Go Bananas

Birthday at the Goose 'n' Duck Ranch

2007-06-12T20:13:00.000+08:00

It was Dirk's birthday last weekend. He had a royal surprise thanks to his extremely competent wife-to-be and a bunch of scheming friends who plotted for weeks to ensure that this birthday would be one that Dirk would never forget.

First, the stake out at Goose 'n' Duck Pub at Chaoyang Park West Gate where Dionne lured the unsuspecting Dirk into a trap of confetti...

The birthday boy still reeling from shock (excellent! Mission accomplished)

We then hopped on the bus for the Goose 'n' Duck Ranch out in Huairou, about an hour's drive away from downtown Beijing. The Ranch is popular with the Beijing folk, both local and expat, because there are loads of fun things to do, such as:

Water strolling...

...aptly demonstrated by this weekend warrior

There was also a respectable enough looking swimming pool at the far end of the Ranch. Just mind the surly swimming pool lingdao and his besotted group of pool attendants. When will the Chinese ever understand that being hospitable is a pre-requisite of working in the tourism industry and switching off music playing at reasonable levels at 3pm is only going to piss people off?

Swimming pool at the Goose 'n' Duck RanchLazy, hazy days by the pool

Of course, there was fun to be had on dry land as well. Some of us released our inner Schumacher at the go-kart track.

Martin holding court with his adoring audience while getting a final check from Ofer

Ofer giving Martin tips on cheating to win. And I learnt this weekend also that Ruud is the only white guy I know who can squat properly.

In the meantime, I was starting to fall in love with a not so little guy called Arthur, a curious 5 month old Pit Bull Terrier.

"Mmm... that Schnauzer would make a great snack"

Look at that wee face!

Arthur and I

Time passes quickly when you're having a good time and before long it was dinnertime. Food at the Ranch was like that of a mess hall at best and its whole pig on a spit satisfied the most voracious of meat eaters.

Cheese!

This guy is helping himself to yummy pig skin dangling off what's left of its face

And when night falls, bring out the glo sticks!

Vinao so lovin' his neon sticks

Someone has a way too unhealthy obsession with her glo sticks

Ten things I did not know until I went to Cambodia

2007-05-08T09:31:00.000+08:00

Oh Sacred Book of Angkor, give me strength to channel my inner Lara Croft and discover the secrets that lie within

1. Cambodia operates on a dual-currency system usually favouring the US Dollar over the local Riel.

2. Because of #1 most transactions from accommodation to haggling over tuk-tuk fares are conducted in USD making it a hell lot more expensive than even touristy Thailand. :-(

3. Angkor Wat is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a gateway to discovering Cambodia's many breathtaking temple complexes. My favourite is Bayon in Angkor Thom, a fantastic stone forest with vivid bas-reliefs topped with face-towers. While we're on the subject of temples:

4. Khmer obsession with 85 degree steps that feature prominently in their mountain temples. And wow have I seen some big old trees!

Angkor Wat

Apsaras are celestial dancers. Sculptures like these adorn all of Angkor Wat and all the Khmer temples in the surrounding area

Having a breather to take in the beauty Angkor Wat and the surrounding rainforest

Max makes the long, arduous trek to the peak. There's no turning back now. His life dangles by a thread... Will he make it?

Yees! Ain't no mountain (temple) high enough!

King McVillian surveys the temple grounds

Jo @ Bayon, Angkor Thom. This is probably my favourite temple.

One of the numerous face-towers at Bayon

Khmer history comes to life at Bayon!

Nature reclaiming what is hers - massive buttress roots of a silk cotton tree

Nothing but a tree hugging hippee! Any tree that grows that big deserves a hug from me!

5. No one speaks French despite nearly one hundred years of colonial rule?!

6. Everyone speaks really good English?! Compared to China there were no major signage cock-ups, the street urchins charmed visitors into buying things unlike the mini Sanlitun thugs yelling 'Fark Yoo!' at passersby who dare deny them of loose change. Which brings me to:

7. Cambodian children are probably the most adorable and charming I have ever come across. I generally think that children are devil's spawn but it's impossible not to like the Cambodian kids. Smiles ever at the ready and just bursting to say 'Hello!'as we pass them followed by 'Good bye!'

Me and three of the best saleswomen in Cambodia. They were persistent but always very sweet in convincing us to purchase postcards and souvenirs.

Max "Handsome Man" McVillian and our favourite sales girls. The Yashow/Pearl Market/Silk Market crew could learn a lot from these young women

8. I never knew that pubs/restaurants could keep live crocodiles in a sunken pit! Dead Fish in Siem Reap is a cool little place in town for good Western and Thai/Khmer food and traditional Cambodian dances in the evening.

The Dead Fish in Siem Reap

Jo @ The Dead Fish

9. Meandering cows and idyllic kampong scenery came as a side dish to USD 1.50 stir fried instant noodles. Stir fried instant noodles appear to be jostling with amok, a tasty broth of fish cooked in basil, lemongrass and coconut milk served with rice, as Cambodia's national dish. Both can be found in most establishments.

Waiting for my nutritious meal of stir-fried instant noodles lovingly prepared by the matriarch of the family who own the stall

Adorable little Cambodian girl chilling out with her mum next to the stall.

Even the cows are friendly! This one loitered and poked around as Max and I had lunch while a couple others grazed nearby

10. The motorcycle as a common and effective way to transport pigs to the market! I just want to know how they manage to strap the pig - sometimes up to four - on the motorcycle in the first place. Most that passed us by appeared subdued enough, as if having resigned to its sorry fate. Others were not quite ready and put up a bit of the fight, all four trotters kicking madly and squealing with all its might.

This little piggy went to the market... and was very unhappy about it. Meat eaters take note: this is your bacon along the supply chain in all its horrifying squealing glory.

Pig on motorbike in the distance (click on image for a clearer view)

More pictures from our trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

An ordinary afternoon in Siem Reap. Tuk-tuk drivers waiting for their next fare and not very much else going on

Siem Reap countryside by tuk-tuk

Breakfast at Cafe de la Paix. Max ordered breakfast menu II - coffee, orange juice, freshly baked croissant and bread, with butter and jam, fruit salad and yoghurt. Just what a tomb raider needs to kickstart his day!

A little slice of heaven in my breakfast - waffles with caramelised apple and vanilla cream. Pure ecstacy...

Max in front of a traditional wooden house with the Sacred Book of Angkor. The book is so named because it was instrumental in guiding us around the vast and diverse temple complexes and decoding bas-reliefs.

"Mine! Mine! All mine! Bwahahaha!"

Bottled water - check. Sacred Book of Angkor - check. Humongous silk cotton tree roots in the background - check

Going out with a bang

2006-02-12T21:40:00.000+08:00

I've always known that the Chinese loved their re nao but ever since the government lifted the 12 year ban on fireworks within city limits this Lunar New Year, things have been downright ridiculous. You would've thought that the people who invented gunpowder would put their creation to a more worthy cause, like developing alternative energy sources (plausible), detonating landmines (I'm just making it up as I go along here) or ... something!

I wonder what is the reason behind this about-turn in regulation. Do firework manufacturers have a powerful political lobby? Is there a tax levied on the sale of fireworks which translates into revenue for the State? Were lawmakers who grew up during the difficult years of political upheaval in the 60s and 70s so deprived of the joy of setting off fireworks in their backyard - which had been turned into makeshift smelting centres - that they decided to give themselves a second childhood? I don't want to be a chunjie Grinch or anything, but let's weigh up the pros and cons of fireworks.

Pros

Erm... they're nice to look at? So are Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffyd.

Cons

Unnecessary decibels in a city obsessed with car horns, where conversations are yelled and not spoken, recorded announcements on loop are blared out from shops and the chorus of round-the-clock renovation/construction assault our tortured ear drums 24-7.
Air pollution. Nuff said.
They are an utter waste of money with no returns whatsoever other than the abovementioned. I haven't any figures on fireworks spending but it would not be unreasonable to assume that they run into the millions. This money could've gone to a better cause, like charity. Heck, like having a nice, romantic dinner with your wife! Whatever, there are countless ways to boost the domestic economy without going out there and setting off a bunch of explosives. Update: Estimates suggest that Beijing residents will spend up to RMB100 million on fireworks over the festive season.
They are inherently dangerous unless one is from the bomb disposal unit. And still, mishaps do happen.
As a dog lover, it's upsetting to see them running for cover from the loud noise. (I'd do the same if only there was enough room under my bed for Sam and I.)

I really hope that the government will realise the madness of lifting the ban on fireworks and reinstate it in the following year. In theory, there's nothing wrong with a bit of firecrackers. I used to play with them in my grandparent's garden in Ipoh when I was a wee un. The difference is that 1) Ipoh has a population of less than 800,000 (and KL 1.4 million for that matter) 2) without a single dominant monoculture, not everyone celebrates the same festival at the same time in the same way i.e. we realise there are other ways to have a jolly good time besides making excessive noise 3) we lived in houses, not densely populated apartment blocks.

Asian markets besides the Hang Seng and Nikkei

2006-01-15T20:19:00.000+08:00

I recently discovered that there is a correlation between low office/work activity and me taking tentative, virgin steps towards becoming a proper lady who acts her age and away from the heady days of self-flagellation at work during the week and the blur of the Beijing nightlife on weekends. I had until the very recently refused to be tainted by such poppycock as to actually prepare a meal from scratch. But a Christmas present cookbook from Di and somewhat disastrous patch at work resulting in quite a bit of time to spare convinced me that I should at least give this cooking business a go. So, after a leisurely lunch on Saturday afternoon I tagged along with D&D to the fresh produce market in Xinyuanli, not too far off from the Sanlitun Diplomatic Area.

Anyone who's ever been to an Asian market before will know that it is not the most pleasant experience and has been known to turn even the most voracious carnivores into PETA activists. They are a far cry away from sterile supermarket aisles bathed in warm light and individually plastic-wrapped cuts of meat without any hint as to their original hosts. I attribute my herbivorism to two individual visits to Asian markets. The first was a good few years ago when I was back in Kuala Lumpur for the summer holidays. My mother brought me to visit the chicken seller who has supplied the Chan family with our poultry for as long as I can remember. I can't recall her name, it was something generic in Cantonese: Ah Chan, or Ah Mei, or Ah Fong. In any case, we also called her Gai Poh which means Chicken Lady in Cantonese. I recall standing awestruck at her stall, watching her Indonesian hires (a further sign of the forward march of market forces: even the Gai Poh at Pudu Wetmarket has gone global) perform systematic slaughter of sickly battery chickens, living the last moments of their miserable lives with necks poking out of plastic crates, witnessing their own fate through fellow crate-dwellers. Two workers stood on either side of a column of plastic crates stacked about 6 high full of chickens. There was a small opening on the top from which one worker would reach in, grab a bird, snap its neck back, slit its neck and then promptly throw the bird - airborne and still squawking - into a cauldron of boiling water, feathers, blood and dying chickens still feebly flapping their half bald scalded wings against the side of the cauldron, which was really just an old rusty oil drum . The two workers would take turns killing the chickens and throwing them into the boiling water with such clockwork accuracy that only one chicken would fall at any time so that the other worker whose job was to stir the grim contents with a wooden plank would not be overwhelmed by chickens. The stench of cooking feathers, blood and in all likelihood, feces, was so bad that I had to hold my breath so as not to be sick. After the pristine grocery procurement environs of Sainsburys and Safeway, the reality of where my food came from could not be any harsher. Fast forward a few years to the time I decided to explore a neighbourhood market when I first arrived in Beijing and was living on the the 3rd East Ring Road just south of Panjiayuan. I was rather enjoying myself watching the cartloads of watermelons pulled by donkeys just outside the main gates of the market and old ladies grumbling about the prices of Chinese cabbage. I didn't realise that I had ventured into the meat section of the market and came face to face with a host of decapitated heads displayed on some stalls to identify the kind of meat that was being sold. I can still remember a pair of glazed over eyes staring up at me and a long, purple tongue potruding from one side of the snout from a massive hog's head. It was from that defining moment that I decided that if I couldn't kill it, I wouldn't eat it.

The Xinyuanli market was more similar to the one near Panjiayuan in that there wasn't any actual slaughtering going on. But it still turned my stomach to see goat carcasses splayed open in crucification stance and beef ribs resembling a giant, fleshy xylophone hanging from meat hooks above a variety of bovine innards . Di's first stop was the herb lady where such items as dill, lemon leaves, rocket leaves and mint were procured. While waiting for Di I poked my head next door and bought some galangal and lemongrass.

"What are you cooking with those?"
"Erm... I dunno. Buying them for good luck. Just in case..."
"Just in case what?"
"Just in case, D."

Indeed, everyone can afford some 'good luck' for less than 2 kuai, which was what I paid the herb lady.

I wanted some salmon for dinner so we made our way over to the fishsellers. Now after that tirade anyone would think that I'm vegan and subscribe to that famous Alicia Silverstone one-liner "Milk is mucus". As I said, I don't think it's right to eat anything I can't kill. Although I have never killed a salmon before (I've never actually seen a WHOLE salmon before, never mind alive) but I'm sure I'll manage by flipping it out of the water and waiting for it to die. I know. I'm lame.

The beauty about this particular market in Xinyuanli is that a lot of restaurants in the vicinity source their food from here. The fish chap from whom I bought salmon (market price that day RMB30/jin compared to RMB110/kilo from a supermarket near my flat) boasted that chefs from nearby Japanese restaurants come to him to buy tuna and salmon to make sashimi. The two Ds also purchased a couple of tuna steaks and a red snapper. The fish chap offered to fillet the snapper (I'm stll getting over the fact that he could say 'fillet') and even dished out advice about how best to cook and prepare the fish. It was amusing to watch him give Mr. D, who has handled a fish or two over the course of his illustrious culinary career, a lesson in basic fish cooking and that the secret to tuna steaks in a jiffy was to panfry each side for 5 minutes in olive oil. You'd never get that sort of personal attention in a supermarket, not anywhere in the world.

One of our last stops, and certainly my most reluctant one, was made at the Muslim butcher as Di wanted to some meat for soup. The stall owner, a hefty Hui man in signature white cap, sharpened his knife even as Di looked down her shopping list for the meat she required. Finally, she decided on ribs for meat on bone. The Hui butcher walked over to the aforementioned monstrous beef rib xylophone (I'm a city slicker through and through and somehow convinced myself that beef ribs were only as big as the ones served in Tony Roma's) and hacked off a couple of racks. As they were about a metre long and Di couldn't very well put those in her pot so she asked the Hui butcher to cut them up into more managable pieces. The butcher, happy to oblige, set the ribs down on a huge chopping block which was a round wooden coin-shaped thing sawed off a large tree. What do butchers use to hack bones into small pieces? Not even the traditional cleaver, a favourite with the Chinese around the world, not least Cantonese kitchen workers (if HK kung fu movies are to be believed) would do. The butcher picked up an AXE that was propped up against his stall next to the chopping board, swung it above his head and brought it down with a crack. Crack! Crack! Crunch! The sound of axe against bone, shards of meat and other fleshy matter flying through the air.

That night I made simple baked salmon and served it with leftover vegetarian curry and rice. The results...

Looking very pleased with myself (and secretly hoping that I wasn't about to give Max a violent bout of food poisoning)

Leading by example and diving into dinner.

Max gives the thumbs up to the first ever non microwavable TV dinner he's had at my home.

Menu in 3-Star Chinese Hotel

2006-01-15T18:26:00.000+08:00

Bless. I know they're trying their best but they do have a long way to go. Thanks to my Uncle Kian Foo for sending these pictures, supposedly of an English menu in a 3-star hotel in China.

Although I did not personally take these shots, I can testify to their existence based on a visit Max and I made to the Xinjiang Sulitan Restaurant on Dongzhimennei. We were doubled over in our chairs and having fits of giggles while the staff waited for us to finish convulsing so that she could take our orders. I'm sure it wasn't the first time foreigners had walked into the restaurant as it is located near a rather nice local apartment complex that is home to large communities of underpaid embassy staff and other 2nd-rate foreigners like myself who do not have fat expat packages which include USD3000/month villas out in Shunyi. In fact, the waitress must have seen so many people fall off their chairs in guffaws when perusing the menu that she just rolled her eyes and waited impatiently for me to get over the hilarity that was "Dry Mother Embrace the Eggplant". The food itself wasn't bad and they deserved an A for effort plus top marks for complimentary side-dish of laugther with the meal.

Easy like (a Little Empress on) Sunday morning

2005-12-21T02:16:00.000+08:00

Yes, I know, I have been rubbish and my blog is in a terrible state of neglect. What can I say? Our company's cultural intern has left (and was AWOL for the best part of his internship before that anyway, leaving me to play secretary), the senior manager is returning to her home country and I have been promoted to take over her as Department Head. One of my colleagues has gone on annual leave and nominated me to (wo)man the fort while she is away. And those new tasks have been added on to my not unsubtantial normal workload which means that I have taken on the tasks of 4 staff. One would think that this would be a most opportune moment to demand a fat pay rise but believe me, a hugely increased salary package is the last thing to ask for at the minute. My nearest and dearest, my inner circle, my Council of Elders will know exactly what I mean. To those who don't, well then you have that much to aspire to so that you're privy to the choicest cuts of gossip this side of Chaoyang District.

When it's as cold as Beijing this time of year, the partying and bar-crawling takes a backseat until the following year when spring breaks. Then, I can be stylishly presentable and stop wearing thermal underwear which really, really is the most unfashionable item of clothing that one can own. And yet, I am grudgingly grateful to the several pairs in my wardrobe for keeping me from the icy grip of death by hypothermia. Anyway, it is quite impossible to gather blog fodder when your weekdays consist of fending off the next wave of work-stress induced panic attacks and weekends are spent slumped in front of the telly and covered in homemade chocolate chip cookie crumbs. But there are rewards to be reaped by going out, namely encountering socially inept Party members' children who are highly entertaining if you like watching desperate Chinese girls throw themselves at the first white man who pays them any sliver of attention.

The Club M boys and I made Saturday a bit of a shopping excursion which brought us to the Zoo Wholesale Market a.k.a Dongwuyuan Pifa Shichang in the morning and the decidedly ghetto Tiancheng Shichang near the National Library in the afternoon. Max and I split up with Matt D and Matt K who launched devastating kan3jia4 assaults on unsuspecting stall owners. Watching them whittle an intial offer for a 5-foot Xmas tree complete with lights and ornaments down to RMB40 (less than USD5) to futile bleats of "pei2qian2!" from the Yuletide knick-knack seller was really rather painful so we took our money and spent it on RMB1 (USD0.12) tchotchkes for Max and more thermal underwear for me.

[This morning, I managed to wriggle a calf, a thigh and a buttcheek one at a time into a brand new pair of thermals after a long and exhausting struggle that left me (more) flustered (than usual) and late for work (as usual).]

We caught up at the designated meeting point after fruitful 2-hour procurement expedition - beyond the main entrance leading out from the underground Tiancheng market, up the stairs past the same man on the right with the same shivering kittens for sale as we had seen on the way down, facing the sight of a leathery old woman beggar with hearts just as cold and turning a well-trained deaf ear to the clinking of coins in her tin cup as she beseeched kind souls in the crowd for loose change.

After a short but mandatory on the spot comparison of purchases, Matt D told us about the strange girl who followed him around the market. It turned out that in true Matt D fashion, he decided to strike up a conversation with the nearest random stranger. The girl, he said, was unemployed and liked shopping to while her time away. She showed him the two purchases she had made that day - a couple of dangly mobile phone trinkets (surprise, surprise. I'm sure they were pastel coloured and cutesey as hell too.) She must also have held the mistaken assumption that announcing herself as the daughter of a senior Party cadre would be a foolproof pick-up line with American men because that's exactly what she did next. And then, with Matt captivated by her edgy style and political blueblood lineage, she moved in for the kill by requesting an exchange of numbers. Matt D's phone rang just as he was relating that part of the story. Sure enough, it was the girl he had just met at the market.

"Would you like to go to the Forbidden City tomorrow?"
"Uh... that's okay, I've already been."
"How about the Summer Palace? I can take you there and show you around."
"Erm... I've been there too. "
"No problem! I'm free, I can show you around."
"Well I'm pretty busy actually..."
"So when will you be free?"
"I... I really don't know. I'll be busy all week, I've got lots of studying to do."

A short verbal tussle later, Matt D hung up, the consequences of his over-friendliness slowly dawning upon him. I asked why on earth he hadn't politely declined to exchange phone numbers to avoid the unnecessary hassle of uncourted attention, to which he mumbled something about the thrill of an ego buffing or something or another which I couldn't quite catch in its entirety, but I knew exactly what he meant.

That night, after Max had frogmarched me to and back from dinner at a distant Yunnan restaurant (Matt K had other engagements, Matt D went cheerfully of his own accord), we sat down in our usual spots on the sofa watching DVDs. We were halfway through a mediocre performance by Tony Jaa in Tom Yum Goong (then again, it's difficult to better that superb feat of wireless, special effects-free fight scenes and dizzying Bangkok tuk-tuk city chases in Ong Bak ) when the muffled sounds of Matt D's phone in his jacket pocket drifted across the living room. It had disconnected by the time Matt D got to it and he did not recognise the number on his Missed Calls register. Call me cynical but I had a good idea who it was. To be fair, it was just as likely Matt D's 4th cousin, twice removed on his maternal grandmother's side calling from the Shijiazhuang Grand Hotel in Daxing while in town on business.

But I'm positive it was her.

The next day as we were getting ready to go out for lunch, Matt D's phone rang again. Half-amused and a little exasperated, Matt D later told us that the conversation went a little something like this:

"Are you free today?"
"Well... not... not really."
"Come and meet me at Tiananmen!"
"I'm sorry?"
"I've got a Christmas present for you. Come and meet me in Tiananmen, I want to see you."
"I'm really very busy, I'm sorry, that's very nice of you."
"But I want to see you. I want to give you your present."
"You're asking me to leave Wudaokou and go to Tiananmen?"
"But I've got a Christmas present for you!"

Another spot of to-ing and fro-ing not unlike yesterday ensued. After he hung up, Matt D wondered out loud why every Chinese girl wanted to drag him around tourist attractions as a prelude to expressing their true feelings for him while I pondered whether being a white male was the main criteria to receiving such preferential treatment as I stuffed thick be-socked feet into my boots.

Baby, it's cold outside

2005-12-11T20:34:00.000+08:00

Gone are the days when one could take a leisurely stroll through park and watch the world go by as one rests on the bench with the pleasant late afternoon sun shining down. Oh no. Winter is officially here, and I have, after a long, drawn-out resistance, given in to the need for thermal underwear. So what do you do when you are forced to stay at home all day and remain sheltered from the elements but when all 41 TV channels offer nothing but the usual shite: period dramas, programmes commemorating the anti-Japanese Movement and infomercials of anti-bacterial Y-fronts which kill off the parasitic organisms that cause the testes to resemble a couple of raisins? The Matts, Max and I decided to take matters of amusement into our own hands and had a bit of fun with some nifty picture-taking software on MattD's computer.

Note: the following images are not suitable for persons of sensitive or easily-distressed disposition.

Oh ... dear God... What monster have we created.... WHAT HAVE WE DONE??!

Floating shrunken Jo Head.

I think I'd make a really cute Malaysian boy but Matt D looks like Granny Smith.

MattK:"Dude... that is like... so totally radical man... that's far out dude..."
Me:"Dude... I like... make a totally freaky dude... totally cosmic, man..."

MattD:"Oi! What the *&^**!?! do you think you're doing? You looking at me, punk?"
Me:"Og.. urgh... Oggg... Yeurgh...Grugh...!"

Me:"Aww... what a cute baby!"
MattD:"Yeah, we can make a nice stew with it, throw in some potatoes and carrots and onions..."

I have decided that I really do not want to wear the pants in this relationship. And I want my hair back, Max.

Chinese Coal Miners - Part I

2005-12-09T15:01:00.000+08:00

I came across this photo blog on Peking Duck. My thoughts go out to the brave men who work deep beneath the ground and their families in light of the recent mining accidents that have followed one after another and the dozens more which will never be reported. It is sad the only time we are reminded of their existence is, ironically, when they are no longer with us. When will the unsafe practices stop and when will enough be enough?

Captions accompanying the pictures are direct translations from the originals. which can be found here. The humanity of these men on whom the world's fastest growing economy depend so much really shine through these images and I hope that they touch you as much as they have touched me. Spare a thought for the true heroes of Chinese modernisation who have sacrificed so much for so very little.

Thanks to Shanghaiist who first brought these pictures to the attention of TPD's Richard and subsequently mine.

A coal mine in Xiangzhong (Hunan Province). Summer temperatures in southern China can soar as high as 40 degrees Celcius. Coal miners who have been working in the pits 450 metres underground for 8 hours haul their indescribly exhausted bodies back above the ground. They see the sun once again and breathe the fresh air. Clean water washes away the soot from their bodies. You can see the happiness at going home on their faces and feel their joy. Today, I have captured you using the camera in my hands, but will I see you again the next time I visit? Hard-working miners - I wish you well!

There is a blackboard in the small room at the pit entrance where miners pick up their lamps. Each number on the blackboard represent a miner's life which change as frequently as the numbers, hurriedly coming and going...

Back above ground, the miners are in good spirits. Hard labour is over for now and it is time to reunite with their families .

Sometimes, miners working in the pits earn miserable daily wages because solid rock formations or mechanical malfunctions hamper progress and production levels. These returning miners' are deeply disappointed...

The bond between coal miners are like that of brothers, their love like those of hands and feet. They are connected through they toil together in the depths of the earth, in life and death, through adversity and hardship.

Carefully read expression in the eys of each miner as he comes and goes from the pits - they are so deeply solemn and stirring. One look will haunt forever.

At the entrance of the pit, I observed that through years of close contact with coal the hands of many of the miners had turned yellow from exposure to sulphur . The two hands belonging to this labourer here mines more than 20 tonnes of coal a day from the pit but earns a daily wage of less than 30 Yuan (USD3.70).

Coal miners are the axle of the great wagon representing our society. This giant wagon of humanity could not move forward without them.

The sun never fails to shine down on the backs of miners returning from the pits. They will always be messengers of light. Alas, light forever eludes them!

Every miner returning from the pit looks forward to the sun because it represents freedom. Is there anyone who does not look forward to being free...?

Coal miners have a happy attitude toward the realities of life. But in their eyes, what is "happiness"?

It is very common in the coal hills for sons to follow their fathers footsteps because that is what life demands of them.

The hardest thing inside a coal hill are the hands of a miner and his passionate heart.

Come out from the mine and take a deep breath of fresh air! Feel the warmth of the sun!! Have a cigarette! Today's work is over!

Wash away the fatigue of the day, live each day to the fullest. Here's to all miner brothers!

Chinese Coal Miners - Part II

2005-12-09T07:00:00.000+08:00

(This is the second part of the English translation of a Chinese photo blog depicting the everyday lives of miners in China.)

I was just leaving the coal hill when I saw the innocence in the eyes of this new coal miner and my own slowly grew misty.

Rescue worker at the scene of a mining accident in Henan.

The world looks very, very small when looking up from the entrance of the pit but one can find sunshine and fresh air up there.

Hills of coal residue piled high can be found at the bottom of a lot of such pits. These hills contain countless number of lives!

In the springtime, I saw the form of a little coal miner next to a machine on a coal hill. Fragile and tiny is the tender leaf that sprouts against steel.

I went to the end of the coal hill where I could go no further. My eyes were full of forms of the miner brothers that I had photographed. Perhaps we will meet again on the side of the train tracks one day. I will bring my old camera again to take pictures of you and to remember your stories.

The back belonging to another miner brother who was going up the hill just as I was coming down. He gradually disappeared into a small coal hill in the south of the mines.

This wood is used to mine coal and makes me think of many things. Actually they are the form of miners.

Miners at the beginning and end of their shifts.

I visited some other small coal hills a while ago. The mining and working conditions there were even harsher.

I will never forget these rough conditions. A tunnel as high as a man accompany the miners day after day as they carry out their difficult tasks...

How do you feel when you see the miners in the distance?

This giant scale records the amount of coal collected by miners each day and is their constant companion through the seasons, in happiness, anger, grief and joy!

At midnight, this month's last two remaining grain tickets will follow the departing miner to a faraway place! The scene are you are witnessing is the life of a miner.

In the early morning, puffs of slowly billowing smoke and the coal hill dawn chorus of pots, pans and other crockery rise from the miners' simple. A new day has just begun.

Warm bellies, cold Beijing nights

2005-12-06T23:50:00.000+08:00

Alright then, hands up those of you who did not leave your cosy, central heated apartments last weekend. I don't blame you. Saturday and Sunday were the embodiment of all the reasons I hate the winter and why I think think it is the most pointless, godawful, evolutionary screw up this side of the galaxy. Max is still in the denial stage of accepting that sub-zero temperature is the original freak of nature. I expect him to come round when his frostbitten schnozz falls off his cute little mug.

It took a very good reason to convince me to step out the door at all and Caribbean food at Dionne's washed down with Bajan rum shooters is about as good as it gets! Dionne and her Little Helpers i.e. Dirk and Sophie had been slaving in the kitchen all day when I arrived. I promptly got on with cutting up the French loaf which was my meagre contribution to the bountiful spread of gastronomical delights. My efforts didn't exactly merit 3 Michelin Stars but, to be honest, there's not much you can add to an entire roast turkey, homemade cranberry relish, BBQ'd pork ribs, black eyed peas, Mauritian potato chutney, sweet potato casserole, stuffing and papaya salsa, not forgetting the tuna, pumpkin & pine and spinach & cashew dips that went with the French loaf I hacked into uneven chunks.

"Look Ma! I still have at least TWO fingers left after that venture into the kitchen. That's a record!"

Dirk:"Not so fast, lady, hand over the silverware."

Me, Sophie and Anou.

Eva-va-va-voom!

Max, a shining example of good guest etiquette - drink the beer your host offers to you and always express your appreciation with a smile.

Louise:"You're not my husband! What have you done with him?!"
JosefBot:"Heh heh heh... now I have you all to myself, my lovely..."

Anou and Martin

Max looking like he's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar on his 14th trip to the buffet table.

We had all eaten till we were about to pop so the girls decided to make the best of our newly acquired pot-bellies. Obviously somebody had to go first...

"You want me to do what??!"

Celine gives the booty shake belly dancing malarky a go...

... but Dionne wasn't terribly impressed...

Anou shows us how it's done...

... while i chase her ass around the room with the camera...

... until i get a perfect shot...

The paparazzi gets papped!

Back to normal, and Max decides that I'm safe to be around again.

Ross' 22nd + Layo & Bushwacka in Beijing!

2005-12-04T22:34:00.000+08:00

I know it's been more than a week, but you know what they say about keeping a diary, and the same applies to keeping a blog - good girls have nothing to write about and bad girls simply don't have the time! What better time that now to catch up on back-dated blogging now that it's approximately -6 degrees Celcius (that's 21 degrees Farenheit for the Americans reading this :-))

Ross turned 22 last weekend. When Max and I dropped into Bar Blu on Wednesday where he does the quiz nights, he casually announced to me "I'm gonna have a birthday party." I paused, expecting him to give me details - where, when, dress code, after dinner plans, who was going to be there. And then I realised that the party was would be another little project for me to manage. Ross gave his instructions : Friday night at Purple Haze opposite Gongti North Gate, around 9pm, 10 people expected at most as he had lost his mobile phone and was unable to get in touch with anybody. Alllllrighty then... True to himself, Ross turned up 50 minutes late to his own birthday party and guest numbers doubled to 21. But nothing a level-headed, quick thinking, problem solving under pressure party planner to make sure that everyone had enough to eat. And pronto!

Great food and even better company.

Jia and I with her Denis and Evan, Jia's crazy Parisian co-workers.

Ross - b...b...b...BAD from the day he was born!

Ahh... the happy couple...

A celebration of London's hellraiser rep in Beijing was made whole when we nipped over to Babyface for the Layo & Bushwacka gig. RMB100 later door charge later (*ouch*), we were in and jumpin' with the rest of the party crowd.

Ross in fine form, as per usual.

Jia, Ross and Alex... and a very dejected looking Zach in the background.

Group hug!

Happy Birthday, Ross! Life's so much more colourful with you around. (In my case at that particular moment, the colour in question would be a shade of monkey bum red...)

Bush is another word for c*nt

2005-11-30T10:17:00.000+08:00

Priceless. Thanks to Sarah Peart-Bentham for the forward, and somebody give that photographer a medal!

Thanksgiving in Beijing

2005-11-27T18:21:00.000+08:00

I meant to post pictures of my first ever Thanksgiving but I have spent much of this week in a vegetative post feeding-orgy state, much like a python after a big meal of deer/tapir/Cheesy Wotsits or whatever it is that pythons eat. That's what you get for hanging out with Americans although that said, Brits don't really celebrate anything and when they do it invariably involves large-scale consumption of alcohol, so much so that all different celebrations kind of meld into one indistiguishable lager-swilling festival. Josh did mention something about starting a bonfire for Guy Fawkes Night but somehow I couldn't see a bunch of tanked up laowais dancing around a blazing pile of old matresses going down very well with the Public Security Bureau.

The first Thanksgiving Dinner I attended was held last Sunday by Max's classmates. They rented the canteen at the old Beida Foreign Student's Dormitories for a couple of hours and used the industrial size kitchen to prepare food, including the all important turkey. Max and I were assigned mash potato duty which I'm proud to say is one of two things I am able to prepare, the other being spread on toast. I have to thank my Belfast years for my spud skills where I regularly prepared tudouni (and a dizzying array of fried, chipped, broiled, baked, boiled, grilled, roast, deep-fried or otherwise prepared potatoes) for the 30 screaming cousins, bickering aunts and uncles and random house guests that would descend upon my then boyfriend's grandmother's house in North Belfast for Sunday dinner. We stopped off at the Zhicunlu subway station on the way to Wudaokou because we wanted to check out Walmart and also because well, it seemed like a perfectly safe assumption to make that Walmart would stock your ordinary household potato. We eventually found the fresh produce section after running around in circles following misleading direction signs. We scoured all the alleys but could not find a single potato. Sweet potato - yes. Dragon fruit - check. Durians from Thailand - I'll have a half dozen. Bay leaves - yep. But when I went up to the supermarket attendant to ask for tudou all I got was an all too familiar reply: a curt "Meiyou!" Plenty of attitude and not a potato in sight - that's Walmart with Chinese characteristics for you. Max and I eventually hunted down the fugitive spuds and made it to the Thanksgiving Dinner. Now, I became a vegetarian for many reasons, including developing healthy eating habits. However, I am positive that vegetarians at Thanksgiving Dinners are at risk of developing adult onset diabetes. Whilst everyone else helped themselves to large chunks of turkey, I found myself in high-carb heaven that was every Atkin's followers nightmare, filling myself with stuffing, mash potatoes, sweet potato casserole, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, apple crumble and freshly baked biscuits.

I had only barely recovered from that ordeal when I experienced my second brush with this American glorification of masochistic over-eating at the legendary Club M. The boys really outdid themselves and made full use of the limited cooking equipment they possessed. The turkey was cooked in the microwave and turned out very nicely indeed while the toaster oven churned out pumpkin pies and apple pies. Because it was a quasi-potluck do, the guests also folded up their sleeves and got crackin' with making stuffing, garlic mash potatoes, some killer grilled mayo-parmesan southwestern bread things, jiaozis and salads while others came bringing gifts of cheesecakes and other devillishly sinful desserts. And what's a party without a room full of happily tipsy guests? My contribution: two buckets of deceivingly strong fruit punch.

Chez MattD and Bertha the Turkey

Feeding frenzy!

Mmm... dessert time...

David:"Eeek!"
Matt:"Eeek!"

Josh:"Hmm... this punch looks dodgy.."
Max:"Yeah, it's as evil as the woman who made it. Won't catch me drinking that witch's brew, which is why I'm sticking to tasty, refreshing, watered down Yanjing beer."

Josh:"It was HER idea!"

Me:"Oh shut up Josh and just lap it up. You're my muse. *coo*"

Josh:"You mean I'm your aMUSEment."

Josh:"I dunno... what does the Parisian say?"

Denis:"Ooh lala, tres chic, mon amour..."

Josh and Pete in the middle of an attempted murder.

You know what they say about the 3Ms - beautiful women follow them around like flies on shit every where they go.

Smokin'!

Julia and Alina doing what they do best - looking irresistable.

Josh, ever the Englishman, could not hide his contempt for his American contemporaries and their encroachment on his personal space.

Julia:"Ooh, what a lovely bunch of people."
Josh:"Stay away from me, you freakoid!"

Jia:"Hello, darlings."
Josh:"Gaah! Gyaaah! I hate all of you!! Stop touching me!!"

Elsewhere, Pete just could not seem to stay out of trouble...

"How many times do I have to tell you? Stop copping a feel when my back is turned or somebody's gonna get hurt real bad. I'll take you out, mister, just you wait!"

"You may have foiund me golden egg tarts but Oi told you then and Oi will tell ye once again, boyo - you will never foind me gold!"

Matt K looked his usual rock star self...

... and Pete is still hell bent on foinding me gold...

Sigh... so many hot chicks, so little time...
Denis in the background:"Psst... pass them to me when you're done"

All things considered, I think we had ourselves a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner!

Friends, new and old, are what make time spent Beijing so unforgettable.

Matt and I go into a state of shock when faced with the task of cleaning up.

We woz all here!

3 days later, the aftermath...

I'd like to see how the authorities cover up this toxic spill.

Japan to have 'military' for the first time since WWII

2005-11-23T11:49:00.000+08:00

Frankly, this is rather disturbing.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party Tuesday formally unveiled a revised draft of Japan's pacifist constitution that would allow the country to possess an official military for the first time since World War II and give the armed forces a more assertive international role.
The proposed revisions, the first since the constitution was drafted by U.S. occupying forces and adopted by the Japanese in 1947, would keep intact Japan's renunciation of war as now stated. But it would grant the country's 240,000-strong Self Defense Forces -- whose role has been strictly limited to defending Japan's home islands for the past half century -- the higher military status as well as new authority to participate in overseas peacekeeping missions.

More importantly, the revisions would open the door for a broader interpretation of the constitution permitting Japan to engage in so-called "collective self defense" -- or coming to the military aid of an ally. The most likely beneficiary would be Japan's closest ally, the United States, which has privately urged Japan to adopt such measures. Changes in Japan's constitutional status would have major significance in the region, particularly in the event of a conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan.

Although not explicitly mentioned, it doesn't take an expert on Sino-Japanese relations to point out that this move is probably also in response to the combination of China's emergence as a military power in the region and growing anti-Japanese sentiment which could turn out to be catastrophic for a demilitarised Japan. In addition,

...The draft ... waters down language separating church and state, a measure apparently aimed at making it easier for sitting prime ministers to visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's military dead including World War II criminals. Koizumi's annual visits to Yasukuni have caused outrage in China and South Korea and sparked a host of lawsuits.

The draft still faces major hurdles as it will require parliamentary approval and majority support from the public through a national referendum. However, opinion polls indicate that "a majority of Japanese support amending Article 9 to enable Japan's Self-Defense Forces to play a greater role in international peacekeeping duties, and perhaps assume other responsibilities."

Moves like this can mean further deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations, yet it is only natural that Japan is nervous about its giant neighbour to the west. In turn, this development and the rise of Japan's right is, according to a Japan Times article, seen by Beijing as "the most disturbing of current trends."

I hope that is is not the beginning of a trend of where tit-for-tat measures are taken in retaliation, potentially escalating into Asia's very own Israeli-Palestinian conflict-like situation but to the power of ten.

Sources:
Revised Constitution Strengthens Japan's Military
Sino-Japanese Relations Continue to Cool

Charlie and the Great Chinese Takeaway

2005-11-19T23:40:00.000+08:00

Prince Charles is taking legal action against the Mail on Sunday newspaper for publishing excerpts of his private memoir written in 1997 after the Hong Kong handover. I just love it when national leaders make snide comments about China.

It concerned the handover of Hong Kong, and in it he described the Chinese Communist leadership as "appalling old waxworks" and railed against Tony Blair and his coterie of advisers... A spokesman admitted that the move in effect confirmed the authenticity of the remarks...

Looks like Charlie sure knows how to let off steam and enjoys having a good old rant like any one of us. His Royal Highness' eloquent whingemanship has prompted me to think that we are quite possibly a match made in heaven. Now if only he'd throw his weight behind the anti-foxhunt campaign....

Entitled The Handover of Hong Kong or the Great Chinese Takeaway, the prince's note criticised the "ridiculous rigmarole" and "awful Soviet-style display" of goose-stepping Chinese soldiers during the ceremony, referred to the diplomatic jockeying to prevent royal loss of face beforehand - in the event he was not required to bow to the then Chinese president, Jiang Zemin - and mocked the Chinese leadership.

He added: "After my speech the president detached himself from the group of appalling old waxworks who accompanied him and took his place at the lectern. He then gave a kind of 'propaganda' speech which was loudly cheered by the bussed-in party faithful at the suitable moment in the text."

Notwithstanding the embarassment stemming from public scrutiny of what previously were private musings, Prince Charles' memos did not involve leaking state secrets, uncovering of CIA operatives nor lead to baby seals being clubbed to death. On the contrary, his observations are on par of his Sinosceptic views reflected in his boycott of the last official state visit by China in 1999 and missing Hu's recent visit to the UK. He should therefore call off the legal action against the Mail for reporting what really lies behind the rigid handshakes and overly gracious smiles.

Bush in China

2005-11-18T00:56:00.000+08:00

W. is coming to China over the weekend and The Economist has posted an analysis of issues likely to be discussed with the Chinese leadership while he's on this side of the pond. I wonder how amicable the talks will be in the light of Bush's digs at China on political reform and freedom of expression among others all while heaping praise on Japan and Taiwan. Personally, I think Bush's speech at Busan was the best thing to come out his two terms in office. Somebody needs to have the balls to tell China what it needs to hear to its face.

Full-time bore

2005-11-16T23:30:00.000+08:00

Have not posted anything for a while and this is down to the fact that I've been putting in 12-hour marathons in front of the computer churning out proposals for events with sweatshop efficiency followed by slugging it out in the gym and then collapsing in a heap. And I phoned my parents for the first time in 2 months on Monday which, although terribly exciting for me, is hardly headlining news.

Instead, I have been finding the lives of others infinintely more interesting than mine. One in particular would be that of Dawn Yang's. I stumbled onto the furore surrounding the California-based Singaporean thanks to a posting on Peking Duck about how this alleged cosmetically enhanced beauty has kicked up a bit of a storm in a teh tarik cup. Thank goodness for the rest of us that it's not all down to looks and some modicum of interestingness goes a long way to adding to someone's appeal. Seeing that I have neither of the above I am even more grateful that I am no longer in the dating scene. I can see that my pick-up line would go a little something like this:

"Hi, I'm Jo. I am an over-worked, underpaid event planner working for a local company. I suffer from occasional but nonetheless violent bouts of Beijing Rage especially when taking the subway and hope that the dickhead that cut in front of me in the queue dies of toxic anal leakage. That is my only defining characteristic. Oh, and devising ever more creative and horrific curses to put one the next nongming that presses up against me in the crush of commuters at Xizhimen to hurry up when I'm trying my utmost not to fall down the steps and create a stampede that'll make Mecca look like a bouncy castle."

In other developments ... central heating was turned on at full blast as of yesterday. The office has turned into the Gobi Desert what with the hot and arid air. Everyone feels feverish, have sore throats, eyes and the general feeling of irritation. We can't strip off the layers fast enough after coming in from the cold so we throw open the office door to regulate the office temperature by letting out the excess heat. All this, while somewhere in China another shift of miners are working overtime to produce more coal to fuel the furnances and some of whom will inevitably be trapped and killed in a mining accident in the coming weeks or months.

It has really been a few dreadfully unremarkable days, and it is as depressing as I make it out to be. Will see if I can get myself into any mischief as the week draws to an end but don't see much coming up. Next weekend should be a great improvement with Layo and Bushwacka at Babyface on Friday night, banjo extraordinaire Bela Flack playing at Tsinghua University and Armin van Buren at Banana on Saturday. I am also counting on my boss to finally decide to leave me alone all of next week so I will have the energy to live for the weekend. Here's to hoping!

Karangan UPSR - Keluarga Saya

2005-11-11T18:22:00.000+08:00

One for the Malaysian posse scattered around the world with a big Terima Kasih to Chris Oon for the forward. Little buggers. I knew all along that they were evil!

Beijing food diary

2005-11-11T00:51:00.000+08:00

This has been a dreadful week. I'm so glad that I survived and that it's coming to an end. Somebody show me an easy chair!

I know that it is to my mother's dismay that I have chosen this line of work. In fact, it's every Asian mother's nightmare to see their child packed off to some faraway land to pursue a career in spin-doctoring, number crunching, stem cell research on aborted female foetuses, whatever. To them, it doesn't matter if their offspring loot and pillage for a living. Oh, but to not be there when they come back from a hard day's work to serve up a steaming toureen of black chicken soup, slow boiled with a fistful of danggui and ginseng for 12 hours (something that smells that bad CANNOT possibly be good for you) - now that is what defines a mother's misery.

Lucky for me, and my mother's sanity, I live in Beijing, a city where people just don't seem to stop eating, and quite economically too. Today, I had a proposal to submit by 3pm and two meetings to attend before popping down the gym and then going round to see Saipin at night who had just come back from Austria and was crashing with Di while in town. Oh, I knew from the moment I swung my feet over the side of the bed that it was going to be a LONG day and a lunchbreak was out of the question. So I dropped by the jianbing stall downstairs before jumping into a taxi for work. There's a short line so I place my order and wait while the Mrs. Jianbing does her scallion pancake thing on her griddle. A white guy scoots up to the stall on his bicyle and gestures at the line then gestures at his watch, shrugs at the jianbing guy and looks hopeful. So Mr. Jianbing is turns round and asks us if we mind letting the waiguo pengyou have his served up first because he's late for work.

Jianbing Shushu: What do you say kids? Let's help out our foreign friend here, he's gonna be late for work.

Chinese guy in line: Absolutely not!

Me: Hell. No. I'm late for work too! And I'm foreign, so how come I don't get preferential treatment?

JS: Oh? You're a foreigner? But you look Chinese to me. Where are you from?

Me: Malaysia.

JS: Ah... you're all Muslims there! You're our brethren!

Me: Um.. yes... assalamualaikum.

JS (looks round at a small crowd gathering to stare at the Chinese-looking foreigner): Look what we have here! She's Hui Zu like us, she's one of our own!

Me *uncomfortably*: Ahem... yesh... more chilli please, we like it spicy.

JS: So how come you look like a Chinese girl then?

Me: Well uh... I'm ethnic Chinese.

JS: Oho! It goes back to the time when Cheng Ho went down the South Seas! *looking excitedly around at the crowd of senior Beijingrens* Do you remember the time, way back in the Ming Dynasty say... oh... 800 years ago! She's a descendant of Cheng Ho!

Me: Uh well... I don't think so. Cheng Ho did lack the necessary equipment to reproduce because he was a uhuhuhuhhh.... uhuhhuhuh... *nudge nudge wink wink*

JS: Well he didn't go down the South Seas alone, did he? You must be a direct descendant of one of the virgins he took with him to present to your ruler. Anyway, here's your jianbing, Malaysian foreign friend.

The greasy goodness that is a perfect jianbing sustained me for most part of the day although I refuelled with a Magnum ice-cream and huge mug of coffee somewhere post - official lunchtime. I was famished by the time I finished at the gym and was really looking forward to some tasty vegetarian jiaozis or dumplings at the restaurant behind my apartment. It's one of those regular hole-in-the-wall type eateries that are not for China newbies and persons with any regard for hygiene, food preparation or in general. Growing up on the mean bacterium-riddled sidewalks of Kuala Lumpur and being a vegetarian goes a long way to stave off Beijing Belly, so the slimy table tops and peeling walls never bothered me.

I sat down and placed an order for 3 liangs of jiaozis. I noticed that the customer on the next table - a female high school student judging by the ill-fitting tracksuits they are made to wear - had brought a dirty looking puppy into the restaurant. Now I love dogs with their pure, unconditional love and relative self-sufficiency compared to human babies who are the REAL bane of the earth. But this was a dirty, mangy looking puppy who looked it it hadn't been washed since its mother licked it clean at birth with the rest of the litter. Its owner fawned over it and fed it dumpling scraps which it nibbled at half-heartedly. She then scooped it up in her arms and padded over proudly to the waitress who had just taken my order. The waitress hesitated at first but, encouraged by the owner, took the pup into her arms and cradled it like a baby. She cooed and lavished it with love and then decided that she was going to bring it into the kitchen and show it to the chef.

I am watching this little drama the whole time with open-mouthed disbelief. I am no fingernail scrubber but I was blown away at how little the waitresses cared about food hygiene. My waitress emerged from a kitchen in a few minutes with a steaming plate of dumplings and placed it on my table. I looked down and tried to pick out black specks that may resemble fleas or tick eggs. The senior waitresses noticed my hesitation and served me a glass of hot water, as if washing the dumplings down with it would kill whatever germs that had made the great leap from their canine host to my dinner. I placed my faith in Matt D's maxim of eating stuff off the floor bu gan bu jing, chi le bu bing! - which essentially espouses the benefits to one's health through ingestion of unsanitary food - and made a hasty meal of the dumplings after dousing them in as much vinegar as I could.

The Girlie Show

2005-11-10T00:34:00.000+08:00

It is getting COLD here in Beijing which makes dressing up to go out and not looking like a miniature stuffed yak a real chore. Anou decided to take matters into her own hands and invited the Peking Internacionales ladies to her apartment for dinner and drinks. For a slob like me, friends like Anou and Dionne are worth their weight in gold. They plan what to cook then go down to the local market to buy groceries - salmon (a pop at only RMB22/jin), watercress and other tasty whatnots that I am unable to name simply because I will not, cannot, refuse to cook even if a date with Brad Pitt depended on it. Of course, they even give the evening a theme and on Saturday, it was lingerie night. Why why why do I call these sexpot crackheads my friends. Just kidding, girlies! You know I luv ya. ;-) But seriously, while the rest of them had no concrete plans after dinner, I had a date with Sasha at Banana down Jianguomen way which I could predict would be chock full of leery men infused with alcohol and who knows what else to their shoe laces who were looking for girls of questionable moral fibre to take home. I AM black to the core, no doubt about that, but I am also going out with the perfect man so no need to hang around dark corners of clubs looking coy and batting my eyelashes at every bloke on his way to the men's room.

I picked Di and her apple tarts up in a taxi on my way to Anoushka's apartment. It never ceases to amaze me how domesticated my girlfriends are when my own living quarters bear signs of prolonged neglect and symptoms of acute bacholerette-titis. Cosy lamps, colourful throws, a (albeit sparsely inhabited) fishtank, family photos and an interesting collection of bric-a-brac gave Anou's boudoir a lovely lived-in atmosphere.

Dodgy Mauritian sex figurines.

Dionne and I were the first ones there and the girls started to arrive one by one, some on time while others were fashionably late as always. :-p Matt K called me and I gave directions to the taxi driver to rumbles of discontent going around the living room. A man in our midst?! I placated the naysayers, assuring them that Matt was at once no ordinary man and at the same time a shining beacon of male perfection. What can I say? I think the girls all took an immediate shine to him - it's difficult not to!

A regular meeting in session at the Peking Internacionales Ladies Club, Chaoyang Chapter

Lord Matthew and his ladies-in-waiting.

He doesn't know it yet, but I sense some great pimp potential in Matt...

Sophie pretending that she doesn't like attention and wishes that nasty man with the camera would go away and leave her alone...

...which means I get paid more notice. Can't complain about that *pout*.

Celine and I revel in a rare moment of being the only Orientals in the room. It's like you're not even in China, woohoo!

Made in China

2005-11-06T23:59:00.000+08:00

Here's another translation of a Chinese attachment forwarded to me by my colleague. Granted, it's is not as thought provoking as the (i) Poignant (ii) China (iii) Images but some of them are still pretty shocking and the rest are pure laughs. I asked my colleagues about the authenticity of the pictures. They seemed to think that some of the images were doctored, especially the ones trumpeting the merits of the one child policy at all costs and were horrified that I was going to translate them into English. They tried to talk me out of it because it would give China a bad name but they relented after I assured them that I took the piss out of myself more than anything else on my blog. Once again, the captions are a direct translation of the originals. Some may require a certain level of Mandarin and China experience to understand but I'll try my best to explain. (See blue writing).

Have you ever used SONY batteries? Well these are SQNY batteries!

Like Mitsubishi (Sanling) electrical appliances? This brand - Siling Appliances - with its extra Ling, is far superior!

Ok, first Chinese lesson of the post. The Chinese name of Mitsubishi is Sanling, which means Three Lings whereas this rip-off brand raises the ante with an additional Ling to make it Siling i.e. Four Lings. Yesh, I realise that this may be lost on some people but, really, it... does... make... sense... if... you... speak... Man...da...rin.... MOVING swiftly along!

Pay attention now! This is no Coca Cola. It's Caca Cala!

When was this Harry Potter novel published?? Giant Funnel???

Book cover reads "Harry Potter and the Giant Funnel" by J.K Rowling.

The world's longest underpass is in China! Does it really take 24 hours to cross the road?

More fun with languages. Another way of reading the sign is "You may cross to the other side of the road 24 hours a day"

Shocking slogans...

Contents read as follows:

Shocking Slogans in China

On a highway in Henan Province - It is illegal to rob the police vehicle!
An absolute classic - One man's vasectomy is an entire family's pride!
On a railway line - Suicide by lying across the railway tracks is still a punishable crime!
In a certain village on the outskirts of Beijing - Have less children, grow more trees; bring up fewer children, rear more pigs!
Birth planning slogan in a certain district of Hunan Province - Death and destruction to the family of those who do not practise birth control! (Shocking, but I can relate especially when recovering from a hangover on Sunday morning at Grandma's Kitchen which plays host to hoardes of blonde haired children screaming and running away from hapless ayis. Urrghh... the blood boils....)
Birth control in a certain county of Hebei Province - Rather the destruction of the family than the devastation of the nation.
A certain district in Henan Province - Rather 10 more graves than one more person.
Inside a train - Keep carriage clean, throw fruit peels out the window.

The employees at this company don't beat around the bush...

Content reads as follows:

Prohibited Words at Petrol Station

Fuck his mother (fuck your mother)
Fuck off (over there) and leave me alone
One look at you makes me sick (you're a pain in the ass)
Go talk to our leader if you have any complaints
Scumbag! (You're a fucking piece of X)
Fuck your mother's X
Fuck you!

Jiangxi Province Advanced Highway Maintenance Bureau Labour Service Company
Nanchang Petrol Station

My God! Every culture has their way of getting the message across!

Banner content: Hit it! Abort it! Trickle it out! Whatever you do, do not give birth to it!

Those who oppose the government have been warned: unnecessarily harsh.

Banner content: It is a crime to resist agricultural taxes. Those who oppose the government have been warned.

How do you translate "Dry Goods"??

Don't ask me why but "Dry"gan1 and "Fuck"gan4 share the same Chinese character hence the unfortunate interpretation. I suppose it's a bit like the dual meaning of 'bush' and 'cock' in English. :-/

Could it be that the English expression reflects the customer's sentiments upon seeing the price of the goods? "Fuck, it's expensive!"

You gotta laugh. This one's a classic.

You can actually buy these things???

Box reads - Artificial hymen.

Main dish at Chinese wedding banquet - perhaps to wish the bride and groom early success in reproducing offspring? Gobsmacked...

"Network, network..."

2005-11-04T12:15:00.000+08:00

... as my mother always told me. "It's not what you know, it's who you know!" So against my better judgement and despite the risks of getting myself into another speed-dating/lap dancing expat shindig, I packed myself off to the YPHH Wine Night at the Ching Pavilon just a stone's throw away from the Forbidden City on Wednesday evening. I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed myself and actually met some potentially useful contacts. It was far less of a meatmarket than the ones I had previously been to and people actually seemed interested in networking instead of finding a bedwarmer for the night. The RMB100 entrance fee must've done something kept the riff-raff of easy lays out.

Featured that night were 5 Californian wines. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a wine drinker, a legacy of my university days in England where my mates and I would set aside GBP4 budget to get hammered, pop down the local off-license and make a beeline for the cheapest, skankiest wine with highest alcoholic content. The 1999 (ahem, yesh, that was when I was at uni.) Chardonnay from Prudoe - 13% alcohol (87% white vinegar) usually did it. Needless to say the throbbing 2 day hangovers have done little to make wine my alcohol of choice. So I was pleasantly surprised at the featured wines, knocked back 5 (albeit small) glasses of tipple and still walked out of Ching Pavilon unassisted with no hangover in sight the next day. One thing that hasn't changed though is how utterly awful I look in poloneck jumpers and how much my Asianess erm... shines through when I drink.

Racism in China and other niggling issues

2005-11-02T16:30:00.000+08:00

Aha! The proxy servers work today so I can follow up on my reply to comments made a couple of posts ago and dig up that post on racism encountered by mixed-race couples from the ever astute Horse's Mouth.

I was actually wondering whether I should include the URL for the proxy server considering the blocking of some of the best blogs around for unflattering coverage of China news over the past couple of days and how the Chinese government is playing up to its paternalistic fancies with
a little help from their Western friends, no less. See? I knew ALL Westerns are evil, conniving, plotsome, two-faced, money grabbing fiends who would prostitute their own daugthers if it earned them a fen or two. They are nothing, NOTHING like the virtuous Asians such as my goodself.

Then again, if the Nanny should by any chance come across my humble blogsite I may be diagnosed with paranoia and "blogging monomania" which sounds like a similar ailment to what this chap was suffering from and take me into Her care for 13 years too.

Hummus and eyeliner

2005-11-01T23:45:00.000+08:00

Ask any person of tropical origins "What do you hate most about the winters in China?" and 10-1 the answer will be the fact that heating in business and residential property is centrally controlled by the state. That is, IF that part of China is entitled to heating. One of Mao's more mind-boggling legacies states that cities north of the Yangtze River may be supplied with central heating beginning every year on 15 November, regardless of how cold it gets before then. Heat provision will likewise cease precisely 4 months after it is first supplied on 15 March. Those who are naturally averse to the cold and consider temperatures below 20 degrees celcius to official signal the arrival of winter, find this a particularly trying time. So, in go the short short skirts and open toed shoes into storage boxes and out come the heavy fleeces, woolly hats and thick socks even when plodding around the house. I would have hibernated all weekend if it hadn't been Josh's birthday. Spoil sport. I was so looking forward to snuggling under double duvet covers in my sub zero apartment. And what does he do? He goes and has a birthday. Pah. Jia and I conspired and plotted before deciding on Biteapitta with its bountiful servings of hummus, shawarma, kebab and general mediterranean goodness to host Josh's birthday bash.

Jia, Josh and Julia

James Dean in the 21st century - the SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy) with a pink rose wearing and leather jacket with added safety features.

The restaurant's owner soon got tired of all the camera whoring in his establishment and threw us out into the cold so we wandered around Nurenjie for a bit. That was one of the few times that we had ventured out away from the familiar comfort of Sanlitun. Nurenjie is something of a resurrection, the second coming of the old Sanlitun Bar Street - all neon lights, aggressive touts, overpriced alcohol, cheese-mongering Mandopop cover banbds and popcorn poppin' dice game playin' bar patrons. In fact, the Sanlitun of today bears more resemblance to Sarajevo of the early to mid Nineties, as I discovered during my trip down there on Sunday morning to escape the godrotting zhuangxiu that began at 9.30am. But that's another story. Anyway, back to Nurenjie. Max poked his head in the first bar whose touts didn't physically assault him for his patronage and the rest of us followed.

Choosing our respective poisons at Shan Bar.

Max finally got his big break after years of modelling Y fronts in supermarket catologues, bursting onto the scene with a cover shoot on Teen Beat Magazine.

...which provided Josh with enough encouragement to make a bid for the Big Time.

The following night was the Yan Club Fetish Party. I decided that there comes a time when I must hang up my fishnet stockings and knee high PVCs to make way for the next generation of Sluts and Perverts. I took Matty D and Matty K to Alien Street near Yabao Lu to shop for props: angel wings (RMB50 for medium sized Gabriel flappers), chains (RMB2 per 1.5 metres), tarty tights (RMB18/pair) and super white foundation (RMB5 - looked like clumpy semi-liquid alabaster) for Matt K; ledernehosen(RMB250, down from RMB400) , bling bling (RMB25), leather boots (RMB200) and a dickie bow (price unknown, not privy to the bargaining process) for Matt D. The boys then came over to my place and I got started on making Matt K look like a morgue escapee.

"Hold still! How am I supposed to fit your lashes around by curling tongs if you don't stop fidgeting?!"

Me: "You're a masterpiece, hun!"
MattK: "Oh, it is terrible being reelley, reeaalley, reedeekoolously good-looking."

Matt K delighted at how well he carried off this season's in vogue "Death Warmed Up" look.

The Matts perfecting the Fallen Angel look.

So lovin' that bling.

Busted

2005-10-31T16:48:00.000+08:00

This is a perfect example of what happens when good expats turn bad, although it must be said that some need less encouragement than others. This chap certainly seems to have taken to the China expat life like a duck to water.

I hope he's single, else I heard diamonds, roses and chocolates are a good way to start grovelling.

These pictures are two of the more erm... incriminating ones taken at ChinaExpat.net First Opening Party at Blue Fox which a bar review I read sometime ago called China's homegrown answer to the Hooters chain.

I've been to a couple networking evenings in the city which came across as thinly veiled matchmaking events frequented by people who could not get laid in Maggies with a RMB100 bill stuck to their foreheads. They've always seemed wholesome enough notwithstanding the air of desparado hanging over the place like Beijing smog and corporate stiffs who attend such gettogethers en masse. That is, until the latest networking crew in town took a feather from the Patpong cap and applied it the bone-dry business card swapping tea parties. These pictures are a new twist to the audition couch - will polish your belt buckle with my bare arse, sir, for a job.

Poignant China images feedback

2005-10-30T20:30:00.000+08:00

I got an interesting comment on my previous posting that I was going to reply to in the comment box but I had so much to say that it deserved its own posting.

Anonymous wrote:

The comments about (Chinese) women having relationships with foreigners could have been written by Goebbels. The increasing nationalism in China seems to be veering towards fascism.

These images seem to pick out the very worst examples of life in China, to drum up a feelings of national grievance and victimhood.

Actually it's not so much that the Chinese are offended by their women being snapped up by foreigners although, considering the gender imbalance resulting from the one-child policy, they have every right to be. I've heard countless complains from male laowai friends about taxi drivers/landlords/Chinese teachers/noodle sellers attempting to pawn their female friends and relatives off to them. I think that they find more offending the fact that an old man who would otherwise be passed off as a ripe candidate for commiting into the old folks' home in his own country would be able to bag himself a nubile Chinese flower. It's not unfair to say that most people, not just the Chinese, would tend to categorise this as a somewhat objectionable but otherwise win-win arrangment where the female parts with a few years of youth in exchange for a lifetime of financial security and the male, a partner in his lonely twilight years. But this scenario is not unique to China. Throw a glance around the Bangkok Airport departure lounge and witness the numerous couples (and, not infrequently, *ahem* triples) composed of senior foreign men and young Thai lovers, both male and female. This happens in developed countries too. Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall, anyone?

I do agree that the other pictures are a collection of the worst examples of life in China but seriously, aren't we all full up of news of how swimmingly well China is developing? The economy grew by another 10% in the first half of 2005, FDI is at an unprecedented high, national euphoria upon success of the Shenzhou VI mission, random tourists expressing their delight at the rich and diverse Chinese culture. Oh to see another picture of children waving flags to warmly welcome yet another foreign dignitary who has nothing but praise for the China will surely bring out the axe murderer in me.

These images, on the other hand, show the side of China beyond the positive business indicators, plus I think it's interesting to see what Chinese netizens are reading / being fed with. Those images may very well be used to drum up nationalist fervour (my personal favourite is the hijacking of the Hong Kong Golden Elephant Film Awards by the Anti-Japanese camp) but I'm hoping that they would prompt the Chinese to pause awhile and ponder the cost of moving forward so rapidly.

Poignant China images, 2005 (Part III)

2005-10-25T19:16:00.000+08:00

Labourers in dangerously polluted workplace.

Woman exploited for sex.

Nowadays even the rubbish collectors have to buy an entrance ticket.

The flowers of our nation on a pile of garbage.

Honour medal for military achievement.

Black vs white. (White: Demolish. Black: Dead against demolition.)

Silkworm farmer.

A tailor earning her livelihood by offering roadside services.

At the scene of a traffic accident.

Every liang counts.

Collapse at construction site.

Farmer's children lying on the plough to help till the land.

The first batch of emigrants displaced by the Three Gorges project moving their belongings down the mountain. The pain of being forced to leave one's home is unspeakable.

Laid off workers queue to receive unemployment benefits.

Jobseekers brave the snow to look for employment opportunities.

Young school dropouts selling roasted sweet potatoes in the streets and alleys.

A gold prospector in the West mourns the death of a loved one.

A miner manually hauls coal out of a small pit in Qianxi while the boss observes from the sidelines and measures the weight of the coal.

Poignant China images, 2005 (Part II)

2005-10-25T19:15:00.000+08:00

Lai Changxing, the principal offender of the Xiamen Yuanhua case, smuggled 50 billion yuan worth of goods and evaded 30 billian yuan in taxes. 30 billion yuan - what an incomprehensible notion. It costs 4000 yuan to put an urban child through 9 years of compulsory education. Based on this calculation, 30 billion will provide 9 years of compulsory education to 7 million children.

My heart breaks when I look at this picture. Civil servants! What are you doing?

Li Xin: The first deputy mayor to kneel and beg for forgiveness.
Reports on the mayor show that some people have no doubt that he is a 'capable man' and a 'capable officer'. But what is the use of evaluating his ability now? If he does not single-mindedly strive for the good and the happiness of the people, it does not matter how capable he is for he is a criminal.

These archaic cultivation methods have not changed since slash and burn farming. Farmers consist of mostly the young and the aged. This picture shows seeds sown using a manpowered plough.
This girl would not answer any of our questions but burst into tears when asked why she wasn't at school.

Do our unfeeling hearts remember the shame of history?

At the 23rd Hong Kong Golden Elephant Film Awards Ceremony, host Wong Dayo said to Daichi Harashima, winner of the Best Asian Film Award "When you return, do not forget to tell the Japanese people that Diaoyutai belongs to China."

How can anyone with a conscience not be moved?

China's first moving picture of 2005. The people are in my heart! I live for the people!

The long life ahead.

The blind leading the blind.

Little shepard boy. This is not quaint artwork, but a real picture taken in the real world.

The female masters student who demands 10 million yuan for her hand in marriage.

Personals notice posted by the modern female student.

Modern university students! What are you doing? Are you truly worthy of the title of God's Favoured Ones?

"Looking for a male student, height between 1.83cm - 1.86cm. His eyes are not very big, wears glasses and has good skin.

Dear Classmate, do you still remember me? We met at the old library one afternoon in May this year. I was sitting under the pine tree with 2 classmates opposite the library. You rode past twice on your bicycle. At the time you were wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt and blue jeans. Your hair was very short and you looked very sharp. You had a cup with you when you rode past the 3rd time. I called after you, saying 'Classmate, where did you get that water from?' You looked back and smiled, pointing to a direction. I can still remember your smile till this day but I do not know where you are. I would like to know your name. If you are still in this school and still remember that day, I hope you will get in touch with me."

Editorial: I HATE CHINESE CHEESE SO MUCH!! How are so many of them spawned from such utterly pathetic pre-mating rituals???!

A sea of black during a Shanghai recruitment fair in summer 2003. What does this tell you?

A popular pairing on the streets these days. How do you feel when you see such a sight?

These people are simply trying to make a living by asking for a fee in return for directions. Signboard "Directions - 5 jiao" (USD0.06 cents)

Passersby! Are all your hearts numb? What could have caused such a scene???

This is the 25 year old Fudan student who gave birth to a child fathered by a 71 year old foreigner. Personally, I despise people like this.

What happens when mistress comes face to face with the first wife. The mistress phenomena is a currently a much discussed social issue. Many successful people have chosen this path, including dakuan (businessmen) as well as our civil servants.

Look at our children! These ones are exploited by people and made fun of to earn their keep. Do you really think they'd willingly agree to such horrific means of making a living if they had a choice?

Yet another child who has no choice but to leave the village and follow her mother as she looks for work. What can we see from their eyes?

Miners at the end of a shift - true colours of the working class.

Poignant China images, 2005 (Part I)

2005-10-25T01:43:00.000+08:00

This post is the English translation of a forwarded email from a Chinese colleague of mine. The pictures below were part of the email and according to its title, a collection of some of the most moving images circulating the Chinese blogosphere at the minute. Whether or not they are current photos, and whether or not the captions accompanying the images are accurate and authentic, I think they still reflect a part of China that is not projected to the world enough - a country that is moving forward so quickly that those who are not able to keep up are, often ruthlessly, left behind.

Blood sellers - Children following their parents who have come from afar to sell blood. Their eyes belie their childish innonence. They will not have the chance to see the freshly drawn bags of blood from their parents, nor do they understand the hardship endured by the ordinary man in this society. (Signboard reads "Blood donors proceed to second floor")

A public health centre (hospital?) inPishan County, Xinjiang. Patients bring their own food and blankets to the centre.

A peasant family in Ximengyuesong Village, Yunnan

Destitute Wa Minority child

The rural folks must work very hard just to survive, so much so that a visitor is greeted by a deserted village if he turns up without advance notice. 81 year old man hard at work in Pinglue Village, Tiandong County, Guangxi.

The New Year has just gone past. This is when the volume of migrant worker movement is at its greatest. You can find them everywhere in the waiting rooms (presumably in train or bus terminals)

Late at night, a cold wind blows. Although the station is full of people, it is difficult to withstand the icy wind that chills to the bone. The people wear everything that they own in order to keep warm.

The masses of workers on the road. Their tide is like the waters of a swollen river. They flag down all vehicles heading south. Mode of transport doesn't matter as long as it is heading south. These migrant workers endure humiliation, hardship and work hard, tenaciously taking root in the crevices of the city.

There is a unique subgroup among the poor of China - impoverished mothers. Many of them live in extreme poverty, suffering from malnutrition and with no source of income. They do not experience cultural education, health, sanitation and other basic social welfare services. They have a low level of education and poor health.

Zhang Jianying, 32 years old from Shangqingshi Village, Kaicheng, Guyuan County, Ningxia. She has a family of 5. She owns 15 mu of hilly soil which yielded 450kg of wheat and a tonne of potatoes last year. The family owns a mule. Her husband's work pays RMB500 which buys grains for the family but that is not enough to send the children to school.

Sheep herding on the saline - alkali soil is an important source of income for many farmers.

Migrant workers loading a truck with sacks of cement mix. They can earn a few dozen kuai each. The foreman constantly yells at them to hurry up.

A family on their way home after a hard day's work(why must they have so many children? Sometimes I think there is no way you can know what they go through unless you are in their life) Italics from original Chinese posting.

This old lady must muster up every last bit of strength she has in her frail body in order to survive.

Exposed to the harsh elements of sun, wind and rain, this is where our children, our future, receive their education.

Club M

2005-10-23T23:21:00.000+08:00

Urgh... have been so lazy. Actually recovering from an extreme state of stress to some semblance of normalcy, more like. Have been meaning to post those great pics of the hike a whole week ago and also our office's little trip down to the karaoke joint at Chaoyangmen. But those require a good deal of concentration and willingness to sit at the computer for extended periods of time - something that I've found myself having very little of ever since the project ended. And so, owing to my inability to sit still for more than 3 minutes, here's a recap of the weekend just past.

It was 8.30pm on a Friday night and I was still at the office finishing up that bloody afterevent report, something the senior manager reckoned merits a badge of honour and some flowers. (Yesh... work does offers some great incentive packages to outstanding employees...)

Woohoo! I'm da (wo)Man!

Went to Pink Loft for dinner on Saturday night with Jia, Josh and Co. Food was fanbloodytastic and the atmosphere delightfully pink. Unfortunately could only stay for a while before dashing off to Vics to help at the door.

Josh and two of his harem's finest harlots.

Cute. And don't we know it.

Spent 3 hours at Vics standing out in the cold checking people for invitations. Don't think I've ever been stone cold sober at Vics so it was interesting to see the crowd rolling in on a Saturday night. As winter creeps round fashion sense just goes out the windows. White boots and flesh coloured tights are just plain wrong. The bouncers, who are quite possibly some of the biggest and nastiest looking Chinese men I've ever come across, are indeed arseholes and not just a fragment of my usually drunken and neurotic imagination when at Vics. Got chatted up by a dodgy African guy called Johnson who told me 2 minutes into a monologue (hardly counts as a conversation with me harrumphing and grunting my answers) that we should hang out sometime. Was actually quite disappointed that I didn't get a marriage proposal like with previous would-be African (mostly Nigerian) suitors. I must be getting on a bit.

Matt, Matt and Max's dinner was postponed to Sunday because they live in Wudaokou, which is about as close as you can get to Siberia without leaving Beijing, and nobody wanted to brave the Friday traffic. Matt K roped me into helping out in the kitchen; Max wished he hadn't. Cleavers. Every Chinese household has one and every Chinese girl, even those who are in denial about their ethnicity, knows how to handle one.

"What did you say about the fly in the soup???!"

"It was tasty! It was tasty!"

First the elephant seal and now a walrus: Matt D finds his niche in the entertanment industry as a piniped impersonator.

Jia and her cigarette gets thrown into the isolation room.

The Germans are coming!

2005-10-19T12:01:00.000+08:00

A couple of German event planning maestros arrive tomorrow and I have a presentation to prepare!
I have an event to run at 6.00am on Friday!
An after event report for the clients due in before the weekend!
I have to be at the door at a DJ party organised by our company on Saturday!
Max wants to go hiking again on Sunday!
A debriefing meeting to plan for Monday!
I have friends to fit in somewhere between now and never!
My parents are coming to Beijing on the 29th!

And to round up my to do list, Eric wants me to call the Agricultural Bank of China to ask whether he needs his passport to do a Western Union transfer, Frank is too shy to ask his Chinese date to make a dinner reservation for two at 8.30pm at Banana Leaf so he's texted me to do so and my colleagues sprung a surprise post event karaoke-dinner celebration. Other than that I have no other excuses for not updating my blog.

In the meantime I found some pictures without the client company's logo emblazoned across every square milimetre from my event last week.

Here's a bunch of labourers constructing a giant backdrop measuring 9 metres high and 5 metres across.

Building a large backdrop requires sturdy steel frame structures so it doesn't decide to collapse halfway through the cocktail reception. A few flattened corporate fatcats at the price of a well and truly ruined career is a tad excessive.

Not as easy as it looks...

Now comes the hard part...

Adding finishing touches to the backdrop by sticking on the digital print outs. 9 metres which is approx. 2 storeys is a long way to fall and it took more than a little coaxing plus a lot of reassurance to get the workers up there. I really know of no other country where a manual labourer will agree to risking life and limb to apply a few pieces of giant adhesive fancy paper.

Lao Li overcame his fear of heights with a few chugs of Er Guo Tou and the promise of an extra RMB20 to his October wages to produce his masterpiece, his Sistine Chapel of backdrops.

Elsewhere in the Chateau, the North Plaza was abuzz with a flurry of construction activity.

Erm... seriously, those layer frames did not build themselves... Must be lunchtime.

It was my first stint as show director AND event coordinator so I spent most of my time at the control station shouting orders simultaneously over my mobile, the wireless intercom, walkie talkie and microphone.

"Alright people, work with me! Let's take it from the top for the 109th time. And... action!"

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of event planning in China

2005-10-15T18:44:00.000+08:00

Phew... The event that we have been planning for 4 months came and went on 12th October. It went well enough and the clients are happy... for now. My boss offered congratulations on a job well done and advised surrounding myself with friends so that I didn't fall into a "black hole" as he had back in the day when he used to organise events. He said he felt empty, depressed and without purpose without the stress of preparing for an event. Pffth... black hole indeed. No danger of that happening. Just when I thought I could take a couple of days off to recuperate I get phonecalls summoning me back to the office to prepare for another couple of things on 20th October and 3rd November.

The events and marketing industry is at fascinating stage of development in China and here I am caught thick in the action. I have been presented countless opportunities to work alongside people from all walks of life from CEOs, leaders of global industry and heads of state like German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, right down to armies of labourers who transform ordinary places into glittering party venues, technicians who work tirelessly around the clock to set up equipment and lay every last cable as well as and the ayi taskforce who clean, mop and wipe down every last surface till not a trace of dirt remains. Somewhere in the middle of this spectrum are the individuals that I conduct day-to-day communication with, usually consisting of white collar Chinese employees in large multinational companies who have graduated from some of the top universities in China and speak a smattering of English and who, as a result, hold the mistaken belief that they are a superior class far above other Chinese. These are some of the most arrogant, self-important yet ironicallly ignorant and unprofessional individuals that I've ever had the misfortune to deal with.

And in the middle of this maelstrom, the much-maligned, over-worked, under-appreciated
events coordinator i.e. me, is entrusted with the difficult and thankless task of pooling these resources towards the common goal of a successful and impressionable event. Notwithstanding the shit I have to put up with on the way there, I'd agree to go through it all over again in a heartbeat if only for the simple fact that this position affords me the full view of different human interactions that make up an event and indeed any successful undertaking in China.

The Good

For all my complaints about Chinese employees, this project wouldn't have taken off without the industrious team of colleagues and workers I had the pleasure of working with.

While I fully endorse the need to maintain a healthy balance of having a life outside the work sphere, routine hours is simply not a regular feature in this industry. In preparing for this event I worked 14 hour days sustained only by a steady stream of coffee, greasy croissants that I bagged from the hotel cafe at breakfast and also the other people who were in this together with me. My colleagues would shoo me off the work site so that I could get a couple of hours of shut eye while they stayed up to supervise construction and set up work which was manned by technicians and labourers working through the night. They took turns sleeping on the hotel sofas and woke each other up in the morning for a simple breakfast of egg pancakes and buns before soldiering on once again. Waking up at 5.30am for final checks on lighting equipment after 3 unfulfilling hours of fitful sleep was made so much easier just by the solidarity of these people who went the extra mile without so much as a complaint. Ask this of workers anywhere else in the world and incur the wrath of worker unions and labour movements along with threats of strikes, demands for higher wages and improved work conditions.

The Bad

Many people and businesses in China aspire to be great and often they turn towards the West as a source of inspiration. The Chinese have an insatiable appetite for all things European even as they scream and insist that their culture and history is far superior to any other in the world.

Transplanting French Baroque architecture to a Chinese managed hotel in the suburban landscape of Changping district is aesthetically objectionable. However, importing Parisian-style service attitude and integrating it into half arsed Chinese hotel management is just off-the-scale unethical and wrong.

I believe that the Chateau Lafitte has dreams of becoming a world-class hotel, an oasis of kitsch tranquility in the of the wasteland steel mills and garbage recycling workshops beyond the 5th Ring Road, catering to middle class Beijingites looking for a weekend break. As with many other things in China, it is easy to build hardware and infrastructure, ergo impressive castle buildings, Greco-Roman pillars and luxuriously fitted guest rooms. However, it is the "software reprogramming" i.e. well trained staff with a high level of education that is the uphill battle. The lack of professional hotel management training especially in the Banquet Department was telling. For example:

The managers were surly and would have been more at home in SOE or down my local jiachangcai restaurant. They were unresponsive even to the least demanding of requests like changing the reception table skirting from red to blue (I know it's anal but seriously about half my time is spent ensuring that the client's fragile corporate identity ego is not bruised).
Repeated instructions were given by myself and my other colleagues before a soiled table cloth in the banquet hall which shouldn't even have been there in the first place was changed.
Wine glasses were placed on banquet tables facing down??! Even a cultural neanderthal of the MTV era like me knows that just isn't right!
The waiter gave me blank look when I asked for scrambled eggs at breakfast before informing me I had a choice between yi bian jian "fried one side" or liang bian jian "fried two sides". The kao mian bao "grilled bread" which I assumed was toast turned out to be soggy Danish pastry adorned in the centre with lumpy custard and a limp slice of tinned peach. "Where is my kao mian bao?" The waiter regarded me kindly with a look that I would normally reserve for mentally handicapped children and nodded his head towards the offending pastry.

The Ugly

Naturally, I reserve my most scathing comments for white collar Chinese employees with superiority complex that I had to deal with before and during the event. Stupid people do not bother me in the slightest. But it is when stupid people mistakenly think that they are smarter than everyone else because they are employed by a luxury German auto maker and happened to spend a year working in Singapore which OBVIOUSLY makes them worldly and cosmopolitan and well-travelled and therefore far better than the rest of us. That's when their very existence pisses me off. I have never seen such a flawless incorporation of anal retentiveness into micro-management. Does nobody love her? Did her mother wish she had died at childbirth? And if she did, why didn't her mother throw her into the river like the rest of the unwanted female babies and done us all a favour? Then we wouldn't have to endure such Dumb and Dumber dialogues like:

Anal Retentive Harpy: How many wait staff can you allocate to us for our cocktail reception?

Banquet Manager: We can give you 10 staff to clear empty glasses and plates, as well as replenishing food and drinks on the cocktail station.

ARH: So... there will no staff to serve our guests?

BM: Well no, we usually set up food and drink stations and guests help themselves.

ARH: That is not acceptable. Our guests are very important people. They cannot be expected to serve themselves.

Me: *Last I heard they were corporate bigwigs, not incontinent cerebral palsy patients. What do you mean they can't serve themselves??!*

BM: Well... this is the way the hotel organises all cocktail receptions, I'm afraid.

Me: *Wow, I'm sure you love being in the service industry*

ARH: I'm telling you, you are not giving me enough staff. This is going to be a disaster.

BM: Ok look, I'll try to switch some staff over from the hotel bar in addition to the wait staff from the Western restaurant to make up the numbers, but I can't possibly allocate 20 staff for your reception. I need people for dinner preparations.

ARH: Ok then, how about 15 staff.

BM: Twelve.

Me: *I can't believe I'm hearing this*

ARH: I didn't come here to bargain. I paid the hotel, I expect service.

Me: *Actually, WE paid the hotel deposit, you mangy bitch. You haven't coughed up a single fen!*

BM: Miss, this is the best we can offer.

ARH: *with reluctant resignation* Fine. What sort of uniforms will they be wearing?

BM: Excuse me?

ARH: They will be wearing identical uniforms, right?

BM: Well uh... uniforms for male and female staff are different.

ARH: That's fine, but the staff from the Western restaurant and the bar. They are coming from two different F&B outlets. They will be wearing the same uniform, right?

BM: Well... no... as you said, they usually work in two different outlets, and uniform is one way of differentiation.

ARH: *shaking head so hard her neck looked like it was about to snap* Bu bu bu bu bu bu. bu No no no no no no. How silly will that look? They must have identical uniforms.

BM: *exasperation* Miss! Their functions will be different! I will allocate the bar staff to serve behind the cocktail station and replenish food and drinks on the table. The staff from the Western restaurant will mingle in the crowd collecting used glasses and tableware...

ARH: AND serving our guests!

BM: And serving y.. no, sorry I can't promise that. They are not trained to serve guests! I've told you that already!

ARH: But how can that be?! How can I ask the company president to queue up with everyone at the cocktail station and help himself to finger food?

BM: I would much rather he did that than my service staff spilling red wine all over him.

ARH: I don't believe this.

BM: Miss, rest assured, everything will be alright. This is not the first time we're hosting a luxury auto maker. We are aware of the high requirements you have.

ARH: Fine. Now back to the uniforms. Can't you dress them in the same uniform? The hotel MUST have surplus uniforms.

Me: Um... actually I don't think it'll make a difference...

ARH: Shut up, Jo.

Me: OK. *shutting up and sinking into chair*

BM: The hotel does NOT have surplus uniforms! Plus all uniforms are made to order! And all staff are responsible for their own uniforms! They take it home with them! We do not have extra uniforms in storage! And even if we do, they're not one size fits all!

ARH: I don't care how you fix the uniform problem, just fix it. Now. How about security guards...?

I kid you not. This 'meeting' chases its own tail round and round for an hour, and to serve what end other than an inwardly insecure female Chinese white collar worker asserting her authority where she can.

Anyhow, that is in the past and I have to look forward to collecting balance payment from the client for services rendered. That is going to be another ugly one but I'll worry about it tomorrow. I'll be getting pictures of the event on Monday and will post it on another site for friends and family (you know who you are), much as I'd like to name and shame the client in public. I'm not completely without principles, you know. ;-)

Business practices with Chinese characteristics

2005-10-11T13:03:00.000+08:00

One thing that I will certainly take away with me after my China stint is appreciation for the orderly manner in which business is conducted in other parts of the world. I have no illusions about deals and transactions being executed with German precision, nor that I'd be on such an equal wavelength with the people I'd deal with if I were anywhere else that we were probably soulmates in another lifetime. But I have to say that I have never quite encountered ignorance and thick-skinnedness on the same level as I have while I've been working in Beijing. To be fair, although Guangzhou is a shithole and everyone is out to scam you, I've found that business-savvy Guangzhouren have always been so much easier to work with. The fact that I expect to be taken for a ride means that I have my guard up. I also find myself in awe of their wileyness and cunning and I respect them for accepting that there are certain business practices that just cannot be bent. Which is more than I can say for the Northerners who have by some cruel twist of fate have been imposed on me.

Consider this:

Party A: My client
Party B: Chateau Lafitte
Our company: Party A's whipping boy and Party B's gimp

Party A and Party B have signed a very ordinary business contract including a date by which a non-refundable deposit must be paid in order for us, the subcontractor, to prepare for an event on the hotel grounds.

Contact person at Party A is a Northern retard who knows too well how long it takes for their finance department to issue cheques multinationals in China are staffed with an incompetent workforce and managed by foreigners who are perpetually on holiday. Naturally, she applies for the deposit cheque too late and the finance manager has swanned off on an extended October holiday. Therefore, the cheque in question is till now not yet in existence, and the deadline came and went this morning.

Party B is run by a bunch of arseholes who throw peasants and farmers off their land to build a horrific mockery of French architecture. They probably have rotting teeth, smoke Hongye cigarettes by the dozen, roll their trouser legs up at meetings and then have orgies with prostitutes in their karaoke baojian to celebrate another successful land transaction that will displace another rural village.

A couple of weeks ago I received a panicked phonecall from the Harpy (that would be the beifangren whose own mother hated her so much that she dropped her on her head when she was a baby) saying that she could not expedite payment.

Harpy: You guys need to write the hotel a cheque to act as our guarantee.

Me: You have to be joking! We are a small company, we don't have the financial resources.

Harpy: They just need a guarantee till our cheque arrives, that's all.

Me: We don't have a contract with the hotel, we can't just write them cheques willy-nilly! And we most certainly cannot act as a guarantee for all our clients.

Harpy: They won't bank it in, they just want a guarantee. It doesn't need to say anything, you can just (I swear to God this is exactly what she said) write a blank cheque.

Me: *sputtering* I... WHAT?

Harpy: That's right, you heard me.

Me: Look Miss Harpy, I don't think you understand the definition of a guarantor. In fact, there is no agreement, written or otherwise, that names our company asParty A's guarantor.

Harpy: *spitting fire* I don't see what the big deal is.

Me: I don't think you understand the legal responsibilities of a guarantor. If I said yes, I would be agreeing to be responsible for costs that arise from the contract that your company signed with the hotel if you default on payment.

Harpy: Of coursenot, you're just being dramatic! It's not as if they're going to bank the cheque in.

Me: This is not the correct business practice. I cannot do this. I suggest if all they're after is a guarantee then I can draft a Letter of Guarantee for you which you can print out on company letterhead and get that bitch you call a boss (didn't really say that but I can fantasise) to sign it.

This goes back and forth for weeks. The foreign finance manager is still on holiday, the Harpy is still mentally challenged but the hotel decides that not only do they want a cheque from us as a guarantee, they also have every intention of sticking it in the bank before they let us begin any work for the event. I have resisted as much as I could but in the end my choices came down to walking away from 4 months of preparation or coughing the cheque up. It was painful but what else could I do?

China sucks ass.

China's paradox, my headache

2005-10-08T16:42:00.000+08:00

Just taking a few cheeky minutes to write this as it will probably be my last posting until 13 October at the earliest. Have a mega mega project happening that I expect will work me to within an inch of my sorry existence.

No matter where we go, associates who are competent and reliable are invaluable to making our working experience a challenging yet enjoyable one. And it really isn't much to expect considering we spend on average one third of our lives at at work. But as Peking Duck observed in his posting China's paradoxical shortage of trained graduates, this is one luxury that I do not have. My decision to delegate came back to bite me in the ass yesterday. Guess my laissez-faire management style is going to need some fine tuning. And don't you believe that the ability to speak Chinese will get you any much further than those who don't.

Me: Right, have you guys organised transport to pick the boxes up from the clients' office.

Colleagues: *all engaged in QQ or MSN liaotian*

Me: *cradling phone between shoulder and ear, proof reading English news releases and shouting across the office* HEEEEELLLOOO?? ANYONE?

Colleagues: Hmmm... did someone speak? Oh. Right. No. You never told us to.

Me: I sent you all an email!! When I came into the office on the 6th!

One colleague in particular: I never got any emails from you...

Me: I BLOODY SENT OUT DOZENS OF EMAILS WHEN I CAME BACK TO THE OFFICE DURING THE HOLIDAYS!!

Colleague: Oh erm.. I didn't think they were meant for me.

Me: So why do you think YOU were included in the mailing list?! And why do you think I wrote the email in Chinese? So that ALL of you would find it easier to understand and actually read them.

Colleagues: *collective murmur* Oh... didn't think it was important... thought was penis enlargement spam.... will get on it now...

Grrr... grrr....I could've thrown the phone at them.

Right then, going under for a few days. Wish me luck. It's going to be one long, drawn out battle against incompetence.

New shoes

2005-10-06T00:31:00.000+08:00

To liven up a stuffy suit

When I mean business

Meeting the parents?

When the parents are gone hehe...

Dongjiao Market

2005-10-05T14:54:00.000+08:00

I was not a happy bunny when I woke up this morning considering that the first thought that seeped into my sleep-blurred consciousness was my plan to go into the office. Well, strictly speaking I didn't HAVE to, but the fact that work anxiety has been the root of my mini panic attacks over the past few days, I thought better grab the bull by its horns and put my nose down for a few solid hours of work. Of course, seeing that most of the country is still technically on holiday, I didn't see why it would hurt to go to work after lunch. And since I'm such a darling / corporate ass-kisser, I figured that I deserved to reward myself with a couple of hours of retail therapy in the morning to cheer myself up.

Beijing is a city as detestable as everywhere else after a while. The first six months are pure laughs but then suddenly everything about this city start to annoy you, at first like an itch begging to be scratched and then eventually - on particularly horrendous days when you've been bumped in the queue twice during your first half hour out of the house, narrowly missed being spat on by a laotou'r living out the last of his pneumonia-ridden days or when the year round zhuangxiu in the flat above begins its daily chorus at 6am with all drills, hammers and saws a-blazing - Beijing Burnout engulfs you in an explosive ball of fire.

That said, none of us would last very long if all we saw was the negative side of life in the Jing. (Although, admittedly, it is sometimes difficult to see anything but) Come to think of it, most of us ride out 9 - 12 months before biting the Red Dust. Anyhow, as I was saying, Beijing is a city as detestable as any other. And like other places we call home, even if for a while, it is the small things and the people we meet that give us reason to stay. Personally, it is the knowledge that I can find affordable and pretty shoes away from the tourist traps of Yaxiu, Hongqiao and Xiushui at the Dongjiao Wholesale Market.

Dongjiao is located south of the old SOHO Building and is easily accessible by subway. I guessed with the National Day holidays the subway system wouldn't be too congested. Even so I was pleasantly surprised at how empty the Dongsi Shitiao subway station was at 10:00 am.

Why can't everyday be like today?

My delight was shortlived though when I got to the Jianguomen interchange and it felt like all of China descended upon that station. My attempts to stand clear of the carriage door were thwarted by the dozens of commuters pushing forward - I can just imagine them as sperm swimming towards the ovum during insemination and beating the crap out of each other to get there first. When the doors slid open, the musty smell of unwashed bodies floated out even before the passengers fought their way through. Perfume and fragrance sellers, as well as the population at large, could really benefit from an all-out marketing offensive in this country.

I got out at Dangwanglu Station. I couldn't remember how far I had to walk to get to Dongjiao so I hopped into one of the motorised trishaws hanging around the exit. These things are wicked if a little rickety and they could sure use better suspension. But they're great for ultra short distances and get you to your destination at RMB5 a pop.

Inside looking out

I got dropped off by the entrance of the humongous Dongjiao Pifa Shichang and was greeted by the sight of 3 security guards dragging and pushing a (presumably unauthorised) sweet potato seller's cart away with the female proprietor protesting every step of the way. It was quite pathetic to see that it took three men to lead one woman and her sweet potatoes away, one of them giving the back of her bicycle a ferocious kick now and again. I've also seen it outside my old residence at Jiaodaokou when a group of security guards ganged up on a woman illegally peddling goods at the gate. They grabbed her stuff, pushed her to the ground a few times but each time she jumped up and ran at them, screaming to give her things back. Stark contrast of cowardice and feistiness if there ever was one.

To get to Dongjiao Market proper I had to walk along a road with stalls selling everything you can imagine at everyday low prices - chicken cutlets, mobile phone trinkets, woven furniture, terrapins, dog food, roasted chestnuts, Xinjiang raisins, faux crystal, hair bobbles, kitchen utensils, garden shears, dumbells, bicycles ... all along a relatively short stretch. You have to see it to believe it. After that I wove my way through a car park which also housed a fish market and made a beeline for warehouse-esque structure beyond the gateway.

Gateway to new shoes - and probably everything else you need

Once inside, I had to locate stall no. 729 which meant passing the countless alleys crammed to the brim with stationary, hair curlers, underwear, ice cream and snacks, hula hoops, bedspreads, bathroom slippers and to the shoe section where I proceeded to dodge stall handlers trying to lure me into buying counterfeit Li Ning badminton trainers. It was like a military drill. I finally earned my stripes and found my girl who, to my relief, had a respectable selection of shoes just in. Prices weren't dirt cheap but they were reasonable for pretty and decent shoes without the hard sell. I came away with 3 pairs of shoes and a pair of boots to last me for the rest of the year, all for RMB415 with almost no bargaining.

I left Dongjiao feeling very chuffed with myself and not dreading the office quite as much as I did in the morning. I decided to walk back to the subway station because it really wasn't that far and also because I wanted to check out the area a little. Not that there is a scenic route to speak of, probably the most green to be found was in the algae floating in the canal that ran parallel to market. There were a few anglers on the bank (do canals have banks?) who must have been feeling more optimistic that I'll ever be if I were given a fishing rod and told to catch something from the waterway.

Venice it ain't...

Mutated freshwater salamander ahoy!

A little up the road and on the other side of a street stood a donkey and its cartload of pears from from the countryside. Along the dusty excuse for a pavement, groups of migrant workers hunched over chess games and another girl paid up some money to have a go at the Chinese tarot cards. An old lady called out to me to have my face read and my fortune told. And in the background loomed the SOHO apartments and business buildings with their shiny shops, HK dim sum eateries and Yoshinoyas. I brushed past a disaffected looking young man in a worn suit and a peasant mother with her 3 grubby children wondering why the urchins weren't at school and then went on my merry way.

Dead on the job

2005-10-04T18:24:00.000+08:00

If nobody hears from me in 5 days I hope that I have enough people who care to come looking for me so I don't suffer the same fate as this chap in the article...

Thanks to Kaufoo for the article. :-)

Not so happy Guoqing

2005-10-04T06:21:00.000+08:00

Yes, the Beijing Abandonees did get together as planned. I would have written all about it sooner had I not been busy making trips from my bed to the toilet worshipping the Ivory Goddess. I have never been so sick in my life from alcohol. It must be true then, that Kai and Vics serves up counterfeit alcohol that screws your insides like nothing else.

First stop Hua Jia Yi Yuan on Gui Jie because Ross had crayfish craving. I personally don't care too much for them because they look like miniature aliens to me that could quite easily have landed a cameo in Men in Black. I also read something interesting about the the xiao longxia in one of those email circulars that Chinese friends and colleagues forward on to you. This particular email urged the all patriotic Chinese not to eat crayfish which, allegedly, are not native to China but was brought into the country by the Japanese Imperial Army during their occupation of China. Legend has it that the JIA conducted biological experiments and widespread torture on the Chinese POWs - not that that is a secret, neither is it that hundreds of thousands died at the hands of the JIA who consequently faced the problem of body disposal. The JIA allegedly dumped a large number of bodies into ponds and lakes but quickly ran out of space because so many were killed in such a short time. The problem of openly decomposing bodies plus the stench and disease as a result is probably more than a little unpleasant even for the most battle-hardened war general. SO (here comes the twist) the JIA flew in planeloads of carnivorous xiao longxia and dumped THEM into the water to consume the prisoners' bodies. The critters not only munched their way through dead Chinese people, they also felt right at home and decided to multiply in their numbers. Ironically, a little while later some Chinese gastronome (or emaciated peasant) discovered that the xiao longxia was mighty tasty when broiled with lots of oil and tongue-numbing pepper flowers. And therefore in an ironic twist of faith the eater becomes the eaten becomes the eater and the xiao longxia rises from its sinister origins and is now the staple of celebrated food streets, best enjoyed with a big group of friends and washed down with warm 3 kuai Qingdao beers.

Ok, that was really shoddy bit of urban legend storytelling and I didn't do it any justice. It certainly didn't bother Ross at all who scarfed 3 portions of the greasy crustascean almost unassisted.

On to Bar Blu where I had my first and possibly last quality drink of the evening. It is more expensive but at least you pay up safe in the knowledge that Beefeater Gin, not some cheap Russian rip off, goes into your G&T. Then it was down the steps of Tongli, past Poachers and into Kai after spending our allocation on premium beverages for the night. The cheapest (and most possibly nastiest) bar in town was as packed as any bar could be even with the exodus of Beijing residents over the October holidays - great for people watching and freak-spotting. As that old adage goes, birds of a feather...

Who in Lord Horatio's name is that??

...tend not to stray all that far away from rest of the flock.

I tried to take some aerial photos of the club, although being about 3 feet taller would've probably be ideal for that endeavour, then perhaps I wouldn't capture my friends looking like they belonged at the neo Nazi youth convention :-/ ...

Erm...

Put it away, Josh!

Yes yes, from your cold, dead hands, we know...

After more than a few and when shirtless Brazillian men became too menacing to handle, Zach came up with a fabulous idea of going to Vics. Children, please, never ever go to Kai and Vics in the same night. I swear these two places serve different brands (can Perestroikovsky Vodkastolinoya even be justifiably called a brand??! ) with the same effect on your stomach as a molotov cocktail.

And so faced with the notion of going back to the office tomorrow I can't help but wonder if my National Day Holidays could've been somewhat more engaging than alternating between the watching rubbish telly on the sofa and twitching in bed. It's a depressing thought.

Respite at last...

2005-10-01T13:56:00.000+08:00

Dangerously close to one step from too far . Eric's enthusiasm to help me get there is cause for concern...

The National Day Holidays could not have come any sooner... I am exhausted from the stress of work and jealousy at my friends who actually have a life outside the office. D & D have gone to Barbados for 3 weeks. Anou and Eryn are lapping up the sun in Boracay. Hmph, even Matt Squared and Max are living it up down in Shanghai without me. I have been abandoned! Discarded! Forgotten! By those nearest and dearest to me in my time of need. *sniff*

No matter. Will be commiserating with fellow abandonees later tonight at Hua Jia Yi Yuan. Maybe there's still fun to be had?

Getting by with a little help from my friends :-)

2005-09-27T11:57:00.000+08:00

Had a very stressful week at work, was actually considering going into anti-social mode and declaring 2 days of hermiting. Thank God for friends who talked me out of my shell and made me realised how ridiculous I was being. Only one way to forget about work blues, and that is to surround yourself with people you love. Lots of them.

You would've thought that as an events planner, getting a big group of friends together is second nature to me. On the contrary, it is exactly because the nature of my work requires me to be so anally retentive 5 days a week that when it comes to my private life I usually opt to go into free fall or at least let someone else come up with a venue, work out the logistics of getting there and calculate the success rate of bringing different groups of friends to the same table (Thanks, Dionne! Just one of the many reasons why we love you!)

Saturday night was a risky experiment in fusing my diverse social circle at a single gathering. I was rather overwhelmed that my invitation returned 21 acceptances, especially as I had sent it by SMS on a whim while enjoying an afternoon gelato at Gustamente with my mature (i.e. grown up and rational, not in the sense of aged cheddar cheese) and sensible girlfriends Di, Anoushka and Eryn. They came along to my little shindig, as did the guys from my gym, Matt Squared and Max, Ross & Co. and also a few new friends to the Golden Circle.

Veteran Beijing residents Anoushka and Dionne share survival tips with newbie Pauline

I never thought I'd see Frank and John out of their sweats. Er... sitting next to another American called Frank.

Matt D looking slightly miffed at Matt K's monopoly on my attention. And the camera's.

It was only 11pm when we finished our very excellent dinner at Banana Leaf so we decided to head down to Beer Mania, one of Beijing's newest purveyors of fine Belgian beer. And as we all know, when the drinking starts that's when good behaviour ends...

Beware the Devil for He is a master shapeshifter who can take on many forms, including seemingly nice American boys andsweet Flemish nectar.

FRANKenstein -vs- Lucifer

Matt D finally cracks the mystery of those burnt out footprints, goats' heads and sacrificial virgins in his apartment.

A couple of rounds buying Belgian beers and overpriced Cosmopolitans left us all skint. We went over to Nanjie and that's when the night really began to unravel. And to think it all started off so well...

Free flow Love on tap at Nanjie. Ahh...

But that didn't last long. It's so much more fun dishing out bad attitude.

Oh my, the hours of fun to be had, lost in the glittering kaleidescope of adorable mugs belonging to Zach and Alex.

But Josh, the new kid in town, injects new blood to the Beijing face-pulling scene giving Alex and Zach a run for their money.

Jia is quite simply bedazzled with the fascinating array of eye candy.

I tell work what I really think of them with a little Dutch courage. :-p

All in all yet another great night out on the town with the gang...

... which, unfotunately, is more than I can say for this gentleman.

Supernanny hard at work?

2005-09-26T23:52:00.000+08:00

I am pissed off. Have conducted a futile exercise in trying to post photos of the weekend all day. Could they have cracked down so soon already?

Pictures of how I'd look like if I were an mature female elephant seal in heat may be very unbecoming of a good Asian girl with upright morals and is hardly "directed towards serving the people and socialism" but "against public security and national interest" it most certainly ain't. God, I hate this country so much.

Does that make me a dissident?

Pictures up and running as soon as I discover a way to circumvent the Great Firewall...

Oh show me a home, where the cockroaches roam...

2005-09-23T18:25:00.000+08:00

It has been a particularly stressful week at work, compounded by the stress and pressure of living up to my highly successful girlfriends who, despite their busy schedules, still somehow find time to prepare nutrious and delicious meals for their loved ones and get stuck into some home improvement while I, on the other hand, languish in a cockroach infested flat slouched out on the sofa in a work-induced coma in front of the telly eating my 3rd slice of Flora coated rye toast washed down by a single hawthorn jelly sweet which I bought at the Sanlitun Jingkelong supermarket over the weekend.

My feelings at the moment are therefore none too charitable towards those personalities that try to convince us into believing that it IS possible to juggle a stupidly hectic career, romance and domestic bliss. In fact it is perfectly normal to hold a 9-to-whenever job where you are barked at by unrealistic and ignorant clients, held back my well-meaning but underachieving workmates, and that you are expected to go back to a spotlessly clean home, open a well-stocked fridge while you crack open an ice cold beer to unwind for 5 minutes before you start to cook an elaborate home-made banquet for one which will take 2 hours preparation time plus marinating and 10 minutes to cool in order to get the flavour 'just so'.

And none of that TV dinner nonsense. You will sit at a perfectly set table (you laid out the silver cutlery and enjoyed a chilled glass of Chablis while waiting for your dinner. Oh, and sat in a hot bath, allowing the soothing water to wash away the stress while playful shadows from the scented candles all around you dance across your eyelids) and enjoy your lovingly prepared meal to the soundtrack of Mambo Kings. After doing the dishes and wiping down your kitchen work top, you slip into some comfy pink slippers and flip through the latest issue Home & Country till you decide that it's been a long day and retire for the night. So you snuggle into your immaculately crisp sheets, turn off the bedside lamp and fall asleep with just the slightest hint of a smile on your face, safe in the knowledge that it has been a good day that can only bettered by tomorrow.

In reality this is how my life goes: work for 11 hours straight, buy shitty RMB6 canteen lunch and eat it at the computer while I catch up on email. If I don't go to the gym, I drag myself up 4 flights of steps, kick off my shoes which land in the untidy pile of OTHER shoes at my door. I drop my bag down on the nearest surface (floor will do nicely), whip up a pasta with cheese dinner - my 4th consecutive one - made with the fastest cooking angel hair I could get at Jenny Lou's (4 minutes to al dente). While the dinner cooks, I quickly sweep up cockroach debris - wings, legs, eggs, droppings, decapitated heads - which has accumulated in the 12 hours that I've been out of the house. I tuck greedily into my dinner burning my tongue on my way there while David Fisher embalms another body on my TV. If I haven't been to the gym then I'm probably too tired to shower and pledge to wake up early tomorrow. I don't smell that bad yet anyway. I'm tempted to leave the dishes till tomorrow too but know all too well that my home will be overrun by an even bigger colony of roaches than it already plays host to. With all that done, I collapse into my unmade bed - it has been that way for the past 2 weeks and the only time I made it recently was so that my landlady wouldn't think that I was a complete slob when she came round to take curtain measurements - and find fitful sleep eventually after convincing myself that there's no point in worrying about what I can't fix till 9am the next day. Yep, life as I know it is a far cry from the glossy pages Good Housekeeping.

New elephant seal species discovered

2005-09-23T00:15:00.000+08:00

I give you the mirounga Beijingren! Eat your heart out, David Attenborough!

Mid Autumn Festival

2005-09-19T23:11:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was Mid Autumn Festival. I would have been quite happy staying at home as I do on all Sundays but Max convinced me to go to Leon's Zhongqiu do at Lusongyuan Hotel. Zhongqiu Jie is that traditional time of the year when Chinese families gather around a table, sit under the stars, drink tea and eat mooncakes, and our family here in Beijing is no different. It was great being with the people I love and meeting new friends and I'm glad I didn't go the slippery road of Nip/Tuck on DVD and a Dominos pizza TV dinner.

Leon, thinking that Matt D and I knew each other and got along well enough, sat the two of us next to each other. But that was before I encroached on to Matt's territory and he felt threatened enough to do something about it...

Me: Do you think this perfume does anything to mask my natural aroma, Matt?

Matt: This crazy ass chick has GOT to go!

... and we were caught like a couple of elephant seals defending their hood from would-be invaders. Or in the middle of what looked like an elaborate mating ritual between two giant pinnipeds.

Oh maaah gaawd maah Mom's poe-tay-toe seealaaad! It's amaayzing!

But seeing as it was Zhongqiu Jie and all we decided to put our differences behind us and made up fairly swiftly...

The normally territorial sea-dwelling shellfish eaters bonded through their mutual love of the marine biologist's lenses...

Mooncake chomping elephant seals weren't the only pretty things at the table...

Matt K and Jia in yet another of their sickeningly picture perfect poses...

But that was before a particularly delicious looking fruit platter caught Matt K's eye and they were soon flirting furiously...

Juicy...

Max decided that a fruit platter was far more than any one man deserved and made off with the cocktail umbrella...

Max always made sure that he wore the right colour accessories to complement his outfit especially on a special night like this...

And Jia discovered that it was far more fun to hang out with the other girls after all.

Me, Jia and her cleavage vying for blogspace

We never got to see the moon of course, this being Beijing, the city of perpetual smog and pollution but this whole Chinese obsession with lunar rabbits is overrated anyway. Happy Zhongqiu, everyone!

You know you're stressed out when...

2005-09-19T18:39:00.000+08:00

... you're at the clinic seeing to what seems like a minor chest infection. The doctor tells you to lie down and gives you the all over examination. He presses down hard on the lymph nodes on your neck and a grave look of concern crosses his face. He ignores the questions you raise and calmly finishes the rest of his examination. He steps behind his desk, removing the stethoscope from his ears and balances his glasses on his nose, jotting down his observations in your medical records while you sit yourself up nervously and prepare yourself for his diagnosis.

Doctor: I'd advise you to take a chest x-ray.
Me: Is.... is everything okay?
Doctor: Just a precautionary measure...
Me: What's wrong...?
Doctor: Your lymph nodes, they're unusually large and knotted
Me *hand self-consciously going to the back of my neck*: Oh? I thought these were just over-exercised neck muscles. I go to the gym alot, you see...
Doctor: No, those are your lymph nodes, part of your immune system. They become enlarged when your body is fighting off an infection.
Me *crestfallen*: Oh... I thought those arm lifts were finally working.
Doctor *rolls his eys*: Noooo... I don't know, maybe you have unusually large lymph nodes. Or maybe...
Me: Maybe what??
Doctor: Maybe you have tubercolosis.
Me *eyes lighting up*: TB? You mean that infectious disease where you cough up green goo and requires hospitalisation and quarantine? Ooh... do you think I can be out of work till.. say... 12th October?
Doctor: Look, I'm just saying it may be serious. That's why I'm advising you to take a chest x-ray.
Me *nodding over enthusiastically* (thinking) : Please give me TB.... Please give me TB...

I was so happy I just about stopped myself from skipping to the x-ray room. So imagine my disappointment when my results came back and I did not have TB, nor did any nasty little flecks show up on my lungs. I had to pay RMB600 for it and I was given a clean bill of health to work my sorry little arse to the ground.

And THAT is when you know that your job is a health hazard in its own right.

Friday night, 7.50pm...

2005-09-16T19:49:00.000+08:00

... and still in the office. It's normal. Really. Everyone does it. All the time. In China. At my company.

My colleague and I needed a break from designing invitation card layouts and decided to mess around with the camera. Taa daaa!!

Thank you to Ross for the Yoshitomo Nara postcards. He actually bought it while he was back in London after he saw this particular picture and was immediately reminded of me. Not quite sure whether to feel flattered or insulted. :-p

The English Language Has Raped the Chinese People

2005-09-16T14:21:00.000+08:00

I came across this topic on the Peking Duck which I found very interesting, plus translating articles that are not remotely work related is infinitely so much more fun! You may also like to check out the full Chinese text and comments.

Why is it said that the English language has raped the Chinese people? (I am referring to the overwhelming majority of Chinese people, not including those who willingly allow themselves to be raped, indeed there are some outstanding heroes who on the contrary rape the English language) . In the opening to my essay I would like to discuss the definition and consequences of rape.

The literal meaning of rape is to violate someone's wishes and to forcibly have sexual intercourse with that person. This usually takes place between a man and a woman. Of course of late there have been numerous cases of male rape victims of male perpetrators. We can go further to include pyschological rape etc...

Rape usually leads to serious consequences: the timid suffer in silence and blame themselves; the bold lodge a police report immediately and have the rapists sent to jail but they often cannot escape the scrutiny and gossip of the public for what happened to them. The victims of rape suffer an irreversible setback and have a feeling of isolation. Some of them who are unable to bear the burden take their own lives, there are those who become pregnant with their rapists' child and end up marrying them. How a rape takes place is usually quite similar, but victims of rape suffer in many ways...

Let's take a look at how the English language has raped the Chinese people:

1) Compulsory English learning is in violation of the wishes of the majority

One must learn English as long as one is enrolled in a state-run school regardless of whether or not one needs to, regardless of whether the English learned will be put to use. I don't know what it's like in HK or in Taiwan but in the Mainland you will not be admitted to prestigious senior high schools (gaozhong), you may not even be allowed entry into ordinary senior high schools, let alone university. Even if you do make it to university, you will not be able to graduate easily or move on to further study if you do not achieve Grade 4 or Grade 6 in English, regardless of whether your work requires a knowledge of English. I think most ordinary people will find no use for English, there are many people around me who regret having put in so much effort to learn the language. If you would ask these people after 3 and a half years, you'll find that 70-80% will have forgotten all that they've learnt a long time ago. I really don't understand why I must learn an utterly useless foreign language in my own country and why my future prospects are affected if I don't. I'll learn it if I have to, why must I be made to? What is this if not rape? On some levels, English is an instrument of rape and the people who introduced the strategy of compulsory English learning are the perpetrators of rape.

2) Compulsory English damages the interests of the majority

Those who have attended school will have a deep impression of how even from junior high school (chuzhong) most of our time was dedicated to learning English, whether it was memorising vocabulary or grammar rules. We probaly spent half our extracurricular time and 2/3 of class time learning a language that is not ours. Our youth, our golden years raped by the English language!!! Some might say we could've chosen not to learn! Could we? If you did not take learning English seriously you would definitely not make it into a good school, perhaps not even into an ordinary school. When I was in junior high, I always came out among the top five in language, math and science subjects. I was often the top student in physics and chemistry. However, I was second last in the English subject in my entire school. When taking the exam to enter senior high , my overall results was 12 points short of that required by the outstanding high schools , and I only scored 17 points on my English paper. From then on my studies took a down turn. It was the English language that suffocated me. It was the English language that snuffed out numerous talented people... (I study by rote learning) Many people like myself had to go home to change the earth after junior or senior high. I really don't know whether they had to speak English to the earth everyday. I'm not too sure what he's trying to say here.

3)Compulsory English has ruined the future development of Chinese science

The blossoming of a hundred flowers refers to the blossoming of talents during the Spring Autumn Warring Period, which is arguably the Renaissance of the Chinese history. Now however, China has till today not produced a single Nobel Prize Winner on its own soil even while Western science develops and grows at a tremendous pace. Some people attribute this to a difference societal systems. I, on the other hand, think that this is a result of compulsory English learning. Students should be taught according to their aptitude and not forced to learn something that is against their nature. With most of their time spent memorising boring vocabulary lists and grammar, students do not allocate enough time to learn about other subjects. In order to gain admission into outstanding senior high schools and key universities - sometimes just so you earn the right to an education - you end up foregoing your interests and what you're good at. For some, this means forfeiting their chances of winning the Nobel Prize in the future.

4) Compulsory English learning has robbed many of their living

I don't object to learning English but I am very much against the notion of compulsory English. English should be a profession, not a basic skill. Those who have a need to learn English and succeed should be credited with a corresponding salary. Those who do not need to learn English should devote their effort to other areas of development. When they need English then they should employ those who have a very good command of the language which is far better than most other people. If everyone studies English language very hard but yet do not learn all that much, this on the contrary robs people who have a good command of the English language of their livelihood. Though how the writer came to this conclusion is beyond me and I'm not sure what point what his point is, assuming he had one in the first place.

5) Learning methods in spite of objective realities

Anyone who judges a country's citizens based on their command of a foreign language is just plain stupid, no matter how many arguments in favour he puts forward.

With our mother tongue, first we learn how to speak, then we learn the characters followed by grammar. The reverse is true of learning the English language. I remember when I was at school I used to note pronuncation of English words by writing down how they'd sound in Chinese characters and still I could not make myself remember them. My girlfriend's has attained Grade 4 English but still foreigners, even English-speaking foreigners do not understand what she's trying to say.

Dear me... what sort of times do we live in, that I must learn another person's language in my own country, in my home, in order to go to university and to look for work? This language will not benefit me in any way, I will have no use for it for as long as I live.

The English language has really raped the Chinese people in an unbelievable way and has done so for decades. Who knows how long more this outrage will continue?

I don't even know what to say to this guy. Hell, I don't even know what my mother tongue is. Maybe I have two, but I think that concept is a bit far fetched for him and too much for his puny, stubbornly monolingual brain to process.

Thought of the Day

2005-09-14T18:24:00.000+08:00

Why is it that you're not actually going anywhere when you're stuck in rush hour traffic? Oh, the irony!

I had lots of time to ponder this question yesterday when I was sitting on the corner of Dongzhinmenwai and the 3rd East Ring Road, staring at the faulty traffic lights ahead, daring it to stay red like it had done for the previous 20 minutes. Now my optometrist grand dad always said to me that it's not healthy on the eyes to look at red objects for too long, so I turned my glare to the cars that were trying to cut into our line of traffic from the service road. Some of them stayed there for about 5 minutes then decided that they were going nowhere and put their cars in reverse to the sounds of honks of protest from the fellow queue-jumpers behind them. It took us a whole hour and a half to get back to the office - I would probably have got there faster on foot. God, I miss my scooter. :-(

China Bans Foreign Names For Properties

2005-09-14T14:42:00.000+08:00

After my last posting on Chateau Lafitte I found this news particularly amusing.

The southwestern Chinese city of Kunming is forcing developers to change the names of properties deemed too foreign-sounding, saying they debase traditional culture, officials said Tuesday.

At least nine developments in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, have changed their names since officials began implementing new guidelines last month. That means "Paris of the East Plaza," "French Gardens" and "Ginza Office Tower" are no more.

"It's not proper to name those communities with so many weird foreign titles," said an official with the Kunming Urban Planning Bureau, who, like many Chinese bureaucrats, would only be identified by his surname, Xiao. "We feel obligated to keep our local characteristics."

Foreign-sounding names are popular in China, lending a hint of exoticism to cookie-cutter housing developments and office buildings springing up in urban centers. Many are targeted at China's rising middle class, who are better educated and increasingly drawn to foreign travel, culture and ideas.

Source: AP

Too little too late? Legislation banning Eurokitsch architecture in Chinese cities would be nice too...

Like a WW2 POW on the River Kwai

2005-09-14T13:17:00.000+08:00

Boss

Surely no one has worked as hard since they built the Death Railway back in the day, but it's business as usual here at the workplace in Beijing. About 4 people have left in the space of a week and a half, the boss is not best pleased, and my client is still gunning for a seat as a permanent member on the Supreme Council of the Harpie Beatchood.

My colleague and I spent most part of yesterday out of the office. We were really not looking forward to it...

We spent hours walking around the grounds and taking pictures of the architectural monstrosity that is the Beijing Chateau Lafitte, located on the outskirts of the city in Changping District. I mean, I know that the Chinese culture has absolutely nothing going for it ever since they shot themselves in the foot with Mao and the Cultur@l R3v0lt10n, but is there really need to copy and paste large chunks of foreign culture and identity as crassly as they do?

Its promotional brochure reads as such - The Laffitte [sic] displays the essence of French culture: wine, architecture, sculpture, painting and gardening. The 24,000 sqm building complex consists of a main castle and two wing castles. The main castle is developed from the French Laffitte [sic], one of France [sic] ten royal castles. The architecture recalls the Baroque style of latter Renaissance Europe...

...and a unique French Duke-style veins parterre stands at the front of the main castle. A fountain featuring sculptures of figures drawn from ancient Greek mythology is inside the parterre. The two wing castles are created based on the French Palace of Fontainebleau. The castles and Roman columns surround a 10,000 sqm "wine culture plaza".

This is where my team and I are going to commute to and from for much of the next 30 days in preparation of a project. The picture on the way back from the Chateau says it all...

Racist Park

2005-09-12T12:25:00.000+08:00

This is a direction sign to the Ethnic Minorities Park along the 3rd Ring Road. The Chinese should seriously consider learning from properly qualified, native level English speakers regardless of their race and appearance instead of obsessing over 'pure-bred' white teachers, going so far as to overlook the fact that they hail from Ukraine, Bulgaria or even *choke* France.

But really, who wants a Chinese-American teacher with a degree in English Literature from UCLA anyway?

Image via asiapundit

Fun with Masks

2005-09-11T23:58:00.000+08:00

Had lunch at Peter Pan - the cheese pizza is to die for - and then made our way over to the Wu in one of the few RMB1.20 taxis that has not been taken off the streets yet. Lots of my friends complained about the RMB1.20 having banged their knees numerous times on the cages but personally I've always preferred them to the RMB1.60, simply because they're a damn sight cheaper and not that much more uncomfortable. The new Hyundais are comfy but the most of the cabbies seemed to have been plucked from the countryside, spiffed up a bit and stuck in the fleet of brand new taxis. Plus they never turn on the A/C anyway so really the new RMB1.60 taxi experience, to me, is probably not the improvement the authorities had hoped for.

While on our way across the city, we came across another example of how the Chinese love to torture their cars - and other commuters - by transforming a perfectly normal vehicle into a garish piece of misguided individual expression which should be impounded and melted down immediately.

Pink Buick on the North 2nd Ring Road.

Pollution was really bad yesterday so we had to get the masks out for our walk from Wudaokou to Zhongguancun. Jia and I thought it couldn't hurt to have a little fun and staged a reenactment of The Slaying of the Friendly Cyclops:

Jia the Friendly Cyclops and Her Tormentor

Matt, Max and I walked down from Wudaokou to Zhongguancun along the North 4th Ring Road. If they felt they did not attract enough attention their masks certainly made sure they did.

Two dangerously good-looking lotharios at large in Beijing.

They are armed to the teeth with a universally alluring charisma. Be warned! Many have had their socks charmed off by these two Passion Predators.

Not much else happened over the weekend but for every person staying home and convalescing from a nasty illness you bet there are 10 more who have been tearing this town up. Here's a pair of ill-fated shoes that didn't make it. I found them discarded just inside the BLCU south gate.

Yep, the students are back and this particular one must be thinking "shoe-d've worn the practical ones to Propoganda"

Jo Fish and Gay Bar

2005-09-10T10:39:00.000+08:00

Went to 1,001 Nights last night with a bunch of friends. Food was good as usual and FINALLY I managed to take pictures of the legendary Jo Fish. The first time we came across this lovely orange smiley fish was back in 2002 in the now chai'ed Durty Nellies in South Sanlitun. I guess I was somewhat more rotund back in the day and bore an uncanny resemblance to the fish which my friends named after me. Judge for yourself:

After dinner we were deciding where to go. Two among our group of friends were a gay couple and they request to go to a gay bar. I was all up for it! Gay bars are the stuff of legend: beautiful, unattainable, impossibly well-groomed, impeccably dressed men who knew how to dance and have a good time. From San Francisco to Miami, East Coast to West Coast (note to self: have been spending too much time with Americans of late. Must undergo rehabilitation in the company of more like-minded Brits), the gay scene IS the ultimate party scene. I was sooo ready for it.

But I forgot one crucial detail - Beijing isn't quite Berlin. We got to Destination, joined the back of what looked like a queue only to be brushed aside by a crowd of burly, tight vest wearing, fugly Chinese gay men. Look on the bright side though - I've found a new subgroup to abuse. Control freak corporate women were soooo last Monday.

Got into the club and observed the mostly Chinese crowd while we were waiting for our drinks. I was terribly, terribly crushed. I thought gay bars are full of eye candy. As Max pointed out, they just look like Chinese men anywhere else. In other words, unattractive, badly dressed and all with that awful flat top haircut. They were as tactile as any other straight, homophobic Chinese man who may or may not be slightly in denial. I like Ross' statement about a guy he met that he was so far back in the closet he's the Mayor of Narnia.

But I digress. To be fair, they did dance a lot better than straight Chinese men, but I don't see them auditioning as back-up dancers for Kylie or Madonna anytime soon. Maybe it was a slow night but Destination really did not do any justice to the legend of outrageously flamboyant gay bars.

It's Friday and I've just figured out how to work the HTML function...

2005-09-09T14:13:00.000+08:00

... plus the picture really does sum it up.

I was just thinking last night how many awful things have happened to America ever since Junior Turd came into office. 9/11, invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq War (justfied by that tenuous link he made between IraQ and al-Qaeda), the on-going war on terrorism and now the disastrous way in which the Katrina aftermath and rescue operations has been handled.

Picture via The Peking Duck

Oh yeeeeah baby, I'm an HTML genius!

Colin Feral

2005-09-09T10:30:00.000+08:00

I have decided that Colin Farrell is no longer the sexiest man alive. He now looks like the fat, greasy, disgusting one from the Village People! How could he have let himself go so much? Why why why??? Obviously Guiness is not always good for you unless you aspire to be a shapeless lump and are fine with living in the shadow of your former glory days. *sigh* Oh well. Max is happy though, and that's all that matters at the end of the day. :-)

Boyz n da Wu

2005-09-07T22:01:00.000+08:00

I have really taken my time to write about Matt, Matt and Max's housewarming party last Friday but it was such a splendid shindig with lots of evidence that a student house in Beijing can just be as fun as anywhere else in the world that I just had to.

I tagged along with the boys as they prepared for their party which in itself was not an uneventful experience. First off, we went to the great saviour and haven from shoddily decorated Chinese apartments (fluorescent lights, linoleum flooring and damp toilets) that is Ikea. Of the many items the boys happily popped into their yellow Ikea bags, the decision on which standing lamps to buy was a tough one.

Matt: Doh! I forgot, I need something to go in my bedroom too.

Koren: Oh God you have hideous tastes

Max: Can we go get a jianbing now?

Matt: Come on Kong Ren, stay with me, you're flagging...

Koren: Whatever!

Me: Ooh look, a camera!

And after all that wrangling they settled on this outstanding symbol of male fertility and masculity. Sweet.

A quick stop home to drop off the purchases and then we were out again, firstly to lunch and then to the nearest Carrefour, which under normal traffic circumstances, would have taken us all of 5 minutes. But of course, we were in Zhongguancun and it was Friday late afternoon - the favourite day for a mass exodus out of the city with a corresponding rush of people coming to to spend the weekend in Beijing. I had the right side of my face properly roasted by the autumn sun and the joy of being stuck in one of those taxis that just did not, come hell or high water, believe in rolling up the windows and blasting out the A/C. I know it's gonna cost you a few kuai, gemen'r, but it sure as hell beats a lungful of noxoius traffic fumes and the noice of gridlock. Not to mention the disheartening sight of plain road stupidity. Can you believe these are the same people the traffic police let off to give ME slack on riding a scooter without a license?

With all that time wasting and Chinese shoppers trying to bump the taxi queue (*serenity now... serenity now...* Where do you think you're going, beatch?!) I never thought the party would take off but of course it did.

It took them a while but people figured out soon enough that this was where it's at... (that sentence can't be grammatically correct, surely?)

Matt gave all and sundry an intensive tour of the premises, leaving no stone or TV cabinet door unturned... ...while Matt Koren was slightly more self-centred, albeit deliciously so, and posed for the cameras...

...but even the beautiful people need a little help from their friends so Matt K roped Jia, who is probably the most delightfully insane Chinese girl I've ever met, and my good self for a little more camera action.

Now the boys would not have let me follow them around if I hadn't made some contribution to the housewarming party so I served up some of my famous fruit punch which went down, quite literally, very well. Observe the bloke in the background proper knocking it back!

The guy in the blue shirt seemed to have had quite a bit too...

... as did Matt...

Despite my heavy punch making duties and social butterflying I still found lots of time to share a quiet moment or two with Max. And then a camera appeared and my natural poser instinct clicked into action...

Echoing Matt's sentiments, I have a feeling that this is going to be a good year. :-)

Holiday Schmoliday

2005-09-06T09:59:00.000+08:00

I took a short break last Wednesday and was out of the office till yesterday. Sometimes you really have to wonder if it's worth it. Even on Thursday my mobile was ringing non-stop. I had one 20 minute conversation with the client i.e. the Mother Superior of Harpies ("MSH") herself, a telephone conference with my long-suffering colleagues and stayed up till 1.30am that night to write up work schedules that the MSH wanted. It seems that She, the Spokesharpie of the Uber Bitches Council, does not fully comprehend the meaning of holiday, which according to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary means:

1: HOLYDAY
2: A day on which one is exempt from work: specifically, a day marked by a general suspension of work in commemoration of an event (i.e. commemorating my Freedom, Liberation and Emancipation from Harpies, however temporarily)
3: chiefly British: a period of relaxation

In the end, I sent the Witch Slag what she wanted and turned my mobile phone off for the rest of the week. I thought that it would give me greater peace of mind but really it didn't. I spent most of the weekend dreading the thought of going back to work, which to be fair, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There was the initial stress of not knowing what to expect and I was half prepared to be torn to shreds by the Hound of Beijingville. But I suppose no matter how many names I call her, I am still but Minion Whose Ass Belongs to the One Whose Name Shall Not Be Uttered Lest It Invokes the Extreme Urge in Me to Stab Someone in the Eye with a Blunt Pencil.

Oh well, new day today and all that and I have thus far been left unharassed so will stop this Banshee Bashing because I really am concerned for the huge debt of bad karma I have accumulated since about 7.30pm last night when I was just about to leave the office for the gym (even turned off my computer, the office server and all) when Spawn of Medusa started throwing hissy fits and spewing battery acid about how she wants that proposal, like, 5 minutes ago. So *deep breath* "Serenity now.... serenity now..."

Happy 3rd China Anniversary!

2005-09-02T01:11:00.000+08:00

Oh my Goldilocks where did the time go?? I cant believe that 3 years ago I first came back to the Motherland. It was a 5 and a half hour plane journey from KL, the landscape was grey and barren, the air oppressively hot, the pollution worse than I had imagined and I was on an emotional rollercoaster. 3 years on, I can say that I have no regrets about coming over here. I am surprised at how long I have lasted especially after giving myself a limit of 2 years maximum. Beijing isnt perfect, but it has been my home for the past 36 months and I daresay I dont think I will be going anywhere for a while. Which, come to think of it, sounds rather dismaying. But if the last 3 years is anything to go by then bring it on! I never thought Id say this but this city has really given me some of the best times of my life! Such as

Meeting Max *collective aaahh*

Girlies Run Wild at Bar Blu

Jo Buckles hen night which began at Suzy Wongs and ended ... uh... the next morning... somewhere in Beijing

Of course nothing is forever, neither was South Sanlitun and the fine watering holes it was home to, such as Huxleys

... and the Hidden Tree where I first met Ross "Junglist Massive" Goulding...

Then there are those places which we wish someone would take apart with a toothpick, like Poachers...

Boys will be boys, and Ross will be the infatiguably incorrigible Ross and that is why he's my brother and sidekick

Terrorising random strangers and serial killers on the run just wouldn't be the same without Alex...

And from time to time, family dropped by to visit me and were lucky enough to withstand however long staying with me and leaving with an earful of how crap China was and that they were best advised never to come back again. This here is my cousin Teresa and James...

Mum also decided to check in on her little girl and spend her birthday here in Beijing...

... which Jo B, Yasser attended and someone caught me on camera looking very gormless and stuffed with food...

Maximillian, myselef and Lev at Tango

It wasn't MY finger up his arse, honest!!

The drunken taxi ride home - it's a familiar story. Here's to more good times to come, Beijing!

Some things never change...

2005-08-30T23:55:00.000+08:00

Bar Blu, circa. April 2004

Kai, January 2005

Babyface, January 2005

Ross, Alex and myselef can always been found in different stages of moral decay in various establishments around the Jing.

Tomorrow, the Girlie Show...

Anti-inflammatory plastic bag

2005-08-29T23:06:00.000+08:00

So THIS is how Merck plans to recuperate its losses from its Voixx recall: adverstising in China through mass distribution of Voixx branded plastic bags at local clothing markets! What a marketing brainchild!

Breakin' the law

2005-08-29T22:48:00.000+08:00

Grrr... grrr... of all the days of the week I had to have my first run in with the Beijing jiao1 jing3 (traffic police) on a Monday. Poo.

I was at the Shitiao traffic lights when a traffic police flagged me down and gestured for me to pull aside. It must have been some operation, it wasn't just me and I most certainly wasn't riding around like a lunatic. All motorbikes, scooters, tricycles, disabled motorcycles, even the huan1 bao3 bloke (street cleaner, or as we would say in KL - Bandaraya) with his little green mobile wheely bin on a tricycle that he rides all around town to pick up pieces of litter wasn't spared. I was quite tempted to ride off when the lights switched to green but I reckoned that not having any valid documents on my person was probably less of an offense than resisting arrest.

I almost blew my cover but remembered to switch to my"I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese" mode. I think I must have been the most unconvincing of people to pull that off. I almost didn't have him for a minute and must work more on that blank look. The following conversation ensued:

(Blue: Chinese; Black: English)

Police: License and registration please.
Me: *slightly twitching upper lip* I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese, I don't understand.
Police: Don't try that rubbish with me. I've dealt with foreigners like you before, and I'm sure this won't be the last time! You think you can just stand there and speak English to me?! Pah!
Me: *genuinely looking distressed and trying my utmost to act like I really had no idea what he was saying* I really have no idea what you're saying.
Police: *peering at my Inner Mongolian license plate* What license plate do you have here?
Me: Inner Mong... Er... I told you, I don't know what you're saying. I'm sorry.
Police: *gleefully* See! I knew you were lying all along! Stop it, you're not fooling anyone, guniang.
Me: *doing my best middle-class English lady impression, which must have been weird with my bleached blonde hair and bright yellow fisherman trousers* Rea-ly my dear fellow I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about.

I called the office and told them to send someone down to help me out of my mess. It took them so long and I was getting tired of passers-by - street sweepers, idle middle-aged men and fellow commuters - dropping what they were doing and inquiring "guniang, ni che zenmele?" (what's up with your scooter, miss?) I didn't mind so much that they were asking me that question, but everytime they did I had to resist paying them any attention. I've never realised that offering an answer in Chinese is such an involuntary action for me now. It was difficult, I make a terrible spy.

In the end, my lovely colleagues came to my rescue and made up lots of lame excuses for their ignorant foreign colleague from Malaysia.

Colleague: Please forgive her officer, she's only just arrived in Beijing not too long ago. And she's from Malaysia! You know what those underdeveloped South East Asian countries are like. Nobody has any money to buy a car! They all ride scooters! And they don't have the sort of law enforcement officers like yourself...

Policeman's chest puffs with pride

Colleague: ... to uphold traffic regulations. Why, they all ride scooters without licenses! It's a very normal thing to do. You must excuse her, she doesn't know any better. It will take her some time to get used to living in Beijing!

Trying very hard to look demure and apologetic while casting my colleague the evil eye. Cheeky bugger!

After my colleagues' arbitration with el polizia I was let off without so much as a slap on the wrist. I was quite expecting to pay a fine; worst case scenario would have been my scooter confiscated and becoming property of the Dongcheng District government. I offered to push it back home and promised as sincerely as I could not to ride it again until I got my driver's license sorted out (pffth... fat chance). The policeman wagged his finger in my face warning me to get my act together as he had been doing for the past half an hour. I offered a handshake to seal our new found friendship. I think the policeman was rather surprised but still graciously removed his white Mickey Mouse gloves and shook my outstretched hand.

What a way to start off the week. Is it any wonder that most heart attacks and suicides take place on a Monday?!

Weekend casualty

2005-08-28T18:58:00.000+08:00

RIP - Ridiculously high wedged mule, 4th June 2005 to 27th August 2005, Beijing

Tis sad. Especially recalling how red in the face I got bargaining with the shoe seller at Hongqiao Market for it - may she suffer from a lifetime of athlete's foot and bad sex.

The weekend has landed!

2005-08-28T17:03:00.000+08:00

And for a while it felt like it had landed on my head. Actually the weekend has come and gone, rather sadly... :-/

Birthday Boy Alex

I was until this morning playing temporary innkeeper to two of Maxs housemates. Not that we really needed a reason for going out but it was Alexs birthday and it was as good an excuse as any other. After dinner at the Korean BBQ restaurant on Chunxiu Lu we walked down to Nanjie. I was planning on keeping things fairly civilized, or at least taking my time to get going. But the moment the first round of tequila shots were passed around I knew it was the beginning of the end.

New friends...

... and the original gangstas

We made our drunken journey along Gongti Beilu, sidestepping beggars, cigarette vendors and dealers although I nearly ran into lamp posts and trees a few times. For reasons still unclear to me we went up to First Cafe on South Street, stayed for a good 20 seconds and decided to leg it out of there but not before breaking the bar's glass door with my right foot. Foot intact, we ran as fast as we could and decided that 50 metres was a good enough distance to put off our pursuers.

After a headcount making sure that everyone was still here, we staggered over to Star Bar where the unfortunate mistake of buying a whole bottle of whiskey was made. In China, tables that purchase liquor by the bottle are rewarded with free popcorn and a fruit platter. What could we do with free popcorn, fancy shaped pieces of fruit and tolerant bar staff? Start a food fight, of course!

After polishing off our bottle of whiskey and then some, we decided it was time to impose ourselves on other bar patrons. We

fell out of Star, Matt D and Alex acting out the literal meaning of that statement by racing each other down the steps and taking a tumble. We flagged down a private cab and six of us piled ourselves in, everyone else in the back and Ross in the front seat, shouting a mix of instructions, profanities and an occasional proclaimation of endless love for the cabbie who was, to his credit, a most patient and cheerful fellow.

We got off near Kai and at this point my right mule decided it had had enough abuse and the thong gave way. Matt K gave me a piggyback through the hutong where one of the street urchins decided he liked the look of my left leg and hung on to it like his life (or a prospective 5 kuai donation) depended on it. Recollection of Kai was actually quite hazy to begin with, although I did recognise the dodgy French guy from a couple of weeks ago who was once again without his shirt.

The night ended where it always does - on the sofa in Ross and Alex's apartment watching South Park. I still had some life in me but the Matts had stumbled into the apartment, placed themselves on the settee and promptly passed out. Jet lag and excessive drinking have never been a great combination.

Before we left our apartment I had predicted that we would arrive home at 6 a.m, and I was true to my word. I fidgeted impatiently while Matt D opened the door, pushed past the two of them, mumbled an apology for my grumpiness, closed my bedroom door behind me and passed out fully clothed in bed. It wasn't till late next morning when the smell of damp clothes, bar smoke, old alcohol and body odour convinced me that a shower was very much in order.

The morning after

A sorry sight indeed - slightly worse for wear and not averse to the idea of never drinking ever again. But haven't we all heard that one before? ;-)

Sanlitun Urchin

2005-08-26T17:55:00.000+08:00

The Bar Street Massif will know what I'm talking about - the group of dirty young children that roam around Sanlitun pestering foreign bar patrons for donations. Newcomers to China find it difficult to ignore them. But hard nosed sceptics such as myself see it as it is: a scam and what could only be a vicious cycle. Give them the message that a living can be made by scrounging loose change off the laowais and the slim chance for upward social mobility grows even slimmer. When they are old enough, or more accurately no longer cute enough to beg, the adolescent ex-child beggars recruit young urchins to take their place.

Now they usually leave me alone, or even if the dare to venture near me I bark "I'm Chinese! I ain't giving you any money!" or something to that effect. But that particular night I was especially inebriated and was sitting outside Fish Nation watching my friends making a nuisance out of themselves. I thought it would be amusing to whip out the digital camera and take some drunken photos. I caught the attention of one of the urchins who gave me a good telling off.

Urchin: You cannot take photos of me!
Me: Why not?
Urchin: *hesitates* You must pay me if you take a photo of me!
Me: *feigned shock* Why must I pay you?
Urchin: *looks over his shoulder at the big kid for moral support* Because I'm hungry.
Me: Well then my friend you should go to school.
Urchin: Just give me 10 kuai. I'm hungry!
Me: *looking hurt* Nobody gives me money when they take photos with me.
Urchin: ..............
Me: Look, you must go to school to learn and get an education. Then, one day, you may even get a job that pays you TWENTY KUAI a day. How about that?
Urchin: *face lights up as he struggles to grasp with the concept of 20 kuai - don't think he can count that far*

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my good deed of the month. :)

I feel like rabbit tonight

2005-08-26T17:10:00.000+08:00

Credit to Lev for taking this photo one winter morning on his way to work. This was actually outside the Jiaodaokou residence area where we both used to live and is home to a large community of cash strapped foreigners like ourselves. You can usually see crowds of middle aged ladies (men sometimes) walking their yappy little dogs, usually of the Pekinese, Pommeronian or Pug persuasion in the morning or after dinner. But rabbits you don't see everyday. Possibly because after their owners air them out a bit they end up in the pot or are sold to one of the many rabbit meat establishments on the nearby Guijie!

It's Friday...

2005-08-26T16:09:00.000+08:00

So why the hell not?

An ordinary day on the roads of Beijing

2005-08-26T15:30:00.000+08:00

Road safety legislators wanted...

A motorcyclist enthusiast friend of mine had a close shave himself while out riding on the 4th ring road. He was tailing a truck transporting similar cargo - big water pipes or something like that - and decided to overtake the truck. Just as he did, a part of the load came loose and fell off the truck, landing in the path of where my friend had been just seconds ago. Crazy, but hey, it's China so it really doesn't surprise me.

Launch of the new Audi model. Availability - mainland China only.

I personally prefer the Chinese cars as opposed to the ubiquitous Audis. People say you can tell a person by the car he or she drives. There has been so much written about the sort of person that drives an Audi in Beijing in far more eloquent terms than I could ever manage so I won't even try to be clever here. Anyhow, a metallic red Chinese made Vespa is by FAR the superior mode of transport in this city. :p

Message Bean

2005-08-26T13:25:00.000+08:00

So anyway, after numerous attempts of keeping a written content based weblog and now that my previous excuse of not having a digital camera is invalid, here is my new site, in its 571st incarnation.

I'm not sure why I chose to post this first picture. It's one of the most novel little gifts I've ever seen, not to mention a somewhat dodgy result of possible genetic engineering to the innocent sprout. This was a colleague's birthday gift. It came as a seed in soil packaged in a simple tin with instructions to water and leave out in the sun. After three days, voila! A little green sprout poked through the soil and came out into the sun.

This however is no ordinary sprout as the name on the in suggests. This is a magical message bean!

The former bean part of the sprout/seedling comes engraved with birthday wishes on either side. What technology was used in creating this horticultural wonder/mutant I can only guess. The boss suggested the technology was either German or Japanese. However, my Chinese colleagues, not suprisingly, preferred to think that the Message Bean had teutonic origins.

Here we go again...

2005-08-26T08:22:00.000+08:00

And one more time... Have lost count of the number of times I've started and tried to keep a blog alive, but here's to perserverance.

More in a bit, downing the rest of my Nescafe before shooting out of the door.

It's Friday!