New Layout

On the lighter side of things, I have decided to freshen up the blog a little by adding a new header image. I've come up with a few alternate choices as seen below and I'll give you all ten days to vote on a new one. Most of these were based off pictures taken around the Great Wall earlier this month. Due to size restrictions these are only previews. To see the full size image, simply click on the picture and then vote for your choice on the panel on the right there.


This is Alt Picture 1


This is Alt Picture 2


This is Alt Picture 3

and of course you have the option of retaining the current image.
Happy voting :)

Eating With Dragons

Click here for the full text.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v501/godandstarcraft/eatingwithdragons.jpg

Tuesday Morning Football

I apologize that this post is almost a week old, but I wanuted to make sure the link to the pictures got plenty of exposure, as well as my thank you, so I waited to post this one.

Last Tuesday morning (Monday evening in the states) we woke up at 7 to get to a pretty trendy coffee shop in an international district to watch the packers/vikings game. You have to understand that the NBA is huge over here and MLB is not far behind. Mention NFL and they draw blanks. However, if you are lucky, you can sometimes catch a game on an American network like ESPN. However, ESPN Asia gives Asian sports preference (imagine that) so instead of seeing one of the biggest NFL games of the season, it was Kyoto University women's rowing finals. On ESPN.

Not cool.

So we were frantically trying to find a way to watch the game online because the NFL option is ridiculously expensive (like 270 US dollars for a season pass) and we ended up finding a live feed from some US TV station that was broadcasting online "ESPN en Espanol." So for about 15 minutes we had things like:

"Brett Farve lleva el balón y evita la defensa. Él mira hacia el campo. Coger! Corre! El bloques! Anoto! ¡Touchdown! No lo puedo creer! Celebración! Undelay, undelay, Él es el ratón más rápido de todo México!"

Then that site went down. It said there was a server overload, which makes me think that every other NFL fan in China was having to listen to Brett Farve slice up his old team in Spanish as well. The only other thing we could do was go to nfl.com and watch the game represented in animated arrows and lines on a green rectangle. We did this for over two hours, wildly cheering or shouting when a line moved a fraction of an inch. I'm sure the staff there thought we were crazy. I can imagine how the conversation among two waiters went...

Ping: "You should have been here earlier today. Six foreigners came in around 730 this morning and wanted to make sure we had that American sports station on TV."
Li: "That's not unusual. Anything good on?"
Ping: "Kyoto University rowing. Ladies' team."
Li: "Oooh, I heard they're really good this year. Can't wait till they compete against the Chinese universities. That's going to be interesting."
Ping: "Yeah, it will be. But boy, you should have seen the Americans. They were not happy.”
Li: "Hmm. Can’t please everyone. So what did they end up doing?"
Ping: "Well after ordering a LOT of coffee. They all squished in one booth and tried to get as close as possible to this laptop on the table. Didn’t care about anything else. Just sitting there watching what looked like very slow, choppy TV.”
Li: “Huh. That’s stupid. Why watch TV on a computer when we have our big screen?”
Ping: “Yeah, well they really got into this one I tell you. I watched a bit of it when I dropped off yet another espresso and it looked odd. This man was all dressed up wearing purple, he got this squished ball from this other guy wearing purple, but it didn’t look like a ball, you see, and then a lot of guys wearing yellow came running after him. I figured they wanted the ball too, and he panicked, so he got rid of it and threw it.”
Li: “Wow really?”
Ping: “Yeah, only the yellow guys were a LOT bigger than the first purple guy. And as soon as he threw the ball, the yellow guys hit him hard and knocked him down. Some other random guy, apparently didn’t learn the lesson from the last guy that in this game ball equals pain, caught the thing in the air and he too got knocked flat, but at least he held on to it longer than the little purple guy. Even looked like he might get away from them for a few seconds.”
Li: “The guy that caught it…was he wearing yellow or purple?”
Ping: “Purple. It looked like a yellow guy was going to catch it after the purple guy threw it away one time, and boy the Americans were UPSET. Awful vocal they were about that one.”
Li: “So they stayed there the whole day watching this sport?”
Ping: “No. Weirdest thing. After about 20 minutes or so, there was no more purple or yellow guys anymore, and the same image was stuck on the screen and all six of them were talking at once faster and faster. Finally, they had a rectangle on the screen. Green with white lines and there was orange arrows and lines everywhere. Lots and lots of numbers too. When this came up, I tell you….they DID NOT MOVE. Not an inch. It was like time stood still for them, as they were glued to that laptop.
Li: “Weird. What do you think was going on?”
Ping: “No idea. Every few minutes, the little arrow would go forth half an inch or two and then they would just jump and shout like they did earlier for a second and then go right back to staring at it. They did this for over an hour, man!”
Li: “over an hour? You’ve got to be kidding me! It must have been another type of game. Maybe a shape game or math game or something. But I can’t believe that could hold anyone’s attention for over an hour”
Ping: “I’m telling you it did. Maybe even two. One time the little arrow shot ahead in two big bursts and then after a pause started going the other way. Boy, they were happy then. After a while, when the arrows stopped moving altogether, the one with the laptop shut it down and they all left, pretty happy.”
Li: “With the possible exception of basketball, I will never understand American sports! But they sure take it passionately!”

Fuqing coming in to backroom: “Hey guys, anyone know if ESPN’s gonna air the West Ham – Millwall soccer match? Some British guys are out front and want to know.”

Thank you

I got a parcel in the mail today containing letters and birthday cards from friends and family. To those of you who contributed to this, thank you so much. The updates from home are much appreciated and I don't think you know how much this means to me. Anything from America is valued, even the little things like an American address on the return address label. I've been over here a few weeks shy of six months now and while I love it, the little reminders of home are a great source of joy and comfort. So once again, thank you.

Stair Master from Hell!

Sarah, Abby and I went to a non touristy part of the Great Wall over the weekend. It was outside of Beijing more than a little and had no where near the tourist trappings of the main section at Badaling, but we all really liked it. It was a lot more narrow and a lot steeper than any section I have been on before and was for all practical purposes, a staircase going up a mountain. The steps were killer, some were only a few inches high, some more than two feet high. We figured it was probably a mile going up the mountain and coming back down, we felt every step. A few days later, I can still feel them a little in my legs. The whole time we were there, the views were amazing, and we took many pictures, far too many to post one at a time as I usually do, but I uploaded them all to Photobucket through a proxy, so you should be able to just click --or copy and paste--the link below and see some of the pictures, (even movies!)

NewsFromDan Photobucket Album

Silk Street

Today, being a pretty special day and all, went pretty well. Sarah - who if you are not aware, came up to Beijing to celebrate with me, and I went to the silk market along with a new facilitator Abby. The silk market is nearly 1,500 vendors selling everything (literally everything) from DVD's to expensive jewelry to artwork to tourist tshirts to fine luxury clothing. One of my favorite shops is this woman who sells pure cashmere and silk scarves. Unless you have been to Northern China, Inner Mongolia or Persia, you have never felt anything this soft or smooth. Most of the silk you buy in the US is a blend of silk and another fabric to keep costs down or colors bright, but pure 100% silk is hard to find in the US. Pure cashmere is even harder to find, but when you find it, it is softer and smoother then silk. A while back, I helped a facilitator bargain at this particular shop and the lady tthat runs it gave us a pretty fair price for what we wanted, so since then I've brought them all the new facilitators who come
into TIP. This ensures that they get great prices for what they want without having to worry about being ripped off during the negotiation phase
of buying and it gives her business. This also help me establish what is called "guan xi." In China, it's not what you know that gets things done, but largely
who you know and how good of a relationship you have with them. This is guan xi. Guan xi is used in thousands of ways for thousands of circumstances, but in this case
guan xi enables me to get a better price than most people would. For instance, suppose the silk scarves this woman is selling cost her 50 yuan each. If a complete stranger comes to her and asks how much, she will probably start off at around 700 yuan and then negotiations would ensue with (depending on the skill of the bargainer) an agreement around two or three hundred yuan or so. However, because I bring this woman customers and because I am her friend, I have built up guan xi with her. Thus, today Sarah and Abby were able to get pure silk scarves for 90 yuan each. This would be impossible for someone who has not spent the time and effort to build up guan xi with the vendor. sarah and Abby bought a few more things there as well, and when she found out it was my birthday, she gave us a free gift of a small cashmere table accessory. Negotations would have started out at over 300 yuan for this free item.
Her brother runs a stall nearby that sells exquisite men's clothes, including very formal traditional silk Chinese shirts. While Sarah and Abby were haggling it out for one last item, I wandered over to his shop and my eye caught a very handsome
silk shirt that is navy blue with intricately embroidered gold dragons down the front. As I was looking it over, the brother said in pretty fair English for me to try it on. So as I was slipping into it, he told me "you always make my sister so happy when you come and bring new business."
We talked for a little more and as I was admiring the shirt, he pulled out a calculator (the preferred way to negotiate) and said "normally, I would charge this amount for that shirt" and he typed in 1,175. It is a well loved trick by vendors to go down in price maybe 50 yuan and then put on a big production about how much they went down so i was expecting this while trying to figure out how to tell him I could not pay over a thousand yuan for a shirt. However, he quickly typed in 270. I was incredibly shocked by this massive drop in price and he delicately hinted that it was the base price and only for me only because of my specialrelationship with his family's shops. This is guan xi paying off. To understand how meaningful this is, you have to understand a little something about how the silk market works. Every vendor is on commission and if he or she fails to sell a single thing on any given day, their base pay is just ten yuan. About a buck and a half. To them, the phrase "another day, another dollar" is a scary incentive of what will happen if you don't make a sell. So to take a bath like they did today, by drastically underselling the merchandise and evengiving some away is a huge cut into their paycheck, and it meant that would have to work that much harder for the rest of the day. Pretty hard to do considering there is another 20 or so stalls selling the exact same thing. Granted, they've more than made up the losses in the business that I've brought them over the past few months, but still, I was very impressed. If I had been completley fluent in Chinese and an expert on silk and cashmere, but a complete stranger to them, I still would not have gotten the treatment I got today. It pays to be a friend.

Payday!

We started our break between sessions, so not a lot has been happening, but one very important thing of note took place a few nights ago. We got paid! The salary system isn't nearly as regulated over here as it is in America. When they say how much you will receive, it's usually per month (for almost any job over here) and it's normal for them to get a few months behind sometimes. Which can lead to some very nice paydays when they finally catch up. Sometimes it is direct deposit, but most of the time it's straight cash. Imagine receiving two to three months salary, all at once, and that was what happened a few nights ago.


Go ahead and grab a stack!


Our "accounting department"


That's 68,000 RMB....Roughly ten thousand US dollars.