Asian Languages

Asian languages are interesting. The character set is entirely different -- Chinese uses pictures as the base for the character set and Thai has a gazillion vowels but fewer overall characters thankfully.

Not all phrases translate directly. For example, the Chinese phrase "ni hao" is used in the sense of "hello" but literally translates to "I'm good."

Asian languages are also tonal. Similar to how English uses tone to establish emotion, Chinese and Thai use tone to establish the actual word being spoken. If an incorrect tone is used, the meaning of what was said can be entirely different.

Also, word structure uses some simple prefixes to change meaning. As an example, in Chinese, appending the latin sound "bu-" to a word generally negates what was said. "Bu hao" would translate to "not good."

Conversationally, I was surprised that the courtesy of saying "please" is not really used. I don't know enough of the language to say how respect is conveyed.

Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year was celebrated on January 29 this year, and surprisingly, there's not much that goes on. In fact, Beijing pretty much shuts down. The closest thing I can equate this holiday with in the US is Christmas, but without the same level of commercialization. Granted there's plenty of people buying little paper dogs and other various decor.

For the most part people travel to their homes to visit their families and the company I have been consulting for shuts down for a week. Apparently that's pretty common.

One of the most classic examples of Chinese New Year is the lantern. I visited the lantern festival in Chaoyang park this week and took a bunch of pictures. Some of the lanterns are as large as a parade float!! Traditionally, the lanterns would have been lit with candles, but that's quite dangerous this day in age, so they're all lit with light bulbs nowadays. One of the coolest lanterns was themed on the 2008 olympics. There was even a dog playing baseball!

Pollution

Beijing is seriously polluted, and for the most part, I've already adjusted to it so I don't notice the smells anymore. However, when I wake up, I usually have to blow my nose to clear things out. As I do this, the burning smell of the pollution overtakes any other scent in my room. I can only guess that my lungs are not happy to have this nasty air in them.

Working in Beijing

Spending time in Beijing as a tourist is different from spending time in Beijing as a businessperson. I've met a number of interesting people who are also here on business, perhaps temporarilly like me, or perhaps permanently.

One of the interesting things I clued in on this week was in the China daily: President Bush: is amazed with China. This country needs to create 25 million jobs a year just to stay even. Given the current stress over the economy and job creation in the United States, I'm wondering if we will be able to keep up.

Still, many of the jobs here are unskilled. It seems like every streetcorner has a soldier standing guard. There are plenty of people working at the hotel to attend to my every need. It seems like things that could be done with a machine are done by hand, simply because someone needs a job.

Of course, the best perk about being here on business is that I can interact with the local people and learn more about how they live. A lot of it is just day to day stuff, like the wife of the main contact at client I am working for just had a baby, so there's some excitement about that. Everybody has been talking about the holiday and asking me how I enjoyed my trip to Thailand. All around good times.

Personal service

So during my second week here in Beijing, I'm not feeling the personal service that I felt my first week here, so I'm going to write about it.

My first week, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the executive lounge and chatting it up with the friendly staff. It was really easy because my room was on the same floor. One of the staff members, Dee, was always saying hello to me, and all of the staff knew my name from day 1. Dee is pictured to the right. When I was brought to my room for the first time, the bellman turned on lights and mentioned one particular light that he liked to have on because it created nice ambiance.

This week, I didn't feel the same friendliness. I was not shown to my room. The staff in the executive lounge were a bit too professional. I called upon my 'personal butler' occasionally for some tea or hot chocolate, and that was nice, and the people were very friendly, but nobody was particularly chatty. I suppose it's possible that the typical traveller at swanky hotels doesn't want to be bothered. On the flip side, the young gentleman that served as the door man in the evenings always welcomed me to the hotel, recognizing my face. He would ask how my dinner at x location was, etc.

I should mention that both hotels had a very professional staff and I think that if I had made more effort, I would have made my second week more memorable.

Getting around Beijing

How, when competing with a population of 12-15 million people does one navigate Beijing? [population: 1, 2, 3, interestingly, 2 and 3 are from the China Daily, a daily English language newspaper, months apart, and reporting different counts.] Beijing's highway system reminds me of Houston: there are a bunch of expressway rings around the city.

I can think of these:

• On foot
• Bicycle
• Bus
• Subway
• Taxi
• Personal vehicle

Foreigners are not allowed to drive in Beijing, with the exception of ex-pats in residence, who may endure the red-tape for a Chinese driving license. Still, with that license, you cannot drive outside of Beijing proper, period.

Driving in Beijing is not for the weak however: traffic is chaotic, but somehow, it seems to work. There's no such thing as a left turn signal, even at major intersections. Vehicles just push their way through an interesection when making a left turn, and oncoming traffic actually stops. The basic rule is that the larger vehicle has right-of-way, although my taxi drivers slightly cut off busses once in awhile.

With the expansive scale of the city, only nearby destinations are reasonably reached by taking bus number 11 - Chinese slang for walking. Most visitors will travel from place to place in a taxi.

Chicken, anyone?

KFC continues to be really popular over here. I've mentioned chicken in some other posts, but figured I'd point out that there have not been any concerns about catching Avian flu from cooked chicken. In fact, I ate chicken for dinner tonight.

Catching up

I've started re-posting following Blogger's troubles. I tried my best to line the datestamp of the post up with when I actually wrote the post, but some of this is admittedly guesswork. I've posted most of the stuff I already wrote but there's a couple that I want to attach pictures to and will do that later. Stay tuned.

Blogger trouble

So I posted a couple of things last week, but apparently, Blogger had some difficulties over the weekend and my posts were lost. Thankfully they were short. I'm a little nervous about putting a post up right away after the outage, so I think I'll wait one more day before I get back into talking about the trip.

Things I miss

There are some things that you miss while you are out and hear about later and think 'Oh yeah...'

Some of these are:

• The State of the Union address
• Groundhog Day

It's a bit odd to forget about an event as large as the State of the Union address, but then again, I was on vacation. Granted Groundhog day isn't as big a deal as, say, Memorial Day, but it's still one of those days that everyone hears about in anticipation of a short winter.

Of course, there are other things that I am completely aware of but will miss and cannot do anything about it.

• The Super Bowl

One night in Bangkok (and the world's your Oyster)

Last night was my first night in Bangkok. I met up with Thana and we went out for dinner to a cool pizza place. We milled around a bit, but I was tired and Thana had to work the next day, so we didn't stay out.

I had been traveling all day. Ban Luang is serviced by a non-air conditioned bus at roughly 8:30 am. This route is the northern equivalent to my trip from Chiang Mai to Nan, passing through Phayo. Sean was not able to see me off as he had to head out into the country on a school trip, so his friend Peafoy came over at 8:00 to make sure I got on the bus. It was very nice of her to do that, and she even brought a couple small bags of some sort of mini-cookies (looked like a mini fig newton as the inside was dusted with chocolate, but tasted slightly like regular Cap'n Crunch).

I was really proud of myself when I understood the 'bus-attendant' tell us that we'd be taking a 15 minute break at some random town's bus terminal. I looked for some fresh fruit for sale, but couldn't find any and settled on a Magnum ice cream bar instead.

Anyway, I've been to Bangkok before, so the world is already my oyster I guess. Here's a photo of the Bangkok skyline.

Friends, and a home cooked meal

One of the nicest things about seeing friends while travelling is getting a home-cooked meal. After arriving in Ban Luang, Sean and I visited one of his fellow teachers and prepared supper. It was essentially a cashew chicken stir fry. I cut up the vegetables and Sean cut up the chicken. We were having special chicken that night: boneless chicken breasts. The photo below is of Sean cutting the chicken out on the back porch.


The meal was fantastic. One of the interesting elements was glutenous rice, also known as sticky rice. The meal was entirely finger-food style. We formed small rice balls and grabbed some of the main dish. It's amazing how quickly this fills you up!