Tiffany in Never-Never Land

Justice and a Harmonious Society in Ruins?

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:20:00 +0000

I'm not making a political statement with the title of this post; please don't misunderstand. I'm simply offering a literal description of an odd scene that recently appeared next to the building I work in.

On Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, I overheard a coworker telling someone else in the office that a nearby building had "collapsed". I had seen no signs of anything unusual that day, so I figured it couldn't have been too big of a building, and if it were a disaster of some sort I'd probably hear more about it.

On my way home from work (I come in the front way, go out the back way), I saw that indeed, an old two-storey edifice was in the beginning stages of being torn down. I wouldn't say it collapsed as it looks quite purposeful, but the next day something strange appeared.

Shiny new banners strung up across the rubble, proclaiming "No matter how savage, the harmonious society cannot be destroyed" and on the right, "Justice will never bow its head to evil forces".

I'm used to banners with slogans on them. It's a central part of the government's plan to propagandize the masses and steer them in the desired direction. The city is full of pithy little things like "Be civilized", "Don't spit", "Build a harmonious society together"; the list goes on. Harmonious society has become a pet phrase of Hu Jintao's in the last several years, but these slogans are worded rather strongly and I doubt it's a coincidence that they appeared in a pile of rubble.

I asked my coworkers what it was about (who are all local), but they just shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders, and laughed. The day the banners appeared there were small crowds of three or four scattered around the area, checking out the new developments and talking amongst themselves. I'm sure it's not a big deal, whatever it is, because nobody cared that I was standing around taking pictures. I saw a local guy taking pictures the day the banners went up. Online searches revealed no news on buildings being torn down or having collapsed in that area, and searches on those phrases came up with no exact matches.

So, I'm still left to speculate.

A trip to Daoist Hell

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:06:00 +0000

After barely missing a train to Inner Mongolia this morning and finding myself unexpectedly still in Beijing, I decided to break out of my "But I live here" routine and do some sightseeing. It was the first time I've done so in years, aside from my nostalgic little foray to Tian'anmen a few weeks ago.

I have, after all, been to: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, a bunch of old city gates, and more. I live inside a hutong that is right on the main stampeding path of rickshaw tours, and most days I ride my bicycle past all or most of: the Drum & Bell Tower, the Lama Temple, the Confucius Temple, and the Guozijian Imperial College.

I'm not claiming that I've seen all there is to see in Beijing, or all that's worth seeing: not by any means. But I get more than my daily fill of tourist crush, of beady-eyed vendors shouting "hallo! hallo! (insert barely comprehensible approximation of English word for whatever they're selling)." I can pretty succesfully ignore it whizzing by on my clattery little two-wheeled contraption, but it saps my will to go see other things.

But since I failed to get myself to Hohhot today, I steeled myself for whatever may come, and followed a friend's suggestion to go to Daoist Hell, more commonly known as the Dongyue Temple (东岳庙). Pedaling through wind and rain, feeling cold and uninterested, I briefly contemplated making a loop and going back home to my bookshelf of half-read and unread books instead. But I did find myself pulling up, locking my bike, and approaching the ticket window after all.

I paid my paltry ten yuan entrance fee, walked through the main gate, and was unexpectedly standing in a green, damp, peaceful courtyard surrounded by recessed altars. I was suddenly as alone as one can be in this city without walking into a room and closing the door.

It's a quite large temple complex, home to hundreds of life-sized statues that each represent some character belonging to different "departments", all of which are related to some aspect of life and/or death. There's the Department of Wandering Ghosts, the Final Indictment Department, the Department of Upholding Integrity, the Department of Wind Gods, the Department of Filial Piety, the Department of ... just about everything.

You can leave offerings in the form of dates or little red prayer tags for the deities ruling over departments you are particularly concerned with. Popular ones include those ruling over the accumulation of wealth, success in business matters, and having children. Some of these had piles of dates and prayer tags stacked on top of each other, while others seemed to be positively neglected, with what appeared to be a mandatory three dates. When there was nothing else, there were always three dates. (Except for the robbery department, where fingerprint marks in the layer of dust left evidence of the dates' theft.)

I was surprised to discover that the Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating had not been honored with one single prayer tag, and had only a lonely three little dates. Personally, if I had had a kilo of dates I would have given all of them to that department. I would have given ten kilos of dates to that department. I would have bought twenty kilos of dates at the marked up cheat-the-foreigner price and poured them out on the feet of the deities in charge.

I was also a little surprised that the Department of Flying Birds was not better tended, as having pet birds is still very, very common among the old men of Beijing. They have pretty little cages decorated with eye-catching toys, they take them for daily walks and dotingly shield their cages with specially-made covers in the rain, but none of them see the need to make offerings to the concerned deities. The birds must be doing well.

A few other people did wander through, some devotees, some tourists but I found the place to be blissfully low-key and sparsely visited. And for any little or non-Chinese speaking people, most of the explanatory plaques were translated quite well; in this country, that means, intelligibly.

In the end, I spent the better part of the afternoon (unmolested) enjoying the at times gruesome, and at times whimsical depictions of the problems and joys of life as we know it, wondering if this wasn't better than Inner Mongolia.

Nowhere near Sichuan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:57:00 +0000

I've received a number of emails from people recently who are concerned about my welfare after the earthquake in Sichuan province. It's great to get emails from so many people, many of whom I haven't had much contact with lately, but I just wanted to make a public announcement that I am still in Beijing and we were not really affected here.

However, if you were thinking of emailing me to make sure I'm still alive, send me an email anyway.

Tiananmen Sky

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:59:00 +0000

My first trip to Beijing was in 2001. It was also my first trip to China, and my first trip to Asia. I had been abroad in Mexico, Europe, Canada – all of the usual destinations, but stepping out of the airport in Beijing that first time, a palpable sense of something different hit me.

There was something hanging in the air, and I couldn’t help but think, They are living under a different sky. But that night there was no time to contemplate such things as there were more practical considerations like, how do we get to our hotel? Will I be able to sleep tonight? What are we going to do tomorrow?

The next day, the first shock of being in Asia faded in the light of day, and we set out on the day’s wanderings from our hotel. We soon found ourselves in a network of little hutongs (small, alley-like streets that were traditionally residential areas in old Beijing) and of course, got good and lost.

After not too long, we emerged onto a large thoroughfare. I looked up and saw an imposing-looking gate and, walking on, craned my head to see a huge traffic sign with the words “Tiananmen” and an arrow. The feeling produced by accidentally stumbling upon Tiananmen Square is one I can’t describe – it was my first real “I’m in China” realization, it was the feeling of stepping out of the airport into Asia, only from a different angle.

I’m usually not easily bowled over, so when I do find something heartily impressive, I really savor the experience and roll it over in my head again, again, and again.

But familiarity does breed contempt, so I hadn’t been to Tiananmen Square in nearly seven years until last week. I needed a reminder of the feeling of being impressed to be here, a visceral experience of some sort. So on my way somewhere else, on a horribly polluted day near dusk, I went a little out of my way to take some unre-
markable pictures, watch tourists fly kites, and remind myself that I am in Beijing.

It did lift my spirits, it did give me a tiny taste of that feeling of first being here. I was relieved to know that that thing that drew me back still exists, though in a different and significantly smaller way.

I probably won’t go for another seven years, and when I do, I hope it’s still under that sky.

Toto....

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:22:00 +0000

One country, two million systems.

I'm in Beijing. I've been here for two days now, and I keep getting little shocks that remind me just how far Urumqi is from here, in distance and in spirit. Some of the obvious ones are that it's more cosmopolitan, everyone is much more nonchalant about foreigners, and it's just a whole lot bigger.

Today I took a walk down the alley to the local police station to register my residence, a required procedure for foreigners in China. My housemate Kate came with me, and I noted with some surprise that she sauntered out of the house without passport, proof of registration, and assured me I didn't need anything other than my own passport. We walked into the police station around 2pm and made a quick left into a large room, completely empty aside from two officers behind a long counter. One looked up. I approached her and said "I need to register." Without a word she walked over, booted up her computer, and held her hand out for my passport.

I took this opportunity to look around at the stunningly empty police station. One of the main complaints that people from Xinjiang have about Beijing is the crowdedness. "There are just too many people", they all insist. "The subways, the buses, the streets, the stores, no matter when you go anywhere every little inch of space is crammed with people. Everything takes so long. There's always a traffic jam and don't even try to go out on the weekends."

These complaints echoed in my head while surveying the bare halls of this police station on a Saturday afternoon. In Urumqi, you'll be lucky if the guy you need is in the station any afternoon at all, much less a Saturday afternoon. Cramped little cubbyhole offices are stuffed to the brim with anxious people trying to get their household registration, birth, death, marriage certificates sorted out. People spill over into the hallways and try to quietly elbow their way a little further into the room, brows furrowed and tempers on edge. Overworked police officers seem to always be frozen in their chairs in the same stance: elbows on desk, back hunched, hand on forehead, frown on face. One by one, people are turned away with lectures, admonishments, demands to see other documents or more photocopies of the same one. Such-and-such person needs to come down here personally, and do you have proof?

A supposedly simple matter is generally prolonged into a multi-day affair requiring the personal appearance of your landlord, proof of where you've spent all your time in the country so far, multiple copies of your passport and several passport pictures. Once I was fingerprinted (not standard procedure), nearly every time I was lectured very sternly about something, and only once did I manage to take care of it in one visit to the station.

I have friends who got hauled into the police station and detained for several hours over mishandling of their papers (which were all in order, just not in the right place exactly); it's not uncommon for the police to make surprise visits to your home and see who is hanging around (even in the middle of the night), and you can basically assume that security guards in your residential compound are spying on you and reporting back to your district police. If not them, the neighbors. Maybe both.

Here in Beijing, we sat in this empty room being asked questions by the policewoman on duty. Nothing matched up. I told them the address I had been told, which was written slightly differently from what they had on file. I reported back the name of our landlord as it had been told to me, which turned out to be almost completely different from his actual name. I was registering a day late, something that the Urumqi police wouldn't let you get away with without a really good excuse and proof, in triplicate, that your excuse was valid. Then they'd let you off with lots of glares, very serious lectures, and threats of huge fines, and feel very magnanimous about the whole thing.

This woman didn't even ask me why I registered late, why I was renting a house on a tourist visa, or why I had the wrong address and the wrong name. She looked everything up, typed it into her little computer, and handed me my little slip. Voila, I am registered.

I walked home with Kate, dredging up all the stories I could remember about the police descending on courtyards to make sweeps of foreigners, arresting people, intimidating and spying on perfectly legal residents, nightmarish hours spent in stations trying to find just the right level of feigned respectfulness and remorse to appease the one with the official stamp. As I talked, incident after incident came back to me, and I realized the absurdity of it all in the face of this empty police station and not-at-all unfriendly officer who somehow, against all odds, manages to register people without treating them like criminals.

Somehow, it all doesn't seem so bad right now: squishing onto the subways and buses, standing in line at the supermarket a little longer, rubbing elbows at the noodle stands. At least I'm not suspected of unnamed but apparently heinous crimes just for showing up here.

Lusting for leather and chrome

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:27:00 +0000

Los Angelenos love their cars. No, they don't just have a special fondness for these vehicles that leads them to buff them on the weekends and take them in for regular tune-ups; there seems to be a bizarre, unhealthy sort of emotional dependence going on.

Many sacrifice rhyme and reason, shelling out more money than they have on a beautiful new car just because it feels great to drive. Some give little nicknames to their four-wheeled friends, and defiling another person's car can be just cause for any sort of crime of passion.

In LA, not only are you what you do, you are what you drive. Your car is an extension of your bedroom and it's not uncommon to see people on the freeway doing all sorts of things behind their panes of glass, apparently unaware that we are all flying around in see-through bubbles that can really be seen through. Yes, really, that means we can see you.

None of this is really new news, but this year I think I've stumbled upon another bizarre little story in this morass of strangeness.

Every day, after I get off the bus, the route I walk home brings me from a main street around a corner to the small residential street Christina and Alan live on, up to the top of the hill where perches their little house. About halfway up the street, every day I pass by a woman sitting in her car.

It's a large-ish white sedan, pretty clean, seems fairly new. Especially to someone who knows nothing and cares less about cars, it seems incredibly average and unremarkable. Except for the fact that every single day, there is a woman camped out in the driver's seat like it's her living room couch.

She has the radio turned up to noise-polluting levels, tuned to some obnoxious talk radio that is mostly ads and then a lot of other shouting done by the DJ's themselves. This is not enough sensory input for her, so she resorts to flipping through what look like B-grade celebrity gossip magazines, or coupon pages of the Sunday paper, or something equally riveting. Sometimes her right hand is moving mechanically from bag-of-some-crap to mouth while eyes remain fixed on the page in front of her.

She's there on the weekends, too, pretty much all day it seems. I wonder ... has she ever thought about getting out of her car and walking inside? What's so scary in her house? What's it like to be a lump of mush?

And since nobody walks in LA, not much of anyone really seems to notice she's there. Everyone flies by in their cars, protected by their own slabs of glass and metal, totally unaware.

What makes one turn into a lump of mush? What happens to make sitting in your car listening to trash, reading trash, and eating trash the most attractive option for killing the remaining time in your life?

From Scratch

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:27:00 +0000

Today was someone's birthday in the office.

You all know what that means: standing around uncomfortably and trying to chat over mid-afternoon cake.

Before the guest of honor even arrived we had already used up our easy chit-chat (how's work, how were your holidays, how about that rain). So, cake in hand, the conversation among this small group of people who have nothing in common naturally turned to ... cake.

Bigwig talked about a cake mix he usually gets from Costco where you only add water; however (climax to the story coming....) he bought a different brand this time. Upon getting home and reading the box he discovered you actually have to put in eggs and milk. And not only do you have to put them in, you have to whisk the eggs. So, he asked, what's the difference between that and making the cake from scratch? And then (punch line ... here it comes....) he told his kids "I made this cake from scratch!"

Everyone chuckled politely. I thought mistakenly this was a conversation I could actually participate in so I piped in about how there are so many things you can't find in China that there are expats put a lot of energy into making things from scratch. I very briefly mentioned David's cheesecake quest: how do you make cheesecake in a land with no graham crackers? No cream cheese? I'll give you a hint: you start with yoghurt, then make your own cream cheese.

I said that I make pumpkin pies every Thanksgiving, starting with an actual pumpkin. A whole, raw pumpkin. Silence followed. Then, aforementioned bigwig said, "You must have a lot of tiiime in China". Time was drawn out, slowly dribbling out of his mouth like something he didn't want inside him. His words carried a tinge of, not envy, but disdain.

Is having time a sin? Is having time a sign of laziness? Is baking bread from scratch, is chopping vegetables every day, is walking up six flights because there is no elevator, is sweeping because you don't have a vacuum cleaner, is all this somehow wrong? Or is enjoying it the part that's wrong?

It's Friday evening right now, as I type this, and I am home from work a bit early after a week where I have literally only been home in time to go to sleep, then get up before dawn and leave the house again. I'm making more money doing this than I ever did in China, but I haven't cooked a meal in weeks, I haven't managed to finish a book, I haven't gotten any exercise. But those silly things are only for people with tiiime. Not us civilized folks.

There are few things more alienating than coming home.

Would you like an EKG with that?

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:47:00 +0000

I recently went to the doctor. I hadn't been inside a hospital for my own reasons for years; last time I went I reluctantly paid a visit after my cracked rib had been inhibiting my ability to sleep for weeks. I figured I could use a good night's sleep.

This time, my "problem" was a little more nebulous, and wasn't something that I would ever get checked out myself.

I have poor circulation. It's always been like that, and I blame it entirely on my father who occasionally complains of constantly cold feet and hands. In cold weather, it can get unbearable.

However, my local hiking friends were becoming increasingly concerned about this as, over the course of our backpacking relationship, the surface area of the parts of my body that turned blue increased as the temperatures dropped. Sometimes my hands and feet turn into blocks of ice and simply stay that way for hours.

One time after having to sit around in below freezing temps for several hours, waiting for our bus to take us home, I didn't return to normal until 24 hours later. No, really.

So they convinced me to get it checked out.

We met up early on a Tuesday morning and trooped over to the clinic. "They might have to do blood tests", I was warned. "Don't eat or drink anything. Not even coffee!" I complied. Parched and caffeine-deprived, I sat in the waiting room of the clinic waiting for the "expert" to get to work so I could consult with him and he could recommend something.

He got there. We explained. He listened, and nodded. I was handed a piece of paper with a long list of the sorts of tests the clinic can perform: on the left was the test, on the right, the price. There were checkboxes. Oh, hm, okay. Full disclosure? I thought to myself.

Then he said: "So?" So what? Everyone was looking at me expectantly. I looked back at them expectantly. Seeing we were getting nowhere, my friend asked me: "What do you want?"

What do I want? I want my hands and feet to function normally. Barring that, perhaps a little ... guidance? So I pressed the "expert" on what he thought it could be. Wild words started pouring out of his mouth. If you have such-and-such symptoms, it could be rheumatism. If you have this-and-that symptom, it could be a nerve problem in your spinal cord. It could be very serious, you could die. Which battery of tests would you like?

I carefully explained everything again, and pressed him on the symptoms of the very scary health problems he was describing. "You see, that doesn't fit me at all." I patiently explained. I explained from the beginning again, emphasizing the fact that there was a direct relationship to the weather, it wasn't just random numbness.

Seeing he wasn't getting anywhere, he cut me off and said: "Well, do you want any tests or not?" I opted for not. We got ushered out of his office and I left with a strange feeling that I had missed something.

On the way out, I explained to my friends that in the States, the doctor will usually give you frank advice on what they think may be wrong with you, if anything, and will suggest reasonable measures for determining the situation. It is not, I stated, like sitting down with a menu in a restaurant or going shopping for a sweater.

"He should be the professional", I said. "How should I know what tests I need? Doctors should listen to the patient and make recommendations based on what they describe, not try to sell procedures you clearly don't need."

"Well, it's just different in China" was the response. God help me if I ever really get sick in this "different" country. I hope I can guess the procedure I need to cure me and pick the medicine out of a lineup blindfolded.

Let's Play North Pole: Hemu 禾木

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:38:00 +0000

The first week of October is a big holiday in China. For many people, it means a chance to sit at home, watch TV, and sleep. For a small minority, it's a rare opportunity to go on a slightly longer backpacking trip and enjoy the wilds of Xinjiang.

Me and the girls once again signed up, geared up, and got on up to Northern Xinjiang (in my opinion, the overall nicest part of this vast province due to its remoteness　and Kazakhness).

We tripped along happily for a couple days, walking through rolling hills alternating between barren winter-is-coming brown, and brilliant yellow autumn trees. Nights were cold, days were cool.

Then one day while eating lunch, I spotted dark portents of troubles to come hovering over us. The temperature dropped rather quickly, the clouds moved into position, and soon fluttery little flurries were floating down around us. I don't think anybody was really happy about it, but we all know that if you insist on coming to this little corner of the world that borders on Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan in October, you can't be surprised at the weather. No matter what it does.

So we trucked along. A couple hours after lunch, we lost our guide right about here. Coming up over the crest of a hill, we were faced not only with black clouds and snowy mountains on all sides, but a disappeared guide, and no one could hear our shouting through the howling wind.

We hadn't been far behind, at all, but as soon as he dipped down on the other side of the hill, he was temporarily hidden from view. A couple short minutes later, the clouds took care of hiding him after the hill couldn't. We waited for a while, turning in circles, looking for footprints, half-heartedly shouting for him every once in a while. Finally, I spotted him at the base of a hill in the distance, obviously about to head into snowy, tall mountains.

The happiness of spotting him was dampened a little bit by the fact that he had lead us over that hill in vain; the stragglers who were lagging way behind were in a little valley that connected to the next valley and had seen him. So instead of going up and down a big hill, they just cut straight through the flatlands.

But no point in complaining. All's well that ends well, right? So, we set off into the dark, snowy mountains. For the rest of the afternoon, all we saw was this. Actually, most of what I saw was my feet, as raising my head would just expose my face unnecessarily to the icy wind and snow.

There were speculations that our guide was lost and leading us in circles; I certainly couldn't tell left from right, much less north from south in those conditions. But there's nothing you can do except pretend you're on your way to a prison camp in Siberia, lost on an arctic expedition, or muse on other such imaginations to keep your spirits up.

We did, eventually, get to a little flat area tucked between hills and set up camp right before dark. It was one of those nights where everyone dives immediately into their tents and sleeping bags. On previous nights we had been chided for not having team spirit, for not participating the campfire-side drinking and singing games, but there were no such reprimands tonight.

The next day we woke up to biting cold and were still fogged in, but the sun soon came out, burned off some of the haze, and we were on our way. The rest of the hiking trip was, how can I put it? Cold.

Really, really cold. I enjoy snow, unfortunately my hands and feet refuse to play. They go numb in protest. The strike doesn't end till I've gotten them to a warm place for an hour or two and coax them back to life.

But there was nowhere else to go. These mountains are pretty much uninhabited at this time of year; in the several days we walked, we ran into just a few abandoned cabins and no people except the front end and tail end, closer to villages.

We did walk out of the snow, but as we slept on the eve of our departure, the snow came back and found as again. We woke up to a winter wonderland. Again. To make a long story somewhat shorter, we walked out that day to the road, but because of logistics problems waited for our bus for hours. It was dark. The temperature was around freezing, and several hours of sitting around outside in freezing weather is not pleasant.

But the bus did come, my hands and feet did return to normal (the next day), and I was very grateful to come home.

Off We Go to the Holy Mountain: Bogeda

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 01:18:00 +0000

We all know by now that the Chinese like to do things in droves; that includes visiting sacred sites. It's just not the same without a bunch of people hanging around who can distract you from the grandeur of what's around you.

So on a balmy September afternoon we set out in a great squawking flapping flock of hikers to stampede over the sacred Bogeda. Local style.

We had the same strapping guide as the Sulaxia death march, Mr. Nine-Lives, who had apparently done the Bogeda trail upwards of ten times (averaging more than once a year).

This hike was mostly free of mishaps and missteps, but it was very very high, and very very cold. Our lips turned blue from lack of oxygen and my fingers turned purple from lack of circulation.

As usual, there were those whose hearts were bigger than their muscles or lungs, and huffed and heaved their way up the mountain and back down again only with the help of these beasts of burden.

We came out at Heavenly Lake, a popular tourist site that I had been too once before on a very foggy, very rainy day a couple years prior. At that time, literally all I saw was the tops of other people's heads and some clouds, so it was nice to come in the back way and see the lake without the outrageous entrance ticket and tour guides' competing loudspeakers.

We did get home safe and sound, but only after misunderstandings and mixups with the transportation back that had us stranded at the lake for a good several hours. A fellow hiker took this opportunity to get completely smashed and, just like Old Charioteer's Road, we had another obnoxious drunk on the bus alternating between goofy-happy, outraged, and passed out. What can you do ... give a Chinese male two hours of free time and a little pocket change, and what do they do with themselves?

Old Charioteer's Road: 车师古道

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:12:00 +0000

You will start noticing a pattern in my posts very soon. A word to the wise: if you have no interest in hiking, stop reading now.

I went hiking again.

It was with the same group of friends and a bunch of other people. The bunch of other people thing is pretty unavoidable in this country. Wherever you go, there are five hundred others.

We got to the trailhead in an unconventional way due to its inaccessability. We were supposed to be driven to our campsite that night and start hiking in the morning.

Unfortunately, the truck couldn't get past a certain point, and just as night had fallen we were already getting off the truck with quite a walk ahead of us. Wild rumors were flying around about how far we had to go: three kilometers? ten kilometers? Some said we could get there in two hours, some said we would be walking till dawn.

The pessimistic predictions ended up being more accurate, and I began wondering as we once again found ourselves running across loose rock in the pitch black, if I am not bad luck on backpacking trips. I started to wholeheartedly believe this after our fourth river crossing: sandals on, pants rolled up, and up to my knees in snow runoff ice-cold river water in the middle of the night.

The bad luck did not stop with that entirely. We unfolded out of our sleeping bags after a couple hours of sleep the next morning and tried to face the day with an optimistic disposition, but things did not improve.

We discovered our guide was incompetent. There was one guide and several assistant guides. Usually, if there's a big group of hikers, the guide goes at the front to lead the way and there's at least one person bringing up the rear. On this trip, everyone who knew the way was in the back and we were running all over the mountain like mad.

The scenery didn't fail to impress, though, with grand views of snow-capped peaks and rocky faces plummeting down to the deserted valley we were making our way through.

The going was rough, but not impossible. Unfortunately, some of the less fit people on the hike were lagging hours behind me, even after hiring locals to haul their bags on horseback.

That day was the most difficult, and I accidentally ended up so far ahead of everyone that come nightfall, my friends couldn't find me, I could find my friends, and I ended up sharing a tent with another swift hiker and waiting for them to appear on the horizon in the morning.

Appear they did, full of concern and reproaches, and we started out on the last day. My bad luck continued to follow us around. Much of the team lagged far, far behind, and when we finally made it out to the bus, we still had hours to wait for the ones stumbling along in pain somewhere up the mountain.

A few of the guys used this opportunity to stop in at a little store there, buy some liquor, and get obscenely drunk. One charming young fellow ended up making a big scene replete with kicking, crying, and screaming, refusing to get on the bus and yelling so incomprehensibly that my Chinese buddies couldn't catch all of what he was saying either. We were glad to be going home, and even gladder when he passed out.

Yet another unlucky hiking adventure with Tiffany. Stay tuned.

See Ya in La-La-Land: Urumqi

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:26:00 +0000

After Sulaxia, we cancelled our planned trip to Turpan (with no great regret an anyone's part) and hung around the city. We didn't do much, but we did eat.

We had Beijing Duck at the most famous place for it in Urumqi (which isn't saying much, but it was good duck).

I took them to sample Kazakh food, a diet made by and for nomads with little access to vegetables. The staples are meat and dairy products, the fattier the better. I got them to drink salty milk tea and eat a little bit of horse meat, even Christina.

We went to a Chinese-style fast food restaurant, where Alan enjoyed the mirrors and the plethora of options on the menu, which spans the wall near the entrance.

And we had hot pot at a nice little place called "Yak Hot Pot". Yes, there really is yak meat on the menu, but we didn't sample any of it.

After all that eating and wandering around the city, we were more or less recovered from our Sulaxia ordeal, but there was no time to do anything else in Xinjiang as I had to take them to the airport to bid them farewell.

Let's Go For a Stroll: Sulaxia 苏拉夏

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:09:00 +0000

I asked Christina and Alan what they wanted to see here, and at the very top of Alan's list was: the mountains. Getting to a good hiking trail is not as straightforward here as it is in California. Hardly anyone has a private car, the buses don't go anywhere good, and these mountains are truly remote and you can get in real trouble if you don't know your way.

So I exploited the contacts I have painstakingly built up over the past few years here, and organized our own private little expedition. It included: a professional guide and assistant guide, a car and driver to drop us at our starting point and meet us on day three at our exit point, and the security of knowing we were going somewhere good and probably wouldn't get lost and die. All that for about $12.

Unfortunately nobody really told us what we were getting into, but I started getting suspicious about the nature of this hike as my friend Wang Jing's text messages to me continued getting more and more dire. Dress warmly, it'll be cold. Be sure to bring good mats, it'll be cold. Dress really warmly, we'll probably be camping above the snow line the second day. Then: wear pants that can be rolled up and shoes you can change into to wade into water, we'll probably have to cross a lot of rivers.

All of her dire warnings turned out to be understated, and we all hobbled along after our (thankfully) very competent ex-Special Forces guide for three solid days of scrambling across rock faces, hopping from rock to rock by the Sulaxia river, and making extremely harry crossings sometimes by wading in and sometimes by leaping over rapids, pulled and coaxed by our strong, tall, heroic leader Lao Mao. (老猫: means "Old Cat". Old is a marker of respect, not age, and Cat because he says he has nine lives. I believe it.)

It was, in a word, relentless. Our first day started with running across loose rock in the dark, and the second day we hit the really challenging parts which a very small number of us were up to the challenge of facing more or less on our own.

There was no trail, there were no flat bits where you could just raise your head and look at what was around you without possibly falling to your death. We just kept climbing, crawling, jumping, slipping, scrambling, kneeling, and cursing.

It was, in another word, fantastic. Those hikes are the kind I live for: where you're simultaneously regretting your existence and stupidly happy to be there. I rarely meet a trail that can wind me, but I could barely walk my own way out of this. Not everyone fared as well as I did though...one member of our team actually did have to be carried out by our guide. Not from injury, but exhaustion.

Poor Alan had another souvenir from a falling-over incident on the part of another hiker, but luckily we all came out with all parts of our body intact and our five senses as intact as they started out as.

Back in Urumqi's Sweet Lovin' Arms

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:59:00 +0000

I landed back in Urumqi from the village feeling disoriented and disgruntled, just a few days before the arrival of Christina and Alan. I had been bugging them for as long as I've been here to come visit, to see this crazy never-never land where my feet have landed before it disappears, or I disappear, or both.

Unfortunately, they came at a time when my feelings about the place were at an all-time low, but I did my best to show them around. They had ten short days here, so we ran hither and thither: to a farm in the suburbs, some locals' homes, shopping around town, fancy dinners with fancy dancing, and of course, the infamous death march along a "classic" Xinjiang backpacking route.

This is my friend Nisagul's family farm in an outlying town called Miquan (米泉). We trekked out for the day for a long lunch and a look at Xinjiang cows.

We were treated to a nice traditional Xinjiang dish: 大盘鸡 or "big plate of chicken". It's basically a whole chicken hacked up (bones, head, claws, everything) and pressure cooked in with potatos, peppers, and some spices. It's then served with thick noodles.

So, just in time for C&A to get over their jetlag, we prepared for another little trip out of town. I thought it was to be a 3-day backpacking trip of the sort I had taken before in these wilds. Through some of my friends, I had organized a trip to the mountains with a professional guide and all I knew was that we were going to be going on a classic route, and it may be very very cold. Little did we know....

And, Oh No, the Post-Toi

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:02:00 +0000

No one told me there were going to be more parties after the pre-parties and the big party, but I sucked it up and went to the mountains with everyone for one last celebration of gluttony.

There was meat, meat, more meat, baijiu, beer, and more baijiu.... I couldn't very well refuse on my last day with most of these people (being a guest among Kazakhs is not something to be taken lightly). Can you find the bottle of liquor in this photograph? It was the last of many bottles that day, and from it I downed the final of many toasts, hoping this one would actually be my last taste of baijiu for a while.

I went home pretty toasty that day and slept off the previous week, thankfully in a mostly empty house as the guests started returning home, one by one.

Sadly, my time for leaving was also coming up as I had a housing crisis to deal with in Urumqi and two guests from the States coming.

So I bid farewell to grandma, baby, and my little semi-idyllic slice of life with the "real" Kazakhs to return to city madness.

The Pre-Toi and the Toi: Chinggil

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:25:00 +0000

The eighteenth, the eighteenth, the eighteenth. It was brought up several times a day, at least once a day someone would ask me: "You're not leaving before the 18th, right? You're staying for the toi, aren't you?"

Yes, I would nod. "Yes, I'm staying."

I didn't, after all, have anything pressing or even alluring in Urumqi, but I was getting a little tired of wearing the same pair of pants and alternating between two t-shirts. But I knew I didn't have a choice in the matter and I was happy to have an excuse to hang around.

The partying began a couple days in advance as relatives from near and far converged upon the house for the pre-pre-party, the pre-party, the inbetween celebrations, the impromptu drinking fests, the endless tea, the dizzying platters of meat....

The tea spreads were out almost 24 hours a day and the women ran to and fro supplying endless amounts of milk tea, butter, candies, and fried bread things to the masses. The house became nearly public as relatives, neighbors, friends, and even one roaming beggar just wandered in and out partaking of whatever was on offer at the moment.

To give you an idea of the size of these bubbling cauldrons of meat, it was not sloppy photography on my part that cut off the sides, it was the fact that there simply was no getting the whole thing in the picture. I was nearly bent over backwards with my camera over my head, and that was the best I could do.

These are all the leftover parts of a sheep that was slaughtered to welcome the guests (a Kazakh tradition) thrown together to make innards soup. Yum. It's one of the things you have to take with a smile, like the butter in your tea and the slippery hunks of mutton fat.

Anyway, the whole Bacchanalian affair was a celebration of excess with nonstop drinking and eating (it was the first time I'd actually seen people get up and drink in the morning to cure their hangovers). A couple of people mentioned that while this made sense in the old days when most people were too poor to eat their fill and relax except on occasions like this, it's perhaps not necessary anymore.

I was grateful when the day of the 18th arrived and the party itself was pretty low-key. We danced, we ate, we drank, and headed home (it was held at a banquet hall) at a pretty reasonable hour where I was forced to drink only a little more before scouting out a place to sleep in a space not previously occupied by unfamiliar bodies.

Finally, I thought to myself, I can start sleeping again and no one will make me drink baijiu.

And Then, Time Stopped: Chinggil

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 06:31:00 +0000

I only had a few days' worth of clothing in my bag and the most basic things I needed for hiking but I didn't really want to go home. What was waiting for me in Urumqi? Noise, pollution, harassment. And in the tiny community BaiXing (百兴) outside the village Chinggil (清河）? Peace and quiet，cows, doing laundry by hand using soap made from sheep fat, babysitting (yes, really), hauling water from the well, swimming in the river, following grandma around and chatting with her. In a word, my version of paradise for a while.
I had wanted to find a Kazakh village to stay in for the summer, a place where I could integrate myself into the family life, speak Kazakh every day, and get out of the harried stress of the city for a while. My efforts failed. The authorities here in Xinjiang don't let foreigners go just anywhere, and they often don't want you to stay in locals' homes. It's a sensitive area with strict rules that are prone to change.

This one just fell into my lap. After coming back from the mountains, I was invited to stay longer. Invited is not quite the word...it was more of a demand. A little boy in the family was to have a toi on the eighteenth, and no one was going to let me on a bus before then.

The local authorities didn't care, either. After a trip to the main police station in town to register me, they made it clear that they didn't care to see my face again and didn't care how long I stayed, as long as I didn't overstay my visa that allows me be in this country. Fine by me.

A toi is a kind of party, a sort of rite of passage. There are several of them in everyone's life, with variations depending on sex. This one was a sundet toi, or circumcision party.

So to kill the time between then and the party, I just did my best to help out around the house. Here, we are making baursaq, little balls of fried dough that are sort of like donuts, only not sweet. And made the old-fashioned way, with plenty of lard.

There were plenty of things that I couldn't help out with, but I made an enthusiastic observer and gave people someone to chat with.

That may not have been an advantage as, due to my fairly low level of Kazakh, they were practically limited to baby-talk, but everyone was pretty good-natured about it.

And so the days flowed on. I was often bored but never unhappy, and though I wished I had brought more than one flimsy little condensed copy of Arabian Nights in Chinese, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

No Time to Lose: Somewhere near Mongolia, Xinjiang

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:11:00 +0000

Classes were supposed to end on July 6, I think. But I was hanging on by my fingernails and well aware that a few more days of classes would do nothing for me except push me closer to the brink, so I waited till I fulfilled the one responsibility I couldn't shrug off (finishing teaching my uni classes) and then rushed in a taxi directly from class to catch a bus up to Northern Xinjiang.

Two days later, as if the end-of-semester frenzy had never existed, my main concern became having too much salty milk tea poured down my throat as we wandered through the mountains that border Outer Mongolia.

My companions were Li Zhuangxuan (my classmate from last post), his friend Meirambek (local Kazakh musician who is now living in Beijing), and Meirambek's childhood friend Janibek. I had stumbled off a sleeper bus around 3:30am on Friday morning, and we got on two motorbikes and sped off into the mountains that afternoon.

We slept under the stars, went hiking, listened to Meirambek play the dombra (traditional two-stringed Kazakh instrument).

One day, we climbed to the top of the highest peak around, and discovered an interesting reminder that these mountains were once populated by Mongolians, not Kazakhs. In the middle of a large field littered with horse bones, was a huge pile of horse skulls.

"This wasn't done by Kazakhs. We don't do this. Must have been done by Mongolians at least a hundred years ago." Both of my local friends agreed no Kazakh would possibly do this.

Later, David's Mongolian friend Meendai explained that Mongolians build these as a way to establish a kind of communication with the heavens. They are considered sacred places and cannot be sullied.

On our way back down the mountain, we ran into a family moving to their summer pasture. In these mountains, most of the Kazakhs still lead a traditional, nomadic life, moving about three times a year. Some families move by tractor, but many still use this more traditional means of transportation.

The wooden frame being carried by the camel in the back is the changiraq, the opening at the top of a yurt used for ventilation and climate control. In the Kazakh language, it is often used a larger metaphor for the home and family.

We spent a few happy days and cold nights in the mountains before heading back to town so that Li Zhuangxuan could prepare to return to Korea. At that time I was also planning to head back to Urumqi pretty quickly.

Head for the Hills: Nan Shan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:20:00 +0000

The Spring semester of 2007 passed in a dizzying rush for me. Hard work is nothing new to me but rarely have I spent so much time with my nose buried in books; there were days when, as my housemates retired to their rooms I was still sitting at the dining room table finishing up preparations for the next day's classes, and when they got up to start their day I was already set up at my post, making harried reviews for classes I was taking or teaching.

I had a busy schedule of full time one-on-one instruction (from good, demanding teachers) in two different languages in two different language families, neither of which has any fundamental similarity with my mother tongue. Then I taught a few hours a week as well. Wondering why no one heard much from me between February and July? Because I was losing my mind.

I did, however, manage to get into the mountains a few times. The first time this year was on a pleasant, one-day hike through some classic Xinjiang mountain scenery. Pine trees, rolling green hills, bubbling streams, and the occasional herder's yurt.

I went with my Korean classmate (on the left), my former student and her boyfriend. This year, there's been nothing sweeter than my moments out of the cities, trudging through the mountains of Xinjiang which seem so far removed from the cities and oases.

Paradise Lost: Taraz, Kazakhstan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 06 May 2007 15:41:00 +0000

Taraz was my favorite place in Kazakhstan, though by the time I got there I was already rushing back to China to make it in time for classes to start up again after the holiday.

I was, again, staying with a Peace Corps volunteer, who introduced me to another PC volunteer (Francesca, in the picture) who took me on a picnic/hike to the mountains the one day I had in town.

Francesca and I boarded a rickety school bus at a ridiculous hour in the morning with a bunch of excited Kazakh teenagers.

The hike was put on by an organization called "Zhambyl Jastari" or, Zhambyl Youth. Zhambyl is the name of the province in Kazakhstan that Taraz is the capital of.

It could definitely be considered a cultural experience, as I had expected a hike through the mountains and a bit of salad and bread for a picnic, and instead we practically built our own restaurant out there.

Someone brought a cauldron, someone started a fire, and all the women set to chopping the vegetables. Half an hour later we had stew, we had salad, we had all the usual picnic fare, fried vegetables. More variety than your average Urumqi restaurant.

Back in town after the hike I enjoyed a last trip to a western-style cafe, a last croissant sandwich before crossing back.

Ah, Kazakhstan. The wonders of west and east, all in one package.

Runnin' from the law...again: Shymkent, Kazakhstan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Fri, 04 May 2007 15:31:00 +0000

Shymkent is another city in Southern Kazakhstan, something of an urban center in the region. By Chinese standards it's pretty small and peaceful, and the complaints that some of the Peace Corps volunteers there had were not even things that crossed my mind. Dirtiness? I thought the streets were sparkling. Rude drivers? The fact that more than one driver stopped to let me cross the street indicates politeness taken to a bizarre extreme. Creepy men? Ha, they've got nothing on what I've seen on this side of the border.

I liked Shymkent, but unfortunately spent most of my time there inside the police station trying to get my registration sorted out. If I earned a nickel (or even a mao) for every hour I have spent waiting in police stations to be registered, I could probably buy myself a lifetime supply of laghman. Anyway. It did all get worked out.

Here Starts Central Asia: Turkestan, Kazakhstan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:14:00 +0000

After Almaty I headed southwest to the small city of Turkestan, much closer to Uzbekistan. The main draw here is the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yassawi, a poet and mystic who greatly influenced the development of Sufism in Central Asia.

Other than the mausoleum, Turkestan was a small Central Asian town with a lively bazaar, and a mix of mostly Uzbek and Kazakh inhabitants.

This is where my tour of the Peace Corps volunteers of Southern Kazakhstan began, as I had been given the contact info for a volunteer living in Turkestan.

He was staying with a local Kazakh family with three rowdy, bratty kids who had great fun talking with me in Kazakh. It was a good intellectual match. I found I could sustain a conversation with them much longer than I could with adults, particularly if the 2-year old was running the show.
At a certain level, kids can really be great language teachers.

24 Hours to Europe: Almaty, Kazakhstan

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:12:00 +0000

Here we are in the heart of Asia, surrounded by deserts and mountains, living in the city farthest from any ocean, yet we can hop on a bus and land in Europe in about 24 hours. Don't believe me? Try making the trip from Urumqi to Almaty.

Say "Kazakhstan" and if it conjures up anything, it will either be images of endless steppe or silly Borat jokes. However, the city of Almaty is a major financial center and has been built up into a wealthy, beautiful, clean, ordered, and distinctly Western city.

Since I started studying Kazakh language, if people have any clue what the language is, the first thing they ask me, "So have you been to Kazakhstan?" Last May holiday, over a year after I started learning Kazakh, I finally got the visa stuck in my passport and braved my way through the harry border crossing. My roommate Logan was with me for a couple days, en route to Kyrgyzstan.

Almaty is a great break from China. Not speaking Russian, it was a difficult city for me to get around, but it offers the perfect respite to weary China-dwellers.

Here Logan and I are enjoying real European-style pastries, something both of us were agog over after learning to ignore the bizarre Chinese renditions of western sweets. Sometimes they look tempting, sometimes they look like alien life forms, but they are never good. (See last year's birthday cake, exhibit A. Picture complements of Fausto.)

We could relish the simple pleasure of something that looks the way it's supposed to look, smells the way it's supposed to smell, and tastes the way it's supposed to taste too.

As good as the selections were, we did not spend most of our time in Almaty eating. For the most part we were running around trying to accomplish all of our traveling errands. We were lucky to have the company and guiding of Saule, a friend who lives in Almaty. She also tried to take us to some of Almaty's sights, such as a vista from a mountain just outside of town, but, well.... You can see the view we had that day.

Almaty is not just European in look and feel, it's European in prices as well. So, because of limited time and budget and a desire to speak Kazakh, not learn Russian, I headed south pretty quickly.

Easter Brunch: Urumqi

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 11:18:00 +0000

Your own traditions and holidays often become more important than they would otherwise be when living abroad. Since my age hit double digits, I haven't cared much one way or another about Easter, but this year Logan and I threw ourselves into hosting an Easter brunch and egg-painting party.

We cooked up a huge batch of pancakes and a couple versions of scrambled eggs, along with some local breakfast staples like yogurt, fruit, and nan.
Our expat friends were happy for a leisurely American-style brunch, and our local friends seemed happy about everything except the pancakes. Once the eggs came out, everyone became totally absorbed in egg-painting and it made me wonder ... why don't we paint eggs all the time?

A couple of Logan's local friends were forever confused by our morning party, not being familiar with the local tradition, and every time we held a party at our house after that would ask "Do you mean eight in the morning or eight in the evening?" Good thing they asked, at least.

At Home: Urumqi

noreply@blogger.com (tifanjo) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:37:00 +0000

This year I landed in Urumqi on my head, homeless and upside-down. I didn't know whether to face east or west, as I had applied for a job in D.C. but was happily in sticky stuff up to my knees in Xinjiang and not totally willing to extricate myself.

After it became clear I wasn't getting the job (turned down in favor of a candidate not living halfway across the world, who had half the qualifications I do), I found an apartment with Logan and Nurmira.

Logan is an American graduate student here for a year on a Boren Fellowship. Nurmira is an undergrad from Kyrgyzstan majoring in Chinese, originally planning to stay here for a year then return to her country to complete her degree.

We made a happy household. The language of the house was Chinese, as that was the most fluent common language between the three of us. When Logan and I were alone we generally spoke in English, but if Nurmira was around we'd switch to Chinese to include her. At a few points, Logan and I forgot which language was which and would start conversations in Chinese with each other. Sometimes I couldn't figure out which language I should speak so just didn't say anything at all.

There was the added confusion that Nurmira speaks some English and I speak some Kazakh (which is mutually intelligible with Kyrgyz), but mostly we just stuck to Chinese.

We were on a main street, just down the way from Xinjiang University and about a 20 minute walk from the Art College. We had the blessings and the curses of living on a large thoroughfare: convenience and noise. All of us enjoyed the views, at least. Occasionally on quiet mornings, the sound of the call to prayer would float over from the mosque just across the street from us but it was mostly drowned out by the din of the city. It is illegal for mullahs to amplify the call in China.