – ‘first’ meaning the first I’ve seen so far. It hasn’t quite sprung yet, but it’s certainly on its way.
Friday afternoon (Good Friday, it seems. I completely forgot) we jumped on the bus for Yanqing, came back yesterday evening. We had pretty sweet luck with the transport both ways, beating the holiday crowds both times. We got off the bus at Nancaiyuan close to six on Friday evening and got in a taxi straight away – for the first time ever, not needing to negotiate the price, the driver giving us the right price straight away. We headed up to where the road crosses the Gui River into the county town proper. There was still ice on the water. Patchy, thin, dangerous-looking, but still ice. And, of course, no blossoms that side of the Jundu Mountains.
Change of a different kind: The old cinema west of the bridge on the south bank where the main road crosses into the county town, a cinema that had been gutted for renovation last time I saw it, was standing there rebuilt in a style largely reminiscent of that of the new church on the north bank at the eastern end of the county town, a red brick modern style one would expect of perhaps the mid-90s where I come from, but with an odd dome poking out the top seeming to stubbornly keep the style of the old cinema. I don’t know what this building has become, but as we zipped past in the battered, old Xiali, it certainly looked like a church. Still, maybe it’s just a renovated cinema. Or something else.
The ice disappeared as we headed west, and the river was completely thawed by the time we reached the next bridge, less than a kilometre down the road, and crossed over to the north bank. A couple of blinks of the eye and we were back into countryside, and some farmers still finishing off the day’s work in the fields, some burning off stubble, others turning the earth over, others, maybe judging from the aroma, spreading manure, all preparing for the planting. In response to a question from my wife, our driver said, nah, won’t be planting corn till about the 20th. Preparing, at least, then.
So, yeah, it’s still cool up there. Not uncomfortably cold, even quite comfortably warm during the day if you’re out in the sun, but certainly still cool. Even had my brother in law not claimed the bed in the other room, we would still have been sleeping on the kang for the warmth, I’m sure. In fact, my brother in law still had an electric blanket on that bed.
Early starts, that means, earlier than if we’d managed to claim the bed. Sleeping on the kang means there’s no way you could roll over and go back to sleep. But it’s warm, and in the winter when the coal stove is going, warm enough it can have you sweating in even the coldest weather – so long as, of course, you stay on the kang and under the covers. That can make getting up in the morning a delicate negotiation between drying off and staying warm. But it’s warm.
all changed…
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on March 28, 2010
…changed utterly…
…apologies to Mr Yeats. But ‘utterly’ is how much it had changed. No terrible beauties born, though,’least, not I saw.
Needing to walk off a load of overdue test marking (marking that had been done, I must emphasise, though I’m not sure I trust the elderly and increasingly doddery office computer to have kept a record), I wandered off out the South Gate and through the Twin Dragons, then south into what had been – what still was – the Hongyan Market. ‘Had been’ because when I lived in the Twin Dragons, indeed, right up until not so long ago, when I was last in the area, which can’t’ve been much more than three years back, the Hongyan Market was a large, but fairly typical for this area, local market. Nuffink special. Three or four large hangars, looking like the kind you’d expect around the edges of a World War 2 aerodrome in southern England circa the summer of 1940, but painted in bright blue and white and housing all the various fruits, veges, nuts, spices and sauces, meats, clothes, curtains, blankets, shoes, socks, sundry household necessities, whatever the local neighbourhood could need. These hangars were fed by a driveway of the kind of white concrete one sees on driveways and parking lots built cheaply and not expected to see much serious traffic. The driveway ran like a southward extension of Xidawang Lu.
And the driveway has become a southward extension of Xidawang Lu. The driveway must have been ripped up, rebedded and repaved, because that stretch of concrete is no longer there. Indeed, nothing is there, just a road extending much further south than any road I remember in that area. And the market? Completely uprooted and replaced, and not just replaced, but replaced by something that looks so established you wouldn’t know anything had changed if you hadn’t known the area as it was a mere four years ago. The only hints I had that I was in an area I should’ve known were the fact that I had walked there following roads I’ve known longer than I’ve known my wife and the buildings around the market area – buildings that I’ve known as long as those I’ve known those roads I mentioned. Had I been kidnapped, blindfolded, taken to the market, and prevented from seeing those familiar buildings, I would’ve had no way of knowing where I was.
And no, I am not just talking, “Oh, things change fast in China”, or even, “Things change so fast here that if you haven’t been back in a few years, you won’t know the place”. I’m talking, this market hasn’t changed at all. It’s been completely replaced, and a road pushed through, and a bus depot installed, and all of this done within the last three years and yet the market, road and bus depot that are there now look as though they’ve been there for ten years already.
And that’s what I can’t figure out. Is what I saw today the market that was always there, except that the facade has changed, and the changing of the facade has opened up areas of the market that were formerly obscured from the direction that I always entered? I don’t think so, because although there was always ‘stuff’ behind those hangars, there were never any intriguing little alleys, let alone giant signposted gates (both of which were in ample evidence on this afternoon’s visit) to entice one into a little exploration.
Except, of course, that I never saw any reason, or even any way, to explore beyond the old market. It was there, I wandered through it, I made what use of it I could. And now, no more than three years down the track, it isn’t just completely different, it is a completely different and far larger market sitting in the place occupied by the market I remember, but looking like it’s been there forever.
And walking out of there, I found myself wishing we still lived down in the Twin Dragons, close to this new market that wasn’t so new but is so much huger and comprehensiver than its predecessor.
And then I remembered my landlord when I lived in the Twin Dragons. Fortunately my wife never met him.
But it was nice to walk out of there and northwards into areas that haven’t changed, areas that exude that comfortable establishedness of neighbourhoods that have no reason to be questioned, and have no reason to doubt. Thence through an area that is being torn down, and yet survives, so far. Then back through established and safe neighbourhoods and home.
Still, this new-but-not-new market, I’ll be back there, and fairly soon, and often, if for no other reason than just to see.
frustration
Posted by wangbo in ranting, tilting at windmills on March 27, 2010
I seem to have misplaced my muse. If anybody has seen my muse, please let me know in the comments.
Actually, I have a few ideas for two or three things I want to be writing, but I am really struggling to convert ideas into pretty patterns of pixels. I have about a dozen projects sitting on back burners waiting for me to find the energy and inspiration to get stuck in. But…
One thing that has been really bugging me lately is work. Well, one aspect of work. A large part of my job is teaching Academic Writing. This means equipping young Chinese with the English writing skills they will need to succeed at a Western university. Yes, there are many problems with that statement, but they’re not the issue. What’s really bugging me, and this is a bugging that has been building up over a long, long time, is the textbooks I have to use.
Now, let me start by saying that all the Academic Writing textbooks – indeed, all the English writing textbooks – I have ever seen have been American in origin. And let me continue by saying that I’m really glad that I’ve known enough educated Americans over the years to not believe that what is contained in these textbooks is in anyway representative of what passes for academic writing in America. Y’see, these books never actually teach academic writing – and that is the least of the problems. What these textbooks invariably teach is a lot of sentimental, saccharine-laden nonsense with the occasional thrust of the lance at the op-ed pages of your local newspaper. What you find in these textbooks is certainly not the kind of writing that would actually earn you a degree. Let me emphasise: The Americans I know know what academic writing is. The Academic Writing textbooks I have to use teach something that is not academic writing.
And the second reason for the need to point out the American origins of these textbooks is that almost all of them I have used have been Chinese editions of the American books. That should be fine, except that the books were very clearly written for an American audience. The topics chosen for each chapter are topics relevant to American society. The model essays were clearly written for an American audience. If I were teaching one of these “freshman comp” courses that American universities seem to have, that would not be a problem. But I’m standing at the front of a classroom in China with 30-odd young Chinese people and an American textbook having to constantly take a step back, explain the topic, alter it to suit the audience I have in front of me, and move on. See, none of the publishers seems to make even the slightest attempt to adapt the books for a Chinese audience beyond slapping a Chinese cover over it and adding the necessary publishing details and perhaps, if you’re lucky, a Chinese-language “How to use this book” page.
To give you one example (because today in class we were doing Chapter 10: Examples), the book I am currently using, in Chapter 16: Argumentation, uses as a model essay one entitled Ban the Things. Ban Them All. by Molly Ivins. It reads like the kind of cheap, easily thrown-off op-ed piece one would find in any random newspaper of more-or-less “liberal” leanings. It argues in favour of stricter gun control. My first problem with using this essay is that it appears in the Chinese edition of the textbook I have to use to teach Chinese students here in China. Here in China where gun control is not an issue. Alright, I can, based on what I have seen of the American media and conversations with a wide variety of Americans I have met both here and back in New Zealand, fill in at least some of the background information necessary to understand what this essay is all about, where the author is coming from, and where she is trying to take us to, but:
To make matters worse, Chapter 16 sets out five strategies for argumentation that I am to teach my students, namely:
- Use Tactful, Courteous Language
- Point Out Common Ground
- Acknowledge Differing Viewpoints
- When Appropriate, Grant the Merits of Differing Viewpoints
- Rebut Differing Viewpoints
That’s all good, and with a greater expansion on Strategy 5 and a lot of time spent on logically developing and presenting one’s own argument added in, is precisely what I’d teach. The problem is that Ivins’ essay is presented as a model of argumentation for the students to learn from and yet it starts with sarcasm and ends with ad hominem attack, makes no attempt to find common ground, only acknowledges differing viewpoints in so far as we can all acknowledge the incoherent babbling of people obviously in desperate need of psychiatric treatment (that ad hominem attack I was referring to) and therefore makes no attempt to find out whether any other viewpoint may have any merits, and therefore can’t even come close to rebutting anything. And with that, I have only just begun to critique that attempt at an argumentation essay. And I’m supposed to use this rubbish as a model to teach my students to write good academic essays?
And then there’s the structure of the books. My current textbook, for example, waits until chapters 21 and 22 to introduce such things as using the library and internet and writing a research paper. Such things as plagiarism, citations and bibliographies are buried in those chapters with far too little detail or development of the topics. My problem is that in my student days, the first thing one would do on receiving an assignment would be to pop into the Union to see who was hanging out there, or wander round to Governor’s for a coffee, or perhaps the Cook for a beer with your mates go to the library and start researching the topic. The point is, you can’t even begin to write a proper essay until you at least have the information you need to understand the topic. Shouldn’t the order be more like:
- Chapter 1: What is academic writing?
- Chapter 2: Decoding the assignment.
- Chapter 3: Get thee to the library, or at least online (but no playing on Facebook!)!
- Chapter 4: Now that you have some information, perhaps we can start brainstorming or planning this essay you have to write.
??
Sure, get a new book. But every writing textbook I have ever used has had problems of these kinds. It seems to be less a matter of finding a better book, more a matter choosing which mixture and arrangement of problems to deal with this time round.
Aotearoa
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills, travel on March 14, 2010
We bowled up to Terminal 3 with plenty of time, dressed in our best compromise clothing – got to get into the terminal before hypothermia sets in, through the airports and flight in reasonable comfort, then from the terminal to the best place to change without spontaneously combusting, not an easy compromise to draw. Personally, I prefer summer to winter flights. But we got to the terminal without freezing and with plenty of time. We got through all the formalities easily and to our gate with time to wander round being underwhelmed by what T3 had to offer in the way of duty free. But whatever. I have only three complaints about the flight:
- I got absolutely no sleep whatsoever. For that, I don’t blame Air New Zealand. I can’t. Somehow my brain went into hyperdrive for 13 straight hours.
- The air was getting pretty skanky towards the end of the flight. I still don’t blame Air New Zealand, as there are probably many technicalities of keeping a pressurised aircraft cabin intact at high altitude and affects of these technicalities on the possibilities for providing ample amounts of clean, fresh air that I’m not aware of, but it would be nice if fresher air could be brought onboard as well.
- The plane ran out of water. Still not blaming anybody, but you really gotta wonder when they get on the intercom and explain that nobody’s getting no tea or coffee with their breakfast as there’s no water left in the tanks.
Whatever, we made it to Auckland safe and sound. We touched down 15 minutes early, in fact. Stepping out of the skanky aircraft cabin air into humid Auckland air was expected. From that into the equally sticky, apparently unairconditioned air of the terminal building was not, and did not feel good. Whatever, we got through the formalities at that end without any hassle, out the other side and there were my parents waiting, standing, hurrying over to greet us. Then in the car and off to my uncle’s house where we could get ourselves cleaned up, get a change of clothes, a cup or ten of tea, and generally start feeling human again.
But there was a reason for us to stay in Auckland, and to have gone first to my uncle’s house, and that was my grandmother. She had been in poor and deteriorating health for some time. I hadn’t seen her for over ten years. About a week before our arrival she’d asked Mum when I’d be back. The plan had been for us to stay in Aucland and visit her before heading down to Hamilton, where my parents live. A few days before our arrival she’d had a massive stroke, and as we packed, then travelled, the family started to gather and prepare. But that’s a matter for another post I’m struggling to write.
I don’t really want to go into a travelogue. That’s been done. I do want to write about a few impressions, though. The first of them – at least, the first I want to write about – is the opposite of Arctosia’s. The thing is, I fully understand where he’s coming from, while I’m still trying to figure out my own reaction. I was struck by New Zealand’s prosperity. Not just prosperity, but possibility, too. I think that’s the first time I’ve felt that way about my own country, and I’m trying to understand why.
For example, I was surprised by Raglan. I had never been there before, and knew it only by its reputation as a surf beach. I was expecting only a few buildings – the requisite petrol station, pub, general store and maybe a church with a few houses and perhaps an area school, not much more. It’s much bigger than that, of course, but what I didn’t expect was an apparently quite thriving retail area full of boutiques, cafes, a few bars, and generally what you’d expect in a trendier part of Wellington or Auckland, but transported to the coast of the Waikato. Tirau was similar, in that the road was lined with some fancy stores selling lots of cool stuff and a few cafes and…. surprising prosperity for a tiny town not much wider than the highway that runs through it.
Oh, and a giant corrugated iron sheep and a giant corrugated iron sheepdog. And a giant corrugated iron shepherd in the grounds of the church next door. In Tirau, that is.
Still, at half past four in the afternoon all the shops in Tirau shut, much to my wife’s disgust. How lazy! she said. How can they all shut?! If I had a shop here I’d stay open until much later in the evening! Then I pointed out how small the town is by pointing out just how far she’d have to walk up one of the sidestreets before she was in a paddock – not far at all.
Nationalism. For years my Mum has been sending me t-shirts with a New Zealand theme. Things like a map of New Zealand with the word ‘Home” next to it in big, bold letters. It’s almost as if she’s trying to tell me something. When we did get to Hamilton, she gave me more t-shirts of that nature. The day we left she gave me a hoodie with three colourful tikis on it. I think perhaps I sense a pattern developing here…. Anyway, so I’ve been aware for some time now that clothing with New Zealand patriotic/nationalist messages exists. What I wasn’t expecting to see so many blatant displays of national allegiance in New Zealand.
That first day there, in Auckland, had to be spent partly at the hospital with Grandma. But the situation meant that we were given time off, and Dad took us to do a couple of necessary things like change money (NEVER CHANGE MONEY AT AUCKLAND AIRPORT!), then we went across the Harbour Bridge and out to Devonport for a bit of a look-round. On the road (to get back to this nationalism thing) I couldn’t help but notice quite a few cars with a southern cross design, basically the same as the right-hand half of the New Zealand flag (four five-pointed red stars with white borders in the shape of the Southern Cross on a blue background – remember that and you’ll never confuse our flag with the Australian one again), to the left of their licence plates and a silver fern to the right.
Flags, too. I saw more New Zealand flags than I remember being used to seeing flying around. But with flags it gets a little more complex, especially when we were in Rotorua. I couldn’t help but notice more than a few Confederation of United Tribes and Tino Rangatiratanga flags flying, too – in one memorable case, a house in Rotorua had a torn-up United Tribes flag and a Tino Rangatiratanga flag flying from a flagpole in the yard and larger and more intact versions of both flags covering the front windows. Rotorua also sported graffiti along the lines of “Tangata whenua 4 eva”.
It seems I forgot to warn my wife what a maritime climate means: Summers are surprisingly cool. Overnight, when cloud covered the sun, when there was a breeze or rain, especially all of the above combined, she found it cold, and was even seen shivering. It seems lzh learnt the hard way that what I’d told her about the Pacific sun really is for real: As soon as the sun came out, she was complaining about the heat. I think the highest temperature we experienced in New Zealand was 27 degrees – in other words, daytimes were consistently a good 10 degrees cooler than midsummer Beijing.
My wife likes Hamilton. Actually, it is a nice enough town in its own right. My parents don’t like living there, because there’s nothing happening there (they say – I will refrain from commenting, having only ever visited, and never for the sake of visiting Hamilton). I can understand lzh’s point of view – it’s quiet, clean, green, full of trees, and generally pleasant. I’m sure that changes for the weekend of the V8s, but that’s one weekend. Mornings there were nice. I’d wake up, somehow instantly back on my summer schedule of absurdly early starts, brew a pot of coffee, and alternate between reading the paper and stepping out on the deck to observe the sunrise. Despite the fact I was awake at a time I have always felt should be illegal, I have to say it was quite a nice, almost civilised way to start the day.
She liked Taupo even better than Hamilton. The natural environment, the setting by the lake, she said. I can see why. I don’t have a bad memory of the place, and it’s natural setting goes a long way to explaining why.
She didn’t like Wellington. Dry and windy and densely packed. I think I saw for the first time just how tightly packed into the valleys and the few scraps of flat land central Wellington and the older suburbs are, and I think it was a combination of time away (seven years, as it happens) and lzh’s reaction as a first time visitor that opened my eyes to that. Windy, of course, and it is unfortunate that the few days we were there Wellington turned on its typical weather. For myself, it was just a little breezy, nothing unexpected or untoward. For lzh, it was windy. And yes, Wellington’s air is oddly dry.
That dry wind has been blamed for everything that’s been wrong with our skin since we left Wellington.
Books really are expensive. Still, I came back with 10 of them (and somehow our luggage wasn’t overweight): 2 were gifts, 9 were ‘New Zealand’ in some way, shape or form (history, poetry, fiction…). Necessities don’t seem to be quite so expensive. We needed shampoo. We were at a store in Tirau on our way home from Rotorua. lzh said, hey, this is only $5. I said, don’t buy it, it’s always more expensive in these small shops. She didn’t understand what I was on about, after all, it was cheap enough as it was. Next day in a real supermarket in Hamilton we got a bigger bottle of shampoo for even less.
We were in the souvenir shop at Rainbow Springs in Rotorua. The cashier rang up our purchases. She told me the price, but in Chinese…. I must’ve looked surprised and a bit confused. Oh, I’d heard you two speaking Chinese, she said. I hadn’t actually noticed the cashier before, being preoccupied with getting our already large pile of souvenirs onto the counter and stopping lzh from adding to the pile and getting her out of the shop and us on our way to lunch in time to catch the afternoon performance at Whakarewarewa, and the hour was growing late and I still hadn’t readjusted to being able to traverse twice the distance in half the time thanks to the very low population density. Turns out the cashier was from Guangdong – must’ve been a relatively recent immigrant, though, considering her Mandarin was slightly accented but basically flawless, most certainly not like that of a Hong Konger. We ate two lunches in Auckland. On both occasions, lzh ordered in Chinese. I noticed a Chinese-language (traditional characters) newspaper on sale in the Asian supermarket in Hamilton.
Chinese-language signs seemed to be about equally divided between Simplified and Traditional.
I was, however, surprised by how few Chinese, or East Asian people in general, were around. There must be plenty of them, especially if the Waikato now has its own Chinese-language media, but I guess they tend to hang out in areas other than the ones we visited.
lzh is still commenting on the distances that had to be travelled in order to do anything, even just buying a bottle of soy sauce or whatever the kitchen had suddenly run out of.
We were on the road to Rotorua, and my wife was glued to the car window, constantly commenting on how green everything was, how many sheep were in that field, how many cows over there, and so on. I spotted an odd-looking herd and said, hey, check out those animals. The look of mixed-up surprise, confused recognition, and a little shock was so priceless I should’ve had the camera ready. “就是那个草泥马吗?!” (Is that that grass mud horse?!) Yep, it was a herd of alpacas.
That’s about all for this long-overdue post. We’ve been back in Beijing two weeks now and the snow is falling thickly outside. Two weeks ago I was wandering around barefoot in a t-shirt.
back in beijing
It was one of those slightly disconcerting descents when all you can see is solid grey murk outside. They’re not the worst approaches to airports, I don’t think. Approaching a coastal airport after dark from the ocean end is worse, when all you can see outside is pitch darkness right until you’ve crossed the airport perimeter is worse. Done that into both Wellington and Hong Kong before. Freaky. The worst solid grey murk approach I’ve had was into Hong Kong when the odd, fuzzy shapes in the grey turned out to be ships – the murk had reached the point where there was no visible difference between sky, sea and air.
But today, after some seriously disconcerting shapes of shadows in the murk, we popped out below the cloud – and I breathed a sigh of relief to see that we were not already below treetop height (that’s what the shadows looked like for a bit – tree tops). And there was Beijing spread out in all its glory – glory dimmed by the solid overcast, but the air reasonably decent for that late in an overcast afternoon, with good visibility right into the central city.
We landed on the runway east of T3. We were bound for T2, meaning we had to cross another runway. I hate it when they do that, land aircraft on runways that require them to cross other runways to get to their terminal. It doesn’t help that I find the taxi from runway to terminal the most frustrating part of a flight. After all those hours in squished into an aluminuim can breathing increasingly skanky recycled air, we’re on the ground again at last – can’t we just be there?! But childish impatience aside, we got off the plane quickly enough, and through customs in record time. Back in Beijing.
I don’t want to complain, because it is good to be back in our apartment, but having spent most of the last two weeks based in the Waikato with side trips to Auckland and Rotorua, and the remainder in Wellington, it is a bit of a shock to the system to get back to the greybrown of a wintry north China, especially with snow that started to fall exactly as I climbed in the taxi at the airport.
Emerald Isle? Ireland can’t’ve been that good if my ancestors packed up and left. Early mornings looking across the gently rolling, deep green of the Waikato as the sun rose golden over the other side of Hamilton were simply magic. Those Wellington mornings, when we were staying in old family friends’ bach (pronounced ‘batch’, meaning ‘holiday home’, traditionally built out of whatever was available, these days often pretty nice; also called a ‘crib’ south of the Waitaki River) in Waikanae, walking barefoot out the backdoor and straight on to the beach, Kapiti Island a few short kilometres offshore, the sun rising over the ranges behind, the ragged northern ends of the South Island more often than not lurking in the southwestern distance.
It felt good.
And there’s much more to write, but that’ll have to wait for now.
tiger year
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, travel on February 13, 2010
And so we’re preparing to celebrate the advent of the year of the tiger down here in Chaoyang District. It’s the first time my wife has spent the Chinese New Year away from home, the first time I’ve spent it in downtown Beijing since fireworks were allowed back within the Fifth Ring Road. We’ve hung our 福 characters and couplets and set off a role of firecrackers for that. lzh has most of the food ready waiting for friends to come and help her wrap jiaozi. Our supplies are ready for the evening, and friends promise more on the way. I have more firecrackers waiting for midnight.
And then we get up early tomorrow morning to head for the airport and catch our flight to Auckland. I’m guessing that between fireworks and the early start, we’ll be doing most of our sleeping on the plane.
Bad news from home means the first week of our trip is going to be rather more sombre than we were hoping. The timing could be worse, though, as this time round we get to be there without having to scramble around looking for last minute flights, seeing as we were planning on being there anyway. And it will be interesting to see how lzh copes with being surrounded by my mother’s rather large family. Grandma will be leaving behind seven children and…. I can’t remember how many grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. A lot, anyway. Still, it’s going to be far from a good start to the Tiger Year.
So we’re all packed up except for that last minute stuff. A taxi has been booked so we don’t have to take our chances. Tomorrow just short of midday our plane takes off, and 13 hours later we’ll be in Aotearoa – the first time in seven years for me, the first time ever for my wife.
Assuming anybody still reads this blog: Happy new year to you all!
simple pleasures
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on February 9, 2010
There’s a simple, tactile, olfactory pleasure in spending a morning in bed with a good book unaware of the passage of time except by the turning of pages. There’s a comforting surprise in seeing just how many hours have slipped by.
Equally to strolling with no greater aim than to burn off a little energy and get a little exercise and fresh air.
And to the exploration of things new, even if it’s nothing more new than the new quarters of a long-standing neighbourhood market.
I’ve watched that new market being built from our loungeroom window and balcony for the last couple of months, it being 20 metres south of our place as the crow flies (but of course, there’s an inconvenient wall in between), occasionally wondering what this new structure would become. It gradually came to look more and more like a new indoor market, but I couldn’t be sure. Eventually, bright yellow, almost but not quite orange, wall panels were fixed to the steel frame, windows were inserted, a roof put on, and work shifted to the interior with the sole exception of two signs announcing that this, indeed, would be a new market. The market it would replace, whose name it had taken, which sits diagonally across the road about 50 metres away, the one that had been threatened with being replaced by a hospital. This time around they had the new market almost completed before the old one was closed.
I don’t know what this presages for the old market. When I walked past it today, as last time, the gates were firmly locked and peeking through the gaps revealed a wasteland. The old structures, those thin, steel frames that supported the thin, steel rooves that sheltered the stalls from the sun, rain and snow, were gone, leaving an empty, forlorn space strewn with rubbish and the little bits of rubble not worth removing. There was no indication that I could see of what this wasteland would become.
But the new market looked good. Nothing fancy, but functional and clean. At one end was a gate with two middle-aged men bearing red armbands proclaiming them to be safety inspectors, or something like that, who formed the nuclei of nebulous and ever-changing groups of friends and acquaintances stopping for a chat. Inside, a paved courtyard expanding to the left, where a bicycle park had been establised, with the market building and its entrances to the right. Along the southern wall of the courtyard immediately left of the gate was a small building in three compartments: A women’s toilet, men’s toilet, and the “standard scale” (公平秤). Inside, the building felt either spacious or as if they’d spaced the stalls out wider than normal, I’m not sure which. It’s not a large building, but the spacing of the rows of stalls made it feel somewhat Tardis-like.
The northern and southern walls were lined by mostly butcher, seafood and delicatessen stalls, with a few selling various assortments of spices, sauces, nuts, beans, grains, sweets, and one selling various alcohols I won’t even venture to name (that being far too deep into traditional Chinese alcohol culture for my mediocre knowledge) out of large earthenware vats, interspersed mostly at corners and in odd niches. The centre was widely-spaced rows of stalls selling mostly fresh fruit and vegetables. Tall stalks of sugarcane stood at one stall, and….
….was that taro I saw sitting on that counter?! Taro I have not seen for many a long year.
Upstairs was clothing, shoes, and all the various odds and ends required to run a household. Up there quite a few of the stalls were closed – the owners having gone home for the holiday, perhaps? – and two or three were still unoccupied. Clothing seemed to dominate, but there were more than a few stalls set up to cater to the neighbourhood’s Spring Festival needs – all but the fireworks – and several ranging from brushes and brooms and those other little necessities up to hardware like tools, low-end electrical goods like lightbulbs, plugs, cables, multiboxes, various plumbing necessities like taps and their components, and even one selling rangehoods and the various bits of pipe, duct, and tubing needed to get the smoke and grease of a Chinese kitchen outside.
In other words, it was exactly the old market shifted into a new building. And yet it seems somehow smaller. Did all of the market shift, or did some give up and move elsewhere?