hot&sour

I <3 Sichuan.

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The earthquake is big news here (obviously). The story becomes more tragic by the day. The other night I skipped out on a group excursion so I could have a leisurely shower and a cup of tea, and turn in early. As I was getting into the shower, I heard an interview begin on the television (which I had on in the background). The first question the interviewer asked was whether it was lucky that the epicentre wasn’t in a more populated area, such as Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The answer (just as earnest as the question) was, yes, it was lucky.

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For breakfast we go to another hotel, where they serve a multitude of Chinese dishes, most of which wouldn’t be considered breakfast food in the West (dumplings, spicy noodles, fried rice, fried bread, and my personal favourite, watermelon). They are lined up in silver catering trays and refilled constantly for us and the hungry Chinese businessmen who (I presume) stay at the hotel. A few days ago, one of my classmates had picked up a little pot of something jelly-like to try. When he tasted it, it was completely disgusting. Several days later, he found out it was fuel, used to keep the trays warm.

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I find it annoying that I can read my blog very easily, but it’s a bitch to post anything.

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I think they’re onto some of my tricks. As you may know, I have a serious and long-standing addiction to reading recipe blogs. Most of them are blocked here. I do not see how a discussion about the virtues of using Greek-style yogurt in a cupcake recipe (or an AOL article entitled “How to Make Iced Tea”, for that matter) is a threat to the social order. But I’m stretching the limits of my computer knowledge, and possibly some internet monitor’s patience. Occasionally my tricks will stop working for a time, and I’m not sure if it’s just the idiosyncracies of the internet, or that someone is throttling my traffic. I think it’s best to err on the side of paranoia. As of now, I can’t even access my Gmail, but the China Daily is loads mockingly fast.

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Speaking of paranoia, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re under surveillance. People keep taking pictures (and video) of us for no reason. And they’re not subtle about it, either. Some guy stood around us for about 8-10 minutes the other day recording video. He would move around a bit, but always stayed within 5-15 feet of us, at one point approaching the three-foot personal space boundary that almost caused me to freak out. At other times, people will pretend they’re texting or doing something with their phones, and take pictures. It’s not like foreigners are such a rarity here anymore, so my blonde hair isn’t much of a novelty.

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Sorry I haven’t posted much. Like I said, it’s really, really, annoying. I guess I should just declare blog bankruptcy, and switch platforms. That doesn’t appeal to me.

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Several months ago, with the help of my amazing friend P, I purchased a digital SLR. It was shiny and wonderful. Then, also with P’s encouragement, I made my very first eBay purchase: a 4GB compact flash memory card, shipped directly from Shanghai to my door for a grand total of about $23 Canadian. I began shooting in .raw format (which I couldn’t do before, with only a measly 16MB memory card). Then I discovered that my computer wouldn’t recognize the .raw pictures — but I kept taking photos in the hopes that I’d be able to solve the problem. And I did. The other day I went to the largest electronics mall in Asia and for a whopping 25 kuai, bought myself a compact flash memory card reader. (It reads other cards as well, but I don’t care about those.) Afterwards we got mobbed by Olympics mascots and introduced to a crowd by some guy with a microphone as Jianadaren (Canadians), but that’s another story.

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(Interestingly, I wasn’t able to find even a 2GB memory card at that electronics mall for the same price as my eBay purchase. I guess because this mall is all legit and stuff, it’s way more expensive.)

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All that said, I haven’t uploaded any photos yet… I’ll get on that soon.

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Today was a good day, funny in a you-had-to-be-there kind of way, so I won’t get into it here. Needless to say, I <3 Beijing.

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I also <3 comments. Ahem.

I thought I had conquered the Great Firewall with my realization that I could use a VPN to circumvent it, but alas. My hotel is blocking my VPN connection (I’ve been told this is done in North America for security purposes — can anyone confirm?). I figured out a way around it, but it is annoying and time-consuming. But still. I won.

…At least temporarily. I was fooling around and rashly searched “falun” in Google to see what would happen. The answer: exactly nothing. Google didn’t load a page saying “no results” or the like; it simply didn’t load at all. “Page not found.” Since then, I haven’t been able to connect via wireless. I even tried changing my computer’s name in the vain hope the system wouldn’t recognize me. Hopefully it’s just technical difficulties. If not… oops.

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Just to catch you up on the last few days…

Darcie and I were up bright and early Friday morning to visit the Mutianyu portion of the Great Wall. We hiked until our calves were seizing up in protest, and then “tobogganed” down the slope in little plastic go-carts on a shiny metal track, laughing hysterically and tailgating each other (well, I tailgated Darcie). We also snuck into* the “non-tourist” portion of the wall, which was all grown up with trees and was inhabited by lizards and giant (like the size of a little finger!) bees**.

(*”Sneaking into” consisted of walking out the other side of a tower at the end of the tourist portion of the wall, and avoiding the guard who sat atop it, looking the other way.

**The bees were scary. At least to me. But I saw some little butterflies divebombing one of them… what’s that about?)

We ate Peking duck. Twice. Duck skin dipped in sugar is pure heaven.

And then there was more shopping, more delicious food, and a sad goodbye. Darcie went home with a few more pounds in her suitcase, and I moved up to Haidian district to start my class.

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Apparently there was an earthquake in Chengdu*** today. I missed it, though many people in tall buildings here in Beijing at the time were pretty freaked. We received a panicked phone call warning us that another earthquake was projected to hit between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m., so we shouldn’t go to sleep and should have our documents and money ready for a quick escape.

Um, yeah. Last I checked, nobody could predict an earthquake. It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’m going to sleep as soon as I’m done here.

(Chengdu is where the pandas live, about 1000 miles from Beijing.)

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As for class, I’m one of the dumb ones again.

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I’m online! Yay for ethernet cords. Boo for slow firewall-bypassing connections.