Don't Hassle Me I'm Local

The other night I went out to dinner with some Chinese friends. Like always, I sat by idly as they poured over the menu and discussed things to eat. They asked me to pick something out, and so I looked through the menu (which had pictures) and picked something that looked good. Although my Chinese has gotten much better, ordering new food is still difficult. Food is its own separate category, and the verbs, adjectives, nouns, and sentence structures that I am learning in Chinese class don't usually discuss the difference between HuZhou and Beijing style pork. 

Anyway, the food eventually arrived and there's all sorts of stuff. We over ordered, as is custom in China, and gorged ourselves. Now that I think of it, over ordering Chinese food seems to be a global custom. Anyway, among several things that we ate, there are a couple that stand out. One was some sort of really soft fat in thick layers that covered small, oval and oblong bone. My guess is that it was pig feet, but I can't be sure because when I asked my friends what it was they just smiled and gave me more. I've realized you have to be careful when you ask about something in China. When you ask a question here, you are implying in a polite way that you want more of it (if it's a food), might like to buy it sometime in the future (if it's an electronic or household item), etc... I usually just want to know more about it, but I've learned to temper my questions. 

The other interesting dish I ate was bone marrow from pig bones. It came in a giant bowl placed over a bunsen burner in a tannish colored soup. The bones had been broken apart and were no larger than half a loaf of bread. After having placed one in my bowl, I was handed a straw and shown how to suck the bone marrow out with it. I found seeing cute, petite Chinese girls sucking bone marrow from pig bones to be brutally hilarious. It is such a carnal and primitive looking way to eat, yet they all carried on as if it was no different from any of the other dishes, which I guess it wasn't for them. The bone marrow wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't anything I would order again. The consistency was somewhere between gravy and pudding, with chunks of something more solid mixed in with it. 

Eating out with locals is always enlightening, and even though I don't always understand what they order, or would I ever order it again, it makes my experience here seem more... authentic. Plus, every now and then you run into a dish you would never order in a million years that tastes pretty good. I think the strangest thing I've eaten in China would have to be pig brain. Granted, this was in 2005 in Chengdu and not this year, but it's still the strangest thing I've eaten in China. It came on a little plate at a hot pot restaurant, and when it arrived I had just one clear, concise thought, which was "yup, that's a brain." We tossed it into our hot pot, gave it a couple minutes, and I had a bite. It wasn't very good (which I was happy about, I think I would have a hard time rationalizing to myself every time I wanted to order pig brain), and the aftertaste left a filmy like residue in my mouth. Anyway, the bone marrow was much better but I doubt I would order that again either. 

The next morning I woke up later than I wanted because of my exhaustion from the night of the flight. I decided I needed to have a good dimsum meal while I was in Hong Kong because I had heard that it was some of the best dimsum in the world. I decided to go to the City Hall restaurant. There were hundreds of reviews online and they were virtually all very positive. What would I have done if it weren't for the marvels of modern day technology?

When I got to the restaurant, the lunch rush was just beginning to die out, but most of the tables were still filled. The restaurant was enormous, it was just one giant room, which must have had over 100 tables, many of which would have seated at least 6 or 8 people each. The dimsum was delicious. The highlight was probably to baked pork buns. They weren't really typical hum bao though, each one was smaller than normal hum bao and the outside was more like a pastry than a roll, and they were very flaky. By the time I was done I was extremely uncomfortable both with the knowledge of how much I had just eaten, as well as with the feeling in my stomach. It didn't matter though, I knew from the first pang of ripping stomach muscle that it was worth it.

Since I only had the late afternoon left before I was going to meet up with Jordan and his friends again that evening, I decided to just wing it. I picked a subway line and road it to the last stop. The name had 'park' in it so I hoped that there would be some sort of nice greenery I could walk through on the edge of the city. When I got there, however, it was not quite what I hoped for. The park was apparently the name of several massive apartments. By massive, I mean that they were at least 50 stories high and seemed to have the girth of a city block.  There were seven or eight of them. The subway stop led to an outdoor walkway with a roof that only went in one direction - towards the apartments. As I got closer to the apartments, however, I saw that right next to them, there was a massive foresty area. A sign showed that it had a lot of paths and wound its way to the coast. I got really excited until I saw a big metal gate that separated me from it. I waited around a while, pressed the security button (I was hoping that since it was HK and not mainland China, things like security buttons would work, but alas), and waited some more. Finally a security guard walked by and saw me. I tried to explain to him that I wanted to go into the park. I think he was still getting over the shock of seeing a foreigner around the apartment skyrises because he didn't say anything for a while. He finally spoke in what I can only hope was Cantonese because I picked up nothing of what he said. He showed me his Octopus Card (the all purpose HK card for subways, the ferries, and  other things around the city) and pointed at the gate. It seemed that I was not going to be able to go in, so I looked at the view from the walkway. Beyond the forest I could see the ocean and one Hong Kong's many islands. The sun was beginning to set and I enjoyed the scenery while eating a pack of some sour gummy candy. 

When I got back to the city I changed into my suit and tie and met Jordan and his girlfriend at their hotel. We were all dolled up because we were going to the Ritz Carleton for dinner that night. The restaurant was on the 103rd floor of the tallest building in Hong Kong. When we got there, it was smaller than I expected, but extremely lavish. We met Jordan's friends at our table. I could tell it was fancy restaurant because they gave us two pairs of chopsticks. When we got the menu, I was flipping through it, and noticed that there was a HKD $1,000,000 bottle of champagne. When we got our food, I was shocked. You know in comedy movies when the actor orders a main dish and it's like a spoonful of spinach with a one inch by one inch piece of steak on top? This was kind of like that. And the food wasn't even that good, especially for how expensive it was. By the end of our meal we all agreed, food is one of those things where you definitely don't always get what you pay for. We ended the night with dessert tucked away in a corner of the restaurant overlooking the city. It seemed like we were almost as high as I was at the peak. Afterward, I said goodbye to Jordan and went home. I had to catch my plane back to Beijing the next afternoon. On my way back home, I decided to walk around the city some more as it was the last chance that I was going to have. I realized I was still quite hungry after our meal at the Ritz so I got some delicious street food and a waffle filled with sweet syrups and pastes. All together, it only cost $30 HKD.

I went to Hong Kong at the end of November. I went to visit my friend Jordan who was there for one of his friend's weddings. I had to go during the week so I only had 2 full days there. However, it was, in a word, wonderful. My flight departed at 7AM so I left for the airport at 4AM. Driving to the airport, there were a few people out, but it was shockingly peaceful. Without all of the people you really appreciate how big Beijing is and how many huge buildings and sweeping roads there are. 

I got on my flight and promptly fell asleep. However, because Hong Kong is an international city with several different languages commonly spoken, the announcements were made in three different language (English, Mandarin, and Cantonese). This usually doesn't affect me as I am a deep sleeper, but the levels of the speakers on the plane were somewhere between old Chinese waitress screaming orders at a restaurant and a stadium rock concert. I didn't sleep very well. When I arrived in Beijing it was 10AM, the sun was out, and it was around 70 degrees. An auspicious beginning. 

I arrived at my hostel, which was located in the Chung King Mansion. I came to learn that the Chung King Mansion was a huge 15 story complex located in the heart of HK, and it was a city in and of itself. It was like a mall mixed with an apartment complex mixed with a shady tourist area mixed with and hang out spot for foreigners from around the world. I didn't spend much time exploring it because A) I could have probably spent the entirety of my 2 days in Hong Kong exploring it and still not have seen everything, and B) it creeped me out a little.

I was going to meet up with Jordan and his friends later that night so I decided to walk around and explore the city. I had looked up things to do and in everything I read there was always a suggestion to go to The Peak. The Peak is an area at the top of a mountain in the south of the city. I took a ferry across the Victoria Harbor to Hong Kong Island and grabbed some food. I spent the next couple of hours figuring out how to get to the top of the The Peak. There are several ways to get up: Bus, Tram, Cab, Walk. I decided to try to take the Tram up since it's supposed to be quite an experience. It's a 1,365 meter trip up, and at its steepest inclination it is 27 degrees. I read that if you stand up at this point, you'll be standing at a 45 degree angle. Unfortunately I didn't know this at the time and didn't have a chance to try it out. I asked a guy at a bus terminal what bus to take to get to the Tram station. He glanced at me then back to his miniature TV and pointed at a bus terminal. I thanked him and left. I asked someone else what bus I should take to get to the Tram Station and they told me to take the 15. When the 15 came, I got on and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up I was halfway up the 1300 meter climb. Apparently the bus I needed to get on was the 15C, not the 15. The 15 was taking me all the way to the top. 

I got off the bus at the top and started toward a big mall complex. I read online that you can look at the Peak from the top of the mall, but there are roads that wind around the circumference of the peak that takes about an hour to walk and are much more beautiful so I decided to do that. The path paved and there was a wooden gate/buffer 3 feet high on the side of the path that overlooked the city and surrounding area so that you didn't fall to your death. Toward the center were more hills covered with flora and probably some flauna as well. They lead up to a residential area in what I can only imagine as pricey. Several times on my walk there were side paths from the main path that lead up to large, thick metal gates covered with barbed wire at the top. I was very glad I took the scenic route because the sights were beautiful. After I made my round around The Peak, I bought some noodles that resembled Pad Thai. I took the Tram back down, which was really cool (although there wasn't much of a view as you descended), and it was way faster than the bus since the Tram went straight up the mountain rather than winding around it. 

By the time I got back to my hostel it was almost time for me to meet up with Jordan and his friends. One of the great things about Hong Kong is that it is truly an international city. I believe one way you can measure this is to see how much you are stared at. In Beijing, and I bet even in Shanghai, you get a lot of looks. Granted some of those looks are from Chinese foreigners who are in one of of the big cities on a trip, but nevertheless I didn't get looked at twice in Hong Kong, unless it was by a PYT checking out my powerful physique. HK's history with Britain has also probably acclimated residents to foreigners as well, but I digress. To digress a little more: in Hong Kong, people drive on the wrong side of the road. 

I met up with Jordan and his friends and we headed to a restaurant that specialized in dumplings. They were delicious but I left the restuarant still feeling hungry so I bought a street waffle and later some candy at a 7-11. I forgot how much I missed candy. I wandered around a different part of the city for a while and got a better feel for the city's culture. There are more brand name shops there than in any city I've ever been to in my life. They also LOVE really expensive watches. Every block seemed to have an expensive watch store. I must have seen close to 10 Rolex ones. The financial zones in Hong Kong are a sight to see as well. It's kind of like Wall Street but much more sprawling. Everyone wears suits and ties, hold briefcases, and walk like they have somewhere really important to get to. One subway stop away from the financial zone is a Chinatown looking district that looks like it's straight out of a B Hollywood Movie. Shanty looking restaurants and retailers line the streets wall to wall with tons of street vendors and so many neon street signs that they almost extend to hang over the street. I finally made it back to the Chung King Mansion where I was offered Hasheesh by several different Middle Easterners and avoided eye contact with groups of angry looking Africans. I made it to my hostel and promptly fell asleep. 

Day 2 to be continued.

In the immortal words of Eddard Stark: winter is coming. Beijing is quite cold. And, since it's Beijing, when you breathe in the sharp crisp air, the smoggy hands of the city's pollution aren't far behind to massage your lungs with a tight grip. It's not as bad cold-wise as Bard or Ulaan Baatar were, but I can tell it's gonna get pretty chilly as we move deeper into the winter season. The strong winds don't help people out much either.

I first noticed the cold while I was coaching my boy's high school basketball team. I think that virtually every high school in Beijing holds their basketball practices on outdoor courts - and my teams are no exceptions. Playing outdoors makes sense in the spring, the summer, and even fall. But it seems silly and reckless to play outside during the winter. Nevertheless, we keep on marching into it week by week. Last week, it was especially cold and the winds were really a blowin. I had to stop in the middle of speaking several times and turn my back toward the wind because I couldn't yell over the strong gusts of dust and pollution. The day had started warm so I only had on my jeans, a sweathshirt, and a beanie. All of the high schoolers wore matching sweatshirts and sweatpants. They looked like a bunch of Umpa Lumpas. I'm more concerned for what's going to happen with the players in the severe cold - I mean, for guys who already have trouble with their hand-eye coordination, adding numb hands and stiff limbs certainly won't help. It's going to be a long season.

By the time practice was over, I couldn't feel my hands at all and I was shivering so I waddled to the subway stop and went home. I will definitely be better prepared next time. A shout out to Momma Bennett for insisting that I bring my old Goretex Northface snowboarding gloves, those are going to be handy (HA). I've got a lot of warm clothes too, so next time I'm going to make sure that I'm more insulated than a starving Eskimo floating on a piece of drift ice on the Arctic. 

Last week's practice couldn't have been more than 40 degrees, but it certainly wasn't freezing like I'm pretty sure it will be in January and February. I don't envy those kids, and that's coming from someone who had to wake up at 5:30AM every weekday during college to go to basketball practice.

Beijing is pretty polluted. Even my Chinese friends have acknowledged this. Here is an example of photographs taken looking up and down the same street, one during a polluted day, and one during a clear day. Let's see if you can tell which is which.

Yeah, it's like that.

Today Sun Qiang, Sam (the other guy who works on the curriculum development with Sun Qiang and I), and myself had a long overdo meeting. I have been working some long weeks and now that things are settled down a little more (we just hired 3 additional coaches) I have different responsibilities. 

It took a month or two of scrambling but we finally have all of our ducks in a row. I have gotten the hang of coaching and understand how the company and the Chinese parents want me to coach. I am now in charge of training the new coaches that we hire. Basically, I will be going to their camps when they begin and coach for the majority of each camp and give them only a little bit of time to run the show. As they get better they'll do more coaching and once they seem to get the hang of it, I can stop going altogether. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. 

This means I am now only in charge of coaching teams 3 times a week (minus helping new coaches). 1 time for the HS Girls team, and 2 times for my HS Boys team. It's the best situation because I get to keep coaching, but I don't have to coach exhausting little kids.  I will also be running the demo classes we put on around the city for new prospective camps. Once some other coaches get the hang of how to coach, they'll be sharing the demo camp load with me. So that's it for coaching.

As for the office, I only need to come in 2 times a week. And each day I only need to be in the office for 3 or 4 hours. This means a TON more free time, more time to dedicate to Chinese. Or maybe I could get a second job working as a street sweeper during the night, and I could work with all of the elderly Chinese ladies. We could battle with our bamboo brooms under the moonlight, obscured by all of the smog. When we finish in the wee hours of the morning, they could take me to their dancing or tai-chi classes with all of their elderly friends and after we slowly pace around the block with our hands behind our backs and sell nick-knacks on the side of the road. I could lead a double life. I would be like Tyler Durden except not psychotic... I would start a street-cleaning club and call it the street-cleaning club. And you would not be allowed to talk about it. We would play majiang and drink tea and lure all of the passersby to stop and stare at our games. We will form a hoard, the elderly ladies and myself, masked in the night by the silence of our slipper-worn steps and the haze of that grayish brown omniscient Beijing smog. We will slip into government buildings and begin epic games of majiang in the lobbies, stopping government employees from entering the offices and completing work. We will bring China's bureaucracy to a grinding halt. We are the elderly women. We are the  

I bought a big canister of coffee the other day. I thought it was 30 RMB but it was actually 80 RMB. I was considering returning it. See, the coffee you buy here at supermarkets isn't really coffee usually, it's like this weird vicious hazelnut tasting brown liquid. However, it was A LOT of coffee, so I decided to go for it. When I got home I tried it out, and poured some into the boiling water in my fancy Victrola mug. I stirred it up, slowly raised the black liquid to my mouth, and took a sip... my god. It was like miniature army men were having a war in my colon and large intestine. I briskly walked to the bathroom and relieved myself for the next 5-10 minutes. It was glorious. In lieu of good tasting coffee, the way I measure how "good" the alternative coffee is is by seeing how soon and how powerful my next trip to the bathroom is after I have a cup. Needless to say, this coffee ranked pretty high. That was yesterday.

This morning, I got up, made myself breakfast, dropped an egg on the floor, forgot to clean it up, had my coffee, and went to work. When I was 100 meters from my building when a woman came up and tapped me on the shoulder. She asked if I spoke Chinese and I said a little bit. We ended speaking about 50/50 in basic Chinese and English. From what I gathered, she works for some media company and was trying to hire me to work in an TV advertisement, or a TV program or something. I'm not exactly sure. She gave me her card and I'm supposed to email her a headshot. The wheels are turning in my head on how to make a fabulous one. I think Westerners get asked pretty often on the street to work in TV stuff, but still it's a little flattering and could be an interesting story.