What a night last night. It began at my buddy Richard’s place, where about 30 people of varying nationalities celebrated Thanksgiving. Oddly, I think I was the only American (there might have been one more) out of the whole group. It was more of a “let’s get fucked up and eat turkey” party than it was a real Thanksgiving dinner, but the food was fantastic. Then, when everyone was suitably shithammered, we ended up at one of Beijing’s popular expat bars, The Rickshaw. I was standing there drinking, watching some white guy get his ass kicked at pool by two smoking hot Chinese girls. One of them was wearing a skin-tight black t-shirt which said in white letters LIFE IS FULL OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS. After losing yet another game his partner had to take off so he asked if I’d like to play. Sure, I said. He introduced himself as Jeremy and said he was from England. I responded that I was Lee from America. (That’s the usual way people are introduced here: name, country of origin, and how long you have been in China.)
Jeremy said to me, “Okay, these girls have been kicking my arse and acting like a couple of right cunts about it, so we have to show them who’s boss.” I told him to break, and then he ran the table, getting all the way down to the 8 ball, which he just barely missed. One of the Chinese girls took a shot and missed, after which I sank the 8. Game over, the white devils are victorious.
Of course, pool here is different than pool in the US. When I was in the Navy I used to play a lot of pool, and I got to be pretty good at it, so I know the proper way to play. If I may be vulgar for a moment, what they play here would have been referred to by my Navy shipmates using the charming sobriquet “nigger pool.” (It’s not a racist thing, it’s like people using the word “gay” to describe something dumb, like in South Park—“Dude, that is so gay.” The context threfore wasn’t really racial in nature, it was just “What kinda nigger pool are you playing?” Of course, since the guys who used that phrase the most often were all from the South, draw your own conclusions.)
At any rate, since there are so many Brits here, the rules are sort of a weird hybrid of snooker and pool. Slop is permitted, so if you accidentally sink something you still get to take another turn. The weirdest things are when you scratch. If you sink the cue ball they put the white ball anywhere on the table, rather than at the end where you shot the break ball. (This is a snooker rule, if I remember correctly.) Then, if you shoot and don’t hit a ball, the other player gets to pick it up and put it anywhere they like on the table. Very odd. You don’t have to call your shots, either. You just hit the balls and if something goes in, whoo-wee, you get another turn.
It kinda reminds me of the two-shots rule they have playing pool in Australia. If you shoot the ball and scratch, the other player gets two shots. I remember being in Melbourne, playing pool in a dodgy bar in St. Kilda’s, and we almost got in a fight with some guys over this stupid rule. I was with a couple of other Americans, and we were like, “What kinda fucking dumbass rule is this?” Lesson learned: when in Rome, play pool the way the Romans do.
So, after a while at the Rickshaw drinking and playing pool, Richard and I decided to take off (it was about 2 am by this point) and go somewhere else. We ended up at some bar down in the Russian district. Think of every stupid cliche you’ve seen in the movies about Russian gangsters and the women who hang around with them. Well, it’s all true. Every Russian mafia cliche was present in that club—dark suit and sunglasses, big buff guys in black t-shirts with gold chains and goatees, tall lanky blondes wearing skin-tight clothes and too much makeup. They were playing pop music but it was all in Russian. The signs for the toilets were all in Cyrillic. It was bizarre, but exactly the sort of amazingly cool experience which makes this city so much fun.
Russian food is great, too. Anyone who can take crispy chicken, mix it with lettuce and onions and about a gallon of mayonnaise, and call it a “salad” it okay by me. You take that, smear it on some Russian black bread, and man, that’s good eating.
So I got home drunk off my ass at about 4:30. God I love this life. I could have done without the throbbing hangover this morning but, hey, you go to war you come back with scars.
Beijing, preparing to host the 2008 Olympics, has ordered hotels to provide condoms in all bedrooms in a bid to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS after cases of infection soared to 54 percent in the first 10 months of this year.
Announcing the move, the official Xinhua news agency made no direct reference to the Games, saying only that all the Chinese capital’s 700 hotels must comply by the end of 2008.
With many thousands of visitors due to crowd into the city for the Olympics, which run from August 8 to August 24, every hotel is likely to be sold out.
I hadn’t heard this but it wouldn’t surprise me. Prostitution is widespread here. It’s completely illegal, of course, but it’s tolerated. The government is more interested in the appearance of order than in actual order itself. So, if allowing a few brothels to operate, or letting bars full of hookers peddle their wares keeps the public happy then it’s one less thing for the government to concern itself with. (There’s that “oddly libertarian” thing again.)
The vast majority of China’s wealth is located in its three or four big cities. The rest of the country, roughly a billion people, are dirt poor peasants. So girls come in from the countryside to act as prostitutes, knowing they can make enough money to support their entire family back home. Because of this AIDS is a growing problem here. When people come for the Olympics they’re going to be partying in bars full of hookers, and the last thing the Chinese government wants in the western media are stories of how people came here for the games and went home with a nice viral souvenir. If this happens the Chinese government can say, “Hey, we put a condom in every hotel room. If Hans from Deutschland forgot to wrap his braunschweiger beforehand it is not our responsibility.”
Thus it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Olympic committee did something like this. Actually I think it’s quite a good idea, and should be mandatory for all hotels at all times. You get drunk, you bring some chick back to your hotel, and oops, you forgot to pack your rubbers before you left, so you bang her anyway. Then, two days later, your dick rots off and falls in the toilet while you’re taking a shit. If the hotel had a condom in the bathroom along with the soaps and shampoos, and you didn’t have one of your own, wouldn’t you use it? I know I sure as hell would.
Interestingly, the other night the film “Must Love Dogs” was on HBO here, and I watched it while I ate dinner. There’s a whole scene where the two main characters drive all over town because they want to fuck and neither of them had a condom. How responsible of them. Of course, neither of them had been drinking 50¢ beers in a bar full of Mongolian hookers for the previous eight hours, an activity which may tend to impair one’s sense of judgment.
There ain’t no pussy worth dying over. Killing over, maybe, but not dying over.
One of the things that has been hardest about learning Chinese is the phonetic sounds the language requires which are often halfway between two sounds that we make in English. For example, my apartment is located close to a well-known bridge in Beijing, the San Yuan Bridge. The Chinese word for bridge is “chow” (phonetic spelling), and when taxi drivers say it they say it quickly and all in one word, like “sanyuanchow.”
When they do this the “n” in San is often only pronounced slightly. Then there’s Yuan. If you say it slowly and enunciate it correctly it’s “yoo-an.” However, when the locals speak it quickly it sounds different, closer to the Spanish name “Juan” than anything else. So, in order to pronounce this correctly so that taxi drivers can understand it, you have to imagine a word that’s exactly half way between “yoo-an” and “Juan,” then say it quickly with the “semi-silent n” version of San before it and the word “chow” after it.
Seriously, try it right now. It’s fucking damn near impossible. It took me a hell of a lot of practice to get to where I could say it, and even then I don’t get it right half the time and have to repeat it a few times before I’m understood. I’ll say it my way, and the cabbie will respond “sahwonchow?” Then I’ll say nod and say yes, indicating that he correctly understood my poor Chinese.
Update: Here’s one other example I just thought of. One of the phonetic sounds in Chinese which is particularly difficult to pronounce correctly is represented in pinyin by the letters “zh.” Most people reading this would pronounce it the way the “zh” is pronounced in “Dr. Zhivago.” That’s partially correct. But it’s closer to a “juh” sound, like in “justice.” So try to say a sound that’s halfway between “zhuh” and “juh” and you’ll have it.
Often times if you say either “zhuh” or “juh” in the word the Chinese can figure out what you mean. But to say it accurately is quite difficult.
More than a few people have made only half-joking comments about how they wish they could find a job over here. There are a number of employment websites dedicated to getting westerners to fill jobs in China. Here’s just one, NewChinaCareer.
The beers are on me.
Oh, and one other thing. Often times you can make a HUGE career jump by coming here. If you’re a college graduate stuck in an entry-level job at some company you can come here and move right into middle management. But there are pitfalls to watch out for. If any of you get to a point where you’re seriously considering this let me know and i’ll fill you in.
I have to admit that for the past couple of days I’ve really been thinking about possibly going to North Korea for a short trip. Since we have no diplomatic ties with Lil’ Kim’s regime you can’t get an entry visa within the United States. There is, however, a North Korean embassy here in Beijing, and one can be obtained there. Of course, just like most things in this part of the world, the best way to do it is to hire someone to do it for you, and there are companies here which can arrange tour packages and handle the visas.
You’re followed by a minder who tells you what you are and are not permitted to see, who you are and are not permitted to talk to, what you are and are not permitted to ask, and so on. Regardless, I can honestly say that if I could visit anywhere on the planet right now it would be Pyongyang. North Korea is the last true Stalinist dictatorship on earth, and I think it would be a fascinating experience to see that firsthand, to see the Kims worshipped like gods. Eventually, like China and Cuba and Vietnam and the USSR, the totalitarian dictatorships will give way to some form of “friendly” communism. To me, that’s boring. I want to go when it’s not friendly, when doing so would be something significant. Going to the USSR during the height of the Cold War would have been significant. Going to Russia today is about as edgy as going to Hawaii.
Honestly, I’d be really surprised if in 2008 I didn’t take a trip to visit Pyongyang. What an adventure that would be.
And you know damn well I’d have Team America on my iPod.
Oh, and for those of you who have been asking for more pictures and stuff, I was going to take my MiniDV camera down to The Place and shoot some video. The it dawned on me, I bet someone’s put it on YouTube. Sure enough, there’s a ton of video already online. Here’s one shot by some foreign tourist. (I’m trying to guess the language, perhaps Portuguese?)
Click on the link and you can see other videos shot by other people. Suffice it to say that video of the giant screen there, with the swimming sharks, does not to it justice. You have to stand underneath this thing looking up to really appreciate it.
Oh, the doorway that you see right at the beginning of the video is the doorway you walk in to get to the restaurant area. You go in there, then down the escalator, and turn left. Just in case, you know, you find yourself in Beijing and want to eat at Ganges.
Something momentous happened the other day and I forgot to blog about it. The night I went and ate Indian food at Beijing’s most opulent shopping mall, The Place, I saw my first fat Chinese person. In a month here I have, I shit you not, seen one fat person. Even the westerners who are here are thin, oddly enough, considering the amount of food everyone eats. Well, of an acceptable body weight by western standards anyway.
The fat Chinese was a woman I saw the night I ate Indian food. She was in the restaurant next door, and I caught a glimpse of her as I was walking out. She’d be considered fat by western standards. Now, I’ve been in China, what, five weeks now? If you count everyone I see in a day in the streets from the taxi on the way out, the people I’ve seen in bars and restaurants, and so on, I bet I’ve seen a million people. And only ONE of them would be fat by our standards.
There’s a young gal who works for me, about 24. By Chinese standards she’s considered fat. By our standards she’d be shapely. She doesn’t have a gut or anything, she’s just sort of thick and stocky, more of an athletic build. But in her eyes she is quite overweight, and talks about how she goes often to the gym to try and slim down. When I told her that she’d be considered quite thin by American standards, and that 2/3 of American women would be thrilled to be as thin as she is, she couldn’t really grasp the idea. She could easily buy clothes at any regular store at any mall in America, not in the “big ladies” section, yet she thinks she’s huge.
This will all change, of course. America leads the world in most things, and we were the first country to have the obesity epidemic. Europe and the UK are following close on our heels, and as China becomes more wealthy people will buy cars instead of bicycles. They’ll walk less. They’ll buy X-Boxes and HDTVs and computers and lead the type of sedentary lifestyle that the west has perfected. And their weight will start go up, just like ours has. Not to mention the growing popularity of McDonalds and KFC, both of which can be found all over the city, especially KFC. (There’s one of each within a 10 minute walk of my apartment.)
A few decades from now, the newest western companies to be opening offices in China are going to be NutriSystem, Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig.
*For those of you who don’t get the reference in the title, it can be found here.
At Sumo Stadium, Homer and Bart are among the spectators. A sumo wrestler sprinkles salt on the ring. Homer eats a soft pretzel.
Homer: Mmm, fifty-dollar pretzel. Hey, what’s Baby Huey doing?
Bart: [reading a folded piece of paper] It says here they throw salt before they wrestle to purify the ring.
Homer: [looks at his pretzel, then walks in the ring to the wrestler] Spare some salt, Tubby?
Wrestler: Tubby? [Japanese, subtitled:] The name “Tubby” is hurtful, as my weight problem is glandular. Are you going to eat that? [takes pretzel from Homer] Yoink!
Homer: Hey, that’s mine!
Always remember, I am the king of obscure pop culture references.
Today I officially became a Beijing resident, which is kind a peculiar coincidence considering it’s Thanksgiving. It was no big deal, I went with a representative of the management company to the police station, and five minutes later I was officially registered as living at this address. Piece of cake.
One funny thing was a restaurant I saw on the way which was called—I swear I’m not making this up—“Seafood and Fungus.” Now, I’m sure that the fungus in this context meant “mushrooms,” but it was still funny as hell. If I ever see it again I’ll take a picture of it with my phone, which I would have done today if we weren’t whizzing past in a car at the time.
Well, since I’m on the other side of the world, my Thanksgiving is almost over. I just got off work at around 7:30. My Thanksgiving feast will consist of watching DVDs, and eating delivery from a French bakery: a couple of baguette sandwiches, a caesar salad, and a diet coke. It’s all good, Thanksgiving was never a big holiday in my house. My mom is Australian, and for most of my childhood we were living in countries other than the US so there was no celebrating the holiday. I have no real emotional attachment to it.
Plus, the project I am working on is due December 31, and we are WAY behind schedule. The senior staff (of whom I am a member) got together and decided that we’ll be working late every night (8 pm minimum) as well as every Saturday until the completion of the project. So I’ve got that to look forward to for the next four weeks.
Overtime here is different than the US. Rather than time and a half you get “overtime in kind” or “overtime in lieu,” which is a fancy way of saying that for every hour of OT you work you get to take an hour off at some point in the future. With the schedule I’ll be working in December I’ll be earning about three days vacation per week, so December will allow me to take 12 days off at some future date. Not a bad deal, really. It’s not like I have family here or had a big Christmas planned.
It’s one of the advantages to being a maverick capitalist whore who doesn’t mind being alone.
Saturday night, though, I am still getting together with friends for a turkey feast. I’m just going to have to have them keep a plate warm for me until I get off work. I’m sure I’ll go out and get shitfaced somewhere afterwards, which will more than make up for the inconvenience.
Today I had my tour of two of Beijing’s western medical facilities. The first was the United Family Hospital and Clinic. Their website is here, so take a look through it and see for yourself. I was met by the Marketing Operations Manager (note the word “market") who gave me a guided tour of the entire facility. A few brief points:
This hospital was as professional-looking as just about any US hospital I have ever been in.
All the rooms are private. They have regular rooms, which are nicer than most US hospital rooms, and they have VIP rooms, which were nicer than the hotel room I stayed in for the two weeks before I found my apartment.
All the rooms had en suite bathrooms, and the couches all converted to beds in case family members wished to stay in the room with the patient.
They are a full-service hospital. They have a neonatal intensive care unit, MRI scanners, anything you could ever need.
They have a full pharmacy. I had brought along the medications that I take to treat my OCD. I spoke to their head pharmacist, who looked at the bottles and stated that they had every one of these drugs. Some of the dosages the pills came in were different than the US, but getting the correct dosage wasn’t a problem, I’d just have to take two or four pills instead of one.
I saw one of their maternity rooms. Everything, from labor through to the birth and follow-up care, is done in this room. Right down the hall is a surgical room in case a c-section is necessary.
Now, allow me to introduce a couple of the doctors. First there’s Dr. Chickering.
Dr. Chickering is from the United States of America. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati, and his Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. He is dual board-certified in Emergency Medicine and Family Practice. Before coming to Beijing, Dr. Chickering worked in the Emergency Department at the Richmond VAMC where he was Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia. In addition to the United States, he has worked for prolonged periods in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, French Cameroun, and Korea. Dr. Chickering speaks English, French, and Spanish.
Then there’s Dr. Springer, who I was briefly introduced to.
Dr. Springer is from the United States of America. He received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts, United States and his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, United States in 1982. Dr. Springer completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of Chicago where he was Chief Resident in Emergency Medicine in 1986. He also completed specialty training in Toxicology and Hyperbaric Medicine. Dr. Springer has taught Emergency Medicine in level one trauma centers in Chicago and California and was an Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Springer also has extensive international experience. He has worked in Nepal as a partner in an internationally renowned clinic supplying medical care to expatriates, and in Beijing as Chief Medical Officer at an international clinic. Dr. Springer has been involved in disaster preparedness and emergency readiness aid programs in Asia. He has also been a flight physician on two helicopter emergency services. He has a significant interest in wilderness medical care and has been an expedition physician in a number of remote sites. He ran a high altitude clinic near the base of Mt. Everest and another near Annapurna. He has published numerous papers on Emergency Medicine related topics. Dr. Springer speaks English and conversational French and German.
In other words, this isn’t some dump of a hospital. I came away from there fully confident that they could handle any issue which may arise. One interesting tidbit: the maternity wards have been packed this year. Apparently in Chinese folklore this is the Year of the Golden Pig, which is a lucky year to have babies. Hospitals all over the country are swamped with expecting mothers, and the western hospitals are no exception. Not only are foreigners having babies there, but the ever more affluent Chinese are choosing western medical hospitals as well.
Strange, that in a country with “free” medical care like China people would choose to pay, isn’t it?
The next facility I went to was the International SOS clinic. You can read about their Beijing operation here. I have a particular affinity for this company because they saved my father’s life twice. In 1992, when he had a heart attack in Siberia in the middle of winter, they sent an air ambulance to pick him up and take him to Helsinki, Finland, the closest country with a major cardiac care unit. (He ended up having a quadruple bypass there.) At any rate I was shown around their facility by the marketing director. (There’s that pesky word “market” again.) They have a fully stocked pharmacy, featuring a wide range of western over-the-counter medicines, stuff like Immodium and Metamucil and Tylenol. This facility is not on my company’s insurance plan, so I would have to buy one of their plans myself. Before I tell you the price, allow me to quote some of their services.
With China’s growing and diversifying economy, our clinics and emergency services are also accessible to Chinese nationals. Our services will expand and continue to meet the growing demands of our members.
We help corporations analyze the cost of their medical care in China, and then work with them to develop solutions that lead to greater operational efficiencies.
At our clinics we offer standard family practice services, emergency medical services and a range of clinical services through a network of providers that is unparalleled in China today.
Each alarm center provides 24-hour hotline services to all our members when they are in China. Any problem, from lost luggage to a serious medical condition, can be reported to the alarm center, where multilingual coordinators and doctors are on duty to respond to all types of emergencies.
We have developed a network of hospitals, airlines and local authorities so that we can deliver a fast and efficient response. Through this network we support the medical staff, equipment and facilities that we provide to our clients at remote sites.
We have an exclusive agreement with the Ground and Air Force Divisions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which gives us access to:
military aircraft enabling medical teams to reach areas in China which are out of bounds to civilian aircraft
military aircraft for medical transport: fixed-wing, helicopter and challenger jets under internationally supervised maintenance
military hospitals, many located in remote regions and often better equipped and staffed than civilian facilities.
Our alarm centers can ship medications to remote locations, provide telephone advice, and guarantee medical expenses anywhere in the country where acceptable medical resources are available.
I walked through their call center. Sitting at terminals were men and women of every conceivable age and race, speaking every language you can imagine. They have these call centers all over the world, and they are all linked by satellite in realtime. The marketing director told me an example of a Malaysian client who was arrested in the Philippines after getting into a bar brawl with some townies. He had no idea how to speak the language, but he had the number to SOS’s London call center in his phone. He called, and was put through to a Malay speaker. He had just gotten the basic details of his legal predicament out when the call dropped. The London office contacted their office in Manila, who contacted the police, and located the client. Within two hours they had obtained legal counsel for him, and shortly thereafter he was released from jail.
When was the last time your insurance company did that? Now, the cost. Their program named the “Individual Resident Abroad Program” costs $430 a year. A year. By way of comparison, I am currently paying $263 a month for health insurance in the US, and it’s, shall we say, “less than stellar.”
There are a number of these types of western hospital and clinics and Beijing, and the insurance provided by my company is accepted by most of them on a direct-pay basis—I show the card and get treated for free, much like in the US. If I go to a Chinese hospital, or to one of the other clinics, I have to pay out of pocket but I get reimbursed. Even so, I think that for $430 I’d be a fool not to hedge my bets by signing up for one of those International SOS plans.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the profit motive provides the highest level of healthcare imaginable, and illustrates with amazing clarity my opposition to government-run healthcare.
So tomorrow the leasing agent who found me my apartment is taking me on a tour of the western hospitals. They’re not really a realtor in the sense that we understand them in America. Basically my company hires the management company to handle the housing and residency issues for their employees. The management company then finds available apartments and shows them to the employees, in this case me. When I find one I like it is actually the management company who signs the lease with the landlord, not me. My company gives me a generous stipend for housing, which is paid every month to the management company who are technically the renters of the apartment. Any costs for the apartment which are over and above the stipend amount are deducted from my salary and paid to the management company. To put it in simple terms, I’m paying someone to rent an apartment for me, handle all the paperwork, and all I do is live in it. The reason they do this is the labyrinthine bureaucracy in this country when it comes to property law, especially where it concerns foreigners. The added benefit is that since the money is paid directly from my employer to the management company, it’s not “deducted” from my check, it’s just paid to them instead of me, so I don’t get taxed on it.
Let’s say I was making $5,000 a month and my portion of my housing expenses was $500 a month. That $500 would never be paid to me, it would go directly to the management company, so I only get taxed on $4,500. It’s like getting a 100% deduction of your housing expenses on your income.
So, anyway, I asked to see what the hospitals were like. Everyone I know who has been to them has had nothing but wonderful things to say about them, probably because they’re private and for-profit, rather than some government run utopian “free” hospital. What I’m curious about is the access to the medications I take to control my OCD. When I came over here I brought a three month supply with me, so I’ve got plenty of meds to stop me going apeshit, but I want to see if I can get them here in China. If not I’ll have to buy them in the US and get them shipped over here, which is a HUGE pain in the ass because China has serious rules about importing prescription medication. I’d have to get an import license from the Bureau of Health and Sanitation or some damn thing, a real nightmare, so you can see why I want to get the ball rolling on this now rather than when I have a week of medications left.
Then on Thursday morning the same management company is picking me up in the morning to take me to the police to file my official residency paperwork, the final step in making me an official resident of Beijing.
As you know the Olympic Games will be here in Beijing in August of next year. Olympic fever is beginning to grip the city. Everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE, are the official mascots of the games.
I mean, come on. These things make the Teletubbies look like Chuck Norris. The Chinese (indeed, pretty much all Asian counties) love these sort of characters. Think of Pokemon or Hello Kitty. There was a guy on the street today selling little hand-painted lanterns made out of gourds with these characters on them. I actually thought they were kind of neat. If I see him on the street again I might ask how much a set is, it couldn’t possibly be more than a few dollars. (I tell you one thing, Christmas shopping this year isn’t going to cost me jack shit. Except for the DHL fees to get it back to America. It’ll cost five times the purchase price to get it back to the US.)
I forgot to mention this the other night. I was at Carrefour’s, the big French Wal-Mart type store near my house, buying groceries. I needed detergent for my clothes, and as I was walking down the aisle I noticed there were all these bars of soap. After a second it dawned on me what these were for—so you can wash clothes by hand with a washboard and a bucket.
Which gets back to my point from the other day about poverty in America versus the third world. I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever seen flocks of American poor washing their clothes by hand, probably because many of these people who literally meet the definition of “poverty” either have their own washing machines or enough money to go to a laundromat. (It goes without saying that the truly mentally ill among us don’t wash their clothes at all.) In China, however, there are still enough people who wash their clothes by hand that there are twenty different brands and styles of soap dedicated to that purpose.
I was talking to my girlfriend the other day and she said, “You know, I was reading your blog, and you must really be full of yourself. I mean, all you do is write about nothing. Who cares what some guy in China does?”
I guess she didn’t read the graphic disclaimer at the top of every page. At any rate, she’s right, this is a page of nothing except my daily life. The thing is, most people will never live in another country, certainly not one as different from their own as Beijing. In days past people would keep a journal to remind them of their daily thoughts and events, so that years later they could jog their memories by reading it. This blog is nothing more than a journal of my experiences here. The main differences are that it’s posted for the pubic not only to read but to comment on, and it will be archived forever somewhere on the internet. So, three generations from now, one of my great, great grandchildren could write a report about the years his grandfather spent in Beijing.
Let me give you an example. My great great great great grandfather came from Germantown, PA to Kelsey, CA as part of the gold rush. The fastest way to get from the east coast to the west was to sail to Panama, walk across the area where the canal now sits, then sail north to San Francisco. There were, as you can imagine, hordes of banditos laying in wait to rob and/or kill the goldrushers, so they were all armed for protection. My ancestor carried a four-barrel Derringer. It’s been passed down to the first born son in every generation since then, and it will go to my firstborn as well. I treasure that gun as a link from my past.
But, ultimately, it’s a hunk of metal. What I’d love to have is a journal he kept on his travels. What he ate that day, who he saw, what obstacles he had to overcome, that sort of thing. All of that is lost to the sands of time. But this blog will not be.
My experiences in Beijing will be located in some cache file somewhere in the bowels of the internet for the rest of eternity. My great great great great grandchildren are going to have a hell of a lot more of an understanding of who and what I am than I ever did of my ancestor.
This is, in the literal sense, journalism. I may not be documenting anything for a news organization, but I am writing and keeping and self-publishing an interactive journal for all to enjoy.
And that, my friends, is pretty fucking cool. Those of you who will never undertake a move such as this will be able to live vicariously through me. And isn’t that kinda cool in a way? You get an insider’s look at Beijing from a guy who knows nothing about the city. You learn things as I learn about them. It’s like we’re on this trip together.
There’s been a bug going around the office lately, and today I started to feel a bit feverish. China doesn’t really sell western over-the-counter medicine, so running to the pharmacy for some cold pills wasn’t an option. I asked a coworker if pharmacies here sell aspirin and he replied that they did. There’s a pharmacy right near the office, so I asked him to write the word “aspirin” in Chinese so I could go and buy some.
I walked in, handed the clerk the piece of paper, and she handed me a small box containing a bottle of pills. It was 7 ¥, or about 94¢. The box has dosage instructions in both Chinese and English. Here’s the writing from the side of the package, exactly as it is printed. [Items in brackets are my translation.]
The aspirin is a nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug. The small doses of aspirin can be used for inhibiting platelet aggregation and thrombus for mantion [formation], there by [thereby] preventing thrombosis in cardiovascular and cerebral vessels. With large doses, it also has analgesic, antipyretic, and antirhematic effects.
Now, I have a pretty good vocabulary and I understood almost all this, but even I had to look up antipyretic—it means to reduce fever. Can you imagine the blank, open-mouthed stares on people’s faces if US dosage instructions were written in this type of medical language?
Anyway, guess what the dosage was? 40 mg. That’s HALF A BABY ASPIRIN. I’m on daily low-dose aspirin therapy—I went on it at the suggestion of the surgeon who put in my father’s artificial heart—and that’s 80 mg. To quote one news story:
The typical baby aspirin contains 75 to 81 mg of aspirin, whereas adult aspirin contains more than triple the dosage at 325 mg.
So, two regular aspirin (not even extra strength) is 650 mg. To equal taking two aspirin I had to take almost 20 of these pills. The Chinese who work for me just about shit when they saw me pour half the bottle of pills into my hand and swallow it down. Then, an hour later, when I wasn’t feeling any better, I did it again. You would have thought I’d swallowed two balloons full of heroin the way they were acting. Even some of the westerners I work with were freaking out, so I had to explain to them that all I did was take the equivalent of two regular strength aspirin.
People just spaz out over shit for no reason sometimes.
This page has been viewed 172334 times
Page rendered in 0.6867 seconds Total Entries: 522 Total Comments: 1525 Total Trackbacks: 1 Most Recent Entry: 08/26/2008 02:12 pm Most Recent Comment on: 08/26/2008 08:59 am Total Members: 75 Total Logged in members: 1 Total guests: 8 Total anonymous users: 1 Most Recent Visitor on: 08/28/2008 10:50 am The most visitors ever was 86 on 11/29/2007 09:58 pm
