Category: China

Commentary about the Middle Kingdom

Categories
China

I can see clearly now…

Something must be seriously wrong with the world, or at least with my understanding of the global economics of the eyewear industry. I went and got new lenses for my glasses yesterday, and what I discovered prompted this story. First of all, I wanted to replace my 2.5-year-old lenses since they were very badly scratched. Not from mistreatment, but because the anti-reflective coating went FUBAR, possibly because of the water here in China. This is the second time I’ve had this problem. In 2000, I travelled to the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and the coating on my previous pair of lenses also became a mess of microlines that made it difficult to see. The last two pairs of lenses were purchased at Shopper’s Optical in Edmonton, and maybe that’s the common factor and not the international travel. I don’t really know.

I put off the quest for new lenses because I thought it would be a difficult undertaking for me here in China. I didn’t know the procedure for getting my eyes checked or if the old prescription would be understandable to the technicians here. Plus I wasn’t looking forward to having to choose new frames because of the difficulty of getting used to a new pair of glasses. (Whine, whine, whine….) But, the experience turned out to be quite easy, in fact. My girlfriend took me to a centre which is a collection of many eyeglass wholesalers, and she helped translate for me. Well, the one shop we settled on had a computer which “read” the prescription off of my old lenses. I didn’t know they could do that. It was a Topcon CL-100 Lensmeter, in case you are interested. And then they double checked it with the prescription that I brought with me. Cutting the lens blanks and fitting them into my glasses was the identical procedure that I would find in Canada, but it didn’t take an hour. More like 20 minutes.

Now here’s what surprised me about the whole thing. The new lenses cost me $18 CDN for the pair! That’s less than the cost of a dinner for two at any restaurant in Canada. They were high-index, single-vision lenses, with anti-reflective coating, and they were thinner than the old lenses, which were also high-index. I think I had a choice between lenses that came from Japan and those from Korea, and I probably ended up with the Japan lenses. I’m still incredulous about the low cost. In Canada, at least 2.5 years ago, I would have paid $100-150 CDN for the same lenses. I’m going to guess that the same is true today. Why the difference? Is it the large population here in China? Or the cheapness of the labour at the eyeglass store/lab? I don’t know, but it makes me wonder what people in Canada are paying for when they buy lenses.

Categories
China General

Mmmmmm

Today I discovered I had all the ingredients necessary for a peanut butter and banana sandwhich: crunchy peanut butter, bananas, half-decent bread, and a glass of cold milk. In my (almost) two years of living in Beijing, this has never happened before, mostly because of the lack of real bread in my neighbourhood.

It was tasty. Time to go buy more bananas and peanut butter…….

Categories
China Tech

For want of a good book

I went to the Haidian Book City in Beijing today, looking for books on database theory. I’ve been going crazy all week with ideas inside my head about different databases that I need to create for work, and a few for fun. But I don’t know anything about databases—not their theory, implementation, what software solutions are out there, or even how to create and access a database.

Well, I found two textbooks on databases that I could read. 99% of the books here are in Chinese, but there are a few computer science series that are available in the original English. Fortunately, the topics match my interests quite well: software development, hardware, theoretical computer science, operating systems theory, and network programming.

So I ended up purchasing one database book: Database Principles, Programming, and Performance, 2nd Ed., by Patrick and Elizabeth O’Neil.

On other subjects, I picked up two O’Reilly titles: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, by Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, and Mark Stone; and Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, edited by Andy Oram. The first contains essays on the Open Source movement by the original and the continuing innovators of the movement. The second describes the phenomenon of peer-to-peer networks (file sharing networks like Napster and KaZaa) and specific applications and implementations.

I got one famous book in software development theory and practice: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. I’ve needed to read this one for a long time, so now was a good time to buy it.

And finally, I bought one Chinese title. Can I read it? Not exactly, but I bought it for the pictures. It’s called Web Color Design, and as you can guess, it has many examples of colour schemes for website design, including colour charts and RGB values of the actual example web pages and photographs. So I can use it to get some ideas for sprucing up this website.

How much did this whole book shopping spree cost me? 156 RMB. That’s $24.88 CDN approximately. Not bad for two O’Reilly books, a text book, and a book that’s entirely done in full-colour glossy pages. I figure there’s got to be some benefit to living in China and suffering from the lack of a good bookstore.

Well, enough typing. Time to curl up by the fire (I wish!) and enjoy a good book. Or five of them!

Categories
China

A unique picture

I took this picture two weeks ago while visiting Ba Da Chu, a site of 8 temples ascending the mountains west of Beijing. It is worth sharing.

 

Categories
China General

Crazy

Crazy. It’s been a crazy past couple of weeks. Or maybe it hasn’t even been that long. Some cool things happened since my last weblog entry, so I’ll tell you about some of them.

On my flight back to Beijing, I met my cousins for brunch in Vancouver for something to do for the layover. We had a good time catching up on their lives in Canada and my life in China. My french toast was pretty good too. As we were saying goodbye before I entered the security gate for International Departures, I just happened to check the screen to find that my flight to Beijing had been cancelled. So we all went over to the check-in desk to find out what was going on. Well, the plane never left Beijing the day before, so there was no plane to take me back there. Probably unlike most of the other passengers that day, I was pleased. It meant I could spend 24 more hours with my cousins, plus see various aunts and uncles too. My uncle Paul was even in Vancouver on a business trip, so I got to see him. It was great to hang out in Vancouver like this. I even got to meet my cousin Ann’s husband Steve. They got married this past year while I was in China. He’s pretty cool. We have a lot in common.

I was a little concerned about how I was going to get a seat the next day since they were going to combine the two flights into one. The ladies at the desk told me to just come early (really early!) the next day. Well, I did that and everything seemed normal. I just wasn’t certain that I had a seat on the plane until I was sitting in it. It didn’t look like the crowd at the boarding gate would fit on the plane. But we all made it, some of us a day late.

I spent one or two days at the office when I got back. Not everything was where I had left it though. For one, the entire building had been cleared out and moved into the new building next door. I had gotten some advanced warning via an email though, so it wasn’t too bad.

A devastating realization hit me as I was unpacking from my vacation. I couldn’t find my laptop. I then realized that I must have left it on the x-ray belt as I went through security in Vancouver. How could I do that? Well, let’s just say I had a warehouse of electronics in my backpack and even though I was careful not to lose any of them, I forgot about the tray with the laptop in it. For one thing, I was held up by the metal-detector thing for several minutes. I set it off, which I normally don’t do, and it took a while to search me with the wand because I wasn’t wearing anything that should have set off the detector in the first place. So I was a bit flustered when I went back to the belt.

Anyway, after realizing my mistake (when I was in China) there wasn’t much I could do except call the airport lost and found. I did that, and because of email problems and my subsequent travel (more on that below), I didn’t actually hear from them until this morning. I spent a week in the dark about my laptop’s fate. The good news is that they do have it. I’m very lucky. So I’ll send one of my cousins back to the airport to fetch it for me. I was fully prepared to never see it again, the worst part being that all the digital pictures I took in Canada were only on the laptop. But this morning I had a feeling that I would hear some good news.

After settling into the new office for a day or two, I left for Hainan, in the southernmost part of China, for a 4-day training conference. The conference itself was two days long, with two days of tour tacked on the end of it. Oh, and the conference was in Chinese so my employer didn’t actually expect me to attend. I was there just to travel and experience more of China. I didn’t object.

There are only a few stories from my trip to Hainan. I got to swim in the South China Sea and it was pretty beautiful. I spent most of the trip, however, just recovering from my month in Canada. All in all, I’m just glad to be back in Beijing again. I haven’t seen any friends yet nor done any swing dancing. I’ll see Ilse for supper tonight. Maybe when I get home I can do some laundry!

Categories
China General

IKEA Dekad Clock

Ever since I saw this clock last week, I’ve been obsessed with it, like I just had to buy it and bring it into my apartment. I’m not really sure why. Fate knows. But there is a connection between me and precision instruments, somewhere deep within. And I guess I’ve always liked mechanical clocks, coveting them as I saw them in stores here in China.

The only problem is that all the “mechanical” alarm clocks I’ve seen aren’t real. They are of this style, but the bells on top are plastic and non-functional. And there are a lot of these kinds of clocks, from “Hello Kitty!”, to Snoopy, to Winnie the Pooh.

So when I was browsing through IKEA and saw that their Dekad alarm clock was real, I fell in love with it. I even had a fascinating dream about an intricate mechanical clock the next day.

It took me a week to come to the conclusion that I had to buy it to satisfy my obsession. It only cost me 39 RMB, or $8 CDN. It’s black, though I remember it as being blue. It has an adjustable rate, and I’m still fine tuning it to keep accurate time. It wakes me up though (if I remember to wind it), and I can know what time it is now by just glancing across the room.

Categories
China Philosophy

Jane Doe

A very ordinary—but usually unseen—thing happened this morning. A woman died today. I mean, statistically, it happens every minute on this vast planet of ours, but this was a violent death and it happened just outside my bedroom window. Today was a day of rest for me. I woke up to no alarm at 09h30 and immediately continued reading a new book that I had started last night. I only put the book down so I could go to bed. So with the morning, I read for a long time, saw the Jian Bing lady leave my neighbourhood, and made some food for brunch. At some point, I noticed a gathering in the courtyard below—I live on the 3rd floor of a 5-storey building, facing west. I had seen the likes of this before. The Chinese are quite fond of rubber-necking. If anything out of the ordinary happens on the street, a crowd will gather immediately and persist for a long time. Disputes happen on the street a lot, especially when the weather gets hot and people get edgy. And when they happen, everyone wants to look, and many get involved. Several months ago, a similar scene had developed outside my window. There was a man or two, and a dispute, pushing and shoving, and four guards from my campus ultimately taking control. And so a crowd.

Hence, this morning, I didn’t give much thought to this new crowd that had formed and so caught my attention. Things were quiet and there wasn’t much movement. I scanned the crowd and the parked cars and the men standing nearby, but I didn’t see anything. I opened the screen of my window and took a picture of the courtyard and the curious shape of the gathered crowd. Anytime I see anything peculiar about China, that seems like it would be a good story for my friends back in Canada, I like to record it somehow. So I too became a rubber-neck. It was after I took the picture that I noticed a lone uniformed police officer among the standing men and the campus guards. Then I saw that a squatting man in the crowd had noticed me and was watching me watch him. He had seen me with the camera. So I was a little disturbed because it’s best not to take pictures of police and such in a place like P.R. China. I played it cool and broke my gaze with the man, stepped back from the window and closed the screen, and put the whole affair out of my mind.

Only later did something more happen which caused me to begin to watch the crowd again, wondering why it was still there. I was doing dishes at my sink and saw that a patrol car had arrived and that a very large police van was arriving. It had search lights, a portable tower, and a ladder on the roof. I saw four un-uniformed men get out of the van, and I thought, “fuck”, plain clothes policemen. I don’t like seeing police at the best of times, but un-uniformed police is a bad sign, especially in a country I don’t know. And I knew I would soon lose the four men in the crowd and I didn’t want to be seen again watching the crowd.

But then something about the geometry of the situation caught my attention, and I began to find the focal point of the crowd, a feature which was actually quite far away from the people. I saw the far-off rectangular tarp on the ground. I saw the police begin to gather and move toward the colourful sheet. I saw the two thin, black canvas shoes on the ground, like they had been thrown there, several feet back from the tarp. And then the recognition came—a body. There must be a body under that tarp. As I was realizing this, the police pulled the tarp aside. I saw the body of a young woman in her thirties, lying barefoot and facedown in the courtyard, outside the window of my home. I ran from the window as far back as I could go into my apartment, yelling “fuck! fuck! fuck!” I had seen something I didn’t want to see, and I knew something that I didn’t want to know.

But very quickly the reality of the situation came to me and the emotional outburst lost its control over me. I returned calmly to the window to see this miracle of my day. The woman on the ground had just left our planet, our home. It was physical act that resulted in an obvious spiritual outcome. Although her body didn’t appear broken from my vantage point, it was plain that she had fallen from the roof of the building adjacent to mine. She had chosen to leave today—maybe not consciously, but her soul knew, and her soul had chosen.

This way out…

Categories
Audio China

Sounds like China…

Yesterday, while looking for audio equipment for sale in China, I came across a very interesting collection of sounds. Most people who travel and explore their world like to put pictures up on the web for others to see, but this is an archive of sounds for you to listen to. There are quite a few recordings of Canada and many of China as well. I recommend the one of the steam locomotive in Kunming, China, but I also liked the recording of a cat chewing on the microphone. You’ll need a fast internet connection (or just plain old patience) as most of these files are greater than 1 MB in size.

Phonography Archive

This archive gives me some ideas of recordings I could make of my experiences in China. I have already recorded myself learning Chinese with friends, and I once made a commentary of my first visit to the Great Wall. So now, I’ll have to keep my ears open and “look” for further interesting sounds to capture.

Categories
China

Chinese Paper Money

For those of you who like money, here’s what Chinese paper money looks like. Both old and new designs are currently in use. The old has pictures of various ethnic groups in China (except the 100), and the new has Mao’s portrait on all bills. Five yuan is worth about one Canadian dollar, so the math is easy.

Categories
China

It’s 5 a.m. Do you know where your windows are?

I awoke this morning at 5 a.m. to the sound of some very loud crashes. They persisted long enough for me to wake up fully so that I had trouble going back to sleep afterward. I eventually woke up enough to investigate the source. The man who usually dumps the garbage at 5 a.m. was, this morning, throwing wooden window frames from the fifth-storey window, letting them crash onto the concrete square below with the sound of a gun-crack. Most of the frames contained screens, but at least one had glass. I wasn’t impressed. I put in my earplugs, rolled over, and tried for the next hour to relax enough to go back to sleep. When I got up later in the morning, the mangled frames were still there, laying where they had fallen. China is a weird place sometimes.