Beijing says: “We teach you beetches how to KTV!"

Ohhh, so 有 (you) feeeeeling. One of the slight misuses of English I noticed is that when I'm really excited about something, whether it's Xinjiang food or karaoke, my coworkers will tell me, "You're so high!" And I know they're not talking about drugs, but it never ceases to amuse me =)

Tonight I went with the Happy Girls (otherwise known as ztang, wenwen, 老 P, and carol) for what was my third time at Cashbox Karaoke (inexplicably labeled as PARTY WORLD outside). The last two times I was photographically disabled, and so could not do this glorious experience the justice it so rightly deserves.

Just to make one thing abundantly clear: Karaoke-ing in China puts anything I've ever experienced in America to shame. Shame, I tell you. And here is why.

First, the outside. Not sure if you can see it, but yes that is a Ferarri parked outside. Again, inexplicably.

You walk in through these large glass doors and enter this gold and white, sparkling, totally marbled lobby with high flying ceilings. It dawns on you that you have entered not just a Party World, but a karaoke palace. You feel sufficiently humbled -- you are a long way away from the cramped, dim, dingy, brothel-like establishments of downtown Sunnyvale that won't even serve peanuts, let alone alcohol.

Yes, it's totally over the top, enough to rival the most audacious Vegas casino in its use of gold on absolutely everything. It even sold its own paraphernalia, some no-name dudes from China's version of American Idol:

We waited around for almost 30 minutes for a room. And trust me it was not for lack of rooms - this place was 6 floors, with something like 50 rooms on each floor. I guess it was just a hoppin' Thursday night. When we finally got it, we were ushered into a gold-plated elevator...

down a lavish hallway...

...and into a comfortably small but annoyingly warm room, well appointed with sofas, flat-screen TV and fully automated song selection system.

One of the highlights of karaoke-ing at Cashbox is the free, sprawling buffet included in the price. Just when you think it couldn't get any better, they throw FOOD at you. Not literally. But you could have made-to-order noodles, finger foods like fries and onion rings, fresh squeezed juices, customized hotpot (with some addictive sesame sauce), a variety of Chinese pastries, regular dishes like Chinese broccoli and fried rice, and all the sugary drinks you could possibly hope for.

Yes, that's tomato-and-egg over noodles on the bottom left. Yummm. All this plus about 3 solid hours of singing, to be had for the lowly sum of ~Y100 per person. It's enough to make the most humanly imperfect being drop to her knees and cry out, "What did I do to deserve all this?!?"

I'll post some clips on YouTube later, esp one of the girls rapping to 中国话. But for now, some highlights:

• The girls rapping to 中国话.
• Wenwen and my duet, "When You Believe" by Mariah and Whitney.
• Armin serenading us with "The Pretender."
• About 10 songs from the girl trio S.H.E.
• Armin and ztang's duet, "A Whole New World."
• Us encouraging the girls to join us on Madonna's "Material Girls," and wenwen protesting, "Oh noooooo, we are spiiiiiiiritual girls!"
• The girls teasing 老 P for putting them to sleep with her suuuuuper sad love songs.
• Many "so 有 feeeeeeeeeeeling" duets by ztang and carol.
  

Man, I can't wait to take my mom here =D.

Just how shameful is my Chinese?

Living around the Wu, 五，or 5, as we alternately call it, you run into quite a few foreigners, 外国人， or simply 老外, most of them students at Qinghua learning Chinese. There are a lot of students from Korea, too. When I get into a cab and tell the driver how to take me home, about 3/4 of the time they will ask me, 是韩国人吗, or, "Are you Korean?" At first I believed they really thought I looked Korean. It was just annoying to have to explain, almost every day, that no, I am actually overseas Chinese.

Then, the other day, I got it again..."Are you Korean?" “No," I replied, for the umpteenth time, "I'm Chinese-American. My ancestors are Chinese. We don't speak Chinese at home, that's why my Chinese is so bad."

The guy turns around and says, "Well, when you speak Chinese, you sound Korean! You better study and practice your Chinese well so you don't sound like a Korean! Korean people are rude!" At least, that's the interpretation I understood. Something tells me his meaning was a lot more acrid. The worst was, he wouldn't let it drop, and kept lecturing me for the remainder of the cab ride.

To my Korean brothers and sisters, I apologize on behalf of Beijing cabbies.
______________________

Anyway, Tuesday night we went again to Kiev for more Russian food goodness. I took a chance on the borscht and it was perfect. The spinach rolls were not as exciting, but pretty:


Yesterday we went to 一品小笼 for xiaolongbao for the second time in four days. It was decent, but unremarkable as the first time and I missed the delicate perfection of my beloved Din Tai Fung. The dumplings:

And more noteworthy, the dumpling-shaped lighting fixtures (so cool!):

儿's and "er"s

One thing people have trouble with when they come to Beijing is the Beijing accent, especially heavy in cab drivers who tend to slur their words in addition to a liberal use of the 儿, as in, 你去哪儿 (ni qu narrrrrrrr）? It makes comprehension that much more difficult for the non-native speaker such as myself. More confusing still is that not every word ending in an "n" sound gets turned into an "er." The word for gate, 门 (men), turns into 门儿 (men-er, or mer) . Same goes for hospital, 医院儿 (yiyuan-er, or yiyuar) and skewers, 串儿 (chuan-er or chuar). I can't even think of cases where you don't add an 儿, and still haven't quite figured out when to use it, so I just end up using it all the time. But I know it’s wrong. It is equivalent, says my Lonely Planet guide, to a Chinese person coming to the States and speaking in a thick Creole accent all the time.

Anyway, and I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but it made me think of a recent discussion I had with Garry and his roommate about “er”s as they relate to positions, titles, and identities. For instance, someone asked if Chris would consider himself a “surfer.” His response: “I surf, but I’m not a surfer.” So, what kind of “er”s did apply to him? Teacher, yes. Gardener, yes.

It reminded me of how, in Hollywood, some people would completely embrace the label “writer,” while others would turn their eyes away, sheepishly, and echo, “I write, but I’m not really a writer yet.” So when does one do so much of a certain verb that one earns the “er”? In the case of writers, I assumed you could only really call yourself a writer when you are actually paid to write, (and I would look archly at anyone who claimed to be a writer who had not yet sold a script… this sort was generally considered “aspiring writer,” as in, they aspire to someday be paid some monetary sum, however small, for their labors).

There are other things that you can do without being paid, and still earn the “er,” like gardener or dancer or mother (who does, I guess, a lot of moth-ing har har). Anyway, again, kind of a stretch, but I guess one could look at the Beijing 儿 in a similar way, like you know you’ve really arrived when you know how to use the儿’s correctly. I guess I have a long way to go.

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Anyway, the lowdown on last week:

Monday: Back to Isshin for some yummy Japanese staples like pork katsu with curry, salmon sashimi and tempura-fried soft tofu.

Tuesday: Went to some delectable Sichuan-style place that looked like some very rich man’s mansion, with koi pools galore and many a grand staircase inside. The food included some special fish flown directly from Sichuan, a long slimy little thing that was rather tasty, but gave me the creeps.

Wednesday: A fancy Taiwanese place in the Gate 8 (新中关) shopping mall. Delicious beef. Pretty solid on the stir fried cabbage with bacon too.

Thursday: Huge dinner party at my favorite Xinjiang restaurant where we gorged on 拉条子 (hand-pulled noodles), 大盘鸡 (da pan ji), 羊肉串(lamb skewers), 酸奶(yogurt), and mutton over Muslim bread soaked in delicious juices.

Friday: Good gracious. Super late dinner at South Beauty in Chaoyang, another Sichuan place. One amazing dish involved dunking thinly sliced beef in a big bowl of hot oil until it was cooked. Meatball, “delicious chicken,” and other staples were also great. Swung by the bookstore, Bookworm, to have a peek. Then we went to Sanlitun under the pretense of going to Bar Blu, but my real intention was to see if the Xinjiang Boys were playing at Cheers that night. THEY WERE. Oh, it was glorious. We stayed until like 3am just dancing and singing along to covers of the Gypsy Kings and 4 Non Blondes. Then, someone had the brilliant idea of heading to Cashbox KTV, the karaoke palace. Yaaaaaaay, 24-hour KTV!

Saturday: Somewhere between the stuffy confines of Cheers and the numbing cold air outside, I got sick. Plus tummy issues. So I spent most of the day in bed. Sadness.

Sunday: Went to the Lama Temple for a brief stroll, marveled at the 6-story-high gilded Buddha. Headed to Xidan for some shopping, but didn’t get anything. I never cease to be amazed at the Chinese’ capacity for shopping. Gigantic malls everywhere, full of stuff. Sheesh. Then proceeded to take 3 subway lines plus a taxi to the Lido Holiday Inn, to visit my uncle.

Tonight: Met up with a new friend (who happens to work for Jet Li, har har) at the Starbucks in Houhai. I got a tiny gingerbread latte for the unreal price of Y29. That’s like $4. I don’t know who can afford this stuff. It was freezing tonight, but we proceeded to wander around the hutong looking for No Name Restaurant, this Yunnanese place I’d read about. We had to stop for directions. It was freezing. Finally we found it, tucked away in a back alley. It was a pleasant surprise, gorgeously decorated with mirrors, great lighting, koi ponds, mosaics, fancy lanterns:

Food was really good, but not quite on par with Middle 8^th. Liked the Chinese greens sautéed with fragrant smoky ham, and Yunnanese fragrant rice with cubed potatoes, apples, and mushrooms, and lemongrass grilled fish:

There was a random kitty hanging out around the tables. Not terribly hygienic, but super cute. Here he is, toyin' with the koi:

Lastly but not leastly, two Google tools I have come to know and love: Google Pinyin, and Google Translate. Hallelujah.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program...

...to tell you that Rambo is going to Burma.

Yes, Burma.

I'm not sure what I think about it. See the trailer here.

I'm in Beijing, but this morning my heart is in LA.

Why Los Angeles is the greatest city in the world.

New Beijing Resource

For the longterm expats out there:www.bjstuff.com

Pingyao: In English This Time

The weekend captured something I haven't really experienced since college probably. Something like a retreat, something to do with camaraderie, something about a place removed from time and everything usual.

It started with a packing frenzy Thursday night, and rushing to get an assignment done by 5pm on Friday afternoon.

Friday

Both accomplished, we piled into a taxi bound for Beijing West train station. We were stressed out about making our train -- Friday traffic is the pits -- and I was already going to that peaceful place where it didn't matter if we made the train or not. But make it we did, and we wound around other travelers and threw our bags onto the sleeper bunks. I can't really remember much about our conversations, only that they were good-natured and the kind you can't get enough of. We ate from plastic carry-out boxes, we nodded our heads in exhaustion, we played Set. I began to see a beauty in my coworker-friend that is equal parts hopeful and hungry for knowledge. Even when the train workers turned out the lights and we crawled into our bunks, we shared ghost stories and talked about l-i-f-e.

Saturday

The morning light was gray, the countryside dreary. The train was quiet except for the clanking of wheels on tracks and people slowly going about their morning business. I was groggy. We got to our stop, Jie Xiu, and almost missed it, but luckily Yang caught it in time. We went in search of breakfast on a lowkey snack street:

• Youtiao (Chinese doughnuts)
• Doujiang (soy milk)
• Soft tofu - 2 sweet, 2 salty
• Xiaolongbao (different from the Shanghai variety - these were more like mini-buns stuffed with ground-meat goodness)
• Jiaozi (dumplings)
• And two kinds of soup noodles with pork spareribs, one with regular noodles and one with clear.

All to be had for the price of 1-2 RMB each. Gawd I love China.


Took a bus to 王家大院 (Wang jia da yuan), this gigantic courtyard mansion in the middle of nowhere, where the Wang family started. It was super oldschool Chinese. John was so good as to lend me his camera from time to time to take pictures of cool things. The place was interesting enough, but probably not as interesting as debating whether Hero by Zhang Yimou is a good movie for what it is, or not. There was a small dog who took a liking to me for no good reason. The garden with its trees stripped bare of leaves was a somber and stony place, but I liked it.

Lunch was super “local," with many different kinds of noodles: knife-cut noodles, knife-peeled noodles, flat noodles, and this amazing dish we all fell in love with - shanxi youmian, or oil noodles, these flat noodles made with, I presume, oil, and steamed in beautiful shapes. It looked a bit like a fungus that might grow on a tree:

After a prolonged bout of bargaining, we got on a passenger van bound for Pingyao. Drank in some canyon-like land formations that would have been stunning if not for the perpetual and pervasive smog-haze. I hear that the area around Pingyao is especially active in coal-burning, for what purposes I don't know, but it makes for some pretty terrible air quality, worse even than Beijing.

We were dropped off at the east gate of the City Wall, one of the most impressively intact in China. Inside, the old town was not petrified like I imagined (I would call the old town in Lijiang petrified; this was just a bit rundown and choked with dust). There were a few gorgeous things to see, like one of the gates inside town:
The place where we stayed, Yamen Hostel, was another story altogether. We felt it as soon as we stepped in the warm, inviting, and laid-back lounge in front, where backpackers lolled about, reading, checking e-mail, watching Brokeback Mountain in the DVD room. It was the kind of place you wanted to hang around forever. We got our rooms and stepped back into the courtyard portion -- the hostel was converted from an old Chinese mayor's residence. It was like stepping into a movie, specifically Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou. The courtyard looked exactly the same, this magical and storied place, this portal into a past life:

We had a lowkey dinner from the place across the street and tried to watch several movies before giving up. The rest of the night was spent sipping local beer and half-singing songs we knew while ah-kuan (as we've come to call him despite his protests) showed a guitar who was boss. The girls' room was cold that night, our heater busted, but the blanket was warm and I slept well for the first time in days.

Sunday

Woke up rather late to the sound of my cell phone ringing -- Garry! After talking, we got ready to check out and find food to eat. Lunch was similar to dinner, with the addition of a dish called cat's ears, little pasta-like things shaped like cowry shells. We spent the afternoon browsing shops in the old town. I bought lacquer bracelets and contemplated a pair of lions cast with a striking turquoise glaze. Then, to escape the cold, three of us opted for a Chinese-style massage. I've had better, but it was still relaxing (not to mention cheap). Then it was time to catch our bus to Taiyuan, the nearest major city, where our train waited to take us back to Beijing.

We had soft seat tickets, because the stupid transportation system wouldn't allow us to buy return tickets from Beijing, and had to try our luck scoring sleeper tickets once we got on the train. This entailed much negotiating on Yang's part, plus a bribe of Y150 per head to one of the train workers. THEN, we had to swim through a sea of humanity to get from car #13 to car #2 - not an experience I really want to repeat, ever again. People were standing, sitting in the aisles, crouching at the ends of cars, smoking, vomiting on the floor (that was a kid). Finally, finally, we got to our designated sleeper spots and collapsed in relief. The rest of the night was uneventful...more talk-talk-talking, sometimes the topics so serious that I felt almost guilty. At 1am we crawled into bed, only to be shaken awake at 5:30am by the same guy who sold us our sleepers.