Mokka mit Schlag » Travel

The Chinese-language television channels in our hotel seem to be split into news, music, and various historical dramas. The dramas are roughly half Kung Fu, half soap opera. The only modern drama we’ve caught is one that we could best interpret as Chinese Law and Order; but otherwise China does seem to prefer drama set in the pre-revolutionary past. Whether this reflects the preferences of the viewers, the producers, or the government censors, I don’t know.

At least one of the dramas we caught came from Hong Kong. It took me a few minutes to figure out why the actors’ lips were as badly out of sync as in any Saturday afternoon Kung Fu movie on WGNO: this was a Cantonese movie from Hong Kong! Only this time it was dubbed into Mandarin instead of English.

The one English language channel at our hotel is CCTV 9, which brings new meaning to the motto “Fair and Balanced”. This is like a Chinese version of Fox News, only without the entertainment value. Right now they seem to be obsessed with two stories: the class system in Tibet before China “liberated” it in 1955, and the various protests against Beijing hosting the Olympics.
(more…)

English Wikipedia is mostly available from here in Beijing but there are some notable exceptions:

I’ve also noticed that although I can get through to some parts of IBiblio, I can’t reach others, including Cafe au Lait and Cafe con Leche. I can get e-mail from IBiblio but not use SFTP (which explains why those sites are fairly static at the moment.)

I knew I should have set up that VPN before I left the states.

One thing this trip to Beijing has brought out is just how useful it would be to speak even a little Mandarin here, even if one can’t reasonably converse or understand spoken Mandarin. Maybe a week’s worth of basic vocabulary and phrases:

• Yes
• No
• I don’t speak Chinese.
• Cell phone
• Too Expensive
• No meat
• Duck
• Chicken
• Beef
• Rice
• Noodles
• Water
• Tea
• Coffee
• Diet Coke
• How much?
• Skim Milk
• Hello
• Goodbye
• Thank you
• Not now
• Maybe later
• I don’t know
• I understand
• Turn right
• Turn left
• You’re going the wrong way
• Down the sidewalk!
• Oh my God I’m going to die and I still haven’t seen the giant pandas!
• etc.

(more…)

Today I spent doing a lot of the standard tourist things in Beijing: The Forbidden City, Beihai Park, Hutongs, and Jianshan Park; and the most interesting thing I noticed while doing this is that Beijing is not a tourist city.

Even in the Forbidden City, Caucasians were greatly outnumbered by Asians (all Chinese as near as I could tell). After I left the Forbidden City, it was over an hour before I saw another Caucasian and that infrequency repeated until I got to the Jade Islet late in the day. There were several tour groups wandering around the Hutongs, but they were all Chinese.

This did mean I stuck out more than I’m accustomed to, and was a target for every single person making their living off tourists: waitresses trying to lure me into tea shops, vendors hawking water bottles, “Rolex” salesmen, and rickshaw drivers looking for a fare. These were the most persistent. They’d follow me down the street, and just as one would give up, the next would jump in. You think they might have realized that I could not have possibly gotten halfway down the block without already refusing half a dozen of their competitors. I’m not sure why they thought I’d be different, but maybe they were desperate. There were hundreds of them, and not many potential customers (though most of the people I’ve seen actually riding in rickshaws are Chinese.)
(more…)

10. Taco Bell qualifies as ethnic food. Chile’s counts as gourmet dining.

9. Drivers who think the bicycle lane is a right turn lane.

8. Supermarkets that charge you 30% more because you don’t have some silly plastic card.

7. Paranoid residents who lock themselves up in gated communities in case brown people drive by (except for the ones who cut the grass, of course.)

6. No laundromats. If you aren’t rich enough to buy your own washer and dryer, go live somewhere else.

5. No parking signs everywhere, but you have to have a car to go anywhere.

4. Homeowners associations that refuse to tell you what the rules are but will ticket you for violating them.

3. Walk signals that last approximately 0.4 seconds before they start blinking red.

2. Farmers’ markets where frozen Alaskan fish and Mexican vegetables count as local food.

And the number one thing I hate about Irvine:
(more…)

Last month I had to make a quick trip to Palo Alto, which is about equidistant between SFO and SJC. I usually take JetBlue into San Jose for this route, but I decided to try the recently launched Virgin America instead. That was a mistake.

(more…)