No WordPress or Facebook or YouTube in China

Very inconvenient, especially when you want to write posts in your WordPress blog.

Taiwan

My blog has been MIA since I returned to Beijing because of China’s firewall blocks on sites like Facebook and WordPress, but luckily I’ve found a some new proxy software.  So here is my long awaited post:

Taiwan Notes:

• I snorkeled on Taiwan’s northeast coast – saw colorful fishies.
• Two earthquakes, both about 6.5, hit while I was there.  I slept through one of them, which apparently was quite a feat since things were really shifting around, and the other one woke me up at 8 am.  No major damage I think.
• To my surprise, I did not gain weight in Taiwan or Beijing.  In fact, I weighed myself at a gym and found that I’ve actually lost weight since coming from the US.  I attribute this to lots of walking and riding my bike in Beijing.
• Participated in an outdoor sport I have never heard of before: River trekking (I think that’s the best translation from Chinese).  It essentially means hiking upstream a shallow river and climbing up waterfalls (see pictures below).
• I visited Hua Lian on Taiwan’s east coast.  Drive down coastal highway was beautiful.  Family member serves in the Taiwan air force so our living accomodations ended up being at the Hua Lian air force base.  Saw some cool F-16’s.  At night, had tea on a mountaintop resort overlooking a night view of Hua Lian.
• Typhoon Morakot – very very sad.  Many parts of southern Taiwan devastated.  The eye of the storm crossed over Taipei so I didn’t feel much while I was there – just some more rain and a little wind.
• I visited 8 or 9 different night markets and enjoyed every snack I had.
• I had a special shaved ice – almond shaved ice.  Instead of using a regular ice block, they shave an almond milk block – oh baby, baby.
• Went to Taiwan mainly to see my Dad, who was there for a high school reunion.  My two cousins and uncle from Seattle also were there and we lived in Aunt’s house in Xinzhuang.
• Enjoyed the fresh warm spring waters in NE Taiwan.  Felt so much freedom felt while standing naked on a mountainside.
• Disappointed by the rate of expansion of Taipei’s subway system.  Barely changed since I was there in 2002.  Apparently they’re going to finish a new line every year for the next 5 years, but there’s always delays, delays…
• For the second half of my stay in Taiwan, I was on my own in my family’s apartment – the owners live back in Seattle and my cousins, uncle, and dad had already returned home.  It was ok because a friend named Ashley took me out a lot to different places around Taipei.  Got to ride her scooter too!
• I might have gotten minor heatstroke.  I visited the hospital twice in two weeks.
• During my last night in Taipei, Ashley got tickets to see Blue Man Group.  Pretty fun, especially when Chinese people get involved with blue men.

Tony, those were the elevator stalls where you fainted.

Korea in Pictures

Traditional village huts in Jeju

Nice to have the beach to myself

Visited my grandmother’s grave

Jeju Harbor

Near a university district

My dad’s family used to live in a house suspended above this river 30 years ago. It’s been torn down.

Representative of the fashion obsession in Korea – this was in a subway station.

City of Seoul crated a man-made stream flowing through most of the city. Great for walks on hot nights.

Streets near University District

Traditional Korean Drumming

Hundreds of people playing “Go” in the park

Bi Bim Bap!

My dad in front of his elementary school in Seoul

Korea: Superstars, Bosses, and Billionaires

My whole life, I thought my dad was your average, hard-working dad, pretty quiet and doesn’t hang around a whole lot of friends.  After coming to Korea, he showed me a whole other side of him…

Superstars
My dad’s friend is the father of Korean film actress Ha Hee Ra (하희라) and we stayed at their family’s house during our trip to Seoul.   Ha Hee Ra’s dad acted as our tour guide around Seoul.   I didn’t realize at first just how well-known Ha Hee Ra is in Korea until on more than one occasion we walked past  TVs in the mall and he saw one playing a Korea drama and pointed out, “There’s my daughter.”  Apparently, almost everyone in Korea knows of her and her husband.  She is married to Choi Soo Jong (최수종),  another one of Korea’s most famous actors, whom I met one afternoon.  He’s a very kind and welcoming person and I got to chat a little with him before he left (he learned some English in the States).    To my surprise, the same afternoon, I saw an advertisement of him for a golf brand in the mall.  They live in a huge five bedroom house down the street from the house of former president of Korea, Roh Tae Woo, which is the reason for 24 hour security guard surveillance patrolling our area, making it somewhat of a hassle passing through the neighborhood.

Me with Korean superstar Choi Soo Jong (최수종)

The Boss
Another one of my dad’s friends owns one of the largest Chinese restaurants in Seoul – four floors and luxurious in design.  As he treated us to a meal at his place, we found that he happens to have connections all throughout Korea in government, business, and other aspects.  He helped hook us up with a connection at the Chinese embassy up the street:  I needed a visa that allowed me to return to Beijing in late August but my school only provided me a student visa application that allows me to return in September.  My school’s administration made it clear that no visa would be allowed for August, and the same thing was told to me at every travel agency I went to.  I was about to give up the idea of returning to Beijing in August until the restaurant boss said his connection at the embassy could hook me up.  I went to the embassy and within 20 minutes his friend cleared me for a visa that allowed me to return in the month of August.  Amazed, I picked up the visa the very next day.  I will be back in Beijing August 21st.  Please compare this experience to my first blog entry, Difficulties at the Chinese Embassy.

The Billionaire
My dad has another friend that is a property developer in LA, Hawaii, and Korea.  Besides his Beverly Hills home, he also has a place in a brand new condo development near the heart of Seoul.  He invited us to his pad and we had a nice time of tea and while he showed us some of his latest calligraphy works.  With my interest in real estate, I picked his brain on a number of issues surrounding property development in Asia and the United States.  Another great part is that he’s an avid golfer, which was a great topic of converstaion – that, and the fact that he owned a couple golf courses…

Change in Plans

Staying in Beijing
Originally I intended to stay in Beijing until the end of the summer when I would begin work in San Francisco.  But earlier this spring the management at my company decided to push back my start date until winter 2009 due to the slow economic conditions.  I was actually uplifted by the news since it would give me the opportunity to stay in China for another semester.  After the summer break, I will re-enroll at my university to continue the next level of Chinese classes at BLCU.  This means though I won’t return to the US for a while.  In October, although, I will visit Seattle (hopefully San Francisco too) to attend my cousin’s wedding.

Taiwan and Korea
During the summer break I will stay in Taiwan where both my parents will join me.  My dad has a school reunion in Taipei and some family members offered to let us stay in their apartment during the summer.  I arrive on July 8th and return to Beijing on August 20th.   During our Taiwan trip, however, my dad will take me to Korea to visit friends and see where he grew up on the island of Cheju, which is now more of a resort location.

I wished to see all of you back in the US a lot sooner, but you know how life is – things change!  Please keep me in your prayers as I continue my service in reaching out to Chinese people who haven’t heard the gospel.  A friend of mine is going to get baptized this month!

Vacations are the best – Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Singapore

China Travels
Last week a friend and I took tour through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Nanjing.  We originally planned to do the adventurous backpacking thing on our own but the price of the tour group package was too good to pass up:  A five day, four night trip which includes round-trip airfare, food, hotels, buses throughout each city and transportation between cities, all for the unbelievably low price of $230 USD.  Of course, the trip included some of the touristy gimmicks like shopping centers to coerce us to buy stuff, and putting up with a rigid schedule all day that left us exhausted,  but it was all still very worth it.

I had already seen Shanghai before which is actually not that special to be honest.  The places I was most looking forward to were Hangzhou and Suzhou, which are supposed to be “heaven on earth.”  Both were beautiful places, but I wouldn’t quite call them heavenly.  After traveling to five other Chinese cities, I’ve realized that Beijing is one of the best places to be – I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in China – Shanghai is too urban, too congested, even more so than Beijing.  Hangzhou and Suzhou on the other end don’t have the flair of a big city, but are packed with tourists.  And Nanjing is small and ugly.  I am fortunate to be able to travel and see these different places all in one trip.  Some pictures of our adventures:

Check out the bottle opener building, currently the tallest I think?

We stayed in the most ghetto hotels. The sign says "2 hours for 48 yuan (about $7)"

You can tell that it was a big boy Buddha.

Roger and I cruising the Suzhou water

A very weird place, some convention center/temple for Buddhists.

Singapore Trip
I went to Singapore this past weekend to see my cousin’s high school graduation.   Singapore is a small, clean, hot, humid, unpolluted, quirky, and boring place.  Lots of rich people here – in the parking garage of my family’s building there are a few Lamborghini’s, Ferrari’s, Maserati’s, Bentley’s, and Rolls Royce’s, interspersed between BMW’s and Mercede’s.  Other than seeing shopping malls where all the rich people go, I ate good Malaysian and Indian food, checked out the night life at Clark Quay.  It’s so sad that everywhere I go, I keep gaining weight; just too much to eat in Asia.

Misc Notes
Chinese people text like mad.  The surprising thing is that most people of older generations can communicate through text, whereas back in the US my mom doesn’t even know that her phone has a text function.  To keep up with the texting madness, I bought a Blackberry Curve with a keyboard with which I can type much more easily.

I ride my bicycle everyday.  I buy used bikes from a nearby shop, which probably gets their bikes from stealing them off university campuses or parking lots.  I must buy used bikes because new bikes will get stolen – even my first junky bike already got stolen and I’m already on my second one now.  Both bikes cost less than $12 USD.  The problem is that I put up with a lot of repairs which end up costing up to half the price of the orginal price I paid for the bike.

Mid-May Update

Has it really been over a month since my last post???  I can’t believe it.  Time flies. Sorry, guys.  I mean to keep it updated, but you know how amateur bloggers like me can be…inconsistent…

English Class

I started teaching the English class for Chinese students a few weeks ago.   A bit nervous at first, but slowly got the hang of it as I got to know the children a little better.  We read a chapter of Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe together.  The older kids, eight or nine years old, could handle it, but the younger ones had a tougher time following along. This past week we had a more interactive PE class outside at the Peking University campus and I taught them Western playground games like Red Rover, Simon Says, and Leap Frog.  Some of them have never played these games before so they were lovin’ it.

Cheng De
I went on a weekend trip to a city called Cheng De, a little resort town about a 4 hour drive northeast of Beijing.  It’s the place where the Qing emperors pretty much built a whole palace to hang out when it got too hot in Beijing during the summer.  A lot of beautiful temples – one of them had the largest wooden Buddha statue in the world – and a huge park that looked similar to the Summer Palace in Beijing.

English Corner
Every Saturday night I volunteer to teach conversational English to a group of Chinese college students.  Many students are desperate to learn English there and I have a lot of fun with my conversation with them.  Its held in the apartment of this Christian couple who really just wants to give back to the community and enlists young foreigners like me to help out with this English session.  At the end of every session, many of the students are really interested to learn about Christianity and they often stay much later in the night to hang out and talk.

Church
A friend from a fellowship here took us to a Chinese church near where I live, and we’ve started to make that our home church every week.  We feel a much more personable and welcoming atmosphere here than the other church we used to attend  since many students and families go here.  What’s different though is that it’s hidden way up in this office building where the church occupies one of the floors.  There are no signs or directions in the building so it’s impossible to find unless someone takes you there.  One advantage of this is that it has more independence from the government than many of the larger churches here.  We are now getting in touch with students at nearby universities who can take us to weekly  small groups

Random Notes:

Within a five minute bike ride from my apartment, I can reach more than nine different universities in the Wudaokou area, each with a student population of more than 20,000.   I see tons of students around here, but for some reason I don’t have that university-town feel that I get back in the states, mainly because we’re still in an urban atmosphere and there are still so many Chinese people, who aren’t students, going about their business.

I have grown accustomed to seeing young women interlocking arms or holding hands, a common sight in Asia but not so common in the US. The past week, I discovered another interesting fact about this bit of social interaction. Not only do girls hold hands with close or intimate friends, but female acquaintances also freely hold hands. Let me explain: two of my local Chinese friends, both girls, met for the first time. The three of us were walking down the sidewalk, but I walked a little bit ahead of them because I knew the direction. I left my two friends to talk alone right behind me. One minute later, I turned around and noticed that they had already interlocked arms while they were walking and talking. They had just only met two minutes before!  That’s female solidarity right there.

I didn’t really feel a spring time in Beijing.  Went from cold to hot pretty fast.  This weekend looking to be over 90 degrees.

I found Chinese people who got mad handle on the basketball courts.  I play with them a few times a week now.

Mid-April Update

KTV with Teachers
We invited our language teachers out to Korean BBQ and KTV with our class, and surprisingly they agreed to join us. So that we week, we spent several hours practicing a selection of Chinese classic songs such as, 一路上有你，月亮代表我的心，北京欢迎你，朋友，and many others. I worked on Jay Chou’s 安静 (An jing) and sung it at our KTV night. Our main reading/writing teacher has a really awesome voice and made it into a real party with the microphone.

My favorite teacher, teaches our Chinese Culture class

Teaching English
I mentioned I am going to teach English to a class of children in our church. After getting off to a slow start, we plan to have our first class this Saturday. I’ve prepared some lessons for Saturday’s first class and discussed the curriculum with the other teachers. I’m pretty excited and a little nervous at the thought of working with Chinese kids, but no matter what it’ll be a worthwhile experience.

I’ve started to participate in a weekly language exchange with local Chinese students. Actually it’s mainly a group of American Christians, including me, practicing spoken English with Chinese students. One of the leaders of this group felt that this was a great way to share the gospel to Chinese students in a friendly way. I’ve found that the students learn a lot, and I really enjoy my conversation with them. They are curious about the gospel and ask a lot of good questions, and we always try to find opportunities for them to join us at church.

Other Random Notes

I ate donkey meat and frog legs this past week. I really liked the frog legs, which I’ve eaten before, but the donkey meat was ok…

At Pan Jia Yuan market I saw for sale a passport belonging to some random Chinese guy. Ghetto.

Chinese people have a more objective view of beauty. For example, they consider fat girls just plain ugly. In America, if we say fat people are not nice looking, we’re speaking about half the population, and we don’t want to offend half the population. But that’s not the case in Asia. The few fat people that are here are considered ugly – that’s just as fact.

The level of pollution and haziness changes drastically from day to day depending on the weather. Some days, I can’t see more than a couple hundred meters and I don’t even want to go outside. Other days, it’s completely blue skies, fresh air, and smog-free. My guess is it’s 50% of the time either one of these cases.

Despite sharp criticism from my Western friends and family, I have been growing my hair out to a much longer length than I am accustomed to. In fact, when a friend, Steph Jung, visited me this past weekend she did not recognize me until I stood directly in front of her and yelled at her face a couple times.

Some Pictures

Visited the "Peking Man" excavation site in the outskirts of Beijing, in one of the caves

Donkey meat taco style

Rhino in Beijing?

A beautiful park. We took a boat out on the water.

Great Wall Birthday

I celebrated my birthday on the Great Wall.  Our school scheduled a class trip for all the students to visit the Mutianyu section of the wall, which is actually very beautiful because of the surrounding scenery.  One of the classmates was kind enough to carry a cake nearly one kilometer up the steps (not a simple feat), and we had a mini birthday celebration in one of the watchtowers.

Surprisingly, the cake survived the trek up the wall.

In the evening I invited students from my class to go out to dinner at a more fancy Chinese restaurant near our school.  Complete with our own private room, it was quite a fun evening.  So I consider myself blessed to already have some good friends in China to celebrate my birthday with.

And finally, what really made my day was an online facebook digital birthday card from friends back home.  It’s so nice to hear from friends back home and wish I could have spent the day with them too.

You can't tell, but I'm really tired after climbing up that far.

Fever

I have been sick for the past four days with some sort of cold/flu. Normally with colds, I don’t like to take medicines, not even tylenol, and instead I just tough it out and drink lots of water. This time, however, it is some sort of intense China-strained mutation that has sacked my energy, leaving me bedridden for the past weekend. After several days of coughing and a wastebasket full of tissues, I finally went to our school’s hospital and saw a nurse. Discovered that I had a temperature (can’t remember how high) and bought a whole package of different antibiotics and medicines. It seems like Chinese people are inclined to take medicine, which contrasts with the natural remedy approach I’d usually expect from Eastern medicine, and much different from my “tough it out” approach.  Four different medicines, take two doses of each, three times a day.  Do the math and that’s 24 pieces of medicinal paraphernalia entering my system everyday.

Oh well, I did feel a little better this morning.