Lucky

The chinese have so many different ways to get luck.  The pictures are (mostly) from the top of Taishan (Mount Tai), one of the seven famous mountains in China in Tai'an.  The candles are from a Taoist temple at the top of Laushan (Mount Lau), here in Qingdao.  Most of these ways to get luck involve leaving some totem (or money, or both) somewhere very beautiful, and preferably very high.  When you are that close to heaven, I guess you take your chance..

I have asked many people about what they think of luck.  The Chinese view of luck is very different from American superstition, which is basically the avoidance of bad luck and misfortune.  Here, people want to get good luck, good fortune, etc.  Most people don't really seem to believe (literally) in supernatural powers that bestow or withhold luck, but the attitude seems to be 'what can it hurt'?  I take this attitude to be hopeful optimism, which rubs off.  Looking at these offerings makes me happy and optimistic, too.  

Spring

Qingdao is full of flowers in the spring.

Good Morning, Mr. Magpie

How are we today?

Magpies are everywhere in town.  The European magpie is very intelligent, and is one of the only animals that passes the mirror test.  I assume the Korean magpie (what I understand to be the subspecies that we have here) is every bit as smart.

I have always known a magpie was a bird, but I have never lived in a place with magpies, so I never saw them growing up.  Since visiting Europe, I have always known about those large black-and-white birds (Elster in German).  But I never put together the word 'magpie' with the thing 'magpie.'  Of course, in Chinese, there is a third thing -- the character for magpie.

Great wall

We went to Beijing over the weekend, and went to the Great Wall twice.  The two times could not have been more different.  The first time was  by Mutianyu.  The wall here is straighter, and everything was in a deep, thick fog.  There were not many tourists, and the whole thing seemed very calm and erie.

The second day we went to Badaling.  In the snow!  The snow made everything look bright and clear, and at least for the first part of the day, we could see for miles.  The snow made the walkways very slippery, and walking along the wall in huge crowds while trying not to slip on the steep walkways was exhausting.

Faithful readers will notice that this is the fist post where I show something further away than a short walk from the apartment.

Silas looks at things

Stefanie and Silas came to visit us in Qingdao for their spring break.  We took Silas on a walk through the neighborhood, down to the street market down the street, and he looked at things.  First, we saw kids in the day care down the street.  They were practicing some sort of karate; the teacher was quite serious about making sure they did it right.  I see these kids outside doing their morning exercises every day on my way to the shuttle that takes me to the Laoshan campus.

Here, Silas is looking at some chickens on the street.  If it is not clear that these chickens are for dinner, then the feathers coming out the shoot on the right should clarify that point.

The seafood market is really spectacular.  You can get all kinds of fish, shellfish, and other small sea monsters.  My favorite part is the (live) octopi.  They are about as big as my hand, and swim around in a small styrofoam box.

The zipper on Silas' jacket broke while we were down at the market.  A lady (in the red jacket) noticed me struggling to try to zip the jacket up, and pointed us toward the cobbler.  He pulled out some tools and a new zipper from his bag, and had a new (working!) zipper put on in about three minutes.  It cost 3 RMB ($0.47).  

Later that day, Silas and I walked up the mountain.  On our way, many, many people wanted to take Silas' picture; I guess long, blond hair is still a novelty.  Silas is shy with strangers, and would usually hide behind me.  But one time, he asked to have my camera, and took a picture back at the person photographing him.  I thought this was very empowering.  Here is the picture Silas took of his photographer.

A rainy day

The Chinese prefer umbrellas to raincoats.

Molasses

The internet was like molasses today.  This was the first weekend after the semester started.  It was also rainy, so everybody staid indoors.  Doing what?  I think I have an idea.

Last week, I had lunch with Happy, who works at the Sino-German Exchange program at Ocean University of China.  Her English is perfect (thoughtful and deliberate, to be sure, but perfect).  She has worked with a number of people from Texas A&M during her time at OUC, and she seems at least as familiar with Texas A&M (where I work) as I am.  Although she has never lived in the US, or even been there for a visit, she also knows American television much, much better than I do.  Admittedly, this is a low bar, but her knowledge of American television seems to me to be substantial.  So, what does she like to do in her spare time?  She watches American television series, naturally.  She downloads them from some Chinese web site.

Given the syrupy nature of the internet today, I imagine this is a common pastime.

So please, Mr. Comcast, come to China and provide everybody with American cable TV (subtitled, of course, not dubbed -- better for practicing English).  This will free up the internet for my proposals, papers, and tech blogs.  Thank you in advance.

What's it like running on the street?

In the comments, Kelly Cole asks "What's it like running on the street?"

Well, I'm not entirely sure because I've never done this... for a few reasons.  First, the streets are pretty crowded, and it would be hard to run around all the pedestrians, street vendors, and holes in the sidewalk. The sidewalks here are uneven in places, and I trip often even just walking.  There are certainly directions to go where there are fewer people, and better sidewalks.  More on that below.

Second, running on the street might involve running across the street.  The relationship between cars and pedestrians here is very different than in the U.S. or Europe.  Here, pedestrians are expected to get out of the way (quickly) from (quickly) approaching cars.  This is something I still haven't gotten used to, and I constantly feel like I'm about to be run over.

The best place to go running would be down by the beach.  Running around the track is about as exciting as doing laps in the pool.  Down by the beach, there is lots of space, despite lots of people, and the view is spectacular.  Also, the broad sidewalks along the beach go on for miles.  However, there are a few busy roads between us and the beach, and it is about a kilometer from us.  In the cold weather, the track is just much more convenient.  We are about 400 m from the track (one lap!), but over a kilometer from the beach.  Funny how even with exercise, laziness wins out.

Saturday

There are two tracks across Qing Da 1st road from where we live.  I think they both belong to Qingdao University. We go running there often.  We prefer the northern one, because it is a bit easier to get to, and has a better view of Fu mountain.  Weekdays, in the evenings, we share the track with ladies walking.

Saturday is soccer day.  There is always some sort of intramural game going on at both tracks across the street on weekend days.  The players seem (from my untrained eye) to be reasonably good.  During the breaks, players drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and kick balls against the wall on the sidelines.  Today the southern field was so popular, that another game sprung up on the sidelines.

Saturday is apparently also air out your bedding day.

Snow

It snowed a few days ago.  It didn't last long, but those two guys still swept the whole street up and down.

Apartment infrastructure

I like to know how things work, not just work by themselves, but how things fit into the system they are in.  This is why I find the stuff in my apartment interesting.

It's winter and sometimes it's cold outside.  We have radiators with red handled valves, that as far as I can tell, are either on or off.  They get warm, but never so hot that you couldn't touch them.  I think that the radiator heat is supplied by the government.  I know that many places are heated like this, and I can only assume that this is true here as well.  The radiators by themselves would keep the place above freezing, but chilly.  There is an additional heater, like a giant window unit, that both heats and cools.  This, with the radiators, keeps the apartment comfortably warm.  You can see the outer boxes of these heater/coolers on the outside walls of nearly all of the apartments in town.

The stove runs on gas, which is great for cooking stir-fry – it heats up to very hot very quickly.  The gas runs on a gas tank next to the stove, like a camping cooker.  The stove itself is just a small, two-burner unit that could be moved anywhere on the counter.  However, it is probably best under the ventilator, that is firmly attached to the wall.

The shower looks like a cryogenic chamber, or some sort of futuristic space capsule.  I don't feel like David Bowie when I take a shower, though, unfortunately.  There are three ways to spray water, one normal shower head on a hose, one set of six heads that shoot sideways, and one overhead that leaks and sprays water everywhere when engaged.  I am lucky I am not taller, at 5'10", I am one inch shy from hitting my head on the shower head above.

Long showers drain the hot water heater, also found in the outer room of the bathroom suite.  Conveniently, it has an indicator level on the outside, so you can see how much hot water is left.  There is enough hot water for two quick showers (or one teenaged shower) if nobody does laundry or dishes concurrently.  The pure hot water is unbelievably hot, and I feel like I could cook ramen noodles with water straight out of the tap.

You can tell an apartment is lived in by the laundry outside the window or in the enclosed porch.  I have heard that there is only about 50% occupancy here; whatever the actual number, there are many vacant apartments.  Those that are lived in have people with wet laundry.  We have a set of drying bars on our patio, so that our apartment can be lived in, too.  The two metal bars are suspended by metal wire, and can be raised up and down with a hand crank.  There are two cams, one for each bar, with one crank that can be moved between them.

Lantern Festival

The Lantern Festival marks the end of the Spring Festival.  I see that the neighborhood shops are starting to open again.  The neighborhood store, just in the next building, was open for the whole Spring Festival, but the small produce vendor out in front was not.  I missed fresh vegetables.  We needed to go into town to Carrefour (a French supermarket chain) to get produce.  Now the local vegetable monger is open again, as are most of the restaurants up the road.  In fact, it seems that the whole town has been slowly coming back to life since the lunar New Year, and now, hopefully, it will be fully recovered.

We have heard some sort of fireworks every night since the New Year, but it was always much, much more modest than on the night of the New Year.  On the night of the Lantern Festival, there were more again. The fireworks started well before sunset, and the din was considerable into the evening.  But there was no crescendo at midnight, as there was on the New Year.  It was a party on a school night – ending in time to still have a reasonable morning.  The weather was cold and windy, so perhaps there were not as many fireworks as there might have been, but still, there were plenty.  Fireworks are still hard to photograph, and I am still an amateur.  Still, I have attached some pictures.

Mai Dao – the boat graveyard

We walked to the beach today, but went away from the beach and park, and went to a small island – Mai Dao – attached to the city by a very narrow road.  The island appears to be a boat graveyard, and there are piles of ancient fishing boats.  Perhaps they will all be revived again in the spring, perhaps this is where they will stay.  Many did not look very seaworthy, with large holes in the hull.  However, holes can be fixed, and even the fishing boats I have seen out on the water don't look like they could actually float.