#1

I've been in Beijing for exactly one month, having arrived on September 4.  It's time to stop procrastinating on my communications.

The school at which I'm employed is called the Beijing Royal School or 北京王府学校 (for a few minutes of amusement check out the translations on the English version of their site).  It's a during-the-week boarding school for very rich kids.  Justifying my paycheck are 24 thirteen to eighteen year-old students who I teach for three periods of forty minutes five days a week.  Most of them have no siblings, thanks to the one child policy; all of them are wealthy - many of them are picked up by private drivers on the weekends; almost all of them have never done a household chore in their lives (I asked).  In exchange for my time I am provided with an apartment in the housing development adjacent to the school and compensated with an American salary in a place where the cost of living is a fraction of what it is back home.

The first thing to know about this situation is that it is all made possible by one 王广发 (pronounced Wáng Guǎngfā, surnames are the single character before the two-character given name in Chinese).  He owns our school, the neighboring ginormous housing development, a nearby hospital, and more that I'm not aware of.  As best I can tell, he is the archetypal self-made Chinese businessman who's (thankfully) altruistic intentions manifest themselves through a process entirely mediated by an intractable sense of proper Chinese business conduct and adroit business savvy.  To my testosterone-deranged Caucasian brain (I'll have to get to current Chinese myths about genetic difference in another post) the result is a seemingly incongruous work environment.  An adequate treatment of this will require an entire post sometime in the future so a wee example will have to do for now: the facade of our school has a screen that's about the size of my classroom that displays pictures to the outside world of various school events, and yet to make copies I have to get an approving signature from a man who is never in his office and is very concerned that no one waste money on frivolous copying.

That's enough about the school for the time being.  I'm now living in one of the largest, most rapidly changing, and historically significant cities in the world.

Upon my arrival the first thing I learned about this city is that the level of chaos on its streets is not something that can be conveyed on any kind of satisfactory level.  Here's my best futile shot:

Were it not for the small side streets running adjacent to nearly all main roads (a particularly large one in a very nice part of town is visible here) there would be no relative safety.  Traffic laws are simply not enforced so running red lights, driving on the wrong side of the street, driving on the sidewalk, and driving the wrong way on the side street at high speed while holding down the horn so that pedestrians know to get out of the way are all regularly observed practices far from being worthy of condemnation or anger on anyone's part.  Nobody wears seat belts; taxis do not have seat belts in the back; it is not common for onlookers to call an ambulance when an accident is witnessed.  All traffic accident statistics are meticulously recorded state secrets.

Here's a couple pictures I took of an accident involving one upside down Mercedes in the middle of the road and a taxi ending up on top of a parked Volkswagen. This happened in a densely developed part of town on a small two lane street.  I asked around and according to a few folks nobody had died and it was a relatively unimpressive accident. 

(click for a higher resolution version)

Despite the horrendous dangers on the road and the feeling that just crossing the street requires all of one's concentration, one of my first purchases here was a motorcycle.  Justification: I live very far away from downtown and getting to the subway station by bus is unnecessarily time consuming, I only drive on the small side streets like the one pictured in the link above, without personal transportation getting out to the mountains for climbing or camping is prohibitively difficult, I never drive into the busy part of the city and I don't drive during the day's four rush hours.

Once one is connected to the subway system public transportation is convenient, but a little crowded.  Depending on the time of day one can find themselves in a situation like this:

I had to pull my arm out of a mess of people to hold it above me for this one - after I snapped it I had as much trouble getting it back down to my side.

When the trains get so crowded that there is not space for people to step on, the newcomers push; they literally compress the passengers already on the train until there is enough space for them to squeeze on.  What amazes me is that nobody gets angry or visibly bothered.  It is just tacitly understood that everybody needs to get somewhere and will do what they need to do to get there - it's nothing personal.

Taken on my first ride out to the mountains.  Stumbled upon numerous ancient stone shrines, objects, walls.

The entire Beijing area is incredibly polluted.  This is the river about three miles north of where I live.  You can smell it well before you see it.

Turtles, fish, and scorpions selling for a fraction of a dollar each at a local market.

A pallet of maggots at the same market.

Xenophilia: American fast food costs about as much as it does in the U.S. which means that it is a conspicuously expensive indulgence in China.  I've been told that eating at Pizza Hut is considered a flashy joint at which to treat your date to dinner.  Also, KFC delivers.

English is a fashionable language in Beijing.  Expensive t-shirts with nonsensical or poorly translated English phrases are common on trendy youth.  Businesses, particularly bars, also demonstrate this.

A friend pointing out that something seems to have been lost in translation with this title.

This picture wasn't taken in a rough neighborhood.  I was actually in 七九八 (QīJiǔBā), the most pretentious district of town renowned for its art galleries and expensive coffee shops.  The only aesthetically motivated graffiti I've seen in Beijing has been here.

Click here for much higher quality pictures taken by my brother-in-law, Stuart.

I'd love to get some questions & comments from my friends & family!