Technical difficulties

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything on the blog for almost two weeks. Rest assured, I am fine. However, I have not been able to access the blog since November 9, and have also been having trouble accessing other Google-based services like gmail.

I did some research last week and found out that widespread Google outages began in China on November 9 (the day after the beginning of the week-long once-in-a-decade power transfer within the Communist Party). There’s a video interview about it on the Wall Street Journal’s website (“Google Service Disrupted in China") and an article on Phys.org. The reports suggest that a block may have been placed on many Google services to prevent people from discussing and/or getting information about the Party power transition.

This is the first time in almost two weeks that I have been able to access the blog. No idea if I will continue to have access, so I will try to post when I can. Thanks for your patience. :)

I have so much to update! From getting a private tour of a nearby museum and making new friends, to seeing how badminton should be played, to doing my first "haggling" in a local market, to getting "high" in Xi'an (and no, I don't mean drugs).

Brrrrrr!

It’s getting colder every day. This morning, it was 37ºF at 8:00, and the weather reports show that it will continue to get cooler. All of my winter clothes and coats are in my air shipment that has not yet been sent from the U.S. (the logistics company couldn’t release my shipment until I got my residence and work permits; they should be releasing my shipment this week). The only coat I have is a mid-weight corduroy jacket. I thought I was going to get to Xi’an back in late September or early October—plenty of time to get my shipment before winter would arrive. Right.

Thus, today’s adventure was coat shopping. I had scoped out the coat selection at Lotus last weekend, so today I went to the nearby Golden Eagle shopping mall—four floors of clothing, accessories, house wares, electronics, cosmetics, and everything you’d find at a typical department store in the U.S. The mall was set up like a department store too. Each floor had an open layout with sections for the different stores; there weren’t separate enclosed stores—one store flowed into the next. The only other noticeable difference between this mall and those in the U.S. was the abundance of store personnel. Each store/sales area probably had three or four sales associates working an area the size of a two-car garage.

I looked at a few coats and realized I was way out of my league—the cheapest coat I found was 1,200RMB (about $190), and this was just a glorified windbreaker. One of the stylish coats I liked was 5,000RMB (more than what I paid for my iPhone). So after walking through each floor, I went to Lotus.

As I was looking at the coats in Lotus, a very helpful (but non-English-speaking) sales person came over to help me. She showed me some really awful coats (I should have gotten a picture—think bright red with sequins, and then pink and white floral with a fur collar). Through hand gestures, I indicated I wanted a coat with a hood, so she brought me over to a rack and pulled out a nice looking navy blue ski-type coat, helped me put it on, and then led me to a mirror. It was a nice looking coat, so I asked her how much it was (in Chinese!)—it was 599RMB (about $95). The coat was nice, but not $95 nice, so I pulled out my Chinese phrase book and asked if she could show me something cheaper. We went to the 299RMB (about $48) rack and I found this:

My new coat. Back in my room at the Citadines.

The coat has a hood.

When I tried it on at the store, the sales woman asked my if I was American. I told her I was, and she got very excited and showed me the coat’s tag. 

The real deal?

Yes, it is a “Playboy” bunny coat. I didn’t know Playboy made coats. Could this be a knock-off? Is the bunny’s head facing the correct direction? Not being familiar with this particular brand, I have no idea. So we’ll just say that I have a Playboy bunny coat. I wish it had a fuzzy white tail on the back though. ;)

The Wall

The weather reports said it was going to snow a little bit on Saturday morning. Thankfully, it was sunny and 41ºF with some wind—no snow, sleet, or rain. A nice fall day, and a perfect time to go to the Xi’an City Wall.

The wall was initially built during the old Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 C.E.) with a base layer of dirt, lime, and glutinous rice extract (this doesn’t change how I feel about glutinous rice desserts—they’re still good). During the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644 C.E.), the wall was enlarged and rebuilt with bricks.  Standing at 12 meters (about 40 feet) high, 15 meters wide on the top (about 50 feet), and a perimeter of 13.94 km (about 8.5 miles), the Xi’an City Wall is the most intact among the ancient Chinese city walls, and one of the largest ancient military defense systems in the world.

Map of the Xi'an City Wall.

Information about the wall. All of the informational signs were
in Chinese and English.

It would have been a five-mile walk to the wall from the hotel, so since I was planning to walk the 8.5-mile wall, I decided to splurge and catch a bus to the South Gate. The subway and many of the buses in Xi’an accept the Public Transportation Card (PTC), which I have thanks to one of my colleagues who bought one for me (I paid for it, but he went to the station office to purchase it). Cardholders get a 50% discount on bus fares and a 10% discount on subway fares. Not too shabby! Although the fares are not that expensive to begin with—most local bus fares are 1-3RMB (so less than $1).

The front of my Public Transportation Card.

The back.

So with the question of dealing with bus fares out of the way, the next issue was which of the more than 200 bus lines would get me to the South Gate of the City Wall? I haven’t been able to find any comprehensive maps of the Xi’an bus system online, but TravelChinaGuide.com has a good listing of most of the lines and their stops, although not with a map. Luckily, Xianese, a local magazine and website primarily for ex-pats in Xi’an, has good maps of the city in each issue and on its website. The maps show the more frequently used bus lines, and it just so happens that quite a few bus lines has stops on Keji Lu, a five-minute walk from the hotel.

According to the map, line 604 had stops on Keji Lu and across the southwestern half of the City Wall. Off I went to the bus stop.

A 604 came along after about ten minutes. It was packed. It also had a conductor rather than a PTC reader. Not a big deal—I was prepared with a few 1RMB notes. Your destination determines the fare you pay, so I told the conductor I was headed to Nan Men (the South Gate) and I pointed to it on the map I had. I think the conductor said that the 604 bus didn’t go there—neither she nor the driver spoke English. She conferred with the driver, and they told me that I needed to take the 402 (I did understand that part). They were very nice about it, and didn’t charge me.

When we turned onto another street, lo and behold there was a 402 bus at the stop in front of us! The driver let me off at the stop, but the 402 pulled away before I could get to it. The 604 driver honked at the 402, but the bus didn’t stop, so the driver signaled me to get back on his bus. He sped up considerably on the way to the next stop, and this time I made it. Thanks to the drive of the 604, I made it to the right bus and didn’t have to wait for another one to come along. What a nice guy!

The 402 bus was less crowded than the 604.

The 402 is equipped with a PTC reader, so I waved my card in front of the machine and paid 0.50RMB. I followed the bus’s progress, turn-by-turn, using the Xianese map, and when we turned onto the road that runs along the southern wall, I got off the bus. The map made it look like it was just a few blocks from the southwestern corner to the South Gate . . . it’s actually quite a bit longer. I walked for about 20-25 minutes through the park outside the wall and the moat before arriving at the South Gate.

A restaurant outside the south portion of the
City Wall on the way to the South Gate.

Even the trash receptacles were neat.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's people flying kites outside the wall!

The three kites.

I do need a haircut, but these guys looked pretty busy already.

Fishing in the moat.

Upon entering the gate, I looked around for the access point to get to the top of the wall. I found it, but getting there was like being in a game of Frogger. Check it out:

The crazy intersection. You come from the far left across three lanes
of traffic, and get to the middle of the intersection where you are in the
middle of six lanes of traffic flowing in both directions. If you're lucky,
there will be a brief opening in the flow so you can make it to the yellow
cones, and the safety of the path to the wall. 

I made it to the other side in one piece. (My peripheral vision is getting a daily workout in China.) As I was walking up the path looking at the immensity and beauty of the gate, I had this “Oh my goodness, I’m really in China!” feeling. Not that I didn’t realize I was in China when I was walking around Shanghai, but the feeling was much stronger.

I paid 40RMB (about $6) for a ticket to enter, and made my way into this incredible structure.

An "Oh my goodness, I'm really in China!" moment. 

Once on top of the wall, I looked for the bike rental area—one of the awesome things about touring the wall is that you can rid a bike along it! I paid 200RMB (about $32) as a deposit (they must have had problems with people not returning bikes), and 40RMB for 100 minutes of rental time (that’s standard—on average, it takes 1.5 to 2 hours to ride the entire 13.94 km).

A set of stairs leading up to the top of the wall.

View of the South Gate courtyard from the top of the stairs. 

Apparently they let anybody with 240RMB rent a bike. 

I’m sure it does only take 1.5 to 2 hours if you don’t stop to take pictures every few feet, but how can you not stop and take pictures? The way and its surroundings are amazing! After realizing that I was never going to make it around the whole wall if I kept stopping, I realized I could steer the bike with my right hand and hold my camera in my left hand, taking pictures using the “action” setting since I was in motion. The pictures weren’t great, so I did stop occasionally to get some good ones.

Taken in motion. The buildings in the background are outside the wall. 

One of the watch towers along the wall. 

The underside of the watch tower roof. Amazing detail!

No monkeying around! 

Another in-motion shot. These buildings are inside the wall.

Jasweck as sentinel.

Door handles on one of the watch towers.

Check out the traffic inside the wall!

A Buddhist monastery inside the north-east corner of the wall.

Deep contemplation going on here.

If you ever go to Xi’an and ride a bike around the city wall, here are a few tips:

1. Be prepared for bumpy terrain. Lots of “pot holes,” uneven bricks, and small ramps.
2. Wear padded biking gloves. The bikes are nice, but the handlebars are covered in textured rubber that can irritate sensitive palms.
3. Don’t walk away from your bike even though you’ve put the kickstand down, especially on windy days. The kickstands are more decorative than functional.
4. Do the touristy thing (i.e., ride, stop, take pictures, ride, stop, take pictures, ride, stop, you get the idea) once. Then go back another time and just enjoy the whole experience without the picture pressure. 

I returned the bike at the 100-minute mark and got my 200RMB deposit back. I took a few more pictures as I left.

City Wall workers in period costume.

The tunnel to enter and exit the South Gate courtyard. 

Then, for something completely different, I walked around the inner city and found my way here:

Really.

My colleagues told me there is a Super WalMart just inside the South Gate (I think there are a total of three WalMarts in Xi'an). I was already in the area, so why not check it out? It’s definitely not like Super WalMarts in the U.S.—much more cramped (it was in the basement of the building) and more confusing to find your way around. I bought two loaves of bread, apples, dragon fruit, enoki mushrooms, broccoli, dried kiwi slices, and hair conditioner, all for 95.90RMB (about $15). The prices were comparable to the prices at Louts (I like Lotus better—more spacious).

A little crabby are we? (I didn't buy any.)

I was intrigued by the "shower heads."

Yes! Another Dairy Queen in Xi'an! This brings the count up
to two of which I am aware at this point. 

Laden with goodies from WalMart, I walked to a line 402 bus stop outside the wall. The ride back to Keji Lu was about 15 minutes, and another 0.50RMB.

The hunt continues

It turns out that SRV found ten apartments for me to check out on Thursday afternoon. This group of apartments was . . . interesting.  More of a mix of styles, layouts, and suitability for human habitation.

I apologize in advance for the dearth of pictures this time. I think SRV is still putting the picture profiles together for me, and again, I took notes on each apartment, not pictures. So, let your imagination run free as you read about my Thursday afternoon.

Three of the apartments I saw were immediate no-go’s. Basically, I walked in, looked around, and tried not to let the horror show on my face (I felt that might be rude). Perhaps “horror” is too strong a word—the apartments were livable, but not for my standards.

For example, in one of the places, the tenants were in the process of moving out, so the apartment was a disaster, and pretty dirty in general, even aside from the moving preparations. Imagine your house or apartment at its messiest and multiply that by five. I don’t think the current residents have taken very good care of the place either—dirty walls, grungy kitchen, some broken light fixtures and flooring, etc. It probably would have taken months to get it ready for someone to move in.

The other two “no’s” were two-floor apartments. Yes, that sounds cool, but it really isn’t. The layouts were terrible. One had both bedrooms on the second floor, which had a very low ceiling (even for me), no doors between the “rooms,” and there was hardly any natural light on that floor. Plus, the one bathroom in that apartment was on the first floor and it was in a sorry state—plumbing problems that the landlord was having fixed that week. This place did have one thing going for it; it overlooks a park.

Great view! It's a shame the apartment itself wasn't great. 

The second two-floor apartment was decent—one bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor along with the kitchen, living area, and dining room. But then you get to the second floor: two nice rooms and a nice-sized bathroom. The bathroom had a window looking out onto a patio/public area. Thoughts: 1) Why would you put a window there? 2) Why would you make that window large enough for a person to fit through? 3) The whole thing is just asking for trouble.  Plus, why would I need two floors anyway?

The SRV representative and I didn’t bother taking pictures of any of these hideous apartments, so I won’t have any proof of how crazy they were even after SRV sends me the apartment profiles.

Another three places I saw were okay, but had some shoddy workmanship in fundamental areas and/or they were in complexes located right next to huge construction sites. Examples of the shoddy workmanship: poorly laid floors; really cracked plaster walls; peeling wallpaper; bad paint jobs with ugly colors; one really, really, really tiny bathroom in a three bedroom apartment with no possibility of being able to install a temporary shower enclosure; etc.

Sign from the grounds of one of the complexes. The first
"funny" translation I've seen: the first icon caption
says "No litter cherishes your homalard."

That leaves four with possibilities (however slim). Unfortunately, all four are more than walking or biking distance from the office. For the right place, that wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker, but I didn’t have that “this apartment is incredible!” feeling about any of them. My favorite one is owned by a very nice little old Chinese woman. The place is much too big for one person, but the layout and decorating were well-done (I hope SRV got some good pictures of this place so you can see some of it). This is also the only apartment I’ve visited where we have taken off our street shoes before entering. I’ve asked at every apartment, and the other landlords don’t have visitors take off their shoes. Very interesting.

I haven’t added these new apartments to my spreadsheet yet, and I may not. I still like the unfurnished apartment from the first trip (Apartment 3), and I’ve asked SRV if it’s still available. One of my colleagues lives in the same complex, and told me that it has its own little grocery store, pharmacy, barber shop, and pool within the complex. Rather convenient. Even though it may take more time for the apartment to be ready for move-in (I’ll need to pick out furniture), I could be happy there.

I’m legal! (I think)

After three weeks, one crazy physical exam, lots of paperwork, a trip to the Public Security Bureau, and one of those weeks without my passport, I am now the proud holder of:

- one Residence Permit for Foreigner in the People’s Republic of China; and

- one People’s Republic of China Alien Employment Permit.

I don’t think there are any other permits I need now, but I’m checking on that just to be sure. 

Since these are personal documents, I won’t include pictures of the actual permits, but the AEP is actually like a passport, so here is a picture of the cover:

Pretty, isn't it?

And just so you don’t feel as though you’ve been cheated reading such a short post, I have an update on the apartment search. I did more thinking about the three places I saw, and reevaluated my assessments in the spreadsheet, particularly with regard to Apartment 1. 

Apartment 1 received the lowest scores for its bathrooms (neither had an enclosed shower) and storage/closet space (just the small walk-in closet; no dressers). In talking with the representative from Silk Road Ventures, I found that temporary shower enclosures can be added to the bathrooms in Apartment 1 and the landlord could furnish a dresser and/or armoire for the bedrooms as part of the lease contract. Those plusses together with the fantastic sun exposure and spacious balconies of Apartment 1 put it at the top of my list.

So on Monday morning, I contacted SRV to let them know I am interested in that apartment. Today, I found out that someone else had put in a bid for Apartment 1 last week and signed the contract with the landlord Monday evening. Oh well. That’s life.

SRV has already found four more apartments for me to check out, so that’s what I’ll be doing this Thursday afternoon.

I think this post needs more pictures. How about a look at my culinary accomplishment from Sunday night? I’m getting a little bit more adventurous . . .

Wood ear! (a type of edible fungus, a.k.a.,Auricularia auricula-judae) Adds a neat texture
to any dish.

Broccoli, Chinese cabbage, wood ear, enoki
mushrooms, and noodles sauteed in soy sauce.

Today, I had lunch with three friends in one of the cafeterias located on the second floor of our office building. This cafeteria's specialty is noodles. I was so entranced by the chef who was making the noodles right there in front of us that I unfortunately didn't get any pictures. Just to give you and idea of how amazing this was: the chef would hold one end of a long strand of dough about the circumference of a man's wrist in each hand, and shake it to lengthen it out. Then he'd raise the two ends up so that they would twist around one another (it looked a little like raw challah bread). He did this about five or six times with the same piece of dough. Then he put the dough on a table and cut noodle-length chunks off of it. He then took each chunk and shook-twisted it even more, resulting in long, thin noodles (he had his back to us for this part, so I couldn't see exactly what he was doing). He threw them into a pot of boiling water and then served the people waiting in line.

I'll have to go back another day--not just to get pictures, but to get more of those noodles! 

To market, to market

My grocery run on Tuesday evening was just for starters. Saturday’s run was the real deal—I took pictures, I asked where things were, I stocked up on food. One of the things that I couldn’t find on Tuesday was soy milk, so one of my goals for Saturday’s trip was to find it. Using the wonders of technology, I typed “soy milk” into a translation app I have on my iPhone and learned that “soy milk” in Chinese is “豆浆”(dòu jiāng). Prepared with this information and how to ask where something is, I walked to Lotus.

Lotus is a pretty big store—one-third of the store is food, and two-thirds are clothes, shoes, electronics, books, appliances, sports equipment, etc. Like a Super WalMart.

That's Lotus next to a KFC. There are a surprising number of
KFCs here.

The entrance to the grocery side of Lotus. 

The bakery at the entrance.

One of the other things I had wanted on Tuesday was yogurt, of which there was plenty, but when I looked at the dates on the containers, all of them had already passed. The last thing I wanted to do was buy outdated yogurt and get food poisoning, so I held off on that and asked some of my colleagues about it. In China, the date on most food product labels is the “packed on” date, not the “use by” date like it typically is in the U.S. The skim milk that I bought on Tuesday actually has both the “packed on” and “use by” dates, but for most everything else, it’s just the “packed on” date. Very good to know. So I did get yogurt on Saturday.

On the way to the yogurt section. They really do have everything
at Lotus. Notice the "Free Dissection" sign in the background.

Gives new meaning to "fresh" food.

Back to the quest for soy milk. After I had searched again in the dairy section and the milk aisle (most milk in China undergoes UHT—ultra-high temperature processing—which gives it a typical shelf life of six to nine months unopened, and it doesn’t require refrigeration until after opening) with no luck, I bucked up the courage to ask one of the Lotus associates, in my broken Chinese, where I could find soy milk. She understood my question, but responded that she didn’t know, so she asked another associate who told me in Chinese to go straight to the next aisle (at least I think that’s what she said). So I did, and this is what I found:

The soy milk section.

It’s DIY soymilk! Yes, it’s powdered soy that you stir with boiling water. I must have stood there comparing the various options (as best I could using the pictures and the little bit of English on some of the packages) for about 15 minutes. One of the brands had instructions in Chinese and English, so using that, I was able to figure out the instructions for the brand that I ended up buying.

I think this was the only brand that had instructions in English.

Before I get into the making of the soymilk though, here is my cartful of groceries—all this cost just RMB237.40 (about $38).

My big grocery run.

Now, the making of the soy milk!

Wongmei soy milk. Each individual powder packet
can be mixed with 180ml of boiling water.

This is two packets worth of soy powder.

Voila! Soy milk! Now into the fridge to cool down.

Since I was in the “cooking” mood and had just bought some noodles and fresh veggies, I made my first real meal in the Citadines. I had brought some dill weed with me from the U.S., and there was a bottle of “all purpose” spice in one of the kitchen cabinets, so I sautéed some broccoli, Chinese cabbage, and enoki mushrooms and added that to noodles. It was actually really good! I was pretty impressed with myself. I also had some really good “Whole Wheal Bread” with raisins and walnuts.

Chinese cabbage and enoki mushrooms.

Dinner in progress on the Miji Gala electric touch-top stove.

Jasweck was excited about the noodles, broccoli,
cabbage, and mushrooms, but trying to hide it. 

The "Whole Wheal" bread.

Really good!

Well, it's dinner time here, so I'm going to see if I channel whatever cooking talent helped me make last night's meal.