The Solution

So I solved America’s obesity problem yesterday. No big deal. Well, I guess it was maybe really China who solved it, but that's beside the point. Here’s the secret: fill every playground with exercise equipment in disguise. To add a note of subtlety, throw in a slide or two here and there to give it a semblance of an actual playground.

Exhibit A: The Elliptical

Exhibit B: The Leg-press

Exhibit C: The Rowing Machine (and one of those swivel machines in the background)

 

Aren't they just FUN and COLORFUL?! I’m serious though, I have seen maybe 4 or 5 playgrounds so far, and they all have the same equipment. The pictures I put up represent just a small sampling of the available equipment—there are maybe 10 or 15 different machines to choose from on each playground. Lewis was hopping from machine to machine like it was nobody's business, so I guess little kids really do enjoy it?

 It may seem pretty funny, but the reality is that their obesity rate is roughly a quarter of the United States’. So there you go

As a side note, here is the birthday card that Lewis gave to me :

Pretty much the cutest thing ever. He goes to a drawing class a few times a week, so he was totally showing off his mad 画画skills.

Earthquake Benefit Concert

So I need to backtrack a couple of days because I have been really busy/tired again and lazy about posting. On Thursday after work, I got ready to go to this earthquake benefit concert with several of my coworkers. Beforehand, we went to a restaurant near the concert venue, and it was the first time since I’ve been here that I have been able to identify a dish that we ate!

I am at least somewhat convinced that the dish on the left is sweet and sour chicken! (I was beginning to wonder if they actually had sweet and sour chicken in China or if it was only part of the westernized Chinese food repertoire)

Now here’s an interesting illusion. At the restaurant, every place setting has a shrink-wrapped set of plates and bowls etc. Now, you might think to yourself “Hey, these plates and bowls aren’t just sterile, they are brand new!” Think again. I mean, I’m sure they are sterile, but they have very clearly been more than gently used (even the chopsticks). I’m just curious where they are hiding this shrink-wrapping machine in the backroom.

As both a frequent passenger and pedestrian, I’ve been wondering about something every since I got to China, and I have finally narrowed down my conclusions to these: either there are no such things as traffic laws in China, or they are just wholly ignored by all parties involved. I mean we have our “right turns on red” law in the U.S. I guess, but I have observed an unwritten “Do whatever you want at red if nobody’s coming, or even if they are” law here. Pedestrians are more daring than I have ever seen—walking directly into fast moving traffic, and stopping in the middle of the road while cars whiz by on both sides—and the cars don’t pay them too much heed either.

What does oncoming traffic really mean anyway?

So on the way to the concert I was in the car with a guy who only speaks Chinese. Since our conversations were extremely limited, we decided instead to bond over a well-balanced blend of Jay-Z, Fiddy-Cent, Eminem, and Wyclef. You know, the good stuff.  He was eager to learn the Crip walk (apparently known as the C-walk in China), so I gave him a pre-concert tutorial.

 Ok, so the concert. Here’s a brief recap of some of the performances:

 This guy's name was Zheng Jun, and I have a feeling he’s a pretty big deal among Chinese teeny boppers, because everybody seemed to know the words. He did an all-Chinese rendition of Coldplay’s “Yellow”!

This next guy  (I forget his mingzi) seemed the most popular, because the audience desperately called for an encore at the end of his performance. Again, practically everyone knew all the words.

 

This woman—apparently not so popular. She made several desperate attempts to coax the audience into singing along, but was met with no response. Kinda awkward. She also made an attempt at starting an audience clap-along. It failed—again, awkward.

 

Now if all that wasn’t already enough, this next guy provided us with a taste of Chinese gangsta rap/reggae flava….

Some Pictures and other stuff

So yesterday I met up for dinner with someone who is also going to Georgetown next year. We became acquainted through the  Georgetown 2012 facebook group, and realized that we might cross paths in China! He lives in Nanjing, but happens to be in Beijing during this week while he's getting his visa for the fall. We went to a restaurant called 便宜坊（pianyi fang), and I had my first real Peking duck!

(Near downtown Beijing in the Chaoyang district, close to the restaurant)

Work is a little bit slow at the moment, because it is an entertainment-based company, and since the Sichuan earthquake most entertainment has slowed or been completely cut off. At the end of the day my supervisors invited me to go to a Chinese rock concert tomorrow night that will raise funds for the earthquake relief. 

Anyway, I'll have more pictures after the concert tomorrow, and a lot more after this weekend, as I will be doing some major sightseeing. For now, I figured I would at least post a few pictures of where I am staying:

The apartment complex from the outside

The living room / TV room

The Kitchen

.

My room (which needs some tidying)

So the family has a Wii and many games to go with it. For some reason, however, Lewis only plays this one mini-game in "Wii Play", over and over (the tank game, for anyone who has it). Now, I thought at first, 'hey I own this game too and have played it a fair bit, I should probably go easy on him'. Little did I know that it was pretty much the only game he has played in the last two months. So even when I started trying my absolute hardest, he beat me with a score of 70-odd to 10...

WATCH OUT! Things are getting intense!

(seriously, this kid has ridiculous amounts of energy, its awesome)

First Day of Work!

(river that I cross when I walk to my internship)

Today was my first day at my internship. I am working for a company called the “China Film Group Corporation” which is the leading film production company in China, according to Google. They also do some production for TV and are currently working on coverage of the earthquake crisis in the Sichuan province, as well as some pre-Olympics coverage. Today, my main task was research, and I spent a few hours perusing the New York Times and other American newspapers for information regarding the earthquake. I have also been polishing up several different letters that are being sent out to thousands of the company’s friends to encourage them to make donations to the earthquake cause. Additionally, the company had recently conducted a series of interviews with the Australian men’s Olympic swim team. Because of the heavy Australian accents, the people working here had difficulty transcribing the dialogue to translate for subtitles, so I helped out by listening to the interviews and transcribing them to English. (Though, to be honest it was a bit of a challenge even for me!).

 

I wasn’t aware beforehand, but at 2:28pm, the entire country stopped for 3 minutes of mourning for the victims of the earthquake (a staggering 50,000 people at current estimations). I have generally been accustomed to observing “moments of silence” in remembrance of those who have died, but this particular moment was quite the opposite. Everyone at work stood up at once and suddenly there was a deafening wailing noise coming from the outside. All traffic stopped, and millions of car horns and air raid sirens around the country blared for 3 minutes straight. The TV kept flashing clips of people crying over lost family members, and clips of military troops lining up in Tiananmen Square.  It was extremely eerie and intense.

 

I had a meeting with my boss today, and he was so cool! On the side of his regular work, he has been working for a number of years on an exhibition of photos relating to Jewish presence in the Harbin and Shanghai regions of China in the last century (of which I had no prior knowledge). During the early 20^th century, thousands of Jewish people fled Russia to the northernmost province of China called Harbin. Later on during World War II, at a time when the entire civilized world closed its doors on the Jews seeking refuge, Shanghai welcomed in 30,000 Jews without even requiring visas. At the time, Shanghai was occupied by Japan, and so the Chinese were under persecution. The Jewish and Chinese people formed a kinship over this commonality of persecution, and their good relations have carried over to present day. The exhibition consists of a compilation of 500 photos that he selected from over 10,000 photos, and it has been endorsed by the United Nations (In the past he met several times with Kofi Annan to negotiate to make the exhibition a reality). It is going to premiere in Los Angeles this June, and then it will travel to D.C., Boston (hosted by Harvard), New York (Hosted by Yeshiva University), and to several other U.S. cities.

 

This company does a lot to garner cultural exchange between the entertainment industries of different countries. My boss has attended the last few Academy Awards, and was struck by the fact that there has never been a Chinese broadcast from the red carpet. This past year he has been negotiating with the Chinese government to allow a Chinese crew to be present at the Oscars, and next year will be the first that the Chinese people will receive an all-Mandarin broadcast from the red carpet.

If all that wasn’t cool enough, one of his close friends is Jackie Chan. Badass, huh?

(Sorry this first post took so long--I've been really tired from the time change and just really busy in general...ill try to be more faithful)

I’m finally here in China! It has truly been a whirlwind of an experience right from the get go. The moment I stepped on the Air China flight, I was no longer part of the majority, but rather a 外国人(waiguo ren)，that is, a foreigner. Upon arriving, I had difficulty filling out the arrival card for the immigration checkpoint, having lost both my plane ticket and the address of where I would be staying. I sought out an employee and asked in Chinese: “请您可以帮我一下吗?”(qing nin keyi bang wo yi xia ma?), essentially asking for help. Apparently my simple question had given her the impression that I could in fact speak Chinese, and I was immediately met with a barrage of lightning fast Chinese. Shaking off the deer-in-headlights look from my face, I managed to figure things out in extremely broken Mandarin. Finally meeting up with my host mother, Helen, I took my first steps out into big bad Beijing. After a quick meal at a vegetarian restaurant we returned to their beautiful apartment and I fell fast asleep.

 

Anyway, today was quite an experience. I woke up around 4:45 because I couldn’t sleep from the time difference. Helen had told me that at some point today we would be attending a Chinese wedding, and I was really excited. I threw on some clothes and flip flops, and then the four of us (Helen, her husband Leo, her son Louis, and I) went out to Cantonese-style breakfast. It was by far the most elaborate breakfast I have ever eaten—mango and papaya porridge, shrimp dumplings, vegetable dumplings(教子),  cream puffs, custards, tropical fruits that I had never seen, among various other dishes I couldn’t describe—the table was covered. Walking out the door of the restaurant, I was informed that we would be going directly to the wedding from breakfast—I guess something must have gotten lost in translation, otherwise I probably would have thought to wear more than cargo shorts, a polo, and flip flops…(thankfully, as it turns out, Chinese weddings typically require much less formal attire, and my choice of clothing didn’t draw too much attention. However, the fact that I was the only non-Chinese person present did attract an intrigued stare from just about every person at the wedding)

 

Now, the last time I was at a wedding, I was young enough that I can hardly recall any specific details. Nonetheless, I can assure you, today’s wedding was COMPLETELY different than any I, and perhaps you may have been to. When I say different, I mean: fog machines, people dressed as angels walking around with candles, bubble machines, and an aisle lined with contraptions that started shooting sparks in the air when the bride and groom began walking towards the front. (I really wish I hadn’t forgotten my camera at home, it was quite a spectacle). Incessant jokes made by the MC, coupled with several impromptu singing performances from toddlers who stole his microphone filled the event with laughter and light-heartedness. After the bride and groom exchanged rings, and then kissed for as long as the audience continued clapping, they started to make their way around the room, stopping at each table of people.  As per tradition, they took a shot of rice wine with every guest present (that is, hundreds). A little confused as to how they were able to walk in a straight line after all the wine, I later found out that usually they simply take shots of water and pretend that it’s actually wine!  Though certainly not the type of wedding I’m accustomed to, I found it to be an exciting way to celebrate the union of two people.

 

Following the wedding, Helen brought us to her parents’ house because she had forgotten her set of keys for the apartment and had to wait for Leo to bring them. We started to walk through the gates into the neighborhood where her parents live, but I was suddenly stopped and told that I wasn’t allowed in under any circumstances. The neighborhood is guarded by military personnel, and for some reason foreigners are strictly forbidden to enter. Helen did what she could to reason with the guard, but eventually she went inside with Louis to drop him off with her parents, and then she and I went and sat in a teahouse while we waited. I found the whole situation far more intriguing than offensive. I had never been the subject of any kind of inhibiting racial discrimination in my life, and this gave me a real perspective about how people within even our own country face this in varying degrees on a daily basis.

 

Later on, we went with another family to go walk through the botanical gardens and throw around a Frisbee. It was incredibly beautiful, but I still didn’t have my camera with me, so I’ll talk about it later on when I have pictures to go with it.

 

Tomorrow is my fist day at my internship, and I will be working at a Chinese film production company that is called the “China Film Group Corporation”, so I will have more to talk about after that. Thanks for reading all of that if you did! I promise my posts won’t be all this long., and they will also feature more pictures. Goodnight!

 (P.S. if the formatting of my posts is kinda screwed up i'm sorry, for some reason I can only edit my blog and not actually see it, so i have no idea what it actually looks like)