Anguish and Order in China

Pictured above: Sculpture in front of Olympics Stadium at China Agricultural University

Dear World,

This is my first post from the International College of Beijing. I have been here since Friday, so I'm hardly an expert. Relying on the good graces of a very capricious virtual private network (VPN) that links me directly to the outside world through the University of Colorado Denver, I bring you these first thoughts.

[Otherwise, without VPN access, my blog is entirely blocked in China. I can't even download instructional video training from sites in the US or anything on Facebook or Youtube. These are strange and imperial restrictions that bear no logic for me,the alien girl from another earth!]

I arrived Friday without incident at the Beijing International Airport which appeared to me to be entirely modernized and imperial (with great red colonnades reminiscent of the Forbidden City and China's association with "red" as the color of love and good fortune.) My "seatmate" on the United Flight, Chris Luo (Luo Dong-ping), an entrepreneur who shuttles back and forth between his Internet security firm in Beijing and his family in San Francisco, provided some amiable instruction and pointers. He was kind, considerate, and reminded me that the two most popular areas of Beijing for foreigners, among them Haidian and the Chaoyang District, east of the Eastern gate in Beijing, were far and frustratingly apart. Right now that's pretty much my feeling about all of Beijing. Far and frustrating, "must get to," but not yet. I plan to venture out seriously Thursday nite to a Bookworm event in Chaoyang and hence brave the bus and subway system. Even though I have all my time in Taiwan behind me -- more than three decades past, as a very young, long-haired "golden dragon" who aggressively pursued Chinese and a new life --this city feels strange and new to me, and I am strange in it.

My first encounter with Chinese "efficiency" was in buying a cell phone. I went to a China Mobile store and was told to find an appliance store to buy the handset. I go into the appliance store and muddle my way to a fairly inexpensive Nokia handset. I am given a set of instructions in completely inexplicable "tu-hua" -- something about a chong zhi ca (charge card) and some freebie domestic time I have, but no information about how to obtain an international plan. I return to the China Mobile store and the same young lady eyes my China Unicom SIM card number and tells me she can't help me with an international plan. "Go back to the appliance store and get another SIM Card," or find a Unicom shop which, she says, is "miles away" (no address). She doesn't know where it is.

There is military music blaring as I speak. The campus seems very unmilitary, and the students in general casual and well dressed.

I return to the appliance store and the help (no one speaks a word of English) reported that the SIM card comes with the phone and that they cannot switch out a SIM card that has a China Mobile brand on it. Meanwhile, the kind Claudia, my student escort of the moment, and a freshmen at ICB, is trying to translate, but she is just as frustrated as I am. "The Chinese systems are really inefficient," she tells me. We return to the China Mobile store, find a young man, explain the situation, and he notes that China Mobile can give me a new SIM card, a new number, and a new plan, only I have to take a number and wait for at least an hour to talk with a technician. At this point we're out of time, I [figuratively] throw up my hands and return without a card or a plan.

The situation immediately rights itself when Patrick Dodge, my adorable boss, takes me on his scooter to a group of little shops around the corner from our campus, part of a tour he generously gives me, along with a decent meal. A store owner hands me a China Unicom pre-pay card. He charges me 30 yuan for a 100 yuan international calling card. What happens if it doesn't work? we ask. Then he can't take it back, he says. But he is convinced it will work. I fork over the 30 yuan (roughly US$5), what do I have to lose, and the next morning I make my first successful calls to my sister and my kids to let them know I'm okay.

I would be lying if I said I felt completely adjusted to this combination of intense population that is peaceful and totally organized, a city where blue sky is almost never visible because of pollution, and where Communism and Communist principals and virtually never spoken of openly. The main objective at the college is to enjoy and learn and then get a good phat job...the idealism and social consciousness appears at a bare minimum.

The campus where I live is in the midst of military training. All freshmen must participate for two weeks prior to the opening of school. From 5 AM young girls and boys in white or yellow T shirts march to orders barked by young men in military fatigues. There is a lot of "counting" -- "yi er san si!" ("one two three four"), much stiff legged goose stepping, and some practice suspending one leg in midair for long periods of time. Other than that I can't much decipher what these kids are doing.

I asked Claudia, a lovely (and tall!) young freshman girl who spent 1 1/2 years in Melbourne Australia perfecting her English in highschool, what the military training meant. She really wasn't sure. "I don't care for it," she said. Did it have something to do with training young people to fight for their country? For helping to unite them in a spirit and love of her school? "Yes, something like that," she admitted (we speak both Chinese and English together). Claudia was hoping that the military theory class she planned to attend two days ago would be quite interesting. But it turned out she couldn't go; another teacher made some demands on her time, so she missed the one class she was really looking forward to.

Claudia is a beautiful, shy, and anguished young girl. She is trying to get her bearings in a college and admitted she felt some uncertainty and loneliness. I tried to assure her that everyone feels that way starting out, but she said that it was lonely especially because she had no brothers and sisters, and her cousins are quite distant. Her one boyfriend is now in America studying, and she feels he is more like a brother than a lover, but she misses him terribly. "I have known him since I was five or six years old," she says sadly (I tried to give her a hug). She scored the highest of the entire college on her English entrance exams and was practicing her matriculation speech for me, very nervously.

The organization and ability to "ting hua" (listen to talk, literally), is extraordinary among these students. They do exactly as they are told, even if they admit (like Claudia) that it doesnt' seem to have much meaning for them. I will be interested to see what really does have meaning. I have enjoyed a few brief encounters with faculty but, as I mentioned, I still am feeling my way through all of this. Luckily, there is a Starbucks around the corner but the coffee is just as expensive as the States.