waitangi day
I was going to write this a few hours earlier, but I suddenly lost all internet contact with New Zealand… again.
Today is Waitangi Day, the anniversary of the signing between Britain and most Maori iwi and hapu of the Treaty of Waitangi, making New Zealand a British colony. The Treaty is traditionally seen as New Zealand’s founding document. We don’t have an independence day, we have a dependence day.
And next weekend my wife and I will be boarding a jet plane and flying to New Zealand. It’ll be her first trip ever outside China and my first time back to New Zealand in seven years. I’m kinda curious to see how both of us will react. I have to admit to both being a bit nervous and looking forward to it. Although I’m certainly not looking forward to being stuck in a tin can breathing recycled air all the way from Beijing to Auckland…. Sure, direct flights have their advantages, but there are distances over which it is nice to take a break. But ticket prices made a stop in Hong Kong on the way there uneconomical. Oh well, we get a stop in Hong Kong on the way back.
I’m not going to even attempt to explain the prolonged silence on this blog, except that I’ve felt the need to withdraw a bit. Two posts have been started but not finished, and therefore not posted, over the last few weeks. I won’t promise to update in the next week, and I can all but guarantee a lack of updates during the two weeks we’re in New Zealand. I do hope to get back to business as usual in March.
settle down, people
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on January 16, 2010
Well, I was almost tempted to weigh in on the Great Google Melodrama, but Mr Bamboo saved me the trouble by writing pretty much what I wanted to write in this concise paragraph:
Another entry raises a question about Google censoring certain search terms and functioning within the law. If Google.cn ceases to censor search terms, then isn’t it breaking the law? Thus Google can’t negotiate because it can’t somehow be exempt from the same laws which apply to everyone else. Like any other government, the boys in Zhongnanhai aren’t about to concede anything.
Exactly.
And will everybody please just calm down? Google is not the internet. Baidu is not the only alternative. Any hypothetical shutdown of all Google services from inside the Mainland would be a pain in the arse, but is in no way equivalent to Mars colliding with Earth and the Sun exploding. This will all blow over and we’ll go on to have a 2010 with many more things to overreact to.
That said, I am a little concerned at the possible advent of the Great Chinese Intranet….
a good decision
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on January 2, 2010
This evening is one of those evenings I’m glad it was my wife who made the decision. Had it been up to me or my father in law, we’d still be in Yanqing watching the snow fall and wondering if we’d make it back to Beijing in time for lzh to get to work the day after tomorrow. But she insisted we leave this afternoon, pointing out that the last bus leaves at 6pm (actually, 7pm, if by “last bus” she was referring to the last 919 from the county town into Beijing. Of course, 6pm may well be the time the last bus leaves either our village or the terminus further up the road, the last village before Hebei, and therefore our last chance to get into the county town). And let’s face it, so long as we first get on a bus for Beijing, and secondly get across the Jundushan before the weather turns bad, it really doesn’t matter how late we leave.
This morning started with one of those utterly pathetically light snowfalls that north China occasionally turns on. A few flakes fall, enough for you to know it’s snowing… kinda… not enough to do anything useful, like make a snowman, or even a snowant with, hardly enough to make a snowamoeba. But enough to let you know it’s snowing… kinda. It wasn’t long before the sky cleared and I was scoffing at the accuracy of CCTV 1’s 7:30pm weather report again.
It was a late kind of a day. We were all rather slow to leave the warmth of the kang. Breakfast eventually came more towards lunch- than brunchtime. Jiaozi were promised for lunch, and of course, there were the shrimp bought in the county town the day before. By the time they were all cooked, it was almost 4pm. Both myself and my father in law were getting rather reluctant for lzh and I to leave. I mean, this late…. why not just wait till tomorrow. “What if there’s snow?” she said. “The weather’s good now, but it’s supposed to change.” I quickly got online via my cellphone to check the forecast. Alright, fair point, there’s a decent-sized snowfall predicted for tomorrow, which, if it materialises, will probably close the roads over the Jundushan, stranding us in Yanqing. No big deal from my point of view. I don’t have an exam till the 5th, and therefore had an extra day to get back. But she’s got to get back to work the day after tomorrow, so getting stuck a dozen kilometres north of the Great Wall when her office is dozens of kilometres south of the Great Wall probably isn’t the best idea.
So after a lunch too late to be lunch, not quite early enough to be dinner, we quickly packed, rugged up, and walked down to the highway. By this stage the sun was already very low in the southwest, filtered red through the remaining cloud, and it was more than a little chilly by the side of the road. Fellow villagers also waiting for the bus into the county town told us not bad news: They’d been there a while already and had seen two buses heading upwards, so it wouldn’t be long before one came back. About ten minutes, which these days, since the introduction of public transport swipe cards killed off the miandi business, is pretty good. A largely empty bus, it was, too, which is a rare sight out there these days indeed. We got seats, even. Turns out, it was the bus whose terminus is at the other end of the village, and the late hour meant relatively few people competing for the far too few buses into the county town. But largely empty, and old, meant cold and drafty.
And after a few months at a temporary location by the county railway station, the county bus station has moved back to its original location. That’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that the short walk down and across the road after getting off the 920 into the county town to get the 919 into Beijing has reverted back to getting off the 920 at the closest bus stop, then hiring a banche – a flatbed tricycle good for hauling goods and people – for a short hop across to the county bus station. Not bad, but after a cold and drafty half-hour bus ride, certainly not warm. I spent most of that short portion of the journey burrowing my face down into the upper limits of my scarf in an attempt – successful, as it turns out – to stop my lips, cheeks and chin from shattering in the cold.
My father in law assures me it’s been an unusually cold winter so far. My mother in law agrees. I’ll take their word for it, considering they’ve spent almost their entire 50-some years on this planet in Yanqing or (in the case of Ma’s early years) Huailai. And I can’t think of any New Year’s Day I’ve spent up there that I’ve sat on the warmest part of the kang (the part right next to the stove) for half an hour and have still been shivering.
Anyways, after the ritual pitstop across the road from the bus station, we joined the queue. A rather short queue, mercifully. And even more mercifully, they were loading two buses at a time, despite the lack of people. And not just loading two buses at a time, but bringing buses out of the depot instead of relying on refilling buses from Beijing. That and the strange people who won’t get on a bus if their ideal seats are taken meant we were on a nice, warm bus quick smart.
Too warm, perhaps. Warm enough to make me sleepy, and yet I couldn’t sleep. And it being about a quarter to six when we got on the bus, it was the first time I’ve crossed the Jundushan after dark, which made it a rather boring journey. Usually I manage to fall asleep as we cross the mountains, only to wake up just in time to be bored to tears as we cross the plain through Changping. This time I managed to be awake-but-sleepy through the whole journey, but with nothing to look at. The first signs of the morning’s snow came at the safety check at the top of the mountain, where the wide bus park and weighstation left enough space for snow to have settled, and streetlights made is visible. Otherwise the mountain portion of the trip was darkness to left and right with mostly a red glow in front from brake lights.
Yes, brake lights rather than tail lights. The morning’s snow, as I had expected based on my only other trip across those mountains after a snowfall, had made everybody a lot more cautious. The red glow of brake lights was only broken by the flashing blue and red of policecar lights at a couple of accidents, orange from a couple of signs, and the occasional flash of white light as we passed some mountain village’s houses.
Maybe my imagination was primed by my re-reading of Lao She’s Camel Xiangzi, but the journey, especially as we passed through what I’m told is Asia’s longest road tunnel (although I have no idea how accurate that claim may be), seemed as interminable as Camel Xiangzi’s flight with three camels from military conscription. Sure, he was fleeing from the southwest, whereas we were on a peaceful bus from the northwest, and his flight was marked by pitch darkness, whereas our trip through said tunnel was marked by featureless orange light, followed by a ride down a nighttime highway, but it seemed to take so much longer than normal. It can’t have, though, because we got home a little after 8pm. That would seem to me to be slightly, but not significantly, longer than usual. Still, the bus felt somehow slow.
Getting off the bus at Madian, we hoofed it for the best corner of the interchange to get a taxi home, as usual. Somehow we managed to get a driver who lives nearby our place, but who didn’t want to go home just yet, as he hadn’t made his day’s rental – ah, yes, what novel did I just decide to reread? In any case, he got us home in good time, thanks in part to the sweetest traffic I’ve seen in a long time, and mostly to his good driving. At Madian we’d seen evidence that it had also snowed here in Beijing this morning, or at least (as the taxi driver confirmed) last night, but it wasn’t until we got close to home in southern Chaoyang that we saw evidence of a decent snowfall. There wasn’t a large amount of snow around as the cab pulled into our estate, but there was certainly a lot more than we’d seen this morning, enough to suggest that there had been a pretty good snowfall.
And then, having gotten inside our apartment and, as per ritual, divested ourselves of our baggage and plugged in the water heater – the two first tasks to be performed when we get back from the village – lzh phoned her father to let him know we’d gotten home safely – ritual number three. “It’s big snow up here”, he said. Well, good thing I listened to lzh and we headed back when we did.
three guns
Posted by wangbo in Chinese study, tilting at windmills on December 19, 2009
Or perhaps that should be Three Shots. I certainly think Three Shots would be a better English title than the official one. Still, I guess the official English title contains a reference to the films inspiration.
I was standing on the corner of that big, fancy mall on the northwest corner of the Shuangjing intersection waiting for my wife to finish sifting through overpriced clothes so we could go watch the film. I knew which of the buildings around me were old and which new- indeed, I remember when the spot I was standing on was a fancyarse lawn scarred with pathways leading into the sales office for the complex which was then little more than a hole in the ground. But somehow all the buildings looked the same age, as if the norwester had finally put the upstart new buildings in their place. It seems we have a habit of going to the cinema on blustery, dry, cold December days to see the latest blockbuster. Indeed, last time we’d gone to the cinema was almost exactly a year ago (indeed, we’re ony 3 days short), and the coldest December day in Beijing since 1951. That day we saw Feng Xiaogang’s 《非诚勿扰》. This time, when lzh emerged from the clothes shop, we wandered up to… oh, no “Wait, we’ve still got time, let’s go check out those discounted shoes first, you need new sandals for when we go to New Zealand”. grrrr. And it wasn’t any kind of shoes we bought, but a new pair of thick longjohns for me, me having discovered unfortunately late yesterday afternoon (when I really needed to be getting out of barbeque-reeking clothes and making myself respectable as presentable as possible) that the top half of my other set of thick longjohns was MIA. And then back to the cinema to see Zhang Yimou’s latest film, 《三枪拍案惊奇》/A Simple Noodle Story.
I have a love/hate/like/why can’t he get back to realising his full talent? relationship with Lao Zhang. I love his early work. I hate his martial arts epics. 《千里走单骑》/Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles was good, but not as good as his early films. 《三枪》 I don’t yet know how to rate.
I suppose I should note that the version we saw at UME Shuangjing was Mandarin soundtrack (obviously) with Chinese subtitles. Those whose Chinese is not up to following a film entirely in Chinese should either look for a cinema showing it with English subtitles or a DVD with more subtitling options than the cinema allows.
First impression was that the volume knobs on UME Shuangjing’s amplifiers must have a Number 11, because the three shots that bring the opening credits to a close really were one louder. Or to put it slightly more directly: If those three shots hit you with such force that you wonder if somebody hasn’t just put three bullets in your forehead, then perhaps somebody should turn the volume down just a tad. lzh spent most of the film with fingers firmly planted in ears, and yet didn’t miss a line.
Based on what I’d seen on TV, I went in expecting some form of comedy, probably of the rather silly kind, some Lao Zhang’ed cinematic errenzhuan [that is perhaps the worst wikipedia stub I’ve ever seen, but at least it gives you a brief description], perhaps. I also did not have high hopes from the film, having heard that it wasn’t all that good. Second impression was that the expectation the TV promotional stuff had given me was right, but the comedy was good. I certainly would never have expected to see 饼 (Chinese pancake type thing) given the same treatment as one of those errenzhuan kerchiefs and spun around till it became a pizza base so huge it’d have the Kro’s Nest pizza chef putting three shots into his own head for shame. It was a lot of fun to watch, but at the same time not a total surprise considering that 3 of the 4 actors playing the noodle restaurant staff (Xiao Shenyang, Mao Mao, Cheng Ye, with Yan Ni the only exception) came up through Zhao Benshan’s errenzhuan circle.
Third impression was that this was most certainly a Zhang Yimou film. Only Lao Zhang could possibly make a desert look so incredibly lush.
There’s also something incredibly discordant about this film. It’s set somewhere way out in Northwest China along the Silk Road, but most of the actors spend most of the film in costumes more appropriate for an errenzhuan stage in Liaoning. Was a time when Lao Zhang was making Northwestern films with distinctly Northwestern vibes, but if you closed your eyes and listened only to the dialogue, you’d think this one was set somewhere on the black earth of the Northeast. Anachronisms litter the script like drug dealers on the streets of Sanlitun of a weekend evening. And I couldn’t help but feel those anachronisms hid a lot of knitting needle jabs at modern Chinese society.
Before too long, a certain darkness crept into the film. It acquired an undertone and atmospherics so black you’d swear it was filmed by a Kiwi. Lao Zhang’s lusciously filmed desert turned all gothic, with ever-passing stormclouds looming, threatening. Sun Honglei’s soldier turned into a psychopath who did everything possible to empty the noodle restaurant boss’ safe. Yan Ni’s 老板娘/Boss’ Wife was so keen to buy the Persian Merchant’s gun because she had suffered ten years of horrific abuse at the hands of the Boss (Ni Dahong). And the Boss is quite a piece of work: Abusive, with a penchant for cutting the fat baby’s face out of New Year paintings and forcing his wife to put her face in the hole as he quietly, calmly tells her off, then slams burning tobacco into the small of her back. Self-centred, manipulative, and tighter than a Scotsman’s arse. While the errenzhuan actors seem to spend most of the film on the errenzhuan level of comedy, Yan Ni’s Boss’ Wife takes a wild, bipolar ride between brave face, slapstick comedy, and Greek tragedy, with Xiao Shenyang’s Li Si desperately trying to figure out what’s going on and how he’s supposed to respond to it all. But can this 娘们唧唧的/Big Girl’s Blouse man up and John Wayne their way out of this mess?
All three shots in the gun sold by the Persian Merchant are put to very good use, with the second being sidesplittingly, laundryman’s-going-to-be-busy hillarious. But I’ll say no more than that the Boss’ Wife gets what she needs, but at a cost of Shakespearian proportion.
Beware, within this beautifully-filmed, light-hearted comedy are hidden a myriad of ragged shards of glass. But it’s a great film. Watch it.
Oh, and for the “Some People Are Just Too Damn Talented For Their Own Good” file: Xiao Shenyang sings the song that animates the final credits (the first of his songs which is not a pisstake of other singers?), a song in which all the dead bodies come back to life and join in the dance. It isn’t just that Xiao Shenyang can act errenzhuan and more widespread forms of drama, and sing and dance (uh… errenzhuan), but Sun Honglei also turns out to be a pretty decent dancer.
spooky
Yesterday at lunch with my colleagues the spookiness of coincidences was mentioned. How’s this for spooky coincidence: An Air France Airbus A330 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on November 29 met the exact same meteorological conditions in the same region as the Air France A330 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1. Here’s Le Monde’s article with my dodgy translation:
Le 29 novembre, un vol Rio-Paris a rencontré des conditions similaires à celles de l’avion qui s’est écrasé en juin. C’est une information que révèle Le Figaro. Il y a dix jours, le vol AF 445, qui est le nouveau nom donné au vol AF 447 d’Air France depuis l’accident du 1er juin dernier qui avait fait deux cent vingt-huit victimes, a subi de fortes perturbations exactement dans la même zone que celle où l’AF 447 a disparu.
November 29 a Rio-Paris flight met similar conditions to that of the plane that crashed in June. This information was revealed by Le Figaro. 10 days ago, the flight AF 445, which is the new name given to Air France’s flight AF 447 since the accident of last June 1 that killed 228, suffered severe turbulence exactly in the same zone as that where AF 447 disappeared.
Faute d’avoir récupéré les boîtes noires, toujours au fond de l’Atlantique, les enquêteurs attendent de pouvoir analyser les données du vol AF 445. Le bureau d’enquêtes et d’analyses (BEA) en charge de l’investigation sur le drame a aussitôt lancé une enquête.
As they failed to recover the black boxes, which are still at the bottom of the Atlantic, investigators are waiting to be able to analyse the data from flight AF 445. The Bureau d’enquêtes et d’analyses (BEA) in charge of the investigation into the case has also launched an inquiry.
Le parallélisme entre l’accident du 1er juin et l’incident du 29 novembre est saisissant, note le quotidien. Le vol AF 445 aurait rencontré des conditions météo perturbées dans le “pot au noir” (zone de convergence intertropicale) proches de celles de l’AF 447. Il s’agit également de la même famille d’avion : un Airbus A 330-203 pour l’AF 447 et un A 330-200 pour le vol 445. L’incident aurait eu lieu à 18 kilomètres de la zone supposée de disparition de l’AF 447, la nuit aussi. En revanche, l’AF 445 n’a pas subi de givrage de ses sondes Pitot et de pertes d’informations anémométriques, à la différence du vol AF 447.
The parallels between the accident of June 1 and the incident of November 29 are astounding, the daily noted. Flight AF445 met disturbed weather conditions in the “pot au noir” (Intertropical Convergence Zone) similar to those that AF 447 encountered. Both planes were of the same family: an Airbus A330-203 for AF 447 and an A330-200 for flight 445. The incident occured 18 kilometres from the zone from which it is assumed AF 447 disappeared, also at night. On the other hand, the pitot tubes of AF 445 didn’t frost over, nor did it lose its airspeed data, unlike flight AF 447.
Well, I think I’ve got the right meaning across. I should note that a French-French dictionary is not as useful for French-English translation as I first thought. Trouble is, I have yet to come across a decent online French dictionary. I would like to know, if there are any sailors out there familiar with the tropics, if there is any English language sailor slang equivalent to “pot au noir”. I should also note that I have never seen an English translation of Bureau d’enquêtes et d’analyses– and it’s been in the news a fair bit recently, what with Air France’s crash and the crash of an Air New Zealand A320 into the Mediterranean off Perpignan.
Anyway, it’s strange to see a flight from the same airline, the same kind of plane, encounter the same weather in almost the same spot as where one plane was downed not so long ago. And if what I just read about the Intertropical Convergence Zone is accurate, then I have to wonder just how many other similar incidents there have been in similar areas.
that was quick
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 4, 2009
That was quick. After my unfortunate discovery on Tuesday afternoon, I got up this morning, showered and put the kettle on and all that, walked into the study and turned the computer on, and thought, that’s odd….
I could hear banging, crashing and crumbling sounds. I looked out the window. Nothing going on in our yard. Looked over to the left, and there it was: Workers on the rooves of those condemned houses, tearing off tiles, planks and beams and dropping them into the houses, smashing at brickwork with sledgehammers. So there is to be no reprieve.
the dreaded chai
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 1, 2009
Yes, I have been rather silent of late. I’ve been busy and distracted. I have large and growing piles of tests and essays to be marked. The piles of essays will continue to grow, and are even threatening to take over the office and start a whole new civilisation of their own. I will continue to be mostly rather silent as I take on these hordes of marauding essays and beat them back so that my colleagues and I can continue to use our office unmolested.
What inspires this brief break in the silence is the walk home from the supermarket this afternoon. After class I headed down to the nearest branch of Shouhang hoping to take advantage of the specials they have on. No luck. What I wanted was sold out. I guess I’ll have to try again Thursday or Friday morning closer to opening time. On the way home I decided to take a slight detour, walking up through the area just west of our complex and stopping by the newsagents for cellphone card and, perhaps, a copy of So Rock! if the latest edition was out yet. Again, no luck. Managed the cellphone card, but not the magazine. But a luckless shopping trip is not the point.
across the Chaobai River
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on November 15, 2009
It’s nice to be told straight up I’ll never get a mortgage because I’m a foreigner. And for my wife to be told she’ll never get a mortgage because she married a foreigner.
On Friday after work lzh met up with a friend. Her friend said, “Hey, there’s this real estate development out in Yanjiao (燕郊) that’s selling apartments cheap! You should come along and have a look!” And so they agreed to meet at the 930 bus stop at Dabeiyao (Guomao) at 11am.
Yesterday morning dawned with me feeling tired and headachy and generally not wanting to do much more than sleep. But I was kicked out of bed, thrown in the shower, dressed, and dragged out the door. Well, it wasn’t that bad, and it would be nice to see if these apartments were any good and if they were affordable.
The norwester had finally come and cleared out that ridiculous damp, snowy weather we’ve been plagued with for the first half of November. A clear, clean, blue sky, but a bitterly cold breeze. We got to Dabeiyao, met our friends, found the stop for the bus we needed (the 930, like apparently all the 900-series buses, seems to come in a wide variety of mutations, so we had to find one particular 930 that would drop us right outside this development), and eventually managed to get on one. There was quite a crowd of people looking to catch the exact same bus, so we watched three load up and leave before we made it to the front of the queue.
The bus was pretty good, taking off down the Jingtong Expressway then the Jingha Expressway, making a couple of stops along the northern edge of Tongzhou town before getting back on the Jingha, zipping past Songzhuang and across the Chaobai River, over the border into Hebei, then straight down the G102 through Yanjiao. It took us a little under an hour to get out there, and that was largely thanks to the lack of traffic restrictions on the weekends causing backups at the toll gates. Lack of traffic restrictions and the large number of real estate developments being built in Yanjiao. Although we were in Hebei, it seems most of the cars had Beijing licence plates, and the sales office of the development we visited was packed.
The Chaobai River wasn’t much of a river. More like a long, narrow, shallow ditch with a couple of tiny streams winding their way through, but otherwise mostly grass. It would be nice to think it turns into a proper river with the summer rains, but that grass was a bit too long for me to believe it had suddenly sprung up in that brief gap between summer and November when it was still warm enough for things to grow.
It seems that Yanjiao is taking advantage of its proximity to Beijing- especially the CBD- to drive its development. “40 minutes to the CBD” they told us, and considering it took us 50-odd minutes to get there through weekend unrestricted traffic, I can believe that’s true of a weekday morning. The most common kind of advertising along the G102 in Yanjiao was for real estate, and where Yanjiao was expanding at its western and eastern edges, there was no shortage of sales offices. Especially along its northwestern edge, apartment blocks seemed to be the most important cash crop of Yanjiao’s fields. Every bus stop- including Dabeiyao- seemed to have a huddle of real estate touts hawking apartments. I can’t understand why anybody would buy an apartment from somebody standing at a bus stop clutching a well-worn brochure, but I guess they must be able to make a living this way, otherwise they wouldn’t be standing out in that cold, cold wind. And glancing at the map, Yanjiao seems to be no further from Beijing’s CBD than Shijingshan, and closer than Shunyi or Changping.
Our destination was on the eastern edge of the town. The western edge was all fancy, new real estate, then the bus took us through the centre of town, which was considerably older and betrayed Yanjiao’s real status as a township of Sanhe City (三河市), and a small one at that, with a population of 104800 in 2002. The dusty streets were lined with weathered buildings from the white-tile period of modern Chinese architecture, other buildings with very-faux-Classical European facades. It felt very much like a small county town, but not as far along in its development as any of Beijing’s equivalent outlying towns. Nevertheless, it seemed like quite a pleasant place, and certainly had all the amenities one would need in order to persuade people to buy apartments out there, plenty of restaurants, supermarkets, markets, hospitals and schools.
We arrived at our destination on the eastern edge of the town. The first thing I noticed when we got off the bus was the cooling towers of a powerstation just fifty-odd metres northeast of this development. Steam from the towers conveniently obscured the chimney and its smoke, but I’d noticed this powerstation in the distance when we were driving through the town. I was told it would soon be closed down. I have no way to confirm that. Anyway, right in front of us was a fancy new towerblock, obviously yet to be completed. Well, the structure was all there and people had moved in to their apartments, but the lower levels that were supposed to house a shopping mall were still in use as the sales office. So, finsihed, but not quite. Immediately to the west was Phase 2 of the development, where are friends are planning to buy a small apartment. On the eastern side was an old, 1950s-looking estate of long, low-rise brick apartment blocks that would soon have to make way for Phase 3. To the south was an area of low-level industrial buildings, little more than a shanty town.
Inside the soon-to-be-mall/sales office, the walls of the lobby were covered in posters showing the various kinds of apartments on offer and sofas arranged around coffee tables at which multitudes were doing their deals. Under the escalator was a large model showing the finished project, a model that showed the effects of the myriad people with an urgent need to touch it in order to figure out what it will be like when it’s finished. This place was beyond crowded, and the thousands of small groups of apartment hunters and buyers acted with such urgency you’d think they were running late and in danger of missing their train. Our friends found their agent we had a look around. Our friends were there to book an apartment, that is, to put down a 10 thousand yuan non-refundable booking fee which would get them an apartment set aside for a week, a week in which they had to find the deposit and get a mortgage. We were there to have a look and see if it was worth booking an apartment for my brother-in-law, and perhaps, if possible, ourselves, something I was not overly happy about- apartments are not the kind of thing one buys on impulse- but that’s what we were there for.
The apartments seemed fine. Indeed, we did get to look at two in the completed Phase 1, and we certainly could not see anything wrong with them. We would, of course, have trouble getting a mortgage, but we were told there were ways and means around that. My brother-in-law doesn’t have that mortgage problem, though. What was frustrating is that we could put the deposit down, we certainly do have the money, but a large portion of that money can not be touched until lzh has a visa for New Zealand in her hands. If we so much as glance at it before then, NZ Immigration will deny her the visa. A couple of quick calls, and no, we can’t make up that shortfall that isn’t a shortfall but is borrowing money from friends. We’d be able to get some, but not enough. In any case, now is not a good time for us to be buying an apartment, we have other plans. But we did pay the booking fee on a small apartment for my brother-in-law, and I hope he comes up with the deposit by Friday, I don’t want to lose that 10 thousand yuan.
We arrived at midday, and the process of discussions, looking around, urgent phonecalls to various people, more discussions, more phonecalls, paperwork, and handing over money took quite some time. It was almost 5 when we got back to Beijing, starving. Yoshinoya rescued us, and then I snuck off to O’Farrells to wind down while lzh phoned her father and her brother to discuss the rapid rounding up of money for the deposit on her brothers’ apartment that now needs to be done.
And the norwester continues to blow, keeping the sky clean, clear and blue. lzh is sitting a translation exam. I’m starting to think about lunch.
more swine flu news
Following on from my last post, 新京报/The Beijing News has an article today reporting several developments in Beijing’s preparation for the upcoming ‘flu peak season. The headline states that the city’s elderly will be able to get vaccinated against Influenza A H1N1 from next week. The article itself states:
据北京市疾控中心副主任庞星火介绍，60岁以上老人用的甲流疫苗正在向卫生局申请调配，预计下周内可在社区启动接种服务。
According to vice chairman of the Beijing Municipal Disease Control Centre Pang Xinghuo, an application to deploy H1N1 vaccine for over-60s has been submitted to the Ministry of Health, and it is expected that vaccination service in the community can begin next week.
But the article seems to be more a collection of interesting little tidbits of news than a single, coherent piece. Up until yesterday, 630 thousand Beijingers had been vaccinated against H1N1 and, as reported in the article I wrote about in the last post, the rate of adverse reactions is the same as that of the vaccine for seasonal ‘flu over the same period of time. When combined with vaccinations for regular ‘flu- which has been supplied free to over-60s and primary and middle school students, and for which vaccinations end today- a total of 1.9 million people have received ‘flu vaccinations, an increase over last year’s vaccination rate.
Now, I’m all for an increased vaccination rate, but those numbers don’t look quite so impressive compared to Beijing’s total population. Still, H1N1 vaccination has yet to start, so hopefully over the next few weeks the numbers will continue to increase.
What of those masks more and more people are wearing? First up, the municipal drug bureau says there are over 7 million of them stored up, which should be ample to supply the market’s demand. Apparently some company in Tianjin claims to have made a mask that can control the H1N1 virus. The municipal drug bureau says there are no such masks in Beijing at this point. And besides, according to the Ministry of Health’s disease control centre:
甲流主要通过飞沫传播，合格的医用外科口罩即可满足个人防护需求，身体健康的人在日常生活中最好不戴口罩。对于个别口罩生产及销售单位宣传的“抑制或杀灭微生物”功能，其实对防控甲流并无显著功效。
H1N1 is mainly spread through droplets, and standard surgical masks meet individual prevention needs. Healthy people should not wear masks in everyday life. As for the “control or eliminate microbes” function advertised by specific mask production and sales companies, in fact they have no noticeable effect on the prevention or control of H1N1.
I would like to bold that entire quotation for emphasis, but doing so would take away the emphasis. Try this approach instead:
- Standard surgical masks are perfectly adequate.
- Healthy people shouldn’t wear them, anyway.
- There are no masks that can control or prevent H1N1
There is also an attached “related news” article which sets out the rules decided by the education committee and health bureau for how universities must respond to outbreaks of acute respiratory illness and fever in both dormitories and within class groups. To be honest, I doubt I could get my head around the numbers in any language, but I’ll try:
In dormitories:
If half the students in one dormitory have acute respiratory illness and more than 10 students in a neighbouring dormitory have a fever, then all the students in the dormitories must stop going to class and must be quarantined.
Class groups:
In classes of 30 students or less, if 5 or more cases of fever (temperature over 37.5 degrees) occur in one day, or, in classes of over 30 students, if 20% or more develop a fever in one day, then the affected students should be quickly taken off for treatment and quarantine. Campus hospitals are instructed to give the appropriate treatment to students with mild symptoms, and send those with severe symptoms up to the next hospital.
Also, schools have to check students’ temperature daily.
I hope I got all that right.
There’s also an interesting little note at the end about district- and county-level education committees being told to prepare for “internet education” so that education will not have to stop in the event H1N1 forces school closures.
Assuming I’m reading all of that right, it’s comforting to see Beijing making preparations for a possible outbreak of H1N1 (and believe me, school dormitories are prime breeding grounds for respiratory illnesses) without any of those preparations going “over the top”. It’s also good to see the government calling “bullshit” on these masks.
good news for Beijingers
新京报/The Beijing News reports that Beijingers can get free vaccinations against Influenza A H1N1. Anybody over the age of 3 who is willing and gives their informed consent and who is a registered Beijing resident can get their free vaccination from any of 402 vaccination centres any time between November 16 and December 13. I take “registered Beijing resident” to mean that foreigners and Chinese whose residence is registered in a province, municipality or autonomous region other than Beijing still have to pay for vaccines. Unfortunately the 3.63 million doses of vaccine Beijing currently has are for some reason not suited to over 60s, so the city’s elderly will have to wait.
The article also reports some interesting statistics regarding Beijing’s H1N1 vaccination programme to date:
北京自9月21日首先在国庆庆典参与人群中开展甲流疫苗接种以来，至昨日已累计为超过44万甲流易感人群（主要是中小学生，医务人员，司乘人员等重点岗位的社会公共服务人员）提供了甲流疫苗接种。
From the launch of H1N1 vaccination on September 21 among those participating in the National Day festivities up until yesterdaya total of over 440 thousand people susceptible to H1N1 have been vaccinated (mainly social and public service personnel in key positions such as primary and middle school students, medical workers, transport workers).
“不良反应发生率并不比季节性流感疫苗高，且多为局部的轻微不良反应。”市卫生局疾控处处长赵涛说，随着疫情发展，以及甲流疫苗在广泛人群中接种后的安全表现，现在，有意愿接种甲流疫苗的市民越来越多。
“The rate of adverse reactions is no greater than for seasonal flu vaccinations, and are mostly localised minor adverse reactions” said Municipal Health Bureau Disease Control Office directer Zhao Tao. Along with the development of the epidemic and the expressions of safety among the broad masses of those vaccinated, currently more and more citizens wish to be vaccinated against H1N1.
Further down, the article states that from November 16 the vaccination centres will be open between 8am and midday and 1:30pm and 5:30pm. Somehow I doubt that many people reading this blog will be eligible for free vaccinations, but if you want to know where the nearest vaccination centre is you can check the Municipal Health Bureau’s official website (there are links to English, French and Japanese sites at the top of the page- but I hope others have an easier time trying to find the locations of these vaccination centres than I’m having) or dial 12320. Also, large-scale work units such as universities, schools, government institutions, and large enterprises may also get their own vaccination centres.