Changsha et al.

Mysore -> Kochi -> Madurai -> Pondicherry -> Mamallapuram -> Chennai -> Bangalore -> Hong Kong -> Guangzhou

2011-02-17T14:33:00.003+08:00

I will miss using only open-air vehicles for intra-city travel.

Agra -> New Delhi -> Bangalore -> Mysore

2011-01-31T20:12:00.002+08:00

In economic terms, from the perspective of the uninitiated pedestrian, the hearts of India's premier cities resemble the outskirts of China's second-tier provincial capitals. India's pockets of rapid growth are cozily nestled - in many cases hidden - among neighborhoods of inchoate social fabric and wide boulevards abutted by sandy depressions in place of sidewalks. The sight of a stray cow ambling across six lanes of heavy traffic in the middle of New Delhi is, astonishingly, rather common.

Two strange things written on Indian Diet Pepsi bottles

2011-01-28T18:20:00.001+08:00

1. CONTAINS NO FRUIT

2. "CONTAINS CAFFEINE" (these words are in quotation marks on the bottle)

It seems that one can't compose the body of a post from an iPod, so: Guangzhou->Kuala Lumpur->CameronHighlands->Penang->Melaka->Singapore->Delhi->Agra

2011-01-27T00:31:00.003+08:00

败子回头 (The Return of the Prodigal Son)

2010-12-30T23:01:00.006+08:00

Sitemeter tells me that most of my readership long ago left Changsha et al. for dead, but for those of you still clinging to the hope that new content might emerge, Christmas has come late this year. As this semester draws to a close and I prepare for another season of international travel, I thought it appropriate to breathe some new life into my only consistent chronicle of these two years. I have spent most of the last four months in Guangzhou and Zhuhai (the former my home, the latter my once-a-week teaching locale), though it should be noted that since my last post I did travel to Harbin in Heilongjiang Province (Administrative Region #27), Changchun in Jilin Province (Administrative Region #28), and Taipei and Taizhong in Taiwan ("Administrative Region #29").

Life in Guangzhou differs from life in Changsha mostly insofar as the city is far more developed and decently more cosmopolitan in outlook. I have begun studying Cantonese in order to better take advantage of my surroundings, but in truth the extent to which one needs it in addition to Mandarin is scarcely larger than the extent to which knowledge of the Hunanese dialect would have been necessary last year. A more noticeable difference - one which few Chinese people neglect to point out - is the paucity of spice in local cuisine. The regional cuisines (primarily Cantonese and Chaozhou) are notoriously bland, although in my opinion the availability of high quality dim sum makes up for the deficiency. Perhaps the greatest lifestyle improvement has been Guangzhou's ever-expanding metro system: from what I could gather, most Changsha bus drivers honed their skills on the job, and I do not miss them.

In nine days I will embark on another winter's journey along various tendrils of the Chinese diaspora, which I will surely tell you about. Until then, I recommend this level-headed, non-hysterical treatment of China's political landscape.

New York -> Beijing -> Xining -> Urumqi -> Kashgar -> Yengisar -> Turpan -> Urumqi -> Hong Kong -> Guangzhou

2010-08-28T23:29:00.004+08:00

And there you were thinking that Changsha et al. had finally succumbed to the fate of so many ill-fated travel blogs. No, as the "et al." comes to represent an ever-deeper and more convoluted web of travel destinations, we soldier on.

Xining, located in Qinghai Province (Administrative Region #25) , has got to be one of the least-known cities ever chronicled on this blog, and with good reason. Like much of western China, it derives its appeal to travelers from its minority communities (Tibetans and Hui Muslims), but also like much of western China, the city has been so thoroughly inundated with Han Chinese that it might as well be Changsha.

Xinjiang (Administrative Region #26), however, is a different story. Although Urumqi, its capital, has undergone irreversible Sinification, the rest of the region remains thoroughly Uighur. Trying to get a decent lunch in Kashgar during Ramadan is like trying to find a clean bathroom anywhere west of Chengdu: it's simply not going to happen. Trying to communicate with locals using Chinese is also a losing battle - they speak Uighur, and are content to keep it that way. Turpan, the lowest and allegedly hottest place in China, is an unfortunate place to be a Muslim woman in August, when covering up every inch of skin is just as important as it is to a Harbin schoolgirl in the dead of January.

Here in Guangzhou, my home for the next year, it need only be said that the women (or, more accurately, the men) have no such scruples.

Yekaterinburg -> Nizhny Novgorod -> St. Petersburg -> Moscow -> New York

2010-07-19T09:37:00.002+08:00

Damdin Sukhbaatar trying to clear Mongolia's highest hurdle - Ulan Bator

Old Irkutsk

The Old Yekaterinburg Train Station

The Hermitage - St. Petersburg

St. Basil's Cathedral - Moscow

Changsha -> Beijing -> Ulan Bator -> Irkutsk -> Yekaterinburg

2010-07-06T11:41:00.002+08:00

It will be apparent to anyone in possession of a map that this route required a fair amount of time spent on trains. In addition to being vast and sparsely populated, Russia and Mongolia are moderately friendly, but not nearly as much so as China. Whereas Chinese people have all seemingly internalized the notion that foreigners are a cultural and economic gift to be cherished and cultivated, Russians seem to accept them with knowing apathy, as if to say, "Who wouldn't want to frolic in the meadows where Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky once toiled?" As in China, however, the twentieth-century communist interlude is neither embraced nor entirely renounced. The main drag of Irkutsk is lined with fancy cafes and European shops, but its name is Karl Marx Street, and there's a statue of Lenin at the end of it.

Exodus

2010-06-27T17:04:00.003+08:00

Before saying goodbye to Changsha for good, and China for a little while, I swung by Inner Mongolia (Administrative Region #23) and Guizhou (Administrative Region #24) for my last shot at administrative region glory during year #1. In truth, neither was particularly glorious, but as we say in the sports world, a win is a win. Stay tuned for 'round-the-clock CEA coverage of my upcoming, prolonged journey out of Asia.

The Xilamuren Grasslands, Inner Mongolia

Paiyang, Guizhou

Scenes from Western Hunan

2010-06-02T21:47:00.002+08:00

Dehang

Fenghuang

I can show you the world, but not during rainy season

2010-05-27T22:32:00.000+08:00

No Chinese person would consider a trip to the province of Anhui (Administrative Region #22) complete without a visit to the famed Huang Shan ("Yellow Mountain"). It seems unlikely that much of the mountain is actually yellow, but fortunately for the mountain, many visitors have no way of piercing through the miasma of mist that often engulfs its highest peaks.

An ordinary Chinese person would probably consider a trip to Anhui complete without taking in a high school production of Aladdin: The Musical, but as I am often reminded, I am not an ordinary Chinese person.

Living on the Edge

2010-05-16T20:27:00.000+08:00

More than two years after a devastating earthquake hit, some parts of Sichuan province (Administrative Region #21) remain tattered and barely livable. Sichuan straddles Han China and the Tibetan part of the country, more starkly portraying the limits of the nation's development than any other region. If the gap between rural china and urban China is ever to be bridged, here would be an appropriate place to begin. Until that happens, however, the natural beauty of the place will hopefully remain untinged. Like a white picket fence, this beauty conveniently shields the rest of China from the ultramontane problems with which it would rather not reckon.

The "ancient" town of Langzhong

Jiuzhaigou National Park

The mug of the Leshan Buddha, the largest Buddha in the world

A scene from high on Mount Emei

What happens if they get sick of bamboo?

The Road Taken

2010-04-27T22:19:00.004+08:00

China's coast is the linchpin of the nation's economic development, and the farther inland you move in any given direction, the more bleak the picture tends to become. After having recently traveled to some of the grittier hinterland provinces, I returned this weekend to the more traditional tourist locales of Jiangsu and Zhejiang (Administrative Region #20), the homes of Nanjing and Hangzhou, respectively. The former offered a glimpse into some of China's Republican history, and the latter, repose.

An illicitly snapped photo of Sun Yat-sen's marble coffin - The Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Nanjing

West Lake, Hangzhou

When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.

2010-04-20T20:24:00.002+08:00

I find it amazing that most Chinese students willingly engage in discussions about controversial topics, even though they'll probably never have the right to speak publicly about them -let alone act on them - in any meaningful way. This semester I have led my freshmen in discussions of such touchy topics as religious freedom, multi-party democratic elections, gay marriage, gender equality, press freedom, fair treatment of minorities, and differing political ideologies in one state. The one thing that all of those topics have in common is that China lacks them, but no matter; the key to a fruitful discussion is to simply discuss other countries - in this case, the United States. Although they often seem to be treading on unfamiliar ground, I find little indication that they have been inculcated to avoid these topics. Rather, they have become content with the government's various excuses for its own existence (China is still developing, China is different from the West) in combination with a vaguely defined belief that gradual change is the road to salvation.

Sometimes, however, small bits of Newspeak creep into their writing, and it is all I can do to ignore it. In writing a journal entry about Affirmative Action recently, one student wrote that because people disagree about its fairness, "we should correct the policy to make it better." Alas, in China, it is that easy.

On Victory

2010-04-05T16:26:00.004+08:00

My travels this weekend took me to the Shanxi (Administrative Region #18) and Henan (#19) provinces. During the trip, I wrote a required "field report" for the Yale-China association that nicely describes the quest that this blog documents. I submit it to you, reader, in place of any original content, with photos from the weekend underneath:

Although I was well aware when I first was introduced to the Yale-China Teaching Fellowship that 12 hours is a rather small fraction of the 40 hours that are generally understood to compose the average work week, and a mere instant compared to the 168 in every actual week, I never really reckoned with the notion of 156 unfilled hours until I arrived in China. During orientation, when we read the advice of outgoing fellows, I dismissed their exhortations to take advantage of free time as the hackneyed advice of newly formed adults who, after a childhood filled with playdates and a formal education bursting at the seams with superfluous extracurricular involvement, had suddenly discovered that real people don't always have that much to do when they go home from work. "Say yes to things...take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way!" Thanks, but I read the Yale viewbook, too.

I figured that China was like a gigantic Ouija board: full of an untold number of undiscovered secrets waiting to be disinterred by me, maybe even while wearing pajamas. Everything would come up roses as I lived the overfunded expat dream. China was going to just happen to me. Good old carpe diem could be left back in those New England prep school dormitories, where it belonged.

For better or for worse, I found my assumptions to be rather misguided. Even in a megalopolis like Changsha, in a country as weird and variegated as China, there's a limit to how much excitement you can squeeze out of everyday life at a low-intensity job, especially if you lack the Peter Hessler-like ability to form close friendships with every Chinese guy who gawks at you and asks you if you're used to Chinese food. That is why I decided to put serious effort towards my goal of visiting all of China's 33 (or perhaps 34) sub-national administrative regions, and hitting all of China’s 38 UNESCO World Heritage sites to boot.

Now, I realize that spending one's Yale-China time and money on travel is not exactly a novel idea, but making a goal out of it has a way of making even the most mundane or even dreary things about China seem exciting again. Case in point: I started writing this little ditty in an internet café in Datong, Shanxi (my 18^th region) and finished it in Luoyang, Henan (my 19^th). Both of these provinces are of the variety that Lonely Planet tends to write off as mostly one-trick ponies with rather uninteresting tricks (coal and centrality, in these cases), but as any good capitalist will tell you, to incentivize is to divinize. Thus, disembarking from an overnight train in Pingyao just shy of 5 AM in sub-freezing temperatures wasn’t wearisome; it was World Heritage site #15. And that dusty suspension of noxious particles perpetually hanging in the Henan air was not a nuisance, nor even disagreeable; it was the smell of victory.

Yungang Caves - Datong, Shanxi

The ancient town of Pingyao at dawn - Pingyao, Shanxi

Shaolin Temple - Dengfeng, Henan

Longmen Grottoes - Luoyang, Henan

A hutong - Kaifeng, Henan

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden

2010-03-24T23:23:00.003+08:00

To the partially-trained observer, some rural Chinese communities seem to have been designed with such a conjoined and interdependent structure that the relatively recent revelation of communism might have sounded like a benignly logical extension of centuries of tradition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the earthen roundhouses of Fujian province (Administrative Region #17 - the half-way mark), from within each of which the world's enormousness feels strangely conquerable. Each of these aged buildings, which dot the landscape a few hours outside of Xiamen (formerly Amoy), has a story to be told. But like much of rural China, and the people who inhabit it, their seeming senescence overwhelms, and one is left hoping that there will always be someone to preserve them.

The East is Red...

2010-03-17T16:59:00.002+08:00

...as To China... and Beyond!, the blog of a fellow Fellow, should be by Changsha et al. readers. To that end, my commentary on Shaoshan (the hometown of Chairman Mao, located in Hunan Province about an hour outside of Changsha) is featured on said blog this week. Read my guest post here.

The Thinning Man

2010-03-09T22:36:00.003+08:00

This semester I have instructed my oral English classes to write short journal entries about assigned topics. Although the subject of the first entry was the American Dream, one student ventured rather far off-topic:

"Daniel, I have to say that you are a really handsome guy. But, is you bald all the time? Just kidding! Hope you enjoy the life in China."

Il Milione

2010-03-02T16:17:00.001+08:00

The Royal Palace - Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Khmer Rouge killing field - Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Roasted rat - Battambang, Cambodia

Angkor Wat - Siem Reap, Cambodia

Little Arabia - Bangkok, Thailand

Pha That Luang - Vientiane, Laos

Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Kyoto, Japan

Himeji Castle - Himeji, Japan

A-Bomb Dome - Hiroshima, Japan

Men at work - Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo, Japan

Mt. Fuji, as seen from the Shinkansen - Somewhere between Shizuoka and Yokohama, Japan

Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again! - Takayama, Japan

Kyoto -> Nara -> Himeji -> Hiroshima -> Fukuoka -> Kobe -> Yokohama -> Tokyo -> Takayama -> Nagoya -> Osaka

2010-02-25T21:58:00.009+08:00

The nation of Japan almost surely deserves more sentences per city than Changsha et al. seems destined to give it, but rest assured that this phenomenon is only marginally attributable to the country's surface-level homogeneity. As a resident of China's gritty heartland, one is hard-pressed to move past Japan's overwhelming sense of propriety and precision, and penetrating observations can be scarce (imagine that!). Suffice it to say that everything you've heard about the toilets is true. Once your correspondent is back in China, after a long boat ride from Osaka to Shanghai, he will let the photographs do the typing.

Pakse -> Vientiane -> Luang Prabang -> Kunming -> Changsha -> Shanghai -> Osaka -> Kyoto

2010-02-12T21:14:00.003+08:00

This latest smattering of cities is united by little more than each one's wealth of Buddhist temples and a shared passion for noodles of various kinds. A few days in Japan serve to highlight the unrealized potential for beauty and solicitude that lies latent in such places. Many of the people and the buildings are, as in any developed country, old, clean and quiet. Its mass transit and marine culinary offerings are, as advertised, to die for.

Siem Reap -> Bangkok -> Pakse

2010-02-01T17:51:00.003+08:00

There are few things that link these three cities (including, as it turns out, convenient modes of transportation), so for now I'll just say that it is no accident that Thai cuisine has experienced a meteoric ascendancy in America, while Cambodian and Lao food are, to put it charitably, non-entities. Also, I have determined that there is in fact a certain number of wats that one can visit, after which one can reasonably say that one has seen them all. I'm not sure what the exact number is, but after about 30 of them, one starts to wonder "wat's the difference?"

Saigon -> Phnom Penh -> Battambang -> Siem Reap

2010-01-27T20:28:00.004+08:00

Continuing in the tradition of countries featured on Changsha et al., Cambodia's humanistic allure grows out of its ingenuous pre-modern history. On the one hand, Cambodia, like Vietnam, deals honestly and (moreso than Vietnam) relatively even-handedly with its twentieth century turmoil. The Killing Fields of Cheung Ek outside of Phnomh Penh, as well as the museum at the Tuol Sleng prison - an erstwhile Khmer Rouge torture and reeducation center - are just condemnatory enough to satisfy the Western moralist. In Vietnam, the War Remnants Museum in Saigon and the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" are putrid pustules of propaganda, but they, too, are put forth as attractions. However, few tourists seem to go to Vietnam for a lesson in the vicissitudes of interventionist foreign policy, and even fewer come to Cambodia with the goal of understanding the horrors of genocide. Instead, it is temples, wats and palaces that suddenly enrapture each wide-eyed patron. Everyone becomes an archaeologist, and an ungovernably pertinacious scholar of Buddhist architecture, when the specters of the Southeast Asian empires of yore rear their decomposed heads. Such, such were the joys when one's king built an adamantine, amaranthine empire out of stone.

Hue -> Danang -> Hoi An -> Nha Trang -> Saigon

2010-01-23T19:49:00.002+08:00

The tourism industry in Vietnam is developed in such a way that every backpacker's dream of isolation and differentiation from the hoi polloi of the travel world is smashed anew upon arriving at each vaunted destination. If a city isn't entirely overrun with mostly European tourists (as in the former capital of Hue or the cloth mecca that is Hoi An), it contains one small, dense quarter of interest often referred to (rather inaccurately, one hastens to add) as a "ghetto," where, but for the sternness of one's visage, a white person is very nearly thrust onto the back of a motorbike or rickshaw and force-fed banana pancakes.

Hanoi -> Ninh Binh -> DMZ -> Hue

2010-01-18T23:00:00.002+08:00

Internet time is unfortunately a precious commodity in most Vietnamese hostels, so the comprehensive coverage that readers of Changsha et al. have come to expect will have to be postponed for the above destinations. Let it only be said, for now, that Vietnam's tourism industry has left few historical stones unturned, and has likewise turned over a few stones that could have probably been left well enough alone. Additionally, riding a rented bicycle down Vietnam's primary north-south highway causes most of the sensations that it sounds like it would.

You may leave here for four days in space / But when you return it's the same old place

2010-01-14T23:56:00.004+08:00

Hanoi in many ways feels like a smaller and slightly antiquated version of Beijing. Echoing Mao, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum is the anchor at the center of a city that clumsily and haphazardly blends broad thoroughfares and claustrophobia-inducing alleyways, both of which buzz with activity until the wee hours of the morning. The similarities are heightened by Ho's ubiquitous visage, which adorns every single denomination of the Vietnamese Dong, as Mao's does the Chinese Renminbi. When one contemplates how the legacies of those two men are reflected (or not, as the case happens to be) in the societies they begat, the comparison becomes almost unavoidable.

Despite the parallels, however, Hanoi is grittier and less uppity than most Chinese cities - here it is motorbikes, not cars, that appear in (quite literally) arresting droves, and development usually feels like a problem that has not been completely solved, rather than a mere formality. Additionally, real Vietnamese cuisine is pleasantly similar to its interpretation in America, where it has perhaps never been adopted widely enough so as to be adulterated. This is true right down to the Vietnamese sandwich, an apparent vestige of French colonialism that utilizes the baguette to stunning effect.

Like a recovering mental patient, the city deals with its hopelessly complicated past by remaining in a constant state of barely-navigable chaos.

Changsha -> Guangzhou -> Nanning -> Hanoi

2010-01-14T00:42:00.000+08:00

For perhaps the first time in the history of Changsha et al., the title of this post provides more useful information than the text itself. Those three journeys were made in the last five days by overnight train, overnight train, and very-long-bus ride, respectively. The first leg was devoted to obtaining a Vietnamese visa and picking up travel companions, and the last two to reaching my current location: Hanoi, Vietnam. I've only had a few hours to make observations, but I can already say that I appreciate a country where I can walk down the street with a few million units of currency in my pocket, even if I have to dish out 20,000 of them for a mere bowl of pho.

Nanning, by the way, is the somnolent capital of the Guangxi Autonomous Region (repeat Administrative Region, sorry) that probably deserved no more than the three hours I spent in it. Guangzhou (also a repeat), on the other hand, is a thriving metropolis that fuses Cantonese culture with Chinese modernity. I'd say more about it (especially since this was my second trip there in as many months), but there'll be plenty of opportunity for that in the future, since (now seems as good a time as any to mention that) some changes in my sponsoring orgnization have dictated that I shall move to Guangzhou next year to teach at Sun Yat-sen University. I guess it's a good thing that last June I didn't go with my original blog title, "Absolutely Nothing Other Than Changsha."

On the Road

2010-01-09T17:54:00.000+08:00

With one semester under its belt, Changsha et al. is departing for about 7 weeks of almost non-stop travel in Asia. For those of you with visions of new administrative regions dancing in your heads, I regret to inform you that this travel will mostly be international and will, if all goes according to plan, feature no new Chinese administrative regions at all! However, rather than causing a lull in posting activity, this period will hopefully reinvigorate Changsha et al., as each new location will surely provide blogging fodder. In lieu of an appropriate phrase to put here, I'll just say that I hope my voyage is indeed bon!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

2010-01-07T22:32:00.000+08:00

When one spends as much time around foreigners living in China as I do, it is easy to grow weary of the (at this point) rather banal and played-out observation that there is no longer anything communist at all about Communist China. However, I felt myself moved to the point of cliche when, upon arriving at the center of the city of Chongqing (Administrative Region #16), what should stand before me but the towering People's Liberation Monument, emblazoned on all four sides with large clocks quite evidently brought to you by Rolex. After some brief photo-snapping - which the puzzled locals seemed to find unwarranted - I ruminated on this troubling collapse of the superstructure and concluded that the government of Chongqing either has a highly developed sense of irony, or, rather, has absolutely none at all. Perhaps a thinking cadre is trapped in an office somewhere, waiting for his big break.

Christmas in My Home Town

2009-12-29T21:51:00.000+08:00

Christmas in China is a (by now, predictably) strange affair. Chinese society, although pervaded by a blithe ignorance of almost all religious principles and an at best hazy understanding of what Westerners do with their leisure time broadly conceived, is unexpectedly titillated by the coming of an alien holiday that almost no one knows how to celebrate. I was shocked to come upon parts of downtown Changsha - a city with a barely-there foreign presence - festooned with Christmas decorations and blaring relatively accurate versions of holiday standards. I understand this to be a recent development in Chinese culture, which is a most distressing notion: they seem to have skipped a few steps in the evolution of Christmas and jumped right to the secularized conclusion (inelegant commercialism) without savoring the intermediate stages of piety (elegant commercialism).

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair

2009-12-14T19:30:00.001+08:00

Foreign visitors to Xi'an, China's former capital and currently the capital of Shaanxi Province (Administrative Region #15), sometimes report feeling underwhelmed after visiting the city's main attraction, the feted Terracotta Army. Located in the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, constructed about 2200 years ago, the throng of a few thousand uniquely carved statues cannot reasonably be labeled unimpressive. Similarly, the statistical estimates that accompany the display are staggering. You don't need a degree in Taylorism to know a whopping number of man-hours when you see it. No, the display's weakness lies in the lusterless milieu it inhabits. Unlike the majestic environs of old Xi'an, which draw on ancient Chinese architecture to cultivate a sense of the elusive and the recondite, the pits from which the statues have been excavated are merely mounds of dirt in an open-air chamber that feels something like a hangar. The statues stand erect but incomplete beside a motley assortment of ruins that didn't quite survive the trip. Qin Shi Huang, the emperor at whose command a few hundred thousand men are said to have labored to craft the army, wanted a legion to help him rebuild his empire in another world. Instead, they are a savage monument to extravagance in this one.

The ones we know we know

2009-12-02T11:03:00.002+08:00

The issue of what constitutes a debatable proposition becomes predictably fraught in a society where all of the most salient ones are treated as settled questions. But Chinese students don’t really buy into those formulations. In fact, they know when they’re being duped; they just don’t seem to mind all that much. Dozens of students can openly and vigorously debate topics like “Is the stability of society rooted in law or morality?” for hours without managing to evince, or even graze the surface of, a single opinion about their country’s public policy. When one class was prompted to produce controversial topics for persuasive speeches, almost everyone wrote down some (mangled) version of “Should Hunan University make us do [onerous activity] even in the frigid winter from which there is no escape?”, yet not a single person raised the most obvious objection that arises in these conditions: shouldn’t the government pull us out of the nineteenth century and just give Hunan some damn heat? There is no detectable source of censorship at HuDa, but in China, it usually seems to enforce itself, and that kind is of course the strongest of all.

Go West, Young Man

2009-11-21T23:31:00.000+08:00

The Gansu Province (Administrative Region #14) is a decidedly different place from the China which I have hitherto come to know. Its surfeit of Buddhist relics and the presence of its very own (often neglected) Great Wall segment might lead one to believe that Gansu, at a mere 25 million people, is simply China lite. To the tourist, however, it is a peculiar mecca where the scenery is diverse and Central Asia begins its protracted collision with East Asia. Below, some breathtaking sand dunes outside of Dunhuang, the Great Wall in Jiayuguan, a peculiar monastery built into the side of a mountain near Zhangye, and a ceremony performed by Tibetan Buddhist monks at the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe. Our trip was also marked by frequent consumption of pulled noodles, the food for which the provincial capital, Lanzhou, is famous. Alas, I forgot to snap a picture every time.

The Coldest Story Ever Told

2009-11-06T23:54:00.000+08:00

It is one thing to be warned before moving to China that most of the southern portion of the country subsists without any built-in indoor heating systems; it is quite another to experience this reality in November. One quickly discovers that cold weather, like a Taylor Swift song, is mildly unpleasant in small amounts and grows nearly unbearable when it inevitably becomes inescapable. Taking a hot shower on any given morning morphs into a joy on par with enjoying chestnuts roasted on an open fire, the only difference being that the latter activity does not necessarily require near-nudity upon completion. The Changsha populace mostly takes this meteorological shift in stride, happy to have found another problem for which hot peppers are the solution. I will spend the upcoming week in a more barren region of the country, exploring whether or not the prevalence of heat can equalize the bleakness of mid-autumn nights in desertified China.

Ain't No Mountain High

2009-10-30T23:55:00.001+08:00

The Jiangxi Province (Administrative Region #13) does not exactly beckon to the foreign tourist in come-hither fashion - instead, it kind of pouts languidly. However, because it abuts Hunan's eastern border, it is just the kind of low-hanging fruit that can be plucked in a single weekend by a comprehensive adventurer such as myself. Its capital, Nanchang, is reminiscent of Changsha in its decidedly manageable quotient of glamor and pizazz. Mount Lu (庐山), my ultimate destination in Jiangxi, once inspired Tang-era poets but now mostly just coddles Chinese yuppies. A rarefied climate and the sighting of fall foliage - a rarity in Changsha - were enough to justify a weekend among its lofty peaks, but it offered none of the opportunities for cultural discovery that are sure to emerge from Region #14.

In Search of Lost Time

2009-10-21T23:19:00.000+08:00

Hair salons in China are renowned, particularly in the expatriate community, for the doting service and almost excessive hair washing opportunities that they invariably provide. Unfortunately, no amount of solicitude for the hirsute is sufficient to overcome the lamentable reality that few Chinese men have any facial hair worth speaking of. It is therefore advisable, when offered a complete and seemingly luxurious shave, to run in the other direction as fast as seems reasonable, taking care not to knock over any men of delightfully ambiguous sexual orientation on the way. Should you fail to heed this advice and find yourself face-up in a barber's chair, the wooden back of which is telling you that inter-personal shaving probably never entered the algorithm used by this particular chair manufacturer, at least devote your best dialectical efforts to explaining that no matter how strongly the barber thinks he has applied a sufficient amount of his preferred shaving agent (water), he is gravely mistaken. As he uses his bare blade to poke around in stupefaction at the sight of uniform stubble, muster your most saccharine susurrations in support of a soft and steady shave, with the hope that his thoughts will turn to those joys of life that do not require bedeviling the bewhiskered. You will otherwise emerge partially shaven, wondering about the origins of the phrase "Chinese water torture."

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy

2009-10-14T00:31:00.002+08:00

It is unclear to me precisely what Chinese students do when they are tasked with coming up with English names for themselves, but the results imply that they tend to rely on sources that are not, shall we say, appropriate to the task. This leads to conversations among us teachers that could best be described as - not to put too fine a point on it - uproarious. My powers of description are once again rendered impotent by this mystical phenomenon, and I can only provide my readers with a list of some of the names that I am charged with reciting straight-facedly on an almost daily basis: Neo, Cho, Candy (x3), Kobe, Dreama, Snow White, Sky, Bright, Totem, Echo, Hamly, and of course, Doublecow.

The Warmth of the Sun

2009-10-09T21:19:00.001+08:00

I was relieved to discover, upon disembarking from a 24-hour train ride in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province (#12), that I had not forgotten to pack my camera for what was slated to be the most breathtaking of jaunts. Unfortunately, the dozens of photos of smog-laden Changsha that I had snapped in past weeks had worn out the battery, leaving me no means to capture the natural splendor of one of China's most coveted travel destinations. My companions and I traveled by bus from Kunming to Lijiang, a trendy tourist locale and (perhaps somewhat dubiously chosen) UNESCO World Heritage Site, from which point we hiked for a few steep and muddy hours until we reached our final destination, an "eco-lodge" located in the small, isolated village of Wenhai (profiled a few years ago in the New York Times: http://travel.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/travel/21chinaeco.html?pagewanted=all&position=).

The lodge had in the past trumpeted its complex and innovative techniques aimed at conserving natural resources and generally creating a numinous aura of eco-friendliness, but given that the entire village in which it is situated is populated by a few hundred impoverished farmhands for whom the placement of multiple light bulbs in the same edifice would smack of extravagance, it is perhaps not surprising that the lodge has basically devolved into just another unheated building surrounded by miles of arcadian landscapes on all sides. Nonetheless, spending a few days walking among members of Yunnan's Naxi minority was an unforgettable experience. The journey was arduous, and the conditions colder than expected, but the hospitality was comfortingly warm. We were quite pleased by our host for the three days, Mr. He, who enlivened our spirits with his vivacious guidance through the region's most uncertain terrain. He was uniformly agreeable, and even his voice was soothing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and begin drafting his nomination for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

We Don't Need No Education

2009-10-01T00:09:00.000+08:00

Because the number of years that have passed since the People's Republic of China was founded has just become a multiple of ten, it is a rather exciting time to be a citizen of said country. Compounding that excitement is the temporal marvel that will bring about the 4706th annual Mid-Autumn Festival, according to the Lunar Calendar, a mere two days later. The customs that accompany these holidays primarily include, respectively, fireworks and a specialty dessert called moon cake. A fortunate side effect of the proximity of the two holidays is that all students take a week off, a side effect of which I will be taking full advantage. Changsha et al. readers should prepare to endure their longest hiatus ever, which is scheduled to last for almost a full week. When I return, however, stories of Administrative Region #12 will abound.

While she nodded, nearly napping

2009-09-27T21:09:00.000+08:00

Many first-time teachers have been known to develop a deeply emotional investment in the progress of their students. I, however, have tried to keep the experience in perspective, unable to ignore the copious amounts of apathy displayed by the university students among whom I walked just a few months ago. This attitude came to the rescue just this morning, when, after an hour-long, line-by-line parsing of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," one student raised her hand and asked, "What does-" she looked down tentatively, "'raven' mean?" Quoth I, "Nevermind."

Of Mans First Disobedience

2009-09-24T23:03:00.000+08:00

The freshmen of Hunan University wrapped up their mandatory military training this past Monday, which means that some of them, for better or for worse, now have the pleasure of being taught by me. Although my methods of indoctrination are almost surely more primitive than those of their previous overseers, the effects of their training have not entirely worn off, and they thus display an unexpectedly high amount of obedience and attentiveness. Whereas the juniors I teach have mostly abandoned any pretense of even appearing interested in the narrative techniques utilized by O. Henry in "After Twenty Years," freshmen are enraptured by the simple question of what people from Turkey are called ("Turkeys?"). Their innocence is endearing, but I fear that, as with freshmen everywhere, their gaze is brightest before the fall.

Call me Ishmael

2009-09-22T22:31:00.000+08:00

Readers can now rest assured that the longest hiatus in the history of Changsha et al. has come to an end. The cause, mind you, was a worthy one: a long-weekend trip to the no-nails Chengyang Wind and Rain Bridge and, more impressively, the breathtaking Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces, a sprawling region of tiered rice fields, the beauty of which is surpassed in value only by its serendipitous location in Administrative Region #11, the Guangxi Autonomous Region. Guangxi is populated by members of some of China's most numerous minority groups, most of whom have utterly failed to distinguish themselves from one another in the field in which they all seem to excel: embroidery design. Who would have thought that mere bucolic isolation would have resulted in the complete uniformity of tourist culture that the Yao, Dong, Miao and Zhuang people all display with such panache? This lack of anthropological avoirdupois notwithstanding, the trip was a step in the right direction towards the goal of catching a glimpse of the white whale, the elusive "real China."

But that was 30 years ago, when they used to have a show

2009-09-18T01:28:00.002+08:00

There is nothing quite so sublime as experiencing one of the most utterly ridiculous moments of one's life while entirely cognizant of its ludicrousness and yet all but powerless to stop it from reaching its mortifying conclusion. Fortunately, when you're a foreigner living in a mid-sized Chinese city, this level of sublimity lies well within the bounds of what is achievable. All you need to do, evidently, is maintain a minimal level of cordiality with a friend's Chinese tutor, who happens to be a tad overzealous about promoting the website she works for, and POOF: you will find yourself dressed in traditional Chinese garb, on a stage in front of a hundred Chinese people expecting to derive their Thursday morning entertainment from your ability to recite a few choice lines of Tang Dynasty poetry, while a recently-materialized young woman dances solemnly and a piano twinkles somewhere in the distance. This narration of events may seem inadequate, but I assure you that Shakespeare himself would have been hard pressed to limn the transcendent pathos associated with conducting a post-game interview with a local TV station while wearing an all-white Mao suit.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

2009-09-16T00:00:00.002+08:00

Administrative Region #10 seemed at first to merit some kind of commemorative post, or at the very least a plaque, but Hubei felt too cozily nestled within my newfound comfort zone to be pigeonholed as exceedingly foreign. My one-day trip to Wuhan, Hubei's capital, was interesting primarily because Wuhan is a kind of mega-city that was once made up of Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang, three cities splayed across the Yangtze River in central China. Unfortunately, this fact is not very interesting, and save for the Hubei Provincial Museum and the immortal Yellow Crane Tower (pictured below), neither is much else of what is promoted by the Wuhan tourism industry. The city is nonetheless home to almost 10 million people, a considerable number of whom would like to have their pictures taken with some white people. This is one of the many traits that unites the people of Hubei and Hunan, and other than Lake Dongting, very little seems to divide them.

The ones we know we don't know

2009-09-12T00:49:00.000+08:00

Living in Changsha as a white person with at least passable competency in spoken Chinese affords one endless opportunities to toy with the perceptions of strangers in a way that is rarely possible in one's own country. Unfortunately, most people's assumptions about language ability seem to go to extremes, as is the human wont. While the incidental use of an English word early on in a conversation with a bank teller or vegetable vendor can turn a simple transaction into a futile and unnecessary search for basic English vocabulary, one well-placed and adequately-enunciated question in Chinese has the potential to bring forth an unmitigated typhoon of regional dialect, the number of words of which is roughly equal to the number of times the sentence will need to be repeated. Fortunately, nearly every single person I have ever met in China appears hard-wired to reflexively compliment the Chinese skills of any and all foreigners, no matter how undeserved such praise might be. Changshaers are pleasantly surprised that foreign interest in Chinese culture has trickled all the way to Hunan, and they embrace it heartily. It is useful to keep such enthusiasm in mind when deciphering the latest change in "plans," or reviewing one's latest purchase to see what God wrought.

The ones we don't know we don't know

2009-09-10T00:28:00.002+08:00

Although teaching English to Chinese students no doubt presents a Gordian knot of linguistic and cultural obstacles through which many a Westerner hath tried in vain to cut, my first weeks of teaching have been partially consumed by a more familiar but perhaps more more inscrutable question: how does one "teach" writing? Half of my course load this semester involves instructing junior English majors in "advanced writing," a term which, it has been made clear to me, means basically whatever I want it to mean. My students' English writing, much like their speaking, lingers in that predictable limbo between stiltedness and proficiency, where the vast majority of second-language learning withers away for all eternity. My task is not only to improve their internal sense of what correct English sounds like out loud, but also to bestow upon them the elusive knack for English writing that even many Americans lack. Most of my students are painfully reticent in class but eager in their work, and I suspect that they have already realized the truth that a foreign culture whispers to its newcomers: teaching could not exist without learning, and not the other way around.

Give me some time, I'm living in twilight

2009-09-07T23:48:00.000+08:00

For better or for worse, the Chinese seem to have adapted to the cell phone revolution more eagerly than many Americans. That people are willing to conduct reasonably important business by means of text message is probably a revealing trait of Chinese culture, and it takes some getting used to. Paradoxically, however, while many have cast off the reticence that would otherwise keep such casual connections in check, the finality that usually accompanies arrangements made my phone remains undiluted. It is thus rather common to be awakened at 8:30 by the digital announcement of a 9:30 engagement. E-mail plays second fiddle in such situations, as does any semblance of advance planning. No word yet on that equally impetuous medium, the blog.

For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool

2009-09-05T23:19:00.000+08:00

Some of the Americans who spend time in China conclude that Chinese culture is ultimately destined to converge with that of the West, at least in all of the ways that matter. Others idealize and voice support for China's various brands of uniqueness - the passing of which they would rue to no end - even if they would never abide such practices themselves. This evening, as I consumed an elaborate meal centered on a large serving dish filled with chopped bullfrog, I meditated deeply on the likelihood of either eventuality. I came no closer to an epiphany on the matter, but the time did seem appropriate. Earlier in the day I had explored Hunan University's weight training facility, which would have borne a striking resemblance to its American brethren had it not also doubled as a junkyard for rusted and broken athletic equipment. Later on, I walked a few blocks to a nearby guitar shop, and when I expressed interest in purchasing a particular model, the otherwise uncommunicative salesman took it down from the wall and launched into a more than adequate rendition of "Hey Jude." He apologized for his spotty pronunciation, but he knew every word.

On Teaching Well

2009-09-02T23:52:00.003+08:00

The sight of a pale-skinned young man of European descent ambling down a street in Changsha is usually enough to elicit unabashed stares that would make Kate Moss blush, but that's nothing compared to the firestorm of gawking that is unfurled when said young man is quite obviously primed for classroom duty, clad in an Oxford shirt and red-and-gold-striped tie. My own students also seemed somewhat dumbfounded by the appearance of this peculiar life form, despite their two years of experience studying English under foreign teachers. Perhaps unfortunately, their giggly glances turned to taciturn gazes with the ring of the 8 AM bell, and I had 100 minutes to pry the most basic personal data from their reluctant lips and give life to William Zinsser's thoughts on the craft of written English. After five hours of teaching, I've definitely mastered the notions of unity of tense and narrowly proscribed topics in nonfiction writing, but whether the same can be said for any of my students remains to be seen.

There Used to Be a University Here

2009-08-31T23:07:00.001+08:00

Some of the more ambitious supporters of Hunan University (HuDa, for short) trace its history back to the Yuelu Academy of Classical Learning, a one-time haunt of Confucian scholars that appears to have existed continuously, in some form, since 976. A few dynasties ago, China's most famous philosophers were all but required to lecture there, and the names of those who did so still awaken the middle-school memories of 1.3 billion people. The academy, in its current, tourism-oriented incarnation, is nestled near the bottom of Yuelu Mountain, next to which I am fortunate enough to reside. Unfortunately, the small building that housed said institute of higher learning has been ravaged and rebuilt enough times that HuDa's claim to the title of World's Oldest University is rather lacking in legitimacy. It is nonetheless a pilgrimage site for Chinese scholars of all kinds, and to many it serves as a reminder of China's rich intellectual past, which, like Yuelu itself, has sometimes been half-heartedly appended to the New China for the sake of convenience alone.

Quite a Few Like It Hot

2009-08-30T00:21:00.001+08:00

When you tell a Chinese person that you're going to spend time in Changsha, the first thing he says usually concerns the purportedly unbearable spiciness of the food in Hunan Province (Administrative Region #9, by the way). Although I usually dismissed such remarks as hyperbolic before my arrival, three days of eating here have proven that such portents are not unfounded. Although you probably have to go a bit out of your way to find a dish that is aneurysm-inducingly spicy, so, too, do you have to strive to find something that isn't bespeckled with chili peppers. Group meals can very easily morph into fierce battles for control of the lazy susan, as diners seek control over the few items that don't require fastidious avoidance of inedible adornments. A second interesting consequence of Hunanese culinary philosophy is that certain new ingredients become palatable based on texture alone. Tonight, donkey meat; tomorrow, (other frightening fauna of) the world.

How the Other Half Lives

2009-08-28T00:51:00.001+08:00

One certainly doesn't need to be greeted by two chickens upon entering one's apartment complex to know that Changsha is an interesting place to live, but it sure does help. Like most experiences in China, my first day in Changsha was one part awe and one part something else entirely. Despite triple digit temperatures, spicy cuisine runs rampant, and the tempo of life is oddly metronomic. Eighteen consecutive hours of it compel me to delay further analysis. More soon.

And the sign flashed out its warning

2009-08-25T23:29:00.004+08:00

One of the most striking differences between Hong Kong and even the ritziest parts of Beijing and Shanghai is the unremittingly dense signage that bombards the pedestrian on every corner. While mainland China surely has its share of Cartier storefronts and Rolex window displays, it all feels almost uncomfortably new. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has had decades longer to reap the fruits of commercialization. As a consequence, neon signs and billboard advertisements have come to cover nearly every square inch of the first two stories of each downtown building. Tonight I had the chance to appreciate this phenomenon from the second level of one of Hong Kong's famous tram cars, which Yale-China graciously rented for us on our last night in the city. I unfortunately forgot my camera and was thus unable to capture the various symbols of old new money that I encountered.

Tomorrow, I head to an abstruse land of new new money, and in so doing, finally begin to fulfill this blog's stated purpose. Destiny, thy name is Changsha.

Into the light of the dark black night

2009-08-23T23:45:00.002+08:00

It is evidently a Yale-China tradition that every year the Fellows travel to Lamma Island - a quaint and car-less part of Hong Kong - and trek through its lovely, dark and deep woods. The reward for this journey is a feast at the heart of the island, the highlight of which is a roasted pigeon for every participant. Each of us was encouraged, though not contractually required, to consummate our relationship with Yale-China by eating the pigeon's head. Although the considerable turbulence we experienced on the ferry en route the island could not prepare my alimentary canal for what was about to befall it, I persevered. In its last moments, I had the pigeon eating out of my hand. By that point, the decision was a no-brainer.

A riddle in four bites

2009-08-22T00:12:00.003+08:00

Today Kelsey and I taught a sample lesson on metaphors to our fellow Fellows, who rather strangely pretended to be Chinese college students with fledgling English skills. The simulation went smoothly, but we've been warned that most Yale-China Fellows have no choice but to discard every word of their training the minute their first class begins, so I remain braced for stormy seas. Below I've reproduced the poem we used in our class, which may or may not be comprehensible to said students. Below that, the "eggette," a mysterious kind of Hong Kong street food that looks mildly appetizing and tastes far, far better than it looks. As with the poem, its simplicity is deceptive.

Metaphors

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.

Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green apples.

Boarded the train there's no getting off.

-Sylvia Plath

What rough beast, its hour come round at last

2009-08-19T22:48:00.006+08:00

The politics of Hong Kong appear byzantine and convoluted to the uninitiated outsider, and a closer look at its structure provides few insights. A century and a half of British colonial rule gave way to a more or less independent democratic regime in 1997, when Britain's sovereignty over the island strangely expired and Chinese control was re-instituted. Hong Kong's political future is perpetually in flux because of the "Basic Law" that governs its matrimony with mainland China, but this nagging uncertainty doesn't seem to bother many people here, or at least not yet. The changeover, much heralded in Beijing, did little to disrupt Hong Kong's hyper-commercial focus, a trait far too deeply ingrained in its citizenry to be altered by the mere specter of authoritarianism. After all, the heroes of Hong Kong's past are not politicians, nor are they necessarily from Hong Kong. The island grew prominent under the aegis of men like Sir Thomas Jackson, a late-nineteenth century HSBC honcho whose bronze effigy still festoons the central plaza of Hong Kong Island. Day and night, he stares across the street at the Legislative Council, Hong Kong's young and untested governing body, waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop.

I said a week, maybe two

2009-08-18T23:40:00.003+08:00

Hong Kong has not been very good to my camera or to my wallet, but such mundanities can never do justice to the most worthy destinations anyway. I find myself having less to say about Hong Kong than I do about mainland China because the former is what the latter would look like if it had taken the initiative a few decades earlier to leave the commune, cut its hair and get a real job. Unlike in most mainland cities, my presence here shocks neither me nor the city's dwellers. Given the situation I will soon be immersed in, it's probably best that my stay will be short-lived.

Island in the Sun

2009-08-16T22:29:00.004+08:00

After 15 hours in this sweltering and confounding city, all I can say with any certainty is that Hong Kong is the place where five years' worth of toil at the study of Mandarin Chinese might go to meet its slow but ineluctable death, should my stay last any longer than 10 days. Oddly enough, the locals disagree, insisting that there's something suffocating in the air - the encroachment of the People's Republic into every aspect of Hong Kong culture, more than 12 years after the official handover. Other than the toxic emissions wafting over the border from Shenzhen, however, this alleged Mainland miasma can be difficult to apprehend. Based on what little I've seen, Cantonese is still alive and well, as well as dim sum and a considerable degree of cleanliness. The Mass Transit Railway feels a little English, as do the cars with steering wheels on the left and the exit signs marked "way out."

I'll have more soon, but after the 30-hour train ride from Beijing to Shenzhen (Guangdong Province - Administrative Region #7), the ensuing two-hour trip over the Hong Kong border (Administrative Region #8) and through customs on foot, and a day of teacher training amid "feels like" temperatures well into the triple digits, I'm due for some sleep.

The Third Man

2009-08-14T00:19:00.002+08:00

I spent my final evening in Beijing watching a recently-acquired copy of "The Third Man" - an unlikely candidate for piracy, I agree - and the experience is oddly fitting. Joseph Cotten ambles for days through post-war Vienna without knowing a word of German or any other potentially helpful language, all the while trying to uncover the identity of the third of three men he believes to have been present for the mysterious death of his acquaintance. The identity of the first two men is undisputed and treated as an unremarkable fact. The third, however - the one who actually matters - is kept shrouded in mystery by just about everyone. As with Chairman Mao being "70% right and 30% wrong" - a platitude that nearly all Chinese citizens recite with nary a hint of irony - the first two thirds of the story are masqueraded around as the whole story, while the last third, where the uncomfortable truth lies, is an unutterable matter of life and death.

Living in Beijing, one often feels that one is prosecuting a similarly profitless investigation, absorbing the standard narrative while repeatedly tumbling into questions that are frustratingly difficult to penetrate, even with a not inconsiderable command of Chinese. Does this subway station's sole ticketing window merely open and close at the whim of the attendant, who is sitting right there at her desk? How many men were seen carrying the body after the accident occurred? Why do the dormitory buildings have to be locked all night using a chain and padlock that can only be opened by one person? How could the dead man have maintained the composure to clearly articulate his last wishes when some believe he died on impact? What makes the internet stop working so frequently? Over whom did the dead man even exert any influence? How does your local government work? What ingenious plot twist could make the truth about this alleged murder actually matter? What would happen to you if you told me what you really think about this country? Is the truth about the third man really that perverse? There is a time to keep silence and, perhaps someday, a time to speak.

As for the unbelievers, their works are like a mirage in a desert

2009-08-11T22:59:00.001+08:00

Beijing is said to be the home of some 200,000 Chinese Muslims, and although only a very small handful of them spent their Tuesday afternoon at the Cow Street Mosque, they were hard to miss roaming the archetypal Beijing streets surrounding the mosque. Among the dozens of mosques scattered throughout Beijing, this one is the oldest and the most prominent. Although it sometimes draws members of the Hui minority in large numbers, on most days it attracts more foreign tourists than Muslims who reside in Beijing. Just like any other historical attraction in China, the mosque's many plaques and promotional materials cast the history of its facilities almost exclusively in terms of Chinese political history. One bulletin board displays - tellingly, and a tad unceremoniously - a withered photograph of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami visiting the site some years ago. Construction equipment lurks in odd places, emitting the unholy aura that only hard hats can issue. Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter the ornate main prayer hall, and thus it remains mostly empty most of the time. In the thousand or so years since the mosque was built, only trace amounts of Arabic have infiltrated its distinctively Chinese walls, and there's no indication that that will change any time soon.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting

2009-08-10T00:11:00.001+08:00

I had originally planned to convey the essence of my weekend explorations by posting photos of the both the centuries-old Ming Tombs and the now famous (but still barely broken in) Olympic facilities. Unfortunately, in my attempt to visit the former, I was once again thwarted by Beijing's hopelessly congested public transportation. Upon arriving at the appropriate bus stop under the Deshengmen Bridge, I was dismayed to discover that the only public bus route running anywhere near the Ming Tombs (situated 30 miles outside of central Beijing) is, to put it mildly, oversubscribed. Because the day was just too oppressive to wait two hours for a two-hour commute, my readers will have to settle for a photograph of the throngs of people waiting for said bus. As for the Olympic facilities, they were arresting but not quite majestic.

To Defend Everything is to Defend Nothing

2009-08-08T01:05:00.000+08:00

Pretty much no matter where I go, I soon determine that I have happened upon a culinary Elysium that plays host to all of the world's most worthy epicurean souls. Although this usually says more about me than it does about the food, I really think I mean it this time. Here is another round of food photographs for your enjoyment. The items are as follows: some garden variety boiled pork dumplings (practically a dietary requirement); a heavenly (and numbingly spicy) dish of Sichuan green beans; a fried pancake filled with pork and spices known as a gong po bing (evidently a Tianjin specialty); a special kind of fried stuffed bun known as sheng jian bao (a Shanghai specialty); a steamed lump of glutinous rice and pork known as zong zi; and an old love made new again.

Fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead

2009-08-05T22:54:00.003+08:00

Chinese people discuss runaway population growth with such frequency and fervor that an untrained observer might assume it to be the single most threatening sociopolitical crisis facing China today. In fact, if you restrict those crises to the ones that people are actually allowed to discuss, even the trained observer might have to admit that it ranks highly. This was made abundantly clear to my six fellow Fellows and I last night, when we headed over to our local ticketing agent to purchase train tickets for our impending trip to Hong Kong. Arriving a mere 30 minutes after tickets went on sale for the 8:00 PM train to Shenzhen (Hong Kong's mainland neighbor) on August 14, we sauntered in with heads held high and wallets open. However, in a jaw-dropping turn of events, the supply of sleeper-class tickets on the entire train had dwindled to 5 in those 30 precious minutes. Although two of us managed to purchase tickets on a later, slightly less convenient train, Chinese public transportation's oft-cited congestion catastrophe was driven home to us. Long-distance train tickets are notoriously hard to come by, and in the weeks leading up to Chinese holidays, even waiting in line at the crack of dawn on the first morning of sale can be futile. Even the Chinese media seems a bit befuddled about how China Railways has so utterly failed to keep pace with demand. I am of course no expert on the matter, but perhaps the squeaky clean but pitifully desolate Tianjin subway system tells us something: where Chinese characteristics fear to tread, socialism always rushes in.

More Than A Feeling

2009-08-03T20:42:00.000+08:00

So often in China, the traveler with a taste for photography is stunned in his tracks by some poignantly contrastive juxtaposition of abject poverty and twenty-first century Asian development. Regretfully, such juxtapositions are more often than not little more than fleeting moments of recognition that lend themselves rather poorly to immortalization. An adolescent girl in tattered clothes cleaning out a bowl with a toothbrush across the street from a BMW dealership in Dalian; a community of homeless fruit sellers living in tents under Tianjin's newest bridge; cripples lying face-down on flat plastic carts, pushing themselves down wide city sidewalks as pedestrians walk in circles around them. I have mostly failed to capture the essence of such disparities in single frames, usually settling for momentary but indelible impressions. China is doing a remarkable job of eradicating this phenomenon altogether by destroying its most dilapidated buildings and mass-producing sparkling new ones, but this is a Sisyphean labor if there ever was one.

I don't want you, But I need you

2009-08-02T01:27:00.004+08:00

My kinfolk have taken some pleasure in reminding me over the years that, if family history has any predictive power whatsoever, I am likely to develop the insatiable mind and acquisitive impulses of a collector. I have always understood this notion as a mixed blessing. Sometimes, the collector is merely a connoisseur, an impassioned devotee who accrues vast knowledge but only seeks to own that which is truly worthy. Other times, however, the collector is driven to pursue otherwise unappealing ends in the name of completion.

As I sat on the 4405 train to Tianjin this morning, the air was heavy with the weight of this question. Actually, that particular pneumatic phenomenon was probably traceable to other causes, but it remains that even as I expended mental energy doubting (with Cartesian precision) the claim on my ticket that all cars were air conditioned, and even as I observed with awe how an over-zealous SRO passenger was managing to take up the space between the nape of my neck and my rock-solid seat back - still, I found it within me to ruminate at some length on the subject of collecting. After all, Tianjin is one of the four self-governing municipalities in China, making it the 6th administrative region I've visited in my Quest for 34. But in the end, a trip there felt like spending $11.99 on The Beatles' "1."

It's not that there's anything particularly bad about Tianjin. It is, after all, the fifth largest city in China. It was the site of the landmark treaty that ended the Second Opium War in 1860 - not exactly a proud moment for the Chinese, but significant all the same. It is, in accordance with the norm here in the PRC, bustling. It even has its own subway. But unfortunately for tourists like myself, the Communist Party dons in charge of maintaining an adequate tourist attraction-to-population ratio have been troublingly lax in their approach to Tianjin. The city offers essentially no "activities" to speak of, and I will thus remain mostly mum on how I spent my 8 hours there, except to say that I did an awe-inspiring amount of walking around, and that if not for that pesky collector's mindset, I could have done what you just did: skimmed Wikipedia, and been done with it.

Plus ça change

2009-07-30T21:05:00.001+08:00

While perusing the New Yorker's "Letter from China" blog earlier this evening, I came upon an interesting perspective on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square ("June Fourth") incident of 1989: (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/4.html). I was particularly struck by some of the similarities between images of China in 1966 and the China I am coming to know. Fret not, however - differences surely abound. Below I've provided some of my own nighttime images of a locked-down Tiananmen, circa mid-June 2009.

Also, at the risk of some considerable self-incrimination, I direct you to the vlog (video blog) of Chris, another fellow Fellow: (anamericansymphony.blogspot.com). Chris is documenting his two years in China using his trusty camcorder, and some of his latest videos have captured the essence of our experience quite well.

To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough

2009-07-29T22:55:00.002+08:00

The water village of Zhujiajiao, situated thirty kilometers outside of central Shanghai, nicely typifies the life of a Chinese village that cannot quite escape a looming urban shadow. Its streets are lined with shops, but they are uniform; its canals are filled with boats, but they cost 60 yuan per ride; its temples and gardens are characteristically pretty and surprisingly variegated, but they are all staffed by workers from the town's central tourism office. The village is a reminder that a search for authenticity will remain in vain so long as its methods are superficial. Appropriately, the city of Shanghai itself is resplendent but even more impenetrable. Both places have a saturated feel, and they cry out for an intrepid explorer who might seek out their as yet unseen corners. However, while in Zhujiajiao, I generally chose not to wander off the mapped-out path. I was indeed curious to glimpse what lay within some of its more tattered nineteenth-century walls, but the sprawl of Shanghai can be daunting enough as it is. Something within me didn't want to interfere with anyone's best laid schemes. Unfortunately, as Shanghai has taught many a bystander, they'll probably go askew anyway.

Scenes From Chinese Restaurants

2009-07-23T20:48:00.001+08:00

Below are some snapshots of inescapable staples of Chinese cuisine: a kind of vegetable-filled egg crepe (known in Chinese as a jian bing), pork-filled stuffed buns, Uighur naan, sliced pork with garlic sauce, and grilled butterfly cocoons (admittedly, somewhat escapable). This weekend I'm back to Shanghai, where I'm likely to find more snapshots to share. Until then, bon appetit.

Oops, my mistake. Alas, what happens to a dream deferred?

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day

2009-07-21T23:03:00.004+08:00

I've finally gotten around to taking the (rudimentary) steps necessary to begin posting pictures via proxy. Here is the best I could do with a foggy day in Dalian, followed by a hilltop view of the Putuo Zongcheng Temple of Chengde. Below, a view of the Xizhimen neighborhood of Beijing (which I inhabit), followed lastly by an intimate view a hutong home, not terribly far away. More soon.

Fly Away From Here

2009-07-19T23:27:00.000+08:00

Frequent trips to some of China's most coveted beaches seem to have mellowed out tour bus drivers in Dalian, to the point where they can often be seen violating the iron law of driving in China, which is that if you can't find a reason to honk your horn, you aren't driving fast enough. Indeed, it is either the scenery or the availability of jubilant Russian television that makes all the travel books rave about Dalian's "livability." Unfortunately, one sometimes gets the sense that the city is not truly representative of the culture of northeastern China, but rather is a demonstration of the predictable precipitate that forms when hyperdevelopment and tourism react. Evidence that the city even existed before 1980 is rather scant, and it mostly comes in the form of foreign architecture from a bygone imperial age. It seemed oddly appropriate to first experience the city from the bed of a hard-sleeper car at dawn, only to bolt from it 40 hours later amidst the soft, blind comfort of a 737.

Dallyin'

2009-07-15T22:15:00.001+08:00

I haven't been able to figure out how to post or respond to comments using my current array of proxies, so using a post as a medium will have to do. Loyal reader arb noted in response to my last post that the Mountain Resort in Chengde offered an opportunity for creating another long list of places to see. Although I determined after a short stroll that the Qianlong Emperor's taste in temples and pagodas was positively pedestrian, arb's comment raises a related possibility: visiting all 38 of China's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, of which the Mountain Resort is one. This goal is of course a subset of a larger quest to visit all 890 sites worldwide, but as we say here in China, reality and desire remain quite far apart on that score. As it stands, I have visited just 6 of the 38 sites in China, including a lovely meander through one of Suzhou's renowned gardens two weeks ago. I'll keep you posted.

Tomorrow, midterm exams at our language program will be held, after which I will embark on a (very large) group trip to the city of Dalian, which is a ten-hour (sleeper) train ride away. I don't particularly relish traveling there in a group of 80 foreigners (pejoratively dubbed "lao wai" - old outsider - by many Chinese people), but getting to Dalian is no simple task, and one oughtn't argue with free travel. For those keeping score at home, Dalian is located in the Liaoning province, making it Administrative Region #5 on Dan's CPLASC. Dalian is a coastal city that was briefly occupied by Russia and later by Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is purported to maintain some cultural influences from both places. Its seafood has also been talked up to no end by many a Chinese teacher.

While I'm sorting all of that out, I suggest you check out this review (sent to me by a fellow Fellow) of a recent exhibition at New York's MoMA that uniquely portrays life in modern Beijing: (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/arts/design/15song.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all).

Long Train Runnin'

2009-07-13T22:45:00.003+08:00

If Dante's descent into hell had been aided by a tram car, the seating on said car would probably have resembled the hard-backed, L-shaped contraptions that fill up the majority of Chinese train cars. But even Charon wouldn't have had the heart of stone necessary to load up his cars with twice as many passengers as there were seats. Well, maybe he would, but either way, China Railways certainly has no qualms with such a practice. The result is a travel experience that pushes the boundaries of communal existence as we know it. My rides to (4 hours) and from (6 hours) Chengde were characterized by this arrangement, which allowed for a special kind of bonding with my Chinese fellow travelers.

The roughly 36 hours in between the two rides were, mercifully, more comfortable. Chengde, now a bustling city of over 450,000, was once no more than a cool summer getaway for Qing Dynasty emperors. The crown jewel of the city, known in English rather plainly as the Mountain Resort, takes up over two square miles and constitutes more than half of the city's land holdings. Sporting the world's tallest wooden Buddha statue, the park by itself justified the entire trip. Navigating the rest of Chengde, with its highly concentrated urban center situated at the southern edge of the gigantic park, turned out to be rather easy despite the city's almost complete lack of English.

Our only minor logistical hiccup came during our initial quest for hotel accommodations for five. We were ultimately successful, but not before riding in the back of a van of unclear provenance, with a driver displaying still murkier professional qualifications. Whenever he decided that crossing a double yellow was advisable, I put my head down and took a moment to appreciate the van's ergonomic, padded seats. Thus did I learn to cherish life's simple pleasures.

Here, There, and Everywhere

2009-07-11T00:45:00.007+08:00

This weekend, a few friends and I are traveling by train to Chengde, a city a few hours away from Beijing that is renowned for its scenery and pleasant weather. It also has apparently countless Buddhist temples that date to the reign of the Kangxi emperor in the early eighteenth century. I will thus be leaving my readership stranded for a few days, content-less, while I bask in the "cool" weather of this alleged Eden.

Chengde is situated in the Hebei province. Since this is my first trip there, I can now cross it off of the list associated with Dan's Chinese Province-Level Administrative Subdivision Challenge (CPLASC). The CPLASC, put simply, is my quest to go to every major Chinese administrative region during my two-year stay in the Middle Kingdom. These regions include Provinces (of which there are 22), Autonomous Regions (5), Municipalities (4), Special Administrative Regions (2), and Taiwan (some call it a "Claimed Province," but I think its name suffices for description). I will attempt to visit (and not merely pass through) all 34 of these regions before I depart in July 2011.

The reasons why there exist five different types of subdivision are a complex question for another post. However, they all have corresponding relationships to the Chinese central government, and they also have at least some degree of cultural significance. Completion of the CPLASC in just two years would constitute the kind of peripatetic apotheosis of which many a cartographer has often dreamt.

Regretfully, my moment of nomadic self-actualization is not exactly around the corner. After this coming trip, I will have covered only 4 out of the 34 required regions: 2 of the Municipalities (Beijing and Shanghai), and 2 Provinces (Jiangsu, where Suzhou is located, and Hebei, where Chengde is located). For those of you as enamored of administrative subdivisions as I am, the Wikipedia article on the subject should fulfill your deepest of longings: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China).

Until next time, happy trails.

The Wall

2009-07-08T21:52:00.001+08:00

The last 48 hours have been a tumultuous time for internet connectivity in this particular corner of Beijing. There is no discernible pattern to the sporadic outages that have been taking place, but the general consensus among we foreigners is that it has something to do with China's rapidly unfolding domestic crisis. I wish I could provide some more information, but even though I live just around the corner from the Xinjiang Provincial government compound, my propinquity hasn't yet fulfilled its osmotic potential. For what it's worth, the young Uighur man who sells stale naan outside of the compound was reportedly in low spirits yesterday.

For some further insight into how China might be managing its internet traffic at the eye of the storm, take a look at this slightly dated but probably still highly relevant article by James Fallows about the so-called Great Firewall: (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200803/chinese-firewall).

Former CNN Beijing Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon has a more up-to-date assessment of China's censorship regime on her blog: (http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/06/chinas-censorship-blowback.html).

Another interesting read is apropos of one of my recent Chinese lessons, which rather nebulously addressed China's young nationalists. This July 2008 article, by the New Yorker's Evan Osnos, is far more incisive than textbook fare, but it will still leave you with more questions than answers about China's political future: (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all)

In case this blog doesn't tell you everything you need to know about what is happening in China - an unlikely state of events, to be sure - then you might also want to periodically check out Evan Osnos' blog. Some of his most recent posts, which address the state-run media's peculiar openness in its reporting of the Xinjiang crisis, are especially apt: (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/?xrail).

For those of you web designers among my readers (you know who you are), I apologize for the lack of embedded links. Unfortunately, in scaling the Great Firewall, one must leave some things behind.

A land of bluebirds and fountains, and nothing to do

2009-07-06T22:02:00.002+08:00

Among the many beautiful things I saw in Shanghai, the yangmei (杨梅) was the most unassuming. Harvested in China for only one month out of the year and banned from importation to America for fear of pesky pests, it at first glance resembles a shrunken plum with a curiously corrugated exterior. But upon further examination, the yumberry (as it is alternately known) manages to combine the resistant texture of a perfectly ripe strawberry with the consistent sweetness of a pomegranate. Although the yangmei currently exists merely as an inchoate reddish sweetness in the minds of millions of Americans, I exaggerate only slightly when I say that its marketing potential pushes the boundaries of fruit hysteria as we know it. For those as entranced as I: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/dining/12yumb.html.

Equally remarkable, though slightly less beautiful, is the astonishingly perpetual clamor of a Chinese train station. As I and my gracious host waited to purchase return tickets out of Suzhou, a city of 6 million situated about 50 miles away from Shanghai, we would have been excused for mistakenly believing that we were at the heart of a megalopolis, rather than a touristy offshoot thereof. It was one of those moments (and there are many of them) when China's One Child Policy begins to make at least a modicum of sense. As a veteran derider of said policy, I mostly take such observations as fodder for jokes. However, this truly is a cramped country, even though it has no small bit of land to its name. When you glance up at the board in the train station, you see a lot of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Wuxi, but only a little bit of Urumqi. Really, the country is so cramped because so much of it hinterlands barely count as Chinese. The numbers remain in the east while the west very gradually and painstakingly inures itself to Chinese dominance. As the world continued to learn today, the frontiers of China's development are lined with anxious and sometimes restless bystanders. No amount of yangmei, it would seem, is likely to placate them.

Tipping is Not a City in China

2009-07-02T23:02:00.000+08:00

It's also not a social custom in China. I could elaborate on the consequences of this, but despite my hard-earned B.A. I still have a test to study for, so instead I'll just say that this phenomenon primarily results in poor service and an abundance of frowns. Despite the annoyance that tipping generally causes in America, as well as most people's generally misbegotten attempts to hang any and all inconveniences on the wait staff so as to psychologically justify dropping below the big one-five, living in China is a constant reminder of how much better life can be when the customer is empowered.

Starting tomorrow afternoon, I'm off to Shanghai for the weekend. In the meantime, I encourage you all to take a gander at the blog of one of my fellow Fellows: kelseydigstochina.blogspot.com. Kelsey will be joining me at Hunan University in the fall. I had planned to post a link to the blog on the right hand side of the page, but my proxy seems to have limited that capability.

Radio Star Vulnerable to Attacks by Video, Others

2009-06-29T23:25:00.001+08:00

In playing around with my new cell phone earlier this evening, I discovered with a great deal of surprise - I've left all of the text and instructions on the phone in Chinese - that it includes a built-in FM radio tuner. A bit of fiddling around led me to the Beijing News Station (北京新闻广播), FM 100.6. The programming - or, to be more precise, that sliver of it which I could actually understand - was pleasingly bold, but not bumptiously so. I mostly listened to a solitary Chinese man discussing what skills are essential to young Chinese students planning to study overseas (I think English was in there somewhere), with Michael Buble awkwardly crooning in the background the entire time. This program segued into a more bombastic one in which an unspecified number of people shouted out some kind of inspriational poem in unison. This first listen did leave me somewhat nonplussed, but I hesitate to judge a culture too harshly based only on the quality of its radio broadcasts: lord knows what circle of hell would be reserved for some of us (certain members of the present readership excepted) if anyone did. I will instead make the radio a part of my nightly routine, seeking new points of cultural insight, as well as a potential lead-in for candle-lit small talk with Michael Buble.

An Unfinished Business

2009-06-28T03:04:00.004+08:00

In a city with more than its fair share of man-made flaws, the locally-grown lychee is a natural phenomenon that can send even the staunchest Darwinian back to the teleological drawing board: its flawless orb, translucent glow, and the irrepressibly resplendent gleam of its perfectly non-adhesive pit are all reasons to suspect that no random process could ever have formed such a pristine living being. Fortunately, insecure Darwinians need look no further than the Beijing arts scene to confirm their dearly held assumptions of human imperfection.

I sought out such imperfections this afternoon when I and a companion tackled Beijing's 798 Art Zone, a sprawling Soho-wannabe in the city's northeastern corner blanketed with countless art galleries, boutiques and cafes - a daunting place to master for just one afternoon, to be sure. The experience was more than satisfying for a day's tourism, but for Beijingers, it remains at turns unnatural and incomplete. In addition to inhabiting the infrastructural purgatory in which most areas of the city seem destined to wallow for years to come, 798 also speaks loudest about what it does not say. The people who inhabit the district, and the art they produce, ostensibly resemble the corresponding communities in most Western metropolitan cities. But the influences of cultural repression have obviated the possibility that history, culture, or propaganda might be meaningfully indicted in anyone's work. The result is the kind of output typical of many modern artists (which many patrons are willing to take or leave) without too many controversial overtones (making the leaving that much easier). At a short-film festival that I attended there in the evening, the entries were often critical of some small corner of Chinese existence and even at times provocative, but rarely coherently so. In the film that probably won the competition, a young man has his picture taken in front of Mao's portrait in Tiananmen square. He then arranges to have yellowed photos of his long-deceased relatives photo-shopped into the picture. When he receives the final product, he returns home, tosses it in the street outside of his house, douses it in grain alcohol, and watches it burn. Why? The movie, like the district in which it played, was a model of potential unfulfilled.

Addendum: Studious reader arb notes that the significance of the burning may lie at least partially in the use of this form of destruction as a kind of veneration.

Night and Day

2009-06-26T23:06:00.001+08:00

The nighttime sky has a way of imbuing even the most crass and noisome of images with at least a modicum of poetic beauty. Many a man hath sinned on the basis of this brand of beauty alone, but such incidents are, alas, another story for another blog. I avoided such transgressions earlier this evening by making my first trip this year to Tiananmen Square, viewing it at night for the first time. The national symbols that surround and comprise it - the Great Hall of the People, the Monument to the People's Heroes, Chairman Mao's Mausoleum, the Forbidden City, and of course the Square itself - are illuminated by long strings of small yellow lights that are at once peculiar and elegant. Most of the square was cordoned off for the evening, patrolled only by a few upright young men from the Public Security Bureau. As during the day, tourists snapped photos in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao that adorns the Gate of Heavenly Peace, while poor, toothless, septuagenarian men roamed in their midst, hawking popsicles for one kuai. Further down along Beijing's strangely austere main drag, Chang'an Avenue, I also caught a glimpse of the National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing's titanium opera house that has quickly become a symbol of twenty-first century China since its completion in December 2007. The NCPA, colloquially known as the Egg, is surrounded by an artificial lake that is grand in scale and so inviolable in its perfection that the building itself can only be accessed via underground tunnel. During the day, both the Egg and the moat engulfing it gleam with a profound sense of newness, in stark contrast to the nearby buildings in and around Tiananmen Square, which emit a decidedly twentieth century aura. At night, however, it can be hard to tell the difference.

The Second Time Around

2009-06-24T21:34:00.000+08:00

One would be hard-pressed to make the case that Beijing is lovelier the second time around. It is probably more comfortable, though, and at times that can be much-needed. I've neglected to provide an update until now mostly due to my (ongoing) struggle to figure out how to post pictures to this blog via proxy, but also because my first week here has largely resembled much of my time here two years ago: some awkward interactions with Chinese people (although those are thankfully becoming fewer), a good amount of studying, a visit to a classic Beijing tourist site replete with Qing Dynasty architecture and lots of trees, and of course numerous mind-bending culinary experiences. I'll elaborate on all of this once I'm able to provide visual evidence, which will hopefully be soon.

Chang2sha1 (长沙）

2009-06-16T05:14:00.008+08:00

First of all, I would like to apologize to my readers and to the city of Changsha for the ambitious domain name of this weblog, which implicitly establishes expectations of comprehensiveness and authenticity that could never be realized - or, to put it more accurately, will not be realized by me. But my excitement upon discovering that chang2sha1.blogspot.com had never been claimed was overpowering, and I was moved to seize it like a privately-owned industry in Venezuela.

For those of you who are unaware, the numbers in the blog's URL represent to the tones used in pronouncing the preceding syllables. Mandarin Chinese is spoken using four possible tones, and they are the bane of many a Western learner. Their inclusion in the URL is an aesthetically motivated illustration of how even the phonetic renderings of Chinese words can appear baffling without further inquiry. Although the tones are numbered and are sometimes written numerically, as they are in the blog's title, they are meant to appear as accent markings over the main vowel of each syllable (Chang2sha1 = Chángshā).

Although the URL might mistakenly lead you to believe that I intend to tell you most of what there is to know about Changsha, I have tried to compensate for this oversight with an equally clever and memorable blog title, which, as you can see, manages to combine my love for citation with the excitation that I experience when thinking about Changsha - all in only two and a half words. In addition to being nonpareil in its catchiness, the title also happens to be apropos: the inspiration for the blog will be not only Changsha, but also the people, places and events that I will encounter in connection with my stay there.

What will I be doing there, you ask? I will be spending the next two academic years, beginning this September, teaching English at a university in Changsha, which is the capital city of China's Hunan province. I will spend most of my time between now and then studying Chinese at a language immerson program in Beijing. To read the gripping blow-by-blow account of the last time I did that, feel free to peruse djbeijing07.blogspot.com. The material on the present blog looks to be more varied, yet also more in-depth: I am now entering my fifth year of studying Chinese, and I hope that my increasing competency will translate into heightened historical and cultural understanding. As usual, I'll try to keep the ambitious conclusions to a minimum, because, as it has been written, "People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own."