Unfortunate events

As depressing as this may sound, this is unfortunately a rather good summation of this week's events. Also as a warning to all my devoted readers (ha, ha) this entry won't have any pictures, for reasons that will be summarily explained below...

Bengkui

Or, 崩溃, which means something along the lines of crumble, collapse or fall apart. This word, along with many other computer-related vocabulary, has unfortunately become part of my vocbulary...since, you guessed it, my computer has 崩溃了. To be more exact (and in English), the registry and/or the hard drive both have problems, are hopelessly corrupted and are now useless. This happened last Monday, so in the last week this has resulted in several different phenomena:

(1) In contrast to the questionably-useful vocabulary I have been learning (I know how to say "gibbon," several different synonyms for "miserliness," and how to describe Chinese prosody, as an example), I now know much computer vocabulary that I didn't know before! (Including, for example, how to say "registry," "backup," "hard drive," "file," "copy," etc.) They say there's nothing like a superbly inconvenient situation in a developing foreign country to make you learn vocabulary faster -- or something like that, anyway.

(2) In the last week I have hailed a cab more times than in the previous 20 years of my life. I am now an expert on how to get to Zhongguancun 中关村, which is this super-tech-heavy area of Beijing, and can describe to you numerous buildings on the route. More about this later. That is, transportation in general, not Zhongguancun.

(3) I am now an expert at using 201 cards and IP cards, which are both telephone cards. Having bought a 30 RMB ($4.35) card and used it directly to call the US, I now know that that is a bad idea, since calls using the 201 card are 8 RMB ($1.17) a minute and that call ended in approximately three minutes. I'm also now a speed demon at using the phone in my room and find a certain pleasure in clacking away at the numbers (since I have to dial 2012, input my 201 card number, then the PIN, then the access number, then the IP card number to call abroad, then the actual number) on the phone.

(4) Finally, I have discovered that I have much more free time than I did in previous weeks, not having a computer, the conclusion of which is fairly obvious...

In any case, this is the reason why there will be no pictures in today's post (because I'm borrowing someone's computer and it will take forever for me to upload pictures, resize them, etc. and plus because I'm lazy and want to go to sleep soon.)

Muttering in the rain

On Friday, my friend My Khanh (who is studying at PiB) made plans to meet up at Wangfujing 王府井 after she got back from watching Beijing opera that night. That night was a complete disaster (but not because of My Khanh! In fact, we successfully met up the next day!), and again I think I will summarize by giving you the list of the lessons that I have learned from this experience.

(1) Making plans to meet at the "only McDonald's" on Wangfujing Dajie 王府井大街 is a bad idea when there are two McDonald's. Enough said.

(2) Well, I suppose there are really only two lessons, but this second one is that that Friday night trying to hail a cab in the rain was hands-down absolutely the most god-awful miserable night that I have spent in my entire month in China so far without exception. After failing to meet up with My Khanh, I decided to head back to BLCU to get some rest. Unfortunately, last night it had been pouring rain for hours. I knew that hailing a cab in the rain was difficult, but Friday night was absolutely ridiculous. I was waiting at Wangfujing Dajie and Chang'an Dajie 长安大街, which is this major thoroughfare through central Beijing, and I waited for a full hour and a half to catch a cab, all the while while it was still raining. The experience went something like this:

1. I'd stare miserably at the traffic on Chang'an Dajie racing by and cursing at all those people sitting warmly in cabs racing home and muttering under my breath at the incompetence of subway lines that close before midnight, and one that closes before 9 pm (don't even get me started on this. Actually, I think I will, just a bit later.)

2. Cabs would turn onto Wangfujing Dajie, and I'd raise my hand to try to hail them. At first, I only waited for ones that had For hire 空车 in them, but soon it became a reflex to just push my arm up when I saw a car that had a bump on the roof.

3. The cabs would race by and I imagined the passengers inside laughing at me, a thought which started in my second hour of waiting. In the rare event that a cab was actually stopping on Wangfujing Dajie, a horde of people would descend on the cab. As soon as the passengers inside got out, people would squeeze in amid arguments about who got their first, and the cab would race away. Needless to say it was very difficult to be the first one to get to a cab.

4. All the while, I was wading through streets that were flooding with rain, etc.

Finally around midnight or so I was able to hail a cab, and effectively collapsed in exhaustion and sheer joy after getting on one.

Getting around

Which brings me to the of the week, public transportation. As a southern Californian, this is a topic near and dear to my heart, since it effectively lacks any as such. The same things that I mentioned in one of my posts while in Shanghai about the subway system there hold true for Beijing. After last night, the one thing that really sticks out in my mind is how absurdly early some of the subway lines close, and how New Yorkers (and I think Londoners?) are spoiled for having a 24-hour subway system.

There's actually only one more observation I want to make, I realize, which is something small but I think very telling. New Yorkers have the reputation of being an unfriendly, brusque people (this is going somewhere, bear with me). But in all my experience of taking the subway in New York, people never fail to wait for the passengers to get off before getting on. This is absolutely not the case in China, not even in Shanghai, which I consider by far to be the most modernized city in China (perhaps I'm a bit biased at this point against Beijing, haha). As soon as the subway doors open people rush into the car as if it's going to depart imminently, leaving the departing passengers to fend their way through the masses.

I don't really know what the greater significance of this is. Perhaps I'm a spoiled Westerner who doesn't know how to approach life aggressively enough. The thing is, habits like spitting on the street or old men wearing questionably little clothing doesn't even bother me. But somehow I feel like this shows something about Chinese society, but right now I'm not exactly sure what.
I have another little anecdote that I've been meaning to write about for the last couple of posts but which I keep forgetting. Before I left for China, I read about Beijing Capital Airport's terminal 3 (which I flew into! Sparkly and new it definitely is) and how it was completed in record time, and no construction project like that could be completed at anything near that speed in a Western country. I think the comparison was Heathrow in the UK. The conclusion drawn was that the authoritarian nature of the government ensures that public hearings, community meetings, etc., are all entirely unnecessary in China, which has the result that construction projects like the airport's terminal 3 can be completed much faster than they would in a democracy.

Anyway -- my example is, when I came to HBA, the street that BLCU is on, Chengfu Lu 成府路, had no paved sidewalks at all. It was all dirt and mud. Keep in mind that this is three weeks ago. Now this stretch of Chengfu Lu is 95% paved, in less than three weeks. The reason, of course, is that the Olympic Village and many of the stadiums are down the way (and one of BLCU's gymnasiums is going to serve as a practice gym for Olympic basketball players), and so the government, of course, doesn't want these muddy, dirty streets to be the impression of pedestrians who may be around this area. I don't know about the rest of you, but construction projects of this sort in southern California always take ages to complete. But in communist China, if the government wants it done, it gets it done, fast. (Not that I'm complaining. My flip-flop-wearing self is super glad that the sidewalks are all now paved. :) )

Fill 'em up

I think I have mentioned food in every one of my posts in Beijing so far, so this won't be an exception. My continuing impression of Beijing food hasn't really changed, which is that everything around BLCU is rather greasy and oily and that I'm still not a big fan of the northern school of Chinese cuisine. I read in the Lonely Planet guide that Light gave us that the northern school is hearty food which is supposed to fill people up in the winter, or something like that, but written more elegantly. And I think it's true. As much as I like my baozi 包子 (dumplings of sorts) in the morning, the food here is rather monotonous. There's a lot of bread and meat. I think part of the reason I'm somewhat dissatisfied is that I don't get out of BLCU that often, but by the same token I think if I were in Taiwan, for example, and restricted to a small circuit I don't think I would be as dissatisfied with the culinary scene there.

I'm really starting to miss all the fresh fruits. Particularly: grapes, which I don't eat here because you have to peel fruits to stay on the safe side and I don't have the willpower to peel every grape before eating one; mangoes, which are a quintessential summer fruit; and lychees and longans, which can be found here but are ridiculously expensive compared to the south. I'm also hankering after a good cup of boba 波霸奶茶 and a rice-roll 飯團 that is one of my all-time favorite Chinese breakfast foods anywhere. Sigh.

Time to do homework

Haha, which is true. But again to sum up, after reading this post I realize that it has been mostly a series of complaints, which I think stems partially from the fact that (1) this week has been particularly unfortunate and (2) they're more fun to write about that spectacular successes. :) So if you're reading this, I just want to say that my life here in Beijing is not really all as miserable as it's made out to be by this blog. But by the same token, Beijing also falls short in a lot of ways which have proven to be more serious than I would have thought. So, to use an expression that I have (re)learned here at HBA, you can't look at this situation with only one viewpoint, or something like that, or, you can't 一概而论 life here in the capital.

Coming next week: hopefully, the recovery of the computer. And, Inner Mongolia!

(On second thought, that post may come next-next week, as I'm leaving for Hohhot 呼和浩特 on Friday.)