All About The Maos!

I heard this on CCTV9 last night, and the “66th new record high” got my attention. That’s propaganda-speak for “steady improvement”, but this is pretty impressive even without the overblown description.

The Chinese Foreign Exchange Trading System says the renminbi (RMB) broke the record 7.47 mark on Wednesday, with the central parity rate at 7.4692 yuan to one U.S. dollar.

In six consecutive trading days, the renminbi, or yuan, has broken the record high four times. It climbed 28 basis points from previous trading at 7.472 yuan to one dollar, rising a total 3,395 basis points from 7.8087 yuan on the last trading day of 2006.

This is the 66th new high the yuan has hit since the beginning of this year - that’s up more than four percent overall.

Good news for me and my Chinese paycheck, but not so great not for those traveling to China. Watch the video from CCTV9.

Beijing Police Name 10 Worst Bus Lines

An article in China Daily listed the ten Beijing bus routes where transit police believe robbers are most common.

They are 9, 57, 701, 707, 728, 44, 300, 302, 808, and the Bus Rapid Transit route between Qianmen and Demaozhuang in Daxing district. Some of these bus lines are long-distance rides where passengers often fall asleep, others are full of commuters and a pickpocket is hard to spot in a sea of limbs and bags.

I’ve been on some packed buses and subways in Beijing without any incident (besides the inevitable “HELLOO!!!” *giggle giggle giggle* ) but with the upcoming Olympics, police are cracking down on crime in the city limits.

That’s Sort Of Like English…

We had another lame department meeting on Friday, at which the foreign teachers were asked to sing more songs, add more chants, and more “action songs.” Now, I’m not adverse to teaching and singing Head&Shoulders, or the ABC song (with both tunes, I’m multi-cultural!), or even the Hokey Pokey, when it actually relates to the lessons.

But there’s a foreign-monkey aspect to random required singing and dancing that bothers me. Maybe I’m still bitter about my Yantai “Surprise! The foreign girl is going to sing to you!” But I don’t know if asking kids to add a tune they don’t know to words they can’t say is really helping them learn.

As Stick pointed out, “Nope. American entertainers get paid more than this.”

So my awesome TA brought in a tape today. “I have a very good song, it’s just perfect for your class.” She played the tape, and what do you think the excellent song was? The one that I just have to include in my English classes?

That song was Ali Bali, with all the Gaelic bits replaced with nonsense sounds.

“You know that’s not English, right?” I asked.

“The last foreign teacher liked it very much. It’s a very good song. You should use it in class tomorrow,”

There are a lot of reasons why I live in China, but today I’m pretty sure I’m not here to teach English.

Fengtai Hutongs

Sunday afternoon, Stick and I took a long walk to our new favorite restaurant, a little shop on Xinhua Jie. Our new spot isn’t very different from any of the other little not-dumpling restaurants in the area, but the differences are significant ones. The tables and plates are clean, and the staff are friendly. The first time we went, I asked for egg rice (ji dan mi fan) and the waitress said the proper name of the dish for me (it’s chou something fan)… without giggling. Everything that a foreigner does is inherently amusing, and any attempts to speak Chinese are extra funny, but the waitress failed to giggle even when I made an obvious mistake. She’s the greatest.

The food is good, too, and it’s a good place to try new things because everything is clean and cheap. We get a dish of cold cucumbers and a dish of egg fried rice and then I order a few other things almost randomly off the menu. My reading is improving at an amazing rate, so I ask Stick “Would you like beef something noodles today? Or mystery potatoes?” He’s pretty good about mystery food. We discovered a yummy peppery-peanuts dish this way, and second-rate version of tomato-egg.

Anyway, today we took what we thought was a shortcut to this place, and found ourselves in an old-fashioned hutong, a labrynth of crumbling brick walls and veggie gardens growing up courtyard walls. It ended up being quite a long walk through a maze of twisty passages, all alike… except for the ducks and chickens running wild. Hard to believe we were just a few blocks from the ritzy shopping strip and the international grocery.

Quick, Easy Access to the Internet When Traveling

One of the more frustrating things about life abroad is China’s internet censorship. Many common sites (Feedburner, Livejournal, Blogger, to name a few) are blocked here.

The China Dream Blog has an awesome link to a quick, free download that will enable you to get Wikipedia and Blogspot and all the other, um, difficult sites in China… or in other countries. Just unzip the file, and you have American internet, without screwing around with port numbers and complicated instuctions.

All copies of the Beijing Times are sold out

All copies of the Beijing Times are sold out -- the greatest mei you ever.

So the Sunning Electrical Appliance Store bought a huge color ad in the Beijing Times, just in time for the National Day shopping extravaganza. But a competitor launched a freakishly well-organized campaign to send minions out to every Beijing Times-selling kiosk in the city. These minions were assigned kiosks and sent to buy out every single copy of the paper, even if that meant paying double the selling price. They were also sent to follow the delivery trucks to seek out any stores that might have been missed.

Then, the minions tossed out Sunning’s ads, substituted their own, and found locations to hand out the modified papers to shoppers, free of charge. Seems like a rather expensive venture, all in all, but quite effective as a means of blocking Sunning’s ads. Good money for the Beijing Times folks, who made up and sold an extra print run, at any rate.

Sunning execs, who were notified by gloating anonymous text-message of the scheme (how mafia is that?), say they’re seeking legal action. I don’t know if anything illegal has happened here. Seems like buying a paper and tossing away ads are legal activities, and I think handing out papers and adverts in China is so legal it’s almost mandatory. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

The full (English translation of the) story is here, thanks to EastSouthWestNorth.

Cultural Gap

Most of the time I’m fascinated by the cultural gap between China and the US, but sometimes? I just don’t get it.

Over morning break at school one morning, Teacher Assistant A and Teacher Assistant B begin to discuss the high cost of electricity. This gets my attention because these TAs don’t speak English unless forced. (Please note, A and B are not my own TAs, because my TAs rock. Also they have better names than A and B.)

Teacher Assistant B comes over to Christina’s and my desks, and begins an inquisition on who uses the English room and when and who was in it today and at what time. TA B finally brings the conversation around to the point in question, that it was indeed Christina and TA B’s class in the English room before break. We all agree that, this being Tuesday, such is the case.

TA B then discussed how, on occasion, TA B herself may be the first to exit this classroom. On such an occasion, it fell to Christina to be the second teacher to exit the room. Indeed, just a few minutes ago, this exact situation occured. All possible permutations of TAs and foreign teachers and class times and exit strategies were then reviewed.

I was getting the drift of the conversation by now, but it became more clear when the next topic was the convenient proximity of the light switch to the door.

Finally, TA B alluded to the great mystery of the lights being left on prior to break.

Christina instantly ‘fessed up and said oops, and I thought we could all drop the subject. But no, the remainder of break was devoted to making sure that such a grievous offense would never ever happen again, ever, under any circumstances, no matter who left the room first after any class on any day of the week. Then I, also, needed to reassure both TA B and TA A that I would not decided to adopt the habit of leaving the English room without turning off the lights.

The American Method of Solving The Same Problem:

“Remember to turn out the lights next time!”

Da Bu Tong

Da Bu Tong / Not The Same
Corner of Nan Ma Lu and Wenhua Gong Jie
Hohhot
Inner Mongolia

We actually ate at Da Bu Tong both nights in Hohhot. They have a pretty good reputation for different varieties of broth and lots of ingredients to put in your soup! The first night, we got a crazy hot mutton broth, and sliced beef, mushrooms, hand-stretched noodles, and dishes of cold peanut sauce. Actually I had no idea what was going on with the peanut sauce, but our waiter was really insistant that we got something-something that the other people were eating, so I agreed. It was a perfect complement to the hot flavour of the broth.

We went back the next night for the typical half hot/half sweet broth. This comes in a soup pan divided like a ying-yang pattern, with one half holding a white chicken and cilantro broth and the other half holding red spicy broth. This time I managed to get the spongey tofu (Anyone know the Chinese to specify sponge tofu over smooth tofu? ‘Cause it seems totally random to me), a different kind of mushroom, and of course, more hand-stretched noodles. Is there anything those noodles can’t do?

I think the spicy broth and peanut sauce combo was a little better than the half-and-half one, but I actually had a better time the second night because we were tucked into a corner instead of of being seated in the middle of the room. A cormer means only 90 degrees of staring, while a central location means 360 degrees of watching the foreigners eat. We saw very few westerners on our entire trip (some German backpackers at Dazhou temple) so the staring is only natural, also it wasn’t hostile at all. Still, I do feel more comfortable without the attention of the entire restaurant.

Kokoro Japanese, Denver, Colorado

Kokoro Japanese Food
Quick, Delicious Japenese Food * 555 Broadway, Denver (6th & Broadway)
http://kokorodenver.ypguides.net
A fast, delicious and healthy alternative for those in a rush … service is quick, and take-out even quicker. Sit down or fly out … you won’t be disappointed. Dining in is fabulous … wonderful and friendly staff, good food, good prices, and good sake. Sit down have done the Unagi bowl which is fabulous … good rolls … strong sake. With a Happy hour you couldn’t find anywhere … affordable and tasty. Must visit. Rating 5 stars out of 5.