Shamu: 鱼眼看美国,以及中国

上几张照片活跃一下气氛

在纽约时报网站看见的。老外就是视角独特。对，还很执着，不拍到猛料不干休。
看完了，又开始想念祖国了。浪教乔治，这是你们要海归的理由吗？

这个知道是谁吗？

Rules of the Road in China

Much has been written about driving in China, but this is the best writing I've seen. It is too hilarious. I am copying it here in case the original page is not available.

More comments later.

(Hat tip to the Oriental List (a listserv for China travel) and in particular Peter Snow Cao)

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From the Irish Times
July 31, 2006
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2006/0731/1154075777635.html

Motoring madness puts spoke in China's wheel

Fintan O'Toole
Letter from Beijing: For the benefit of intending travellers, here are some Chinese rules of the road:

1. Driving is like making cloth or baskets - the skill is in the weaving. If there is more room on the far side of a three-lane highway, your duty is to get into it as fast as possible. Lanes are for bowling alleys.

2. Sound waves are a powerful form of energy. If you blow your horn loudly and continuously, obstacles in your way will disappear, clearing the road ahead.

3. Seatbelts restrict the flow of blood to the brain and may be dangerous. Drivers may buckle up if they are approaching a police checkpoint, but the belt should be removed as soon as the checkpoint is passed. Passengers should on no account wear seatbelts, as attempts to find the buckles which have been carefully stored under the seat covers may distract the driver from an important mobile phone conversation.

4. When approaching a junction with a major road, enter the flow of traffic immediately and decisively. The drivers on the main road will be well aware of your presence, even at night, and stopping to wait for a gap may be interpreted as an insult to their sixth sense.

5. Remember that Kung Fu movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are entirely realistic. Chinese people can sense at all times what is happening behind them, even without looking. They also have lightening-fast reflexes, so any momentary danger will inevitably be averted.

6. Overtaking is a spiritual quest, a homage to the gods of time, who do not like to see their precious gift wasted. The less time wasted and the more dangerous the manoeuvre (for example, overtaking on a hairpin bend on a mountain road with a ravine 5,000ft below) the greater the devotion demonstrated. You will get your reward in the next life, a destination which you may also reach sooner than everyone else.

7. Even the narrowest road has two sides - it is wasteful not to use both.

8. If you find yourself facing a head-on collision with another vehicle, it is vital to assume that the other driver will blink first and take the necessary evasive action. If everyone abides by this principle, then there can be no confusion. All drivers will understand their proper responses in this situation and there can be no danger of an accident.

I offer these rules as a cut-out-and-keep guide for anyone intending to travel to China, because, oddly, they are not published by the road safety authorities and can be learned only by observation. This might suggest that they are not rules at all, but they are universally observed in every part of China I've been to so far, and are presumably so well understood that they do not need to be made explicit.

So deeply entrenched are these rules, indeed, that they turn on their heads western perceptions of what is and is not good driving. In the West, for example, someone who swings out into the middle of the road while approaching a blind blend is a maniac who has no right to be on the road. In China, such a person is genuinely a good driver. If you assume that when you turn the corner, there may be cars bearing down on you (because they are overtaking on the other side of the bend), then it makes perfect sense to stay in the middle so that you have room, if necessary, to swerve to either side.

This kind of skill may explain one of two astonishing aspects of Chinese driving: the relatively low rate of accidents. It is not that the carnage on the roads in China is not appalling, even by Irish standards. It is. In China, injuries from road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people aged between 15 and 45. Every day, about 600 people are killed and 45,000 injured on the roads. But if you travel in buses and taxis for a while, these figures come to seem remarkably low.

I can hardly believe that I've seen only one bad crash in the last two months. (Though having my eyes closed most of the time may have had something to do with it.) The other amazing thing is the relative absence of road rage. In most other societies, driving would come to a halt because the roads would be filled with the bodies of drivers who had shot each other, or with the burnt-out wrecks of vehicles whose owners had spontaneously combusted. But I've only seen one episode of serious cursing, when a parked car suddenly and without any signal pulled out right in front of a taxi I was in, missing it by a centimetre. The taxi driver turned the air blue and the guilty party gave a sheepish smile and an apologetic wave, as if he had accidentally brushed up against an old lady's elbow.

When only the most egregious offences raise any objections, it seems clear that all the other offences are regarded as normality.

This all means that there's no point in asking Chinese people to explain the awful driving, since they don't regard it as awful at all. On long drives, when I've got tired of taking the holy name in vain, I try to calm myself by thinking up explanations. The most obvious is that mass driving is a new thing here and that China has gone from the ubiquitous bicycle to 130 million motor vehicles in the blink of an eye. But such an explanation would equally apply if Chinese drivers were slow and cautious.

I do think bicycles have something to do with it, though. Most drivers learned their road sense in the bicycle era, when weaving around obstacles made sense and the risks from a crash were small. Another, related, reason may be that the car is still a symbol of personal freedom, an escape from a communal rule-bound world into a private space where you can follow your own instincts.

Or maybe it's just the peculiarly Chinese combination of fatalism ("If I'm going to die, there's nothing I can do about it") and optimism ("Sure haven't I survived worse?") that comes from a hard history.

Running Marathon (or not) in Beijing 2008

Everybody I met, once I told them I'm from Beijing, expressed interest in the 2008 Olympics. They all want to come and watch the game. However, when I read an article from the New York Times, I am not so sure the Marathon athletes are as excited.

The article is about training to compete in a marathon held in a hot, humid and polluted city. You can read it here.

The article is long and only towards the end it brought up something I knew was true but never was willing to accept. Here's some excerpts:

"Even if the distance runners in the Beijing Olympics eat perfectly, though, they are going to face the problem of air pollution.

In March, Randy Wilber, an exercise physiologist with the United States Olympic Committee, went to Beijing to measure the air quality at training and competition sites.

“I walked around the city for over a week,” he said.

The air was not good. It had high levels of carbon monoxide, which significantly decreases the amount of oxygen that blood can carry. Added to that were high levels of ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, all of which can inflame and constrict the air passages in the lungs and set off asthma attacks even in people who have never had them.

“When you add in heat and humidity, with the heat index you can expect a sensation, a feeling of 90 to 95 degrees when you are outside,” Dr. Wilber said. “With prolonged exposure and moderate physical activity, you will be on the borderline between caution and extreme caution.”

The physical activity the athletes will be doing could hardly be described as moderate, however.

Parts of the 26-mile course are particularly dirty. “If any of you have driven through the steel mill district of Gary, Ind., that’s what it reminded me of,” Dr. Wilber told the meeting participants.

Air pollution can bring on exercise-induced asthma, even in athletes who never knew they were susceptible, Dr. Wilber said. But the runners cannot simply show up at the race and whip out an inhaler."

My initial reaction to the analogy is total shock, because I know Gary is the murder capital of the US and I could not accept simply by the nature of the two cities, one the capital of my motherland and where I grew up in, the other the rotten heartland and represents everything that could go wrong in capitalism. (I found a picture of Gary .) Now I haven't been to Gary, IN, but have been to Hammond, IN, which is pretty similar. While I couldn't believe he made the comparison, once I started to put my emotion aside and think about it, I must admit it was not an unfair analogy. I began to worry about my parents, who still live in Beijing. The athletes only need to stay in Beijing for a couple of weeks at most, but they are living there and breathing the air every second.

Rice Cycle(稻子的周期)

I came upon this Rice Cycle photo essay made by an American (?) traveller.

My first reaction? I am ashamed. I am deeply ashamed of never knowing, until today, how rice, the staple food for all Chinese, is grown in our motherland. I wish this photo essay were a part of my primary school textbook.

To be fair, I've seen pictures similar to some in there, but to see the whole process from start to finish, it's just unbelievable. The power just cannot be matched by any subset of the whole thing.

My second thought after seeing this laborious process is probably in line with what most Chinese my age who grew up in the city--that it took so long and so much work to grow this thing. And I began to recall how my parents (and all parents) used to tell me we should not waste a single piece of rice if only to respect the work that goes into growing rice and putting it in the bowl on the dinner table.

I'm sure I'll see more of such shocking pictures. Hopefully not from a foreigner's travelog.

On a second thought, maybe it doesn't matter where I see them. Or maybe it's even more meaningful if they are found through foreigners' eyes.

今天看了一组让我震撼的图片.一组住在中国的"老外"拍的关于稻子的照片.虽然这是中国的农村再平常不过的百年不变的日常生活,对于我却是第一次这么清晰.

忽然有些感动,对于这稻子的生命力,这稻田中耕耘的水牛的生命力,在收割完稻田中觅食的鸭子的生命力,以及终日在曝日酷暑下耕耘的人的生命力.

也许有人又要跳出来,说我只喜欢看老外暴露中国阴暗面的东西.如果你真这么想,我也没什么可说的了.

链接

春节的回忆

天安门（1）

终于又有时间写了一些－－在坐火车的时候。也许能看出来写字的时候有点颠簸。
越写越象流水帐了，大概因为这样不费脑子吧。 呵呵。

不熟悉的北京（4）

从小巷出来，向左转，进入一条略微繁忙一些的但一样狭窄的胡同。两边是拥挤的院落。从门口望进去，是蜂窝煤炉冒出的烟下笼罩的简易的民房。从院子里闪出来的面孔和他们说话的口音判断，这里大多是外地来京打工的人租住的。就像他们的居住的位置，他们生活在城市的边缘。他们做着平常没有人注意，却又不可缺少的工作，比如买菜，做早点，修鞋修表--很多人已经如此习惯以致忽视他们的存在，只有在过年大多数外地人回家才意识到他们的重要，发现他们也和其他人一样支撑着这个城市。而他们用劳动换来的，比起那微薄的收入更重要的是对明天的期望和更多的机会。我想，开始我刚到美国的时候，心态和他们没什么两样。正是我们这样的移民，心甘情愿地以极低的报酬努力的工作，去追求自己的忽然非常实际的梦想，给这个城市，或者这个国家，作出不成比例的贡献。比起当时的我，他们的要求可能很低。他们不奢求本地人的尊重，和完全的平等。只希望能有机会，用自己的勤劳和智慧让明天比今天更美好。

我向Ron和John解释着我关于这里居民的猜测。不知道他们是否能体会到这些人生活的艰辛，但我看着他们专著的望着所有身边的人和事的眼神，知道他们对中国的兴趣和认识已经超越了长城，烤鸭，假名牌的层次。能理解这些好像生活在离他们自己的世界远的不能再远的人，也就能理解很多当今的中国，这个生产着几乎所有他们日常所用物品的国家，这个人民对美国爱与恨交织的国家，这个大多未曾亲眼目睹的美国人看来象外星一样无法理解的国家。连我这样一个生于斯长于斯的中国人也好像一下子认识到如何能理解当今中国的最直接有效的方式了。

我忍不住对他们说，“Welcome to the Real China” (欢迎你们到真实的中国).

穿出几条胡同，怀里揣着蝈蝈（好像还没有任何动静），我们回到了酒店。我们展示着我们的成果。其他学生有点羡慕的看着我们的蝈蝈。我想他们还不知道没有看见的，比这两只蝈蝈要有意思得多。

至此我们的旅程的第一天才刚刚开始。

不熟悉的北京（3）

从市场后门出来，一转进了一个小巷。如果说刚才欣欣向荣的宠物市场可能给我们的“外宾”造成对一个国人，或者说北京人与我们所说的“玩物丧志”有关的任何印象的话，那么眼前的景象绝对是一个没有任何折扣的原汁原味到能感觉到脉搏的中国。正对面一个工薪阶层价位的饭馆里伙计们一边忙着把小笼包码进蒸笼一边招呼着顾客。摆在人行道上的简易煤炉上是满满的一大盆，咕嘟咕嘟地冒着热气的，乌黑的茶叶蛋--我想一定象中国在美国上市的股票一样是美味的却充满风险。于是自己心里暗自庆幸已经吃过了早饭，否则……按我抵御美食的能力很可能结果是还没开始的旅程就在这儿结束了。

饭馆的右手是个简易的修车铺。老板一早起来已经开始了一天的工作，蹲在地上静静地却自信给一个扭曲的瓦圈拿龙（写下这句话我惊讶于自己这么多年以后还居然记得如此不常用的专业词汇）--这么早就有这么大的活我想这个修车铺生意看来不错。这时候Ron又开始举着炮筒瞄准这个新的目标了。我忽然意识到Ron是机械工程师出身，现在受雇于美国三大汽车公司之一，负责在不同国家开发多种车型在一个底盘上实现的设计。他和眼前这个修车师傅，工作同是为社会交通便捷安全出力，真可以算的上是“革命分工不同”而已。
在他回到美国以后会如何向他的朋友和家人解释这张照片呢—这个人一天工资可能只有10块美元；这辆车总共也不过30美元；但他的投入，他脸上流露出的自信与满足和一个，比如说，无影灯下做开胸手术的心血管医生不相上下；他可以一蹲就是十几分钟一动不动；他仅凭手里一个小小的铁块在辐条的根部转来转去就可以把这个扭曲的金属环变圆，变直。不管是哪个，有一件事我几乎可以确信--他一定是怀着无比尊敬的心情来描述这张他遥远的同行的照片，并且很可能一边讲着一边把照片放大直至修车人的投入，自信和满足与脸上的灰尘一样清晰可见。一瞬间，一个美国人，确切地说一个高大的，梳洗整齐，金发碧眼的年收入相当于百万人民币的美国白人，和一个蹲在地上的，双手和全身沾满油污的收入只及他几十分之一的黑头发黑眼睛的中国人，在我这个旁观者眼里，竟是如此的相象。

不熟悉的北京（1）

回国第一个早上总是凌晨就醒过来，这次也不例外。早早起了床在酒店用了自助的早餐（久违了油条豆浆！），想出去走走(住在一个熟悉的城市的不熟悉的位置就特别有一种出去走走的欲望)。刚好两个同行的老美Ron 和 John 也想利用我这个免费本地导游，于是挎上相机就这么无目的地晃出酒店。

我们住的酒店在东南三环，本来是感觉有点偏。住下来发现，出了门就是三环路，左右都是酒店或者酒楼，没什么可看的。大街上匆匆的行人，看样子都是外地到北京讨生活的打工仔。疾速驶过的车辆扬起的灰尘缓缓落在马路边的贴满小广告的人行道上。我突然意识这东南角的北京和我习惯的西北角的北京风格迥异。

拐进三环边的小路，边上是个工地，有一人多高的砖墙围着。我想里面除了渣土就是垃圾--Ron仗着他人高马大，不禁扒上去看，还批了啪啦捏了几张。弄得我也心里痒痒的，想进去看。

继续走下去，看到了路边买鞋的商店。真佩服小伙计大冷天这么早就开门了。有价美物廉的皮鞋，也有耐克，阿迪达斯的运动鞋。大概这里很少有老外来吧，开价比我想象的要低。Ron问起一双耐克鞋，我也不知他是真想买，还是就问问价。最后结果是――没有他那么大号的！

再走，就进入了巨大的假古董市场。时间还太早，大多数商家还没开门。远远听到有蝈蝈叫，心里说“久违了”，带着老美就循着声音往那两排店铺之间的走道过去…

美国-->中国

北京，北京

写了两篇感想，想放下来写点更有内容的。

一直想作个手写的blog,也好让我心爱的tablet派上用场。自己的字虽然不算漂亮，看起来还算亲切。终于有了第一篇。

My Trip Home: Beijing(2)

Gotta continue on what I have started.

The first place I wanted to go after seeing my parents was..... the grocery store. Yes, I know it's silly but it's the grocery store I miss the most. All the ready-to-eat cooked meats and vegetarian produce, the yogurts and diary products (yes, they are 100 times better than the American ones), the pickled dry fruits, and not to mention the sunflower seeds. Just standing between the isles and knowing that I can enjoy 99% of the foods here (vs. maybe 10% in an American grocery store) gives me such a warm and fuzzy right-at-home feeling. Plus exploring all the new products developed after I went abroad--I could spend two hours just in a neighborhood grocery store maybe one tenth of the size of a typical American grocery store. And I don't need to buy much to actually eat--the smell and touch is all I need.
Now I remember how excited I was even to enter a Ranch 99 in LA. It combines the Chinese smell and the American size. But not quite in the smell department. Even that could make my heart pounding like I've just run a 3k race. Yes, I know this is embarrassing to admit, but right there, I sensed something that would not change for the rest of my life, no matter how westernized I become.
Back to Beijing, I could not resist but bought some tofu products. Those of you who've been to China know how much variety we have in tofu--dried, fried, pickled, frozen, and other processing I can't even find English for. To us, tofu is like cheese to westerners. We simply cannot live without it. As much as I love cheese, tofu is where my heart is.

I AM home.

My Trip Home: Beijing (1)

The Japan Airlines flight to Beijing was an uneventful except for the sweet voice of the Japanese flight attendants. At the airport, after I got my luggage and went out, I looked around but didn’t find mom or dad in the waiting crowd. I bought an IC phone card to call dad’s cell phone and saw them immediately—they just entered the building seconds ago and were looking into the luggage area. They haven’t changed much in two years, except for the gray hair above dad’s ears. “Mom and dad!” I yelled at them to get their attention. I walked over and wanted to hug them, especially mom, but somehow I didn’t—I’m still regretting to this day. This would never have happened to an American, but once I landed in Beijing, I was back into my Chinese self.
Pushing my cart and dodging the guys with little flyers advertising cheap air tickets, we crossed the street and got into the parking garage. It was just like any garage in America, with multiple stories and painted but compact parking spaces. We walked to our car, a shiny silver Volkswagon Bora (Jetta in the US), which I have seen in pictures. Dad’s dream finally materialized, I thought.
Dad’s driving as mom still didn’t know the direction well. Parking was free for under 30 minutes—again, just like the US. Two years saw a lot of changes in China and I can’t predict what it’ll be like in ten years.

It’s already 10PM by the time we got home. Wife was waiting for me—she’d been back for about two months to treat her back pain (disc degeneration). She’s in pain and of course glad to see me.

I needed a rest, I thought, and quickly went to sleep.

I woke up at around 6AM, with no jet lag at all. It’s always been so smooth after every trip to China.

It’s nice to be home.

People mountain people sea

Well, maybe only the second part, literally.

In today's New York Times: (free registration required)
Every American tourist should see before they come.

Thoughts on food

When I came back to the US from my one-month visit home, the first thing my Chinese friends asked me was always "how did you like the food"? Looking into their envious eyes, I knew my answer would probably upset them:" I only enjoyed the food for the first ten days of my trip."

That was my honest answer, and often was greeted by the what-are-you-talking-about disbelief for the next ten seconds or so, until I broke it with the following:
"Yeah, my stomach was so overwhelmed that after ten days it just took whatever was offered and could not really tell the difference."

My mind fast rewinded to those days in Chengdu and Beijing. Even days right before I came back. Yes, like every Chinese about to go back, I visited the food forums and downloaded the Beijing food map, Chengdu gourmet directory, etc. I’ve asked my Chinese friends here what they had last time they went back. I started to make plans for my little food tour. I couldn't sleep for a couple of days before my trip, thinking of all the food that are waiting for me, those I grew up with, those I have read about for so many times online and those I haven't heard about. What a joy to see, and eat, all the foods I'd been dreaming and reading about!!

It was true. For the first ten days, at least.

Then I started to realize how important the atmosphere can be in an dining experience. It's one thing to eat the food you grew up with in the environment you grew up with--like the 卤煮火烧 I had in a small no-name restaurant in Xisi—don’t take me wrong, it WAS delicious. Yet when the food you want to enjoy is always served in a noisy, steamy, crammed setting, it takes away the joy so much that the taste simply does not matter any more. I tried to blame myself for such snobbishness and force myself to forget the environment and concentrate on just the food.

That did not work. Like foreplay to sex, the atmosphere is indispensable to enjoying good food. Yet unlike the foreplay, I found it out the hard way. :(