Living in Beijing: useful stuff

As I start to see the end of my time in Beijing approaching (still a fair way away yet!), I'm thinking of what things I would have liked to have known at the start, and also of how I can make all this knowledge about the city I've accumulated somehow useful to other people. 

So this is a list of stuff that is useful.

Touristing stuff:

• It's easy to see all the main touristy things like the Forbidden City, Summer Palace and the temples by bus or subway. I'd suggest either get yourself a good guidebook (not lonely planet, which is only useful for practical information) or look out through your connections for some kind of local (e.g. a language partner) who will take you there.
• Getting the Great Wall is a bit of a challenge by yourself, because it's a fair way out of Beijing. You could hire a driver or there's a bus-taxi method (in lonely planet) but I'd strongly recommend going with a tour group. If you like walking/hiking, I strongly recommend Beijing Hikers. Alternatively, I've heard the China Culture Centre does good tours. I would be wary of the random internet tour companies you might come across, especially if their English is not good. One other thing: avoid the Badaling area at all costs! You can hardly move for the tourists, and there are so many other amazing places to go. 
• Good places to go for weekend trips are (in order of preference): Shanghai, Qingdao, Chengde, Datong, Pingyao, and Tianjin, among many others (keep an eye on the expat mags for suggestions). You can also get to a huge number of places in China within a short flight, but it's probably going to be expensive.

Stuff to do around town that's not (too) touristy:

• I love cooking, and I knew almost nothing about cooking Chinese food when I came here. It's also a very practical skill for living in Beijing, as it can be quite difficult to cook food you normally eat at home for a variety of reasons (see below). So I've been to about a dozen classes at The Hutong. I thoroughly recommend any of their classes (make sure you get the membership on your first visit!)—check out this post for a taster. Black Sesame also does cooking classes, but I have never been to any of them.
• Check out all the green spaces in Beijing, especially during summer. There are loads of cool parks around the place where you'll laugh at the old people doing Tai Chi or Qi Gong in the morning, smile at the kiddies playing in the daytime or enjoy the music and dancing in the evening. The more time I spend here, the more I find myself wondering why we don't get together to dance or sing in public spaces at home, although it seemed so ridiculous to me when I arrived. I recommend Ritan Park or Temple of the Earth Park, but seriously any of them will do.
• Check out Houhai lake. It's a full of people most of the time (doing Tai Chi or just walking), but is definitely worth the visit. You can also grab a drink at one of the bazillion cafe/bars.
• If you like hiking, go with Beijing Hikers on any of their trips. They're all pretty great. There's also a local hiking group called Beijing Walkers (or Wallkers, depending on who you listen to), which goes for hikes every Sunday, but you have to know someone to get on the email list. If you do, jump on it, because the hikes are great and a lot cheaper than paying a tour company. Make sure you sign up as soon as the email comes out and be prepared for a hike that's on the difficult side.
• Go to any of the cool new hip and trendy restaurants that are opening all the time. To find out what's cool and hip, check out the expat mags (see below).
• Try out dragon boating. There's an expat-friendly club that trains on Houhai on Sunday afternoons at about 4.30pm—they're very chilled and you definitely don't need to be fit or have any skills in dragon boating to participate. It's a good way to meet people and get some exercise, but be prepared to be very sore the next day!
• Check out the streets of Nanluoguxiang, Guloudong dajie and Wudaoying Hutong for boutique clothes shopping, funky gifts, cool bars and cafes. I spent a large part of my life walking around these streets.
• Cycle through the hutongs south of Yonghegong, Andingmen and Gulou stations. It's one of the most fun, relaxing and cultural things you can do in Beijing.

Internet stuff:

• Before I launch into what's available on the web, I'll say this: Get a VPN before you come here if you can. You'll be amazed at how many websites you use regularly are not available at all (e.g. facebook/twitter, news sites), or at least not available consistently (google products). I suggest Strong VPN, which is reliable and trustworthy, with great tech support. Make sure you get one that is compatible with your phone, as well!
• 
  By far the best source for information about what's going on around town is the expat magazines. Timeout and The Beijinger are the best. Pick one up at any of the expat type cafes around town or check out their websites, which have loads and loads of information.
• For blogs, I like to follow The China Story, Danwei, and Lost Laowai when I have the time. There are plenty of others, plus all the major international news services generally have good China blogs.
• As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I like to listen to the China History Podcast and Sinica for China-related stuff.

Living stuff:

• Language training is a must in Beijing. Of course, there are millions of people who tour through the city without Chinese, but it's actually quite difficult to get around without at least a few words. Far fewer people speak English than you might assume. Plus, Chinese is fun to study after the first uphill battle with sounds and characters. If you ask me, you need to study both characters and pinyin, but that's just my preference because I'm a visual learner and I like to be able to read signs. Most people do one-on-one classes or intensive group classes. I can recommend Rose Finch (although it's quite expensive), or my friends have also recommended The Hutong School.
• Groceries. I've mentioned this in earlier posts, but it can be quite difficult and expensive to get ingredients for foreign foods. It's not just that you can't get your favourite brand of crackers or some vegemite, it's that you can't buy breakfast cereal, or bread that's not sweetened, or cheese. Chinese supermarkets (Merry Mart, Dia, Wumart, etc) can be very confronting and uncomfortable, or loads of fun, depending on your outlook. If you can't cope, which has been me for a large portion of my time here, there are western or semi-western supermarkets around. Look for BHG, Jenny Lou's or April Gourmet in the expat districts (largely in Chaoyang). Expect to pay the same price at home for anything that's imported.
• How do you know which bus or subway to catch? Plug it into google maps on your phone. Seriously, I couldn't live without google maps. Just tell google maps where you want to go, select public transport, and you're away. It has all the bus and train routes already plugged in.
• Public transport doesn't run after 10.30-11pm ish. Catch a taxi, if you can get one. I could go on a rant about cabs, but I won't. Suffice to say the cabs are hard to pull over (particularly at night) and the drivers are mean, and they definitely don't speak English. Remind yourself they treat everyone the same way, including Chinese locals.
• Electricity and gas super cheap and is usually paid with a card that you take to the bank. Now, the only way of doing this is with a Chinese bank account card, but if you smile sweetly enough, the staff will do it for you.
• Re. finding a place to live, this is mostly done through agents (you generally pay them a fee of one month's rent, up front, for this privilege). Check out the classifieds on The Beijinger for recommendations and for rooms available.
• Clothes shopping is not as cheap as you might think. Anything you could get at home is the same price as at home, unless you're at a market. I suggest visiting Yaxiu (Yashow) Markets or the Beijing Zoo Market. Be prepared to bargain hard (starting at 1/10th their asking price is a good idea) and to have to push through swathes of people.
• Buy a bike! Seriously, it's so much fun cycling in Beijing. I wouldn't pay more than about RMB 300 for a reasonable, if clunky, second-hand bike. If it breaks down, there are plenty of shops in the hutongs that fix them quickly and cheaply. Buy a helmet from one of the expat areas (or, even better, bring it from home) because, even if nobody else wears them, you're an idiot if you think your brain is safe in Beijing traffic.

Wow that was a huge brain dump! I'm sure there's more useful stuff I could provide, but that's the bones of it. Hope it's useful to someone, and if you need more info, feel free to comment!

Literacy

My ayi (a respectful term, I think, for someone who cleans your house) caught me doing my Chinese homework today. She smiled and said a few things I didn't understand, and then one that I did—"I never learned to read characters". I felt embarrassed, as I has asked her last week to read something for me and try to explain the instructions. She acted as if she needed glasses and couldn't see the small print.

She pointed to some characters on the page: 谢谢。我也祝你和爸爸圣诞快乐 (Thank you. I also wish you and Dad a merry Christmas). She pronounced the first three characters, and then said 'I can't read that one'. It occurred to me that, even though I constantly come across five year olds who have better command of Chinese than I do, I am actually more literate than many middle aged people in China. Wow.

A great leap forward

Ha. There are so many Chinese sayings to make fun of. Life here is just an endless series of classless puns.

Anyway, what this post is actually about is learning a foreign language. I spent some time in Yunnan recently—which was absolutely gorgeous, by the way, I highly recommended going there—and one day we were stuck in a little Tibetan village with no other laowai in sight. The village was one of those cute little places you see in postcards. Rolling green hills, terraced crops, big square Tibetan houses ...

We were led towards a hut that had a gated yard out the front of it. Immediately on entering the gate, the pungent smell of cattle arse attacked our noses. Suddenly not so picture-perfect. Into the small shack at the back and I realised this is where we were having lunch. 

Feeling a little out of place, and unable to ask anyone in English what the hell is going on, I decided to throw caution to the wind (I suddenly realise what a strange saying that is ...) and try out some of my Chinese. I'm mentally trawling through pages and pages of vocab lists from my textbook.

"这是什么?" What is this? (pointing to the small bowl that is being laid out in front of me)
"是酥油茶." It is suyou tea. Suyou? What is that? Whip out my iPhone dictionary ... ah it's butter tea. Oh, and it tastes like watered down butter. Funny that.

Also I see a hard yak cheese served with sugar, soft bread rolls and yak's milk yoghurt—this is cultural experience at its best.

Ok, so we've established what we're eating. This is going ok! They can understand me, and I can pick up some of the words they're saying. Let's keep going.

"你叫什么名字?" What is your name?
Ok, I didn't really understand the answer to that, probably because you have a Tibetan name that's hard to pronounce.
Let's try ... "你去学校马?" Do you go to school?
"是的" Yes. 
"你 每天去学校马?" Do you go to school every day?
"每天" Every day.
"你今年多大?" How old are you?
"十三." 13. What the? You look about 6! 
"你今年多大?" How old are you? Ooh you cheeky little boy.

So we progress like this for a while. How many brothers and sisters does he have? Is that his older brother? Why is he not at school today? Then he asks:

"你哪国人?" What is your nationality?
"澳大利亚人" Australian. 
Wait a second, I have an idea.
"你要看照片 ... ahhh [I don't know the joining words] 澳大利亚?" Do you want to see photos ... Australia? With a smile.
Oooh that's done it. Now I have a large crowd of Tibetan children pressing in on either sides, eager to see the image being projected from the iPhone.

I show them kangaroos ("袋鼠!" How is it that this 13 year old Tibetan boy knows the mandarin word for kangaroo?), emus (no idea what that one is!), some scenic landscape from near my home. Next I find some pictures of my 妈妈 mother and 爸爸 father  ... now how exactly do I explain the concept of step-parents? "不是我爸爸 ... 是 ... 我妈妈的男朋友" This is not my father ... it is ... my mother's boyfriend! Oh my vocab is failing me, that elicited a bit of shock. 

And this is a picture of 我的男朋友 my boyfriend. "你有几男朋友?" How many boyfriends do you have? What? Did you really just ask me that? "一个!" One! He almost looks disappointed. 

Oh now this has really got them started. Questions are coming from left, right and centre. What's you're name, what's this place, what work do you do? And many that I can't understand. My head is exploding from trying to translate backwards and forwards from this crazy language. Time to redirect their attention.

"你们看, 这是北京" Look, this is Beijing. Attention is glued back to the iPhone.
"我们的中国!" Our China! They suddenly recognise the photos I'm showing them. It's a place they've never been, and they may never go there. It's more than 2000 kilometres away from here. I realise how lucky I really am, to be able to live in a place that is, in their eyes, so magical.

This is one experience I'll never forget, and not only because of the yak butter tea. It's the first time I conversed with someone in China in their own language!

剩女 and 小姐

A fascinating read on sexism and the Chinese language: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4116

(with translations and pinyin for those of us who have only learnt 3 of the 50 or so Chinese words for women mentioned in the article!)

Things I miss most about home

There are a whole range of things that I thought I would miss from home during my time in Beijing—I thought I would be frustrated with the bustle of big city living, and I thought I would get sick of Chinese food, I thought I’d miss the clean streets and sanitised toilets of the West. But really, none of these things have bothered me too much! Living overseas is a fantastic way to get down to the things that are important to you.

So these are the things I miss most about home:

1. (this one’s a given, but worth repeating anyway) My wonderful family and friends, the laughs we have together, sharing their lives and experiences

2. Wine.
Oh how I miss the sweet popping sound (or slightly less romantic but more pragmatic click of the screwcap) of a newly opened bottle, and the first whiff of a succulent savoury pinot noir when I swirl it in my prized Riedel glasses. I miss lounging on my couch with a good book and a glass of red after work, and I miss catching up with my girlfriends over a glass of the local riesling. And don’t even mention the prospect of wine and cheese together! My twitter feed is constantly reminding me of the degustation dinners, harvest festivals and wine tours I’m missing out on while I’m here.

3. Cooking.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot break the barrier of comfort in a Chinese supermarket, much less in a Chinese kitchen. The foods that are available are so foreign to me that even a translator would make no difference. Despite being exceptionally willing to try new things (I’m munching on a punnet of bayberries as I type this), actually cooking them is a whole new level of challenge. I feel like I’m grabbing at a cloud that keeps disappearing through my fingertips. So I miss so much the experience of cooking at home—from being able to look up new recipes on my iPhone, to being able to find the ingredients I want in a supermarket, to having an oven and sizeable kitchen in which to prepared the food, to serving up a heartfelt meal to my friends and family (cf #1).

4. Being unable to communicate.
This one at least I can do something about! My Chinese lessons are going very well and my tutor is a little scared by the ferocity of my commitment to study. But still, every now and then I wouldn’t mind going into a shop and understanding what the assistant is saying. Just once or twice …

5. The natural environment.
To be truthful, my time out bush is limited even when I’m in Australia, so this one is definitely not a constant longing. It’s more of a surprising twinge I didn’t expect. Yesterday I was walking into my apartment block when I heard what I thought was the sound of a large bird. More likely it was the sound of a bike squealing or a gate swinging shut, but for a millisecond I was transported home to being awoken by the squawk of a cockatoo (which I have always hated). This made me realise that, in fact, there are no birds in Beijing (except the ones kept as ‘pets’ in miniscule cages that resemble torture chambers), and for the last month I have been awoken by a constant drone of car horns on the busy street. 

 
I have managed to get out of the Beijing city bustle for a few short periods of time in the last month. And they have been wonderful! Luckily for me, next month I will be visiting the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Plenty of natural environment for me there :)

6. (and this is a very distant fifth place) Work.
Not enough to want to go back to it, but just a teensy little bit.

Well, that's hardly anything to complain about, is it?