Absolutely horrific news for a straighter than straight girl such as I:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/chem_trust_reports_on_male_feminisation/

Yesterday I went to see the Great Wall in HuangHua area. The Great Wall meanders on the northern outskirt of Beijing, so there are a couple of spots people usually go when they want to visit the Great Wall. Manuela, a nice girl from Columbia who I met in the hostel, and I chose to go to HuangHua because it receives far less tourists, and is closest to Beijing city compared to other spots.

The night before I didn’t get any sleep at all because of the thought of going to the Great Wall, and getting there just the two of us girls. In the morning we prepared ourselves in what we thought was warm clothes, brought along a ton of sesame bread and fruits and set out according to the plan written on Lonely Planet.

It was pretty straight forward in the city to go to the main subway station and get on the bus that goes to the main town on the outskirt. However, when we hit the outskirt town we still had to transfer by minibus, so written on Lonely Planet, in order to get to the Great Wall site. Once we got off the bus there were underground taxi drivers shouting at us trying to get us to go with their car and pay way more than the public minibus that we were trying to find. I tried to ignore them while holding on to M, and started to walk across the street where the minibus is supposed to be. Most of the hawkers left when they saw I wasn’t interested, except for one that kept yelling in my ears and following me and tapping my shoulders all the time that I was trying to walk. “80 yuan! 80 yuan! That’s the cheapest you can find. The public bus is not there anymore, you can look on your book, it’s not there anymore. Miss! Miss! I’ll take you guys right there…” I kept saying okay, okay, no thank you, not interested, no no, but it didn’t seem to work. He kept following us for about 5 minutes while I was trying to find the minibus. Finally on the sidewalk, I stopped walking and turned to his jabbering face and started to yell at him loudly, “Where’s your car? Over there? I already told you I’m looking for the public bus, or some other way to get there. Why don’t you go back there and If in the end I can’t find anything I’ll go with you. Your following me like this I can’t even freakin’ walk on the street! I feel so annoyed! Okay!?” While all this was coming out of my mouth and I could hear my own high pitched voice, I saw this guy’s face froze for about 3 seconds, then he went away.

I really don’t yell at people at all and I couldn’t believe I did it. While taking a deep breath I saw more guys coming over, at least 8 of them who might have heard me yelling to the previous guy. They were walking towards us and talking to us at the same time asking where we were going and how much we’d pay. I said I was looking for the bus that goes to the Great Wall. They looked at each other, lots of them smiling, some said the bus doesn’t exist anymore, some maybe even shouted out some price. I tried to find someone else to get help from, but with this group of people it was hard to talk or walk. I stayed real close to M and shouted to this group of people, looking at them in their eyes and said loudly, “We came such a long way here, just to take a look at the great wall! Don’t lie to me! You’re all lying to me! Where’s the bus?!” They all looked at each other, some shaking their heads, some smiling in a bizarre way and some said no no not lying to you, how much how much. I think I said “don’t lie to me” and “you’re all lying to me” at least 5 or 6 times, then finally there was a sound bursting out of the crowd:

“Walk straight pass the traffic light there’s a bus station.”

That guy was a young guy smiling a bit, while all other guys looking at him like “aw you such a spoil sport.” I might have forgotten to say thank you to him in such a chaotic situation, I really should have if I didn’t because what he said was like a message sent from god at the time. I quickly translated it to M and walked away together, leaving the crowd behind us.

After we got on the local minibus it was all good, with nice local people with us. There was a young girl who was very eager to practice English with M and me, and was helping us to get to the great wall site because her grandparents live up there at the bottom of the hill. We even went to visit their house for a minute before we went into the park.

The scenery was amazing and calming after all these days running around in the huge and chaotic city, and for sure the Great Wall was one of the craziest projects that my ancestors ever did.  Alas since this area was not developed for big tourist traffic, the wall was not repaired and it was completely not climbable, near 90 degree slopes outgrown with grass and trees, so we just hiked in the mountain while admiring the great wall from afar.

While we were hiking alongside a creek going toward “Black Dragon Pool,” there were more and more occasions that we had to cross shallow streams. Suddenly out of nowhere came this weather beaten old man, maybe around 50 or 60, wearing an old green camouflage jacket carrying a machete like thing coming towards us. Maybe it was because I was scared by the taxi hawkers when coming to the park, I looked at M in front of me and thought, if this guy start to swing his machete against M I’m gonna have to do something. But fortunately that was just my stupid thinking, and I even said “Nihao!” to him. He said, “Are you going forward? It’s really hard to cross the river, it may even be impossible!” Then he took his machete and chopped down two branches for us to use as walking sticks, without which we wouldn’t have been able to cross the ever widening stream with shaky stepping stones in the middle. He then told us to stick to the left (靠”做”走!) if we want to go to “Black Dragon Pool.” With the help of the walking sticks, we crossed the river a couple more times, then saw that both sides of the river were lined with giant stones without a path, and the water substantially deeper than before. We looked at each other, me kept saying “but he told us to stay to the left…what?”

We went up to the rocks a little closer, then realized what he meant. Compared to the big rocks on the right side of the river, the rocks on the left side were more rounded and had a bit more foothold possibilities. We went ahead, hanging on to the rock surface over the river, step by step going from one rock to another. Finally we came around to a pool like area with both sides lined with steep sloping huge rocks, behind which was towering rocky cliffs. We saw praying flags flying on the branches of trees that grew on the unreachable cliffs and wondered how they got there.

We inspected the steep cliffs on both sides, making sure that it is absolutely impossible to climb without any harness before we gave up going forward. We suspected that what is called Black Dragon Pool must be a grand lake which lies ahead of the cliffs. We climbed the huge rocks again to go back. Because it was so slippery and the footholds/handholds were small, we had to throw our walking sticks ahead of us and used all fours to climb. With bad aim, or just being nervous, I accidentally threw my walking stick into the river.

While just worrying about how to go forward without the walking stick, the old man appeared again! He asked us whether we’ve crossed, and told us that the pool of water Was Black Dragon Pool, and it IS possible to go up the cliffs! Following his pointing finger, around where lots of praying flags were flying there was a little shrine nestled on the face of the cliff on the right. “I just came from there!” I walked over to take a closer look at the bottom of the cliff, then I decided…not today without a harness! I shall come back with proper equipment before I give this a try! He also fetched another stick for me to replace the lost one. We couldn’t help but think that he must be a mountain god of some sort, maybe coming down from the shrine on the cliff where he lives!

(click for bigger picture, the shrine is behind the cluster of praying flags, where there’s also a couple of small trees)

In the mountain everything was full of life and mysterious, so much more beautiful than the grey city. We saw one park ranger whistling on the side of the road, three sleeping in a small warm hut beside the river, two in the same bed and one on the desk, reminding me of Broke Back Mountain

In the evening when we came back, we went for spicy hotpot on the side of the road to warm ourselves back up, and as a fairwell meal to M and my roomate as they go on to the next destination of their journeys.

Ok I haven’t been updating almost any of my travel. But I have to write something about yesterday, because it was such a magical day. In the morning I did my usual thing, walking across the small hutong street to go to the traditional market to get some fresh hot soymilk to make breakfast with. There’s this little shop that sells sesame oil, sesame paste and little round flat bread at the end of of the market that always have people standing around buying stuff. The typical Beijingers’ breakfast include some fermented soybean milk, a couple of those flat bread and fried thin flaps of doughy thing. I’ve had similar versions of them in Taiwan, and honestly they’re not my favorite food, rather dry I’d say. But yesterday I decided to give the little round flat bread a try and see if it’s any good.

There were two kinds. One was with sugar, the other kind was salty with sesame paste inside. I bought one of the latter and went back to the hostel kitchen. In case the bread was dry, I also got soymilk and cooked up some pork and bok choy to go with, but lo and behold, this was the most amazing thing made with dough that I’ve ever had. I suppose it’s because the shop makes their own sesame oil and sesame other things, the outer crust of the little round bread was a little crispy, but not hard, rich, but not oily, flaky, but instead of being like baklava with a thousand flakes, there were only a few big layers of light crisps that melts in your mouth with the aroma of sesame. The inside of the bread was even more amazing. Instead of being dry and flat, like nan, there was some thickness to it, and when I bit into it, the first bite there was a bit of elastic texture, like the dough was well kneaded, upon the second chewing the thin layer of freshly milled sesame paste flowed in my mouth and it’s richness came in to moisturize the bread, after the third chewing the bite of bread was ready to be swallowed. It was everything but the dry, plain, hard, chewy thing that is often called bread. I finished the bread all by itself only way too fast before touching the soymilk or the vegetables. Someone told me, hey you’ve got sesame seeds dotting your mouth. And of course, it was 0.6 yuan, devided by 7 would be the dollar amount, so it was not even one cent! What can I say, you gotta love your hutong, its people and its food.

Then I helped an Australian dude to get online in the internet cafe and print out some stuff, then I went to the 798 art district in the outskirt of the city. I’d say China is a country specialized in setting up “special districts,” be it financial special district, political special district or cultural special districts, you cannot underestimate these special districts. This 798 art district is again massive just like China itself, converted from some national eletric factories and houses inumorous galleries, studios and public installations. If you’ve been to San Francisco art walk, or Oakland art walk, please allow 2 to 3 times more square feet for each gallery, time all those gallereis by twenty or thirty, and lay them all out in a huge park with ample space in between to put giant statues, then it’d be a little like the 798 art district. I started from one end, visited about 4 galleries in a row, then I got tired, then it was a hell of a walk to find a place to sit down and have lunch (while seeing people brining their substinance along in their backpacks, this is totally hard core). I finally found this little place that cooks family style chinese food that was a little bit overpriced (compared to my hostel’s hutong) but I couldn’t care so much. The food was okay I think, but while I was chewing away my beef with too much chili, this guy came in to have a cup of tea with the owner, then they started to talk about the difference between having a show in France and in Beijing. After I finished my lunch, I plucked up the courage to ask that guy if he was an artist, and in fact he was an artist called Li Xin, and a very kind person, and the owner of the restaurant was dragging an extra chair over for me, poured me a cup of tea, and invited me to sit down and chat, it was like a dream.

I went to see Li’s show just right next door in an again huge warehouse like building, and chatted with him for a bit more than an hour, discussing all sorts of things from his art making process, what he thinks of western audience and Chinese audience, and how he chooses his directions…etc.

Apparently Li has never had to do any kind of art that he doesn’t like in order to make money, and he also doesn’t work 8 hours a day and 5 days a week as an artist. He said that he rests a lot, spending most time resting and living life, and then do art, and even doing art is a kind of resting itself. His direction is not that of social critisism like a lot of contemporary Chinese art that you see a lot in the pages of Art Forum with little soldiers with red flags or chairman Mao or whatnot. His works are very atmospheric, like a kind of scented air that you walk into, and then you can turn around and see the scenery around you, and color or the air, and the faint color of your own mood. He likes to do just one seemingly boring thing, but repeat it everyday to see the slow evolution of the big direction and the small differences between each pieces. I think his works definitely have a bit of the paper and ink wash quality that you can find from a lot of traditional Chinese paintings, but the fact that the entire painting was about exploring the texture and interaction of marks seems very contemporary. There was a very gentle and perhaps unintentional integration of what’s traditional and what’s contemporary. He also mentioned that at this time right now maybe art is not the first thing on Chinese people’s minds, but maybe in the future. In the galleries on Sunday, there were lots of people walking around looking at the art works, while the sign beside almost each work says “no photos, no touching,” everyone was posing beside the paintings or the sculptures and taking pictures like the art works were baseball game mascots. This phenomenon goes with how people in Beijing blatantly ignore the traffic signs, and that taking pictures is the only way to prove that you’ve been to somewhere and have done something (except for eating.) I was so thrilled to have had such a chance to meet and talk with this international artist, it definitely made my day. But oh no, my day wasn’t over yet! 

When I came back to the hostel in the evening, there was a group gathering to go have some Peking duck, however they weren’t going to the very famous Quanjude, the best Peking duck restaurant in Beijing which is the best Peking duck restaurant in the world. So I went with another Australian teenager who was in his gap year traveling around the world before he went to college. And my oh my, I tell you what, after last night’s roast duck I’m never to have any other roast duck unless I have it in the same restaurant. Do you like crispy skins on your thanksgiving roast turkey? All the crispy skin from anything I’ve ever had was nothing compared to this crispy skin from Quanjude’s duck. Truly crispy, never a bit of chew, with fresh duck fat and juices flowing in your mouth. The duck meat was full of flavor and juice, again never a bit of chew ever! Most of the time a roast bird would have some seasoning or sauce or whatnot on the skin, but there was no such sticky seasoning on the duck last night, it was just the plain, full original flavor of the roast duck.

The restaurant can have such fantastic ducks because the business starts all the way from the raising of the ducks themselves, so you won’t be able to get this kind of duck anywhere else. Apparently I wasn’t in on the know, I let them take the remains of the duck bones and serve me duck bone soup, but actually you can ask to keep the entire bones of the duck when it still has a lot of meat leftover on it, take it home, have more meat and make the soup yourself. And also I made an unforgivable mistake: I FORGOT TO TAKE MY VIDEO CAMERA WITH ME!!! However, seeing it and talking about it is ways from actually tasting it, so, I’m going to leave it at that here.

Anywho, who knows what adventure awaits me today, I’m just going to relax and let it unfold on its own! First I gotta get off the internet…

Our apartment is actually a house that got split in two, or the so-called “duplex.” Some duplexes are split in upper and lower halves, while ours is split into front and back halves. We live in the front half of the house, and recently after the bunch of post-college-youngsters-like-ourselves moved out in July, a French family with three kids moved in next door.

At first, I was just so excited about all the “French noise” happening when they came in and out of the house; I was really thinking of them like they are aliens descending from another planet (yeah, while I AM also an “alien” in this country). Although we live in a world that is more and more estranged all the time, I decided that it is not okay to not get to know our neighbors, especially if there is only a wall, a thin one that is, between us. We gave them an invitation to come over for dinner, and it was accepted.

Then it was panic time. They are French, I may be in for a rude awakening that in my whole life I do not know how to cook, eat or drink, I thought. Anything that is remotely western wouldn’t do, be it roast chicken, poached salmon, even mashed potatoes would just utterly reveal my lack of culinary skills. Okay, being Taiwanese, I do have a couple of dishes that are just hard to mess up, and it would be unlikely that the French would claim expert in some traditional Taiwanese dish. Just when I plotted this Chinese dinner, I heard that the French are going to bring wine and fruit salad for the dinner party, then one of our roommates offered to bring bread and cheeses. There was a train wreck in my brain. Yeah, stewed beef with ginger soy sauce is NOT going to be on the same table with red wine, bread and cheeses!

On the day of the dinner party, I scrambled to find something to make to feed 10 people that will not be laughed at by the French. Something Californian, local, unheard of was my hope. In the end, I gave up, and went for “chicken marbella” as the main( which I have tried in a couple of more casual dinner party situation and had not failed and I love this dish myself), sauteed onions and color bell peppers as the side. Cooking vegetables is just as hard as cooking meat, if not harder. To serve veggies at the right moment of doneness is very difficult, especially in a house party when I’m not sure when people are coming, or when people are sitting down and ready to eat. I need to make something that, even if it sits on the stove for 5 minutes longer it wouldn’t be all discolored and gross, and if it is slightly underdone it would still be pleasantly edible. Bell peppers fall into this category so I chose it to be the side.

Both the main and the side came out okay, and I did have my awakening moment. I was judging our neighbors by the stereotypical image of “French” that is constructed by our horrible mass media. No they did not point to the bread and cheese that we got from Berkeley Bowl and said ‘how can you eat this,’ in fact they like shopping in Berkeley Bowl. They also didn’t point to the chicken and tell me ‘next time you can try putting some white wine in there.’ In fact, they are very nice people, enjoying their new lives in the Bay Area, and getting to know their neighbors, us. The children are sweet, smart and funny. We played mouse trap after dinner. I found that with so many differences between us, and that they are from a different part of the world, there are even more similarities between us. And most importantly, we are all human beings.

Last week, we accepted their invitation to go over and have dinner. It was as if I didn’t learn from our last dinner, I started to panic again. It would be time for US to bring WINE! Oh my, I know nothing about wine since I don’t drink. The only brand I know is Charles Shaw and I probably shouldn’t bring that to the French. I went to a corner liquor store and saw a bunch of wine covered with dust that is only $5.99, and the shop keeper doesn’t even drink so couldn’t recommend anything for me. Then I went to WholeFoods, and asked for the wine department expert to help me pick out the wine that “is inexpensive but would not be embarrassing to bring to dinner party with French.” Between one French wine and one California wine that the guy recommended, I chose the Californian 2006 Stephen Vincent Crimson.

In the French part of the house, we saw the super creative “zoo”, “car” and “boat” that was made by the little kid out of Berkeley Bowl shopping bags, simple bedrooms that have the same Ikea stuff as ours do, and the small bright kitchen that has chairs surrounding a small dining table that is full of food. We had very tasty ratatouiile, a traditional French dish with slow cooked veal in sour cream sauce, rice, fruit salad, home made bread and of course, the wine.  I got three servings of the ratatouille, and was thoroughly enjoying the food, the conversation and company of the adorable French family and my roommates, and the wine just sort of blended in, tasty as everything else. It was a wonderful night.

After these two gatherings with our French neighbors, I found that they not only are just like us, there are subtle things that make each of them a different, unique person. The way the dad likes to say “in fact” in almost every sentence, the way the mom doesn’t like the idea of getting an iPhone, the way the daughter laughs at her mom’s English, and the way the little kid step by step walked into the kitchen with a costume made with grocery bags and scotch tape.

I first noticed the difference, then I noticed the similarities, then I notice the difference, and I’m just getting to know them all the time. I’m sure we are going to have a good year ahead of us.

Jay Chou is my favorite Taiwanese singer. No one EVER tops him! Even if he mumbles most of the time. He’s huge in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. For me, he is up there along with Oasis, Regina Spektor and Coldplay.

This song is one of my favorite of his, the video tells a beautiful story, although the moral of it is not clear, you have to interpret it yourself. As for the lyrics, it’s all lovey dovey so you don’t really need translation for that…or do you?

Personally, in this video, I like the red lady better than the white lady, she’s just too much of a victim. The red lady actively pursuit her happiness in life, although in an evil way. Plus I like red.

Through talking to other people and just living and observing myself, I found that I am a little paranoid. What about? About a lot of small things in life, to a degree that it protects me but not makes me crazy.

For example, every time I ride a bike I suppose that I could be hit by a car just on that day, therefore I never skip wearing my helmet. Every time I walk on the streets alone after sunset I suppose that there’d be some bad guy jumping out of the dark to attack me, therefore I always keep my eyes on my surrounding. Every time I carry a bike downstairs to the bart station I suppose I might just fall and break my neck, therefore I step with careful attention. Every time I bring along my wallet out the door I suppose it’d be stolen by some crafty thief, therefore I always keep an eye on my wallet, cell phone and keys when I go out and make sure that they’re with me. Every time a guy starts to say weird sounding things to me I suppose they’re trouble and turn on my “fuck you” face.

However, a lot of things people are afraid of I’m not worried about, because most of those things are out of my control. For example, plane crash, natural disasters, getting cancer (I do my best to live a healthy life, but if I still get cancer there’s really not too much I can do), getting fat (I simply do not get fat) or getting dumped (I can’t control someone else’ heart).

Just came back from the Chinese consulate in SF to apply for my visa to China, was quite an experience. Not that something spectacular happened, but I was able to observe how I interacted with the city through the trip there.

First, I got in the consulate about two minutes before they pulled down the metal scrolling door. It was unbelievable that I biked from civic center bart station all the way up the hills to the consulate within 10 minutes, if under usual circumstances I would’ve died half way. It wasn’t too difficult to find the door to the consulate because there were people protesting outside. I pulled out all the documents that I prepared according to the website’s intructions, and was mentally prepared to be screwed over and told “go home and try again” by consulate workers.

It was pretty noisy because the staff at every service window was talking through a microphone like they were selling movie tickets. Languages spoken: English with American accent, English with Chinese accent, Chinese with Cantonese accent, Chinese with Taiwanese accent, Chinese with Beijing accent. Of course when it was my turn I found out that I filled out the wrong form, but the lady who helped me was surprisingly nice. Not the second lady though after I filled out the correct form. Sort of your regular “China town lady” face, but I’m quite used to it already, and actually was glad that my application went through at all.

Taiwan has always been, I think, a mix of three cultures: Chinese, American and Japanese. The Chinese side is more rude but true, while the American and Japanese sides of it are glossier, cleaner but unreal. And of course in the end these three cultures blend into each other and form something that is just purely Taiwanese in an amusing form. Since I’ve gotten a good dosage of American culture by now, it’d be interesting to see how the other two have formed the country that I come from.

I’m just waiting to see which country is going to treat me better.

Fujiki Naohito 藤木直人. Don’t you think? Walt can have his Keira Knightly, I’ll like my Fujiki. Oh, maybe I’ll meet him when I’m in Tokyo, (*bouncing*) what do you think? what do you think? (＝⌒▽⌒＝)

This image was found on his facebook club.

Today I went to karate class like I usually do on Tuesday evenings. We practiced some basic moves and katas, and afterwards my classmates and I joked around with each other and practiced some drills on our own. There was a new guy that has been coming to class occasionally who has a pretty strong build, and I can see he probably has some previous fighting experience.

Anywho, I jokingly said to him and R, “why don’t you guys fight, I’ll watch!” Since after class we often just practice light fighting on our own, maybe review what was just learned in class, and for me it’s great to learn from watching seniors fight. I didn’t think twice about what I said, and it seemed like R was also ready to do some practice with him. To my surprise, this new guy had a very bizarre look on his face and said to me half seriously and half proudly, “Are you sure? You want me to fight? Do you want to see blood? Huh?”

Now I have to explain that I am a very visual person and that I associate every thought and memory with visual references, and often layer visual imagination with what I actually see through my eyes. When this guy said something about drawing blood from my beloved classmate R I could immediately see blood gushing out of R because of a light fighting practice after class with this guy. It may not have seemed like it from the outside, but I felt so disgusted, sad and angry because of what he said. If one understands even the most basic principals of martial arts and what it is to be a truly great fighter, he would never be so proud of himself just because he thinks he has the ability to threaten the life of another human being.

Granted I am definitely not the one who knows the most about martial arts or any kind of fighting, but since I started to learn karate I’ve met some pretty amazing fighters, karate or others, and none of them would even have the attitude that would accompany such conceited words. Now maybe this guy is a great street fighter, grew up in a ghetto and still fights for a living or for survival day in day out, honestly I don’t care. Just the fact that he was so proud of his ability to hurt his fellow classmate has made me lose all my respect for him, not that it matters to him, I figure.

He’d have to do something pretty big to earn back my respect, like, save a life.