autumnal ramblings
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing, random on October 20, 2009
‘Twasn’t much of a weekend, at least not for me. For me, it could’ve been spent more productively. A short translation, sure, but then mostly just hanging out with colleagues or sitting at home alone watching DVDs for as long as my eyes would stay open.
For my wife, on the other hand, the weekend involved getting up close and personal with more apple trees than she would care to remember. Her parents phoned in a panic looking for help getting their apples in, as everybody else in the village had picked theirs, and they couldn’t leave the apples out too long, and maybe somebody would try to steal the apples if they didn’t get on with it. lzh got back to Beijing on Monday morning utterly exhausted and aching all over.
Incidentally, if anybody in or near Beijing is looking to buy a large amount of apples and is willing to drive out to Yanqing County to collect them, leave a comment….
But as gloriously unproductive as my weekend may have been (I was going to spend it marking homework, but decided to change that plan to going over things in class with the students face-to-face- seemed to fit my philosophy for this semester better that way), it was marked by a rather disgusting discovery on our stairway. I won’t go into any detail at all. It wasn’t just the discovery, but the culprit’s (I hope it was the culprit) pathetic and rather late attempt to clean up followed by the even longer delay in (even more hopefully) the culprit removing the remaining detritus, that has left me still trying to shed the last vomitous smears of disgust. I am still careful traversing a certain section of our stairwell- careful as to where I tred and what I think, smell, and see, even though I know it is now cleaned.
This morning on the way to the office to pick up necessities from class I noticed smoke. Well, first off, somebody in the slum over the wall from our estate often burns things in his yard, and the last few days seems to have been rather more active than usual. But I got over to the main campus and turned south and there was a smudge against the grey sky, a smudge that from its texture seemed to be something more local than the background smog haze. Squinting at it, I saw that it was smoke coming from the stack of the central heating plant that last winter apparently produced some “black snow“. No sign of snow, of any colour, of course, I was still to far away for that. But it was encouraging to see. Very soon it will be cold.
And a notice has been posted to say the heating supply will be tested in our neighbourhood on Thursday morning. Another good sign. We’ll be needing that very soon.
The one thing I really do not like about the winter is waking up in darkness. That combined with poor sleep has not helped this week start well. Finally this afternoon a much delayed trip to the tea shop happened. It has been too many days since I woke up with a nice, hot, bitter cup of longjing. Far too many. That limp, mediocre Laoshan green tea I picked up in Qingdao was alright for dumping in my flask to get me through classes, but no good for that early-morning jump-start. Half-rate jasmine tea is just as good for the flask, but even worse for starting the day with.
And so after class I stopped off at the office to talk over a few minor administrative issues, then feeling a little tired and headachy, trundled off to the south gate then along Shuanglong Lu, crossing Xidawang Lu then continuing just a few dozen metres west down Songyu Nan Lu to my local branch of Wuyutai (吴裕泰茶庄).
I love that shop. It’s not just the tea fragrance that surrounds when you step through the door, either. Only once have they not had the tea I requested- and that was a rather obscure request. Oh, sure, I would never expect them to have anything other than Chinese teas, so it’s not like I asked for a Darjeeling or Irish Breakfast. And yes, I have on occasion had to adjust my price range to suit what was available at that point in time. But those are minor issues. They always have what I want at close to, or usually exactly the price I want to pay. And the staff, that’s what makes that place: The staff are superb, friendly, polite and efficient, all of those qualities done almost, but stopping just mercifully short of, a fault. I don’t need to walk so far to buy tea, but I do, every time, and for very good reason. I love that shop.
Then a quick stop in the neighbouring Shouhang supermarket for a couple of breakfast necessities, a stop made extra quick by my awareness of how grumpy I was feeling, then home, but not the direct route straight up Xidawang Lu. I took the opportunity to wander along an almost-but-not-quite-as direct route through a part of town I hadn’t visited for a while.
Nothing had changed. But then again, nothing (apart from the muster of foreign teachers at BeiGongDa) changes in this part of town, not since the new real estate developments along the southern side of Songyu Nan Lu were finished. Out of Shouhang I continued west, those new apartment blocks ahead on the left, then turned right and walked north through the older streets, surrounded by apartment blocks that look to be fifty years old. Narrow streets, narrower footpaths, businesses that, apart from one or two restaurants, haven’t changed at all since I first wandered these lanes back when people were more worried about SARS than swine flu. Established communities, very well established, judging by the how hard it looks to find a parking space in that area. It was good to see everybody out on the street in the afternoon warmth and calmer breeze after Sunday evening’s rapid shuffle through a howling, frigid norwester down a desolate and near-abandoned lane a couple of hundred metres north of there.
Various random vendors worked off a blanket on the side of the footpath or a bicycle or tricycle parked in one of the few gaps on the side of the road. At the Post Office corner a man was pointedly asking a pedicab driver about the sound suspiciously like pedicab scraping (poorly) parked car while the pedicab driver protested, “I’ve been watching my pedicab! You think I’d let it hit your car?!” These dry norwesters must be getting to some people. A dozen metres further a woman’s shrill voice screached out in protest at some other impropriety. Two chengguan (city inspectors? uniformed thugs?) lounged about the bicycle park. Another dozen metres and the footpath became an annex of the local market, one of several markets within an easy walk of home that sells just about everything, with vendors working off blankets spread on the ground, flatbed tricycles, light trucks, the backs of vans, anything that was useful. Autumn’s overflowing abundance.
Then the intersection, a relatively new one, one I remember in it’s muddy, confusing state before that still rather barren extension of Songyu Bei Lu was pushed through to Xidawang Lu. I briefly considered continuing north up the street a former colleague named Stinky- a lane, really, with at its southern entrance a public toilet rebuilt only a year or so ago into something less pungent, but still blessed with a garbage collection station just north of that toilet that continues to produce a foul stench and makes one very careful, through it’s colourful leakage, about where one steps in the summer when one is wearing sandals. It’s not a street that fully deserves its name, despite the still very foul garbage collection station. It’s an odd mix of slum and apartment blocks, the slum being, so far as I can tell, the remnants of the original village converted to urban use. Urban, but not rich. Still, it’s a community that, despite a certain smelly issue at its southern end, that I have always felt comfortable in.
But no, not while I’m carrying groceries. The walls around our complex would render such a detour twice as long as it needed to be, and while I would not normally be averse to that, having done it on many occasion, I was well aware of my grumpiness. And so I opted for the boring, but shorter route, turning right to meet up with our friendly local high-tension power line as it crossed from the northern to the southern side of Songyu Bei Lu before heading out east, bisecting our campus.
And so ends another day. At least I have some decent tea for tomorrow. Tomorrow is, after all, a big day, four straight classes. And a big day in another way, too, something that may need to wait till Thursday for an explanation.
goosestepping?
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on October 13, 2009
This piece in the Economist got my wife all riled up yesterday. “Bastards saying bad things about us! Who the hell do they think they are?!” and all that. Fair enough. It seems to be one of those pieces which uses mostly easily verifiable and undeniable facts to support a conclusion not all will like, and the tone of the article is rather negative. I’m inclined to sympathise.
But one thing that got lzh’s blood boiling was the word “goose-stepping”, and I got to wondering if the word is actually derogatory in and of itself. Here’s the sentence in question:
Goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles filed through Tiananmen Square, past the eponymous Gate of Heavenly Peace, where, 60 years ago, as every Chinese schoolchild is taught (wrongly, it now seems), Mao Zedong declared that the Chinese people had “stood up”.
It is clear from this sentence, and from the whole paragraph and many similar references scattered through the article, that the author is trying to build a rather ominous picture of military might on open display. There is even a reference to 19th century Prussia and Japan (ooh…) for those who may have found the article too subtle.
Now here’s my question: For me, the word goose-stepping refers purely to a style of marching. It’s a style I find immensely uncomfortable- a few minutes with my first years, a couple of third years, and a drill instructor during first year military training at my school in Taiyuan was more than enough. It’s a style I really don’t like to watch because it looks so unnatural and uncomfortable. But it’s just a style of marching. At least, that’s how it is in my brain. Indeed, when I watched the parade, I did not like to see how the soldiers were marching because of how uncomfortable and unnatural that style of marching looks to me, but I was very impressed with the soldiers and the incredible stamina and discipline they displayed.
But then I got to thinking about it: It’s a style of marching one generally associates with Nazi Germany and evil, menacing Commie soldiers. So perhaps there is something offensive about the word “goose-stepping”. But wherein lies the offense? In the word itself, or in the kinds of soldiers we associate it with? After all, your average Chinese might not see much to worry about in Communism, but for those of us raised in “the West” it has long been held up as a boogeyman and the soldiers of “Communist” countries portrayed as a menacing, mindless, faceless horde of evil threatening to swarm into our happy, Capitalist lands and enslave us. And of course, there’s no need to comment further on the Nazi association.
Tangent: And so we see that all media is propaganda.
And so here I am wondering whether the word “goose-stepping” should be considered offensive. For me, personally, it is a simple, value-free statement of fact to say that the Chinese soldiers taking part in the National Day parade were goose-stepping. On the other hand, given the associations the word “goose-stepping” brings to mind and the overall tone of the article, I certainly understand why lzh took offense and fully agree with her opinion on the article.
And so I put the questions to you: Is the word “goose-stepping” offensive? Why or why not?
seen on the road
We were standing by the side of the old G110 highway at about half past two yesterday afternoon waiting for a bus into the county town. It was actually quite chilly; the weather was grey and damp and the temperature hadn’t risen terribly much since sunrise. I’d seen two buses heading up the road to Xiaying, but Ma insisted three had gone by. I guess she’d seen one pass as we were walking down the village lane to the highway and I’d been looking elsewhere. Xiaying is a fair distance up from our village, and with traffic, who knew how long we’d have to wait?
A convoy of ambulances came up the highway, heading northwestwards, new, they must’ve been, with no licence plates, about a dozen of them. Along the sides was painted “中国妇女发展基金会” – China Women’s Development Foundation. Across the front, “田家健康快车”- at least, that’s how I remember it. Both Google and Baidu are swapping 母亲 for 田家 in their first few results. To be honest, I can’t be arsed with more than a cursory search right now. Nor can I be arsed finding out if there’s an official English translation. “Rural health express” would be my first assumption, but 田家 means a farming family, so maybe “Rural families’ health express”.
Yes, I could easily find out what these ambulances are about. Google and Baidu have turned up a number of articles on the ‘母亲’ version of these ‘健康快车’, but as I was standing there on the side of the highway, cold, with my pack on my back waiting for the bus, I was thinking, hey, cool, they must be headed for northwestern Hebei where they’ll be like some kind of mobile clinic providing basic health care to rural families. But assumptions are easy. Based on where I was standing, the lack of licence plates on the ambulances, and the highway they were travelling up, the could’ve been headed for northwestern Hebei, northern Shanxi, southern Inner Mongolia, or…… And to do what, exactly? ‘Mobile clinic’ is a nice idea, but I just don’t know. Still, it was an encouraging sight.
And then after about half an hour of standing under the trees that line the highway a bus finally came on its way back from Xiaying into the county town. Jam packed. Sardine can packed. Ma said, forget it, we saw three go up, there’ll be another bus along soon, and that’ll have space. Normally by this time I’m thinking, whatever, just get into the county town, but Ma said, no, wait. And sure enough another bus came within ten minutes, and with seats still spare. Sweet as. We piled on, we got seats, and off we went, me staring out the window as is my wont.
I was surprised to see at the entrance to a road running up the side of the next village down two large concrete blocks not blocking the road, but giving drivers serious reason to slow down, and two women in red armbands sitting on chairs on the side of the road. Geez, this village’s committee was taking National Day security seriously. But several other village lanes and side roads had, if not concrete blocks, one or two red armbands standing around watching. I suppose I should’nt be surprised, I mean, the same is still happening down here in Beijing, but I can’t see how there’d be any kind of security threat over this holiday out in those villages. Just farmers going about the harvest and their children coming back from the city for the holiday, surely.
And then at the base of the Shijinglong skifield the highway hooks a right, swinging round to the south for the run into the county town. Just down from Shijinglong what had been a construction site last time I came down that road in early August was now a giant “生态园”- ecological garden. But given that it was dominated by a huge cavern of a building made almost entirely from glass with the plants inside arranged in very pleasant order, I’m guessing it’s the kind of place that hosts numerous wedding banquets every weekend. A little further down was a more traditionally Chinese-style courtyard of a certain order of magnificence taking shape.
The highway ducked under the new G110- the highway built specifically to keep heavy trucks out of regular traffic- and the Dalian-Qinhuangdao railway, and then the electronic voice announced that the next stop was “Yanqing Fuochezhan”. Yeah, I almost missed our stop because of what came out the speakers as a more typically southern (Hunan, and a few other areas) subsitution of ‘f’ for ‘h’, but I caught myself in plenty of time, wrangled the pack over to the door, made sure lzh was with me, and all was good.
I don’t know how permanent the move of the 919 bus terminal to this lot next to Yanqing Railway Station is, but there’s a building going up there, and there seems to be a lot more space for the herding and storage of buses there than at the old bus station. Even so, it’s still, at this stage at least, a very temporary-looking affair, the concrete on the ground looking like it was very quickly poured, the railings to marshall the queue looking to have been installed on the run, and the street-side walled off with those blue steel panels used to wall off construction sites. The public toilet just outside the bus station was your typical, rural-style, rough-and-ready, brickwalled concrete panels over a rather short (and rapidly filling) drop. Not the most disgusting public toilet I’ve ever had to use, but not far off- one of those places your very careful where you step right from the moment you walk in the door. Nevertheless, the 919 Yanqing-Beijing route was functioning as efficiently as it usually does (and as efficiently as it wasn’t on September 30 when we headed out to Yanqing), and it wasn’t too long before we were on a bus back into Beijing.
We got on the bus and it ambled its way over the roughly-paved square and out onto the road, heading south down the road that skirts the eastern edge of the county town. Just before we reached the Gui River we were stopped at a red light and a building to our right caught my attention. I couldn’t see from that angle what kind of building it was, but its shape seemed oddly familiar- which should not be the case considering I’d never visited that corner of the county town before. But there was something about it…. Apart from its dark brown colour it could’ve been the church in the wedding scene in The Graduate, or either of the churches in the Wayne’s World 2 pisstake of the wedding scene in The Graduate. And so as the light turned green and we rumbled off, I made sure I could see as much of this building as possible, and sure enough, it was a church, a very new church, and one its sign made sure was an official protestant church.
I’d heard about this church a couple of years ago. lzh told me some kind of church had been built somewhere in the county town, but she didn’t know if it was protestant or catholic, and didn’t know where it had been built. But there it was, through some fortuitous change in bus route. And it was a pretty decent size, too, not like those piddly little churches you get in Beijing at Zhushikou or halfway between Xidan and Xisi, a tiny fraction of the size their actual congregation needs.
Heck, last time I was at that church between Xidan and Xisi (I can’t remember the actual name of the place) about 40% of the congregation was in the main church hall and another 40% in a side hall and 20% in the courtyard, the latter two groups following proceedings via CCTV. But that’s beside the point.
On the way into Yanqing on September 30 we passed by the old 中心市场/Central Market. A long time ago it was closed down then torn down. Then a gigantic hole was dug, then work was begun on some fancy new commercial centre. I have no idea what the new place is like, all I know is that when we zipped by, twice, it was open, finally. I have no idea what it’s like, having just zipped by the gates twice within the space of 15 minutes, but there it was, finaly open.
Every time I go out to Yanqing there’s a change, and despite the occasional temporary step backwards- a backwards step generally necessary to allow the subsequent step forward- the changes are for the most part positive. The only exception I can see is transport within the county, which stubbornly remains at the barely adequate level, but that’s ok, it’s only that trip from the village into the county town that’s occasionally difficult. Otherwise, what I’m seeing out there is positive, real improvements.
noise
I don’t know why I only noticed it just now- well, early yesterday evening, actually, maybe because it’s just too obvious, or maybe because we’ve recently acquired new neighbours of a rather disputatious disposition, or some combination thereof, or something else….. …..but there’s a huge difference between the background noise of the countryside and that of the city.
Yeah, far too obvious, right? Shouldn’t even need to be said.
Getting off the bus at Madian yesterday instantly rose the background noise level, obviously. We were standing beside a highway as it intersects with the Third Ring Road, but the city isn’t all noise and contains many quiet spots. Where I sit now, the rumble of buses and squawking of horns on Xidawang Lu is as distant as the rumble of trucks on the G110 and trains on the Datong-Qinhuangdao railway were from where I was sitting in Yanqing County this time yesterday. I hear birds, a peddler hawking duck eggs, neighbours coming and going, kids playing.
Out in the countryside, of course it’s different. There’s the same sounds from neighbours going about their business. There’s the clatter of my parents in law getting ready for the day’s work in the fields- that generally starts at about 5 am, sometimes closer to 4. Sleeping in means being woken up at 6. Add in 50-odd head of sheep, 3 (and apparently soon to be 4) dogs, and more cats than I managed to get a count of, somewhere around half a dozen.
From our apartment I can hear distant echoes of the campus broadcast system- weekdays in the morning break, at midday, and at 5 pm. Out in the countryside, however, it’s the village PA system, turned on whenever the village officials have some orders to bark out. I’m not sure how many people pay any attention to their broadcasts. Only occasionally have I observed my in laws listening to it. I, myself, have never yet managed to understand anything in these broadcasts- there’s something about the lack of clarity and the interference of noise coming from several different speakers that loses me. Sometimes it’s been something useful, like “Everybody go pay your power bill”, or so I’ve been told when I’ve asked what that was all about. There have been times in the past when the officials have decided to treat us to an hour or two of music. One day- they must’ve left somebody younger in charge- it was an hour of back-to-back Wu Bai, but mostly the officials have managed to display their awful musical tastes. Not that the poor sound quality helps any.
I suddenly realise thatI probably hear more birdsong down here in the city than I do out in the village, and I don’t know how to explain that. The village is certainly not devoid of birdlife. Indeed, I spent a few minutes a couple of mornings back watching a raptor of some kind (it was too far away for me to have a hope of identifying it, even if it was one of the few birds I can identify) hover over the fields on the other side of the highway. I’ve watched my dog try and fail miserably to catch a pair of pheasant. Maybe it’s a play-off between available space and population density? I have no idea.
Totally random, off-topic, not even a tangent: In making sure I was right about the pheasant, I discover the Chinese word for diploma mill: 野鸡大学. Pheasant/prostitute university. Very nicely descriptive.
But out in the countryside it only takes a short walk into the fields and you’re enveloped in silence. Oh, not total silence, of course, but somehow silence closes in around you and all noise fades into the distance. I don’t understand how and why that happens, but it leaves me with a very comfortable feeling of being in a purely natural environment. Walking back into the village or reaching one of the roads is always a slightly jarring experience.
And getting off the bus at Madian feels like arriving in an entirely different country.
big bundles of beans
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on October 6, 2009
Big bundles of beans, piled high on the bengbengche, that was the result of my morning’s inaction.
It was about 11 am, and my father in law rolled up on the electric scooter. Thirsty, he drained the pot of tea that was sitting on the desk. He said something to my wife about needing some help with the beans. She told me they were too heavy, Ba said, no, they’re too high. Righto, whatever. So I was given a pair of gloves and told to put a jacket on and we climbed in the bengbengche and rumbled off into the fields.
The air had warmed up and the sky was as crisp as it’s been the whole time we’ve been up here this trip. Mountains had their go at the skyline in every direction- looming up close to our north, more laid back on the other side of the basin. The harvest is well advanced out here, with the fields rapidly taking on the desolate grey-yellow-brown that characterises this landscape for almost half the year. The very simple engine made its racket and pumped out the smell of boiled and half-burnt oil. I’ve never been comfortable on bengbengche. The three-wheel set-up just feels hopelessly unstable to me. Still, they’re very useful and practical little vehicles, narrow enough to make village lanes easy work, with enough space to carry large amounts of produce.
Being mostly concentrated on whatever article I’d been reading when Ba got back, I didn’t really hear what kind of help, specifically, was needed. And so I was surprised to see nothing that would require my relative, and rather meagre, height advantage to harvest. Nothing for me to reach up to and pull down to Ba’s height. After a perfect 3-point turn that would have even the strictest driving instructor reaching for a celebratory whisky, followed by backing a dozen metres up the road to where we were to actually start work, we got off the bengbengche and….
…just wait here, said Ba. Alright. And he ran off into the field, picked up a bundle of beans, brought it back, and dumped on the tray of the bengbengche, then ran back off for another bundle. He brings that back, dumps it in the tray and, runs back for another bundle. And so it continues. Um, right, so what is it I’m here for? To stand guard? I dunno. Just follow orders, stand and wait.
My first opportunity to do anything helpful is to hold one bundle of beans in place while he runs off to get another to weigh it down. Then his first pile collapses, the top two bundles falling into the ‘cab’ (it has no attempt at a roof, so it’s hardly a cab, but that’s where you sit and the driver drives). I grab one bundle and hoist it back up, but Ba tells me to leave the other, he’ll get it. Never mind he has to climb off the tray and run the long way around to get it, but he insists. Then as the load grows, there come chances for me to help hoist or support either Ba or his bundles of beans. But mostly I’m just standing around looking dumb and feeling useless.
Then we’re all loaded up and tied down, so we head back home, clattering our way down the hill.
New socialist countryside: That new rubbish collection station that was built over the summer is used by the villagers to store beans, while rubbish is piled up the old-fashioned way outside. For one thing, those nice, flat concrete surfaces are great for drying and pressing beans (note: if you’re driving through a village in Yanqing County and see beans spread out on the road, drive straight over them. The locals will be grateful for your help. Another note: You won’t see beans like you’d imagine, but the dried vines with pods still attached spread out on the ground.). For another thing, you don’t change old habits that fast. Perhaps a public education campaign on the hygiene benefits of using the station to collect rubbish rather than store beans may be useful? In any case, once again, despite my attempts to help, I’m told to just stand and wait, don’t stab my hands (in some attempt at transcribing my father in law’s heavy dialect: bāi zhǎzhe nīde shǒu) on the beanstalks. And then, seeing that I’m standing around looking dumb and feeling useless, he tells me, grab the sunflower heads out the rubbish pile and throw them over there, I’ll feed them to the sheep later. And so, glad for the pair of gloves I had been issued, I pick a bunch of sunflower heads in varying states of either decay or dessication out of the rubbish pile and throw them in the direction indicated. Then I was told to head back home while he went off to get something else.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. Well, not entirely. First of all, Ba treats his own son the same way. He seems to live by the “If you want something done properly, do it yourself” philosophy, which I totally understand and largely agree with. Secondly, I am very much aware of the severe limits of my agricultural skills in particular and physical labour skills in general. Thirdly, this is my place in this family, and I’m cool with that. I earn money in the city doing what I can do well (well… doing what people will pay me for, at least), and that’s how I contribute to the family. That’s totally cool with me. Expecting me to farm is as absurd as expecting my father in law to teach English. Still, it would be nice to feel useful out here. Of course, the cause of my uselessness lies in myself, and is not something I can be blamed for, but it would be nice to feel useful rather than like a bumbling idiot good for little more than standing around looking dumb.
bloody sheep
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on October 5, 2009
I thought that new sheep pen was more secure. Well, it’s not ‘new’, but considerably reinforced. It looked like it would effectively contain the sheep.
For the first couple of days it worked. But now there’s a pile of corn in the courtyard, and the sheep can see and smell it. And lambs, stupid as they may be, and they are incredibly stupid, have a peculiar genius for finding ways out of the pen and into things they’re not supposed to eat.
Four times in the last 20 minutes I’ve had to run outside to chase lambs back into the pen.
What perhaps does not help is that the biggest dog we have here, Niuniu, is not a sheep dog and is far too small to scare any but the newest born lambs. And it wasn’t the wee ones that were acting up, but older ones on their way out of lambhood and into sheepdom. Niuniu decided to help me chase the lambs, as she has done before (although without even a shred of skill), but one turned around and decided to fight back at this noisy little upstart. So I had to step in.
Oh yes, I am looking forward to this afternoon when Ba takes the older sheep out to graze and leaves the lambs behind. The lambs are considerably more unruly when their elders are away, and that pile of corn in the courtyard must look very inviting to a sheep.
morning
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on October 5, 2009
Monday morning, 6 am. Parents in law getting ready for the day’s harvesting as I fumble my shoes on and reach for my jacket. Stumble outside into the cold and over to the outhouse in the southwest corner of the courtyard.
The moon hovers large over the mountains in the northwest, bright like a second, cold sun. The sky in the southeast burns with the sun’s first rays.
No water. The mains water is often turned off overnight, doesn’t come back on till maybe half past six, usually by seven. But damn, I’m thirsty. And it’s cold, and I want a nice pot of tea steaming on the desk beside the computer.
date picking
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on October 4, 2009
I’d make a useless farmer. Really. Just got back from picking red dates up at the in laws’ orchard. I’d be hopeless as a farmer.
So my wife and I got a couple of plastic bags and an old flour sack (not old enough, doing anything with the sack, like emptying our plastic bags into it, got us a face full of flour), my brother in law showed me how to work his electric scooter, and off we went, carreening crazily along the village roads, along of the top of the fields, then up into the orchards.
This electric scooter is reasonably easy to ride, but, of course, if you’re not used to a particular form of transport you can easily make a fool of yourself. I’m sure I could drive a bus or truck, but there’s a very good reason- probably several very good reasons- why one needs specialised training and a separate licence for such things. Scooters are close enough to bicycles that it’s not hard to figure them out, but the figuring out can involve some, um, amusing incidents. Like me just about driving myself and my wife into the back of a parked bengbengche as I took a corner just a tad too fast, not being terribly used to how the scooter handled. Um, yeah. Well, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out, and we got to the orchard in one piece.
But that thing is heavy! It took quite some effort to get it on its stand, and then off again when it came time to head home. And I think I know the source of a goodly portion of the weight: The battery. Last time I was here an urgent phone call from my brother in law, who was at his construction site, had me and Ma opening the scooter up and hauling the battery out and inside to recharge. Naturally, it was me who did the lifting and carrying, while Ma helped opening and closing things and unplugging and plugging. That battery is heavy.
But the battery provides a fair bit of power. I was surprised with the ease it got us up the hill to the orchard. Sure, we were slowing down as we reached the top, but I’m sure we could’ve made it the last dozen metres to the road at the top had we wanted. Coming back down, though, was much easier. Could’ve used some regenerative breaking, though. Hooking a generator to the rear wheel would’ve helped moderate the speed and cut wear and tear on the brakes while boosting the battery charge. But I just had to rely on old-fashioned friction to stop us flying off the road and landing in somebody’s cornfield. Or becoming a permanent fixture of the rear end of a bengbengche.
But here’s how I’d be such a hopeless farmer: We filled the flour sack about a third full with red dates (pickings were slim), a few kilos worth, but probably at least two thirds was picked by lzh. I don’t know if I’m too lazy, too impatient, or both, but I have a very short tolerance for wading through thickets of thorns and spending at least half the time staring towards the sun trying to see what dates are worth picking even though I can hardly see. And then there’s the dates higher up which required me to bend the tree without breaking it- well hey, cutting the tree down to get the higher fruit really does not make much sense if you think long term. Or even short term. I guess we needed either a ladder or some kind of go-go-gadget-arms tool to get those higher dates.
It gets pretty chilly overnight up here. Even mid-summer nights are considerably cooler than what you’d expect if you were used to downtown Beijing. But already, in early October, it gets cold. There’s been nothing unusual about the weather on this trip out here, but these bracing mornings are a crisp reminder that we ain’t in Beijing. It was not a warm ride up to the orchard. But as the sun got higher and stronger, it could get quite hot picking those dates. Right up until we stepped into the shade again.
And pickings were slim, and not just because I dropped at least a third of what little I picked through my hopeless horticultural incompetence. An awful lot of the dates were withered or rotten or chewed up by bugs. I even found one that had some kind of caterpillar half sticking out of it still.
Anyway, after a couple of hours of me trudging around not even attempting to pretend I was making an effort and lzh desperately trying to get every date still edible, we piled back on the scooter and headed home. Not much of a morning, but hey, it got me out of the house for a couple of hours.
cold
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on October 4, 2009
It’s half past seven on a Sunday morning. I’ve already been awake two and a half hours, but that’s how things work out here. No matter how cold or dark the sky may be, days start ridiculously early.
It’s cold, too. Yanqing County has its own climate quite distinct from downtown Beijing. Being considerably higher and drier, autumn comes earlier, spring comes later and winter is longer. I’m sure the same can be said of all of Beijing’s mountain regions, and a couple of days in early October I spent in a small village way up in Mentougou started just as cold as they do here now.
Yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because it managed to slip by unnoticed here. For the first time ever I was not even threatened with a mooncake. Well, we have had simpler dinners than what we had last night, but even so, there was no sign of the festival.
There are, however, mooncakes in the house, and some of them have been consumed, so don’t worry.
Maybe I’ll get off my lazy arse and go for a walk later on when it warms up. I can’t spend the entire holiday online as I’ve managed to do the last 3 days.
Inner Mongolian wind
Posted by wangbo in Environment, news on October 3, 2009
Just came across an interesting article on Newenergy.org.cn: Apparently Inner Mongolia’s wind power industry is taking off, with installed capacity already No. 1 in China. Wang Yutian and Bai Bing report:
随着大批风电项目和风机设备制造厂落户内蒙古，当地风电产业迅猛发展。目前内蒙古全区并网风电装机容量３００万千瓦，累计完成投资近４００亿元，占全国风电装机总容量的四分之一，跃居全国首位。
Following the setlling of a large group of windpower projects and turbine equipment factories in Inner Mongolia, that region’s windpower industry has been rapidly developing. Inner Mongolia currently has an installed grid-connected windpower capacity of 3 million megawatts through the whole region, with a total completed investment approaching 40 billion yuan, accounting for one quarter of China’s installed windpower capacity, leaping into first place in China.
据内蒙古自治区发改委高技术产业处处长孟青龙介绍，近几年内蒙古风电产业发展速度加快，２００７年、２００８年内蒙古完成风电吊装容量较上一年分别增长１７５％和１４２％，产业规模快速形成。预计内蒙古风电装机容量今年年底将达到５００万千瓦。
According to the head of the High Technology Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Development and Reform Commission, Meng Qinglong, in recent years Inner Mongolia’s windpower industry has developed more rapidly. In 2007 and 2008 Inner Mongolia’s completed windpower hoisted capacity grew by 175% and 142% over the previous year, quickly forming the scale of the industry. It is predicted Inner Mongolia’s installed windpower capacity will reach 5 million megawatts by the end of the year.
And here I will admit defeat. I just cannot figure out this sentence: “与此同时，风电产业呈规模化发展趋势。”, and besides, the rest of that paragraph is just a city-by-city breakdown of windpower capacity, installed and under construction. Chifeng leads the way with a million megawatts installed already, and a bunch of other cities including Baotou and Tongliao in the 350 to 800 thousand megawatt range. And what’s under construction takes the total up to 5.9 million megawatts.
The final paragraph begins by stating that Inner Mongolia’s level of operational management of windpower has been unceasingly growing, but I can’t see how they prove it. Not that I doubt that statement, I just don’t see the relevance of the supporting sentences. Maybe that’s because I’m an English teacher, not an electrical engineer. Whatever, it does say that at the end of April, Inner Mongolia had 3.5 million megawatts of windpower connected to the grid, of which 2.24 million megawatts is fed into the Inner Mongolian grid (7.3% of the capacity tracked by the regional grid), 1.1 million megawatts into Northeast China, and 160 thousand megawatts into the Northwest.
Puff piece? Advertorial? Smells like it, but I don’t know. I don’t really think it matters, either. What matters is the rapid development of windpower in Inner Mongolia, and if there’s any truth to the reported numbers, what’s happening out there is looking very good.