A Hood Rats Thoughts on Beijing

Beijing really blew my mind. I came in with no expectations, other than the city was smoggy and had the Great Wall. Even with the smog indeed being unbearable at times, I still loved Beijing. How unbearable was the smog, you ask? A friend told me that teachers get paid 50 percent more to live in Beijing than elsewhere in China because of the smog. I already covered Saul the Smog in my last blog, so let's talk about something else. First and foremost, there is a crazy energy that you get in China. I think the energy is a mix of hope and fear. China is growing really fast and there is a lot of opportunity for the middle class. They're major consumers now, which is something that is relatively new and very pervasive (Malls, Malls, Malls - sung to the tune of "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Motley Crue). One example of this phenomenon in action - as recently as 15 years ago, if you wanted to buy a washer, you would need to enter a lottery to get a ticket to buy one. Now, you can simply go to the store and buy it (and many, many people do). There are still some restrictions on purchasing power, particularly around cars. You can easily buy a car, but there is a bit of a wait to get your license plate. The government is doing this to cut down on pollution. There seems to be, at least on the surface, the ability for folks to move up the socio-economic food chain. However there still seems to be a healthy degree of simmering fears just underneath the surface. Information is not freely exchanged, and people who were raised during the ill-fated Cultural Revolution, in which Mao essentially tried to purge the country of all Western influence, still carry painful, vivid memories of that traumatic time. Sorry to start it off so darkly, let's get back into Beijing. Again, there is so much growth here. About eight years ago, there were only two subway lines in Beijing, now there are up to fourteen and they are expanding rapidly. Same with the train system. There are a ton of new high-speed rails that were created two years ago. BART, please step up your game. People have been incredibly friendly to us here, and many have asked to take pictures with Matt. Yes, Matt! I have been pushed out of pictures on more than one occasion. There are a great deal of historical relics in Beijing, each of which have been beautiful to see and well worth it. If you guys want me to describe in more detail the Forbidden City or the Great Wall, just let me know and I will do a more detailed post on it. China also takes karaoke to the next level. My friend invited us to a karaoke night with his friends. We went to a huge palace-type complex. Prior to entering the karaoke room, there was a grocery store where we got our beer and snacks. Matt quickly found a friend who loved rock music. His name was Rock. They sang Sweet Child of Mine and Don't Want to Miss a Thing. Actually, Matt sang most of the song. Usually you exchange the mic, but Matt really is a solo act. Also for those of you thinking of venturing to China, you must go bargain shopping. In Beijing the big market is called the silk market. They have everything you want and more and they all try to trick you into paying too much. Luckily, I was with Matt who fancies himself a connoisseur at bargaining. At first I was a little skeptical of his claim, but let me tell you, the man has style. At one of the shops the woman bargaining with Matt got all huffy and yelled, "Why you so tough?" Telltale sign that we had won that round. Moral of the story? When in Beijing, if you leave a vendor close to tears, it means you were not screwed.

Pictures of food... And a beautiful gorge

I plan to send more pictures, but currently four is all this internet can handle. Matt and I just finished a two day trek in the Yunnan Provence. The trek takes you around Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is a contender for the world's deepest river canyon and also the primary tributary to the upper Yangtze River. The river has a legend, which involves a tiger... Apparently, many moons ago, a tiger jumped across the river rapids to escape from hunters. The rapids are daunting. A friendly English lad told us that in the 1960s a few expats tried to raft the river. They died. Damn hippies. The first day, we hiked for about six hours - straight uphill. We arrived at a hostel and spent the night. It was the first time that I have seen stars in China. It was also freezing. I wrapped a towel around my head and wore it all night. The same friendly English lad asked me what I had on my head. I simply said, "heat." English people = not intuitive. On our second day, we got up with the rooster and trekked to the magical tiger rock. They carved the path onto the mountain and it was a straight climb down and up - one slip and you are dead. They had plenty of ladders that you could climb as short cuts. These ladders scared Matt shitless. As always, I calmed him down and we made it safe and sound. Below are a few pictures of the gorge and some Boa tsi (steamed bread with pork). We eat this almost every morning for breakfast.

The Etiquette of Karaoke

Back when I lived in the hustle and bustle of San Francisco, my friends and I would occasionally go to Karaoke. Although my set of friends in San Francisco is the most elite and posh group the city has to offer, we usually decided to leave the royalty of the W to grace our gold plated shoes upon the vomit and beer stained floors of Market street.

Why?

Cheap drinks and old bartenders who had nothing to lose… If you have to question the latter of the two, maybe we should sit down over a nice beer and talk about the state of ‘desperation.’

But back to the topic: Karaoke.

My friends and I would go to this real dive on Market, I believe it was called “Moores’ or some Irish name. Every bar in my neighborhood was named after an Italian or Irish family. Did I mention I lived on the cusp of the Tenderloin, one of the most dangerous districts in San Francisco? I also lived on the cusp of the Castro, which is the gay district. I felt like my neighborhood bars had the blend of rough hooligan homosexuals. I know this may seem like an Oxymoron, but they do exist and I shame you for stereotyping.

Occasionally on Wednesday nights I would go out for drinks with my friends and inevitably we would end up at this bar. Some of my friends would go home preparing themselves for their 'big job' on Thursday, but I was an intern with no mortgage. I thought it was either now or never and I only needed five hours of sleep to be a functioning adult; I need at least eight to be a functioning child. Now maybe it was due to late nights out or the state of the economy, but when I became ‘fun employed’ or as I told the Unemployment Office ‘a desperate job seeker,’ I went to the Karaoke joint more periodically with my ‘self-employed’ neighbor.

Why?

He always bought the drinks.

Once inside the warm and musky smelling bar, my friends and I would sing the likes of Snoop Dog and occasionally our friend Katie who knows how to sing would belt out a rendition of “All that Jazz” to the delight of the bartenders and the Karaoke fanatics (Yes some people go to Karaoke eight nights a week and treat it as a second job)…

Now if you have never been to Karaoke and if your voice is below par it is always necessary that you pick a song that everyone knows and can sing to. Nobody wants to hear a bad singer and the elightest Karaoke peeps will boo you off the stage or talk really loud while you are trying to sing, “Come to My Window” by Melissa Ethridge. Side note, nobody came to my window that night.

The real challenge of Karaoking is finding the songs that the crowd is going to like. Unless of course you have an amazing voice like Christina Aguilera and can blow the audience out of the water with your God given talent, but this only comes along in a blue moon and if you think you have a good voice, just Karaoke one night and you’ll know if your hidden talent is really a talent. kiss. That being said, if you are like 99.9% of America or the world for that matter your voice is probably bad, thus when you go to Karaoke you need to pick the crowd pleasers, not the ones that will showcase your cat-like voice.

As I travel across the world and go to many different Karaoke joints this idea of singing the crowd pleasers holds the same note. Although in different countries and even regions the songs change drastically. Here in Korea, the crowd pleasers are old Korean songs that have really high squealing sequences or surprisingly ABBA, more specifically Mamma Mia theme songs. Just like the Castro back at home, Momma Mia was a hit!!!

Koreans call Karaoke joints Noribongs and they are not like your average Karaoke facility. Instead of a large room with strangers Noribongs are private and just amongst friends or foreign hooligans who have met and bonded throughout the night.

Each person picks his or her ‘Go to Song’ and then they sing it to their friends. Usually, everyone in the room sings the songs together and people can share the stage. This isn’t always the case. I have had a few nights where microphones have been punched out of my hands. Some people are just spotlight hogs and let me tell you these are never the people that you want to Noribong or Karaoke with as they have in fact lost the essence of Karaoking: Togetherness.

I have also had my ‘Go to Songs’ skipped, this happens quite often when I am Noribonging with a certain character who will remain unanimous until I leave Korea. I fear that my Noribonging privileges will be taken if I announce the culprit via the internet.

In Japan I did a few Karaoking sessions. One place that I went was similar to the Korean Noribongs, but another one was the American style Karaoke with strangers singing together in one big room. I would like to give a Japanese perspective of my experience, but each time I went I was surrounded by a strange nationality called Australian. I figured these chaps would love to sing songs like, “I Come from a Land Downunder” or be all up in arms over Kylie Minogue, but there mouths salivated to Billy Joel and “Creep” by Radiohead.

As a side note, “Creep” is also an underground Karaoke song. Almost everyone and their mother knows that song and it has great climatic stages to get the audience really ‘in it.’ It also boast simple, but true to life lyrics like, “I wish I was special. You’re so fucking special!”

Now, I’m not trying to stereotype the Australian musical choices, people were throwing out lots of great songs not just Billy Joel (not to say Billy Joel isn’t an amazing musician because he is…), I was just surprised by their choices. I guess… I just felt like an outsider looking into classics that I grew up on. It was as though they were singing their national anthem… as though there was a hidden message to these songs that I had just not heard before… as though the song was originally played in the key of G, but for some reason because of the equator the Australians always knew the song in the key of C. And while I sat there sipping on my wasp vodka (yes a wasp was in my vodka) I couldn’t help but think, “Do my Korean friends feel the same way when my American friends and I sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at the Noribongs?”

Maybe I felt this way because of the etiquette or should I say essence of Karaoke, ‘the knowledge of your audience.’ I didn’t know if the Australians went on long road trips with their parents and sang such classics as “In the Middle of the Night” by Billy Joel or if my Korean friends turn on the radio station with their girlfriends and belt out in unison “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler…

I guess Karaoke just makes me miss home. It makes me miss really bad radio music and the 90s. I don’t really know the moral to my story, but hopefully it will inspire you to head to your local Karaoke bar and indulge in bad music and hominess.

Karl the Fog vs. Saul the Smog

Karl the Fog vs. Saul the Smog For those of you that are unfamiliar with San Francisco, let me preface this by saying that San Francisco is a foggy city. It is surrounded by cold waters (the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay), and to the north and east are climates that stay relatively warm. The cool waters mixed with the warm inland weather make for an ideal breeding ground for fog, especially in the summer months. Fog is so pervasive in San Francisco that it has been personified. We call him Karl the Fog, and he has his own Instagram and Twitter handle. To me, Karl is a wet blanket sort of friend. He crashes a sunny birthday party at Golden Gate Park and ruins it with his gloom. You were just starting to feel warm and fuzzy at Dolores Park, and then Karl rolls in to tell you that he's having the worst day of his life because his fish died + his Netflix queue is all screwed up. Your warm and fuzziness ceases to exist and you have to packup your blanket and go to bed because Karl's depression has left your bones chilled. He can be a bit obnoxious at times, but he can also be incredibly beautiful. When I lived on Nob Hill, I would sometimes walk to Grace Cathedral at night and at the top of the steps before the door, I would turn to look at the city and it would just be a blanket of fog. It looked and felt as though I was sitting on top of a cloud. It was just me and Karl up there, and our conversation was sweet and melodious. Since being in Beijing and Xian, I have met another grey matter that lurks just below the skyline - and also in the lungs. I have named him Saul the Smog. Saul is the type of friend that shows up to the party way too early, smokes the entire night (even when the host has asthma) and doesn't leave when you ask him to. He is like a drunk uncle that lingers in the house with a cigarette always lit, and with his hands in his pants. He gives the babies dreadful coughs and makes the adults as a addicted to tobacco as he is, because, hell, if you are already dying from cancer through secondhand smoke, you might as well get a buzz while you fall to the grave. There are no redeeming qualities to Saul, and since entering Beijing - and Northern China as a whole - he has not left. I do not know if it is because of Saul, but I have noticed a lot more people smoking in Beijing, and also hacking massive, mucus-filled loogies that can be found everywhere: on the bus seats, on the toilet and sometimes even on my shoes. Saul is a pain in my ass and has left my virginal lungs with tar. Okay, he hasn't. I did live in San Francisco, where the fog prompts many folks to smoke another type of substance. Sans Saul, Beijing has been an amazing city that I will write more about in my next blog. Till then, good day!

The Smell of Pepper

Zooming down the gravel road on my newly rented moped, my senses were elated by the smell of Kempot, Cambodian pepper and the breeze across my nose. With my friend, Tim, a little way in front of me, I accelerated the bike and searched in the distance for his ocean-blue helmet; I had chosen a bad time to fasten my pace. I was just approaching a hill that curved down to lead onto a bridge with a small creek and a big drop-off below. I was scared and knew instantaneously that I could not control the bike as well as I thought. I slowly began to break, but with a manual bike, once you break, you lock the front tires. I had two choices: attempt to steer the bike down the hill and cross the bridge or force fall to my left. I chose the latter of the two.
The crash was loud, but not deadly (obviously). I looked first at myself. All I could see was blood seeping through my yoga pants and blood and gravel intermixed on my left arm. Screaming for Tim to come, I then noticed the bike: broken. The clutch was messed-up and the breaker bent in. My heart sank, but then was re-lifted when Tim came running up the hill--actually hobbling as a couple weeks before he had hurt his foot while on a moped. Struck stupid, Tim was unable to help soothe me. I knew that I needed to take the reins of the situation: get to a hospital and then fix this bike before the owner charged me an exorbitant rate to fix it.
I found a few people on the side of the road. Through hand gestures, I was able to get a crowbar and bash the clutch and breaker back into place. A family took me into their home and gave me their child’s t-shirt to wipe off my arm. Considering this was probably the only t-shirt this child owned, I was driven to a quiet cry-session. When questioned of my tears, I blamed the wimpy sobs on my arm. I toured their pepper farm with a smile and tons of questions (even though my arm was killing me), and purchased some of the most aromatic black pepper I’ve ever smelled.
After I was done with the tour, the grandma of the bunch tried to put anti-freeze or something of the sort on my arm to help with the infection; I politely declined. The son and owner understood and hopped on my motor bike to take me to the nearest road-side doctor, while his sister and mother road behinds us. Tim took the caboose role.
Once at the doctor (an ancient man), I realized he did not speak English. Thinking quickly, I began to speak broken French as Cambodia was once a French colony. He smiled and responded in French. We were able to communicate what happened to my arm, what he would have to do to repair it (just some antibiotics and rubbing alcohol), and of course what exactly was wrong with my friend Tim’s foot. Nothing, but a sprain and lack of rest as Tim was attempting to party his ass-off and see all the major historical sights before he had to leave his beloved South East Asia.
Not wanting to waste a day in Cambodia, Tim and I hopped back on our bikes and road around the countryside. We watched a beautiful sunset and ate peppered crabs fresh from the Gulf of Thailand.
Arriving back to our hostel, everyone was worried about me, especially Maggie who had ditched Tim and me that day to wander around Kempot with a local man. As usual, the local man fell in love with Maggie and confessed his love to her, only to be denied by a clueless Maggie who thinks all men just want to be her friends. A yeah, a right. As she was simultaneously trying to sooth me and run away from her new suitor, I sat there in an amazing bliss. I had survived my accident, spoken French, eaten delicious crab, watched a beautiful sunset with my ginger best-friend(not an Orangutan named Suddam, but Tim), and was the center of attention to the bustling hostel. The day couldn’t have been better.



My two fellow companions: Tim-the-Ginger-Zasly and Maggie-the-dubious-lover-Quinn

Room 203 (Don't read if you are already worried about my travels)

I woke up with an aching stomach and a severe headache--drinking rum(Tanduay)with Filipinos will leave you like this. As my friend Maggie continued to slumber through my whispers, I decided to venture outside of our hotel room and into the loud streets of Dumaguete, Philippines. Not knowing the time--I don’t have a watch--I figured I could go to a grocery store and pick out some fresh mangoes and healthy yogurts for breakfast.

I made my way down the spiral stair case and approached the lobby. In front of the sliding glass door two police officers stood talking with the hotel’s security man. I thought that was rather strange, but then, police are always roaming the streets and having casual conversations with locals anywhere you go.

After shopping and making some appointments, I came back to the hotel and found that the police officers had quadrupled, and this,of course, resurrected red flags in my head. The desk clerks were busy shuffling papers to avoid my eyes; there was a strange smell wafting in the air. Having a very sensitive nose, I can usually place smells, but this was a smell that I’ve never known. It was a mixture of dead fish, human excrement,and rotting. As I began to make my way closer to the stairs, the smell began to intensify. I wanted to ask questions, but decided it best to go to my room. As I began my ascent up the stairs, a police officer cut off my path and began to climb the stairs with a towel over his face. Curiosity got the best of me. I decided to ask a very non-ostentatious question, “Why do you have a towel over your face?”

The man stared at me for a millisecond, and with his cold dark eyes he replied, “Because there is a dead body.”

At that instant I froze in my tracks. I looked at the man searching for more of an explanation or sympathy for the corpse, but received nothing. The officer proceeded to head up the stairs and turned on the second floor--the same floor that my room was on. As soon as I turned the corner the scene unfolded to me:

An uncountable number of officers now stood in front of the room next to mine. Large camera lenses were pointing at something in the room and one could hear the loud fluttering sound of their flash, the tearing of duct tape, and the clattering of a gurney.

I sprinted to my room, pushing through the officers and attempting to arouse Maggie who had not been awakened by the forensic noise. Maggie had drank a little more than I the night before, and was still in a dream when I woke her up. She was lethargic and confused. She assumed that I was lying about it trying to get her up earlier than she wanted. But slowly she realized that I wasn’t playing my usual games and the sleep cloud began to clear into a small panic, “What if we see the body?” she said.

This hadn’t occurred to me before, but as soon as the words were uttered I decided this was something that I didn’t want to see. Luckily she agreed. Eventually we devised a plan to stay in the room for a little while longer to avoid seeing the police carry the body past our room. We also turned on the TV as loud as we could to muffle the sounds of a crime scene that was becoming more and more grusome as we waited patiently in our room.

Twenty minutes passed and I couldn’t stand to look at the peach walls any longer. I could only imagine that the next room was a mirror of our room, and knowing that what I was seeing could have been someone’s last image was starting to mess with my brain. The phone rang and the front desk informed us to leave as soon as possible. I asked her for some details about situation next door, but she told me it was under investigation, and she didn’t have the liberty to say. She simply said to put a towel over our faces because the smell has gotten much worse.

As we opened the door, we noticed most of the police officers had gone and there were just a couple of men with latex gloves. Maggie began to sprint down the stairs and I followed her. Outside on the streets a mob of Filipinos attempted to look into a black van that was acting as a temporary tomb for the 203 occupant. Once Maggie and I finally pushed our way through the door we began to run. We ran so fast and so far that we eventually made our way to the downtown, where a tricycle picked us up. We told the man to take us to the closest hostel. Once we arrived at the hostel, we didn’t negotiate the price and ended up paying triple the average fare, but we didn’t care: we were away from the mob, the smell, the unknown story.

I took a deep breath and looked at the clock--10:30 a.m. Thus, before 10 a.m. on September 1st, 2010 in Dumaguete, Philippines, Maggie and I slept next to a murdered body, ran from a mob and were screwed by a tricycle.

We could only go up from here.

To create more commerce and more community to the Continental Divide, America created railroads. All along the passage from East to West you find railroads. The East might house more subways and mass transit, but it is in the small towns of the West that you find the seemingly endless tracks.

My town in particular was a transit spot from Chicago to Seattle. Railroads made the town and my grandfather made the railroads. My father and mother both from the West of the Great Divide lived near a railroad and as small children could only fall asleep to the sound of distant train whistles. I too grew up near the tracks. My window faced a lake and the tracks were in the distance.

These tracks were always something that filled me with curiosity and fear. Late at night, when only the grasshoppers spoke, the whistle would blow and I would know that it was 3:35 a.m. If I was restless, I would always imagine what was in the cargo of the train. Could it be tons of chocolate milk cartons that would be on the lunch tables of my school? Could it be a hobo coming from Seattle to make a new life for him or herself in Chicago or was it a crazed serial killer –Angel Maturin was the famous ‘train killer’ of the 90s-- coming from the south ready to snatch and steal the kids living near the tracks?

When I moved from the tracks to go to college, I found that I couldn’t fall asleep as easily. I missed the sound of the iron pedals pumping to their location, the echo of a lone horn in the night, and the crickets among the grass. Mostly, I missed the thought that if things got really bad I couldn’t hop the train to a new place across the line that divided the relaxed from the uptight and separated Broadway from the Pacific. During my college years, I found other people fascinated with the tracks.

Some of my friends, all male, even decided to ride the rails down to California. They would clothe themselves in the perfect hobo masquerades, trading their well-educated speech for the peasantry slang in a Steinbeck novel. They would do this during Spring Break when I would flock to Florida or Las Vegas, any place that got me out of the Oregon rain. I would come back with a tan and they would come back with stories of how they were able to con train pirates and how the wind felt when you road on top ar’ train. The stories grew from jokes to legends and tactics for the future comrade who needed instructions on how to escape the FBI, while riding through the Red Woods.

In those two weeks, they had more adventure than I had growing up near the tracks. I was envious, not only that they had enough courage to go through with this, but that they would risk their lives to do something I had only dreamed about: entering a train cubby to ride to the next town, not really knowing where that next town was or who you might run into in one of the miscellaneous train cars.

Don’t worry mother, I’m not going to hop a train here in Korea, but I do think that life is worth taking risks.

The train tracks in the picture once tied South Korea to North Korea. They were blown up and all connection between the 38^th parallel were lost. There are no free spirits that hitch a ride from Seoul to Pyongyang on a whim to visit a friend or just merely to see what stars look like on top of a train as it zooms through the night. Instead there is an empty passage way. There is a stop of a dream.

The tracks seemed to be like any I had seen and it reminded me of how connected we are in this world and how easy it is to end these connections. How we can get close, but sometimes cut all ties. We fear the tracks that are meant to make us united. In lieu of all the news going on between the South and North, I think these tracks will be mended again. I hope that one day a young Korean girl living on the boarder will be able to hear the train at night and dream about all the magical lands that she can travel to just over the 38th parallel... If she could just jump on the next train.