Injury

I sprained my ankle last weekend playing soccer and was reminded of how something that is a small problem in your home country can be a much bigger problem when you are abroad. For one thing, you can't just go out and buy ice - corner stores don't stock it and I was not about to make a trip to the big foreign-run supermarket in my condition. Because I had just moved in the only thing in my freezer was a box of mooncake, so I ended up holding frozen mooncakes against my ankle to keep the swelling down. Friends graciously contributed medicine and a pressure bandage, which helped a lot. Every Chinese person I met told me I needed something called yunnan bai yao to get the circulation going and so I ended up applying some dark, strong smelling Chinese medicine that made my foot tingle.

The bus has a regular announcement, roughly translated: "Caring for elderly and weaker ones is a traditional virtue of Chinese people. If there are old, weak, lame, pregnant, or child-carrying passengers please let them sit." So by the time I hobble onto the bus usually someone has cleared their seat for me. When I went to my regular Chinese TCM place for a massage yesterday, they strongly suggested I 'bao yao'. I had no idea what that meant so I agreed just to find out and it was a poultice. They mixed some brown powder (also very smelly) with water and bound the stuff in a cloth against my ankle, then told me to leave it on until the following day. The swelling and pain are nearly gone and I am back to my normal routine though might not be able to play for a couple of weeks.

Storms

Even last year I noticed that storms seem more violent here, but the last two days have been on a whole new level - lightning so frequent it's like having a strobe light in your room for hours and the constant thunder over your head. It was storming two nights in a row and late into the morning today. I've never been through anything like it, and it knocked out the elevator in our building this morning. Thankfully the elevator service was restored tonight and the weather has calmed down to drizzles, but the news reports coming in about storm and lightning damage are pretty alarming.

House Hunting

Apartment hunting here is mainly legwork; there are many real estate offices with ads in the windows and if you walk in they will start showing you around immediately. There are good online listings as well. People often see many, many places before they find an acceptable one though.

Lived-in apartments, both high and low end, are often a horror of grime since people here don't seem to clean out houses when they move out. You need to learn to see past the initial dirt to the place's potential. Newer places, on the other hand, can be really attractive and come with a landlord eager to rent and willing to buy whatever furniture and appliances you want, but also are full of strong new-house chemical smells, which are a scary prospect here. Newer, high-end places also often have multiple cameras at the entrances and hallways, hawk-like guards who think nothing of interrogating or barring your guests, and pass cards to access the front gate and the floor of your building in your elevator. It was tough to find a place that was nice enough to live in but wasn't set up like a prison.

The apartment I ended up taking was lived in and needed lots of work - there was dried food on the walls which no one had wiped off which left greasy marks on the paint. (I ended up hiring a cleaning service, then cleaning again with friends' help before getting the place repainted for a few hundred yuan out of my own pocket.) To turn on the light in the kitchen you not only flick the switch, but you open and close a cupboard door. The kitchen has no hot water - hadn't thought to check, but the hot water heater outlet only goes to the bathroom. There was writing on the walls, and the door of the shoe cabinet was kicked in. ("What's the problem? You can still use it!" said the agent when I pointed it out.) Despite the quirks I love the apartment - it's very well ventilated, which is a huge concern in a place this humid, and has light on three sides and air conditioners in all the rooms.

Besides being one of those intense, sink or swim Mandarin learning experiences that all expats have, I learned tons about the city. Some of the the more memorable house hunting episodes:

-Going into an enormous complex above a high end shopping mall with high expectations, and seeing many roaches skittering across the floor
-Seeing lofts decorated in a very Chinese style.
-Going to a large, slick real estate office where the uniformed agents insisted on speaking to me in terrible English and told me the building I was interested in was far out of my budget.
-Going around the corner to a tiny office where a guy who spoke mostly his own dialect (not local) chatted about his family and flipped through a folder to find places for me, managing to find something to show me in that same building.
-Realizing that this guy lives in the little eight by five foot space behind his desk, and feeling a little self conscious about all my requirements
-Meeting a landlord at one place, and having the agent invite me to take a look at the bathroom, then realizing the landlord is availing himself of the facilities
-One agent's utter disbelief that I wasn't interested in one of the prisons
-The long suffering agent I did use, who was one of the first ones I contacted and who showed me the place I finally took, negotiating rent and payment terms as well as helping me with a bunch of extra stuff and finally waiving his agent's fee for me (agent fee is usually half a month's rent, give or take)

An Eye on China

Direct translation of the title of this amazing expat blog with great photography that explores life in China. Currently there is a series of vignettes about the life of several Beijing locals and how their lives have been affected by the Games. (The blog's posts earlier this year contain some of the most direct pictures I've seen of earthquake aftermath.) Tout en francais, and worth it for the photos even if you don't understand French.

BTV

Jet-lag induced early morning TV:

The Beijing TV station showing the weather forecasts at each Olympic venue.
Chinese gold medal triumphs replayed many times. (They don't care much about the other medals - the medal stadings on Chinese TV are all listed by gold and you would never know that the US has, at the moment, a ten medal lead over China.)
Moving stories of athlete's lives and interviews with their families from whom they've lived apart for years in many cases.
A feature on the design of Olympic broadcasters' clothes.
Security guards saying 'Welcome' in multiple languages.
A moving music video of Olympic tears, rage, and disappointments led by Liu Xiang's heartbreaking withdrawal from the hurdling event
Another moving music video about 'mama yundongyuan' - Olympic athletes who are also mothers performing their events and a few of the Chinese athletes with their children. (The age of each mother is shown.)

Since I've been back, the 'Beijing welcomes you' song is being played even more than the Happy New Year songs during Spring Festival - and on the airport shuttle, people were singing along.

Luodai Ancient Town

The ancient street area of Luodai is a very neat place to hang out though it is quite touristy. There are several stores where you can play dress up in almost any kind of clothes.



What these guys are acting out, I can't even imagine.



A woman stretching out silkworm cocoons:



There are water channels along either side of the street, very handy for rinsing one's feet.



Since it is the evening, most of the people on the street are locals.



We didn't have time to visit all the old buildings, but this is the Guangdong Meeting Hall. These chairs are a distinct style. We ran into a Hakka girl who was guiding us around for free and she said they keep this kind of chair for guests.



There is a definite sense of distinct identity for the Hakka people in Luodai - our guide explained that Hakka (客家, 'guest people')just means people with no homeland of their own. They speak the Hakka language (客家话, though our guide called it Cantonese) and also Sichuanese.

The Wall at Luodai

We went out to Luodai, a nearby town whose residents are 90% Hakka. One of the main attractions there is a replica of the Great Wall. You can see the grey camo over the red bricks, which are made locally. This wall is about eight years old but looks a lot like the original.

We tried to save money by busing it (a total of 5 kuai for the three buses we needed to take) but it took over two hours to get there and so we were climbing the wall in the hottest part of the day. There ain't much shade there and the sun was killing us - near the top I was taking twenty steps, then lying down, then taking twenty more. They did have periodic shady spots where you could buy water and incense for the temple at the top.



Gate to Jinlong Temple at the top:



The teahouse at the top was breezy and very refreshing after the climb.



Even though it was built strictly as an attraction I enjoyed this wall better than i would have liked the real one. We had close up views of rural life on either side.



We asked at the top for an alternate route and they directed us to the old way down the mountain - a trail through the forest of mostly rock stairs. (I wish we had ascended this way.) There were birds, enormous butterflies, and what sounded like cicadas chirping constantly. We passed some abandoned farm houses and a huge cistern.



Somehow, people used those steps on the side to climb down and get water.