Pollution

One of the issues that we are here in Beijing to discuss is the pollution. This picture was taken from my hotel window at about 9:00 a.m. No, it was not a foggy day, nor misting or raining. That is the pollution. And yes, that's the sun being eclipsed by pollution. It has been that way the whole time we've been here, but today was certainly one of the worst. I can taste it even worse than when I was in Torino or Athens and the scratchiness has now turned into a sore throat. It's just unbelievable. People actually walk around and ride their bikes with surgical masks on to help combat the pollution. There is so much construction going on in Beijing right now that a good bit of what you see in this picture is dust and particles from the construction. Most of it, however, is the result of exhaust spewing out from the factories and what seems like millions of cars on the road everyday. We certainly have our work cut out for us leading up to the Olympics.

I'm signing off from Beijing for now. My flight leaves tomorrow morning with quite a few other folks going back to the Springs. My travel schedule is a bit up in the air right now, so I'm not sure if I will have anymore international trips between now and the beginning of June when Andy, Alexis, and I will take off on our European vacation. So stay tuned!

And we sang. . .

Today is my last full day in China. We finished up with all the presentations yesterday, including mine. Everyone seemed engaged and asked really good questions, which is always a good feeling! After the meetings were over, we came back to our hotel for a reception. Hilton is a U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor, so we always stay at Hiltons whenever we can. This hotel was just recently renovated and is unbelievably modern. I’ve been starting off each morning with a run in an amazingly well-furnished exercise room for a hotel. The first morning I got on the treadmill, punched in the numbers, and took off on a slow jog. “Why am I going so slow?” I wondered. When I had reached 3 miles, I thought “Wow, living at altitude must really be working for me, I’m not really tired!” Well, if you haven’t guessed what was going on yet, this is China and everything is in kilometers!

Anyway, after the reception back here at the hotel, we went to dinner at a really nice restaurant down by the Worker’s Stadium (I can’t remember the name). No crazy dishes like goose liver this time which was quite a relief. It’s amazing how unfamiliar everything is here – from the food to the alphabet. This week was a good demonstration of how difficult Beijing 2008 will be for Western athletes. After only 2 days of being in this Eastern, unfamiliar culture, most of the seminar participants sought out the Beijing Hard Rock Café just to eat something familiar. This street sign kind of sums up what it’s like to find your way around the city. The colorful Chinese writing in the other picture is, what I think, an advertisement for some type of industry show going on. I have no idea what is says, but it was really colorful and looked fun.

After dinner last night, a few of us went to a karaoke bar (hey, when in Rome. . . !). We thought we were gonna go to a bar and sit around and laugh at people singing up on the stage. Oh, no - not in a country that takes Karaoke very seriously! We were told at the door that we would be charged by the hour, then they showed us up to our “room.” We were all getting a little nervous at this point about what was going on, but we went along anyway. It turns out that we had rented a little room with sofas, a coffee table, and a giant screen Karaoke machine! There was a playlist in several languages, including English, so we ordered some drinks from our waiter and picked out some tunes. It was a little strange to sit around a room and sing into a microphone, but it ended up being pretty fun once we were all singing along together (no, I didn’t use the microphone!). The songs were all old stuff like Tie a Yellow Ribbon! Very strange music choices for the most part! My voice is actually quite hoarse this morning. I would post a picture of us all singing last night, but I didn’t ask the guys if they would mind being posted on my blog, so I don’t want to embarrass anyone in front of their teams back home in case they didn’t know their coaches and team leaders were closet Karaoke singers!!!

That’s all for now, a little more business today and then hopefully some more sightseeing. The Great Wall is a ways away from here, so I’m disappointed that I probably won’t make it out there on this trip. Oh well, there’s always next time!

Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

This morning we had meetings with our BOCOG representatives. The day was short (early afternoon), but quite productive. After the meetings, we went down to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City, or Imperial Palace, was built in the 1400s and was the residence of 24 emperors for nearly seven centuries. The Forbidden City is huge! Behind a 30 foot wall and a moat, there is a 180 acre city that at one time housed 8000-10,000 people. It's hard to imagine that ordinary people were kept outside of these walls for 500 years before it was no longer "forbidden" to the public. From outside the walls, you can see the very ornamental watchtowers. I wonder what folks envisioned were behind those walls with only the sneak peak of the watchtowers to fuel their imaginations.

Chinese currency is called renminbi ('people's money', abbreviated as RMB). RMB is based on yuan and as of the morning, there were about 8 yuans to the U.S. dollar. For about 60 yuan, I rented an audio self-guided tour headset of the Forbidden City that my American guide book said actor Roger Moore would be narrating. I didn't hear the voice of Roger Moore guiding me through the city, but the tour was still interesting anyway! The picture with the lion was taken inside the Forbidden City and the picture of the pagoda was taken just outside of it.


After touring the Forbidden City, we walked around to the South Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) to take a look at Tiananmen Square. This square isn’t called the Great Meeting Place for nothing, there were tons of people just hanging out around the South Gate. As you can see in the picture, the Gate is adorned with Mao’s portrait and the slogans: “Long live the People’s Republic of China” and “Long live the great union of the peoples of the world.” This square has seen it’s share of politically significant events over the years.

On the walk around the Forbidden City, we stumbled upon a tulip festival in one of the parks. I couldn’t resist posting this picture of some of the signs that spring is here!

OK, I present at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, so it’s time to get some shut-eye. Until tomorrow. . .

Peking Duck

My first full day in Beijing was spent in meetings. The purpose of this trip to China is for a Coaches Summit for the 2008 Summer Games that will be held here in Beijing. We bring the coaches and team leaders out here to present various logistical information to them and for BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games) to take the delegation on tours of each sports’ respective venues. Even though most of the sites are still construction zones, it’s quite valuable to get a feel for where your sporting event will happen and where it is in relation to transportation, housing, dining, etc. This is probably one of the most well-traveled groups of people you will ever meet. No one bats an eye at stepping off a plane in a foreign country that uses a completely different alphabet than us and being able to hail a cab to get them where they need to be. These folks have brought their teams to compete in some of the most obscure places in the world.

After a day of presentations, we had a group dinner at a place called Da Dong Beijing Duck. It is said that the two things you must do when in Beijing is to visit the Great Wall of China and to dine on Peking duck. Peking duck dates back to the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago. Back in the day, it was only prepared for the Emperor, therefore it was considered a dish for royalty. Now, however, this recipe has found its way to the common people. This dish is not something that is whipped up easily after work. Air is pumped into the duck until the skin separates from the fat. The duck is then hung up to dry in the open air before being roasted in an oven until it is crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside. For my family back in Louisiana, the taste reminded me of fresh cracklins at a boucherie. Here is the menu from dinner tonight:

COLD DISH
Salmon Sashimi with assorted sauces (see photo)
Crispy seaweed
Ceasar Salad (it had lettuce, but wasn’t a Western-style Ceasar salad!)
Tongzi (vegetable with garlic paste)
Yellow-fin tuna with broad bean
SweeT & Sour ribs

HOT DISH
Steamed diced duck in bird’s nest
Lobster noodle
Sauteed sole with Chinese Toon
Fried diced Australian beef in spicy black bean
Fried goose liver with apple sauce
Sauteed bean sprout
DaDong roast duck (Peking Duck)
DaDong roast duck soup

DESSERT
Don’t remember the name of it, but it was like grits in a brown sauce
Fresh fruit

I’m not gonna lie, the fried goose liver was pretty hard to get down. The taste wasn’t very far from lamb, but the sight of it and the mouth-feel was quite disturbing. The Peking duck was served in small pieces, kind of like chipped beef or Greek souflaki lamb meat from a rotating spit. It was served with miniature wheat or corn tortillas with about 6 different stuffings (carrots, cucumber, garlic paste, some kind of diced pepper, sauce, and other stuff). Overall, it was an interesting meal. Our Chinese interpreter said some of the dishes were traditional Chinese, but for the most part, the food was tailored to Western tastes. We are having another group dinner tomorrow evening, so maybe we’ll get a bit more authentic then.

For now, I will leave you with the picture of the salmon sashimi (yes, it’s raw!) along with photos of a boat restaurant and street lights from our walk back from the restaurant. Until tomorrow. . . Xie Xie (pronounced shea shea) [thank you] for following my blog!

Nee-hao!

That's hello in Chinese! It was quite the journey, but I made it to Beijing! I got back to my house in Colorado Springs from Louisiana about midnight on Wednesday night. My phone rang at 3:00 a.m. - it was United airlines telling me that my 8:00 a.m. flight to San Francisco (then on to Beijing) had been cancelled. The representative proceeded to explain to me that if I got to the airport in an hour and a half though, she could route me to Beijing earlier. I politely said no and requested she send me on Friday! So, after a 2 hour flight to Chicago, then a 13.5 hour flight to Beijing, I'm checked into my hotel and am about to go looking for my co-workers and get some dinner. I'm pretty tired, but my stomach is growling louder than my eyelids are slamming shut.

No pictures yet, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I made it. Will post more tomorrow!

wan-sharng hoa
(good night)

Linda Robichaux Babin

Once again, life has reminded me that it will take twists and turns at unexpected times. As I was gearing up for my trip to Beijing this week, I got the phone call Thursday evening that my last grandparent had passed away. She was my mom's mother, Linda, and we called her Maw Ma (go ahead and chuckle, but we are from the country!). She was 84 years old, was one of 9 children, had 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren, . . . and had Alzheimer's Disease.

I was on deployment to Okinawa, Japan in the early 90s when my first grandparent passed away. I didn't really have the choice to go home, so now that I do have that choice, I flew home on Saturday morning to be with my family. It's funny how when I was younger, I couldn't understand why people went home for funerals anyway. The deceased is deceased, so I thought that going home was only for my conscious and nothing else. Since buying a home in Colorado (2004), I've lost my 3 remaining grandparents. Now I understand that it's partly for me, partly for my parents, but mostly for the collective conscious of the whole family. There's something about everyone coming together that truly makes the passing of a family member feel like a celebration of a life. Perhaps I can say that because my grandparents lived long, happy lives filled with kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. Cajuns will always commerate a life event with food, so in true South Louisiana style, we had a bar-b-que and reminisced, surrounded by friends and family.

Although it's a sad occassion that my grandmother is gone physically, it's a relief to most of the family to know that she will no longer be in pain or so profoundly confused anymore. My mom asked me if I'd like to do a reading at the funeral (Catholic), but I said I'd be more comfortable being a palbearer. My aunt and uncle agreed that Maw Ma would've loved the idea, so I took my place alongside my brother and cousins and laid her into her final resting place.

I hope this post doesn't seem awkward in the midst of the others, but I wanted to commerate my grandmother's life by acknowledging this passing of a truly sincere, loving, and downright fun woman from our lives. She used to love to hear about my travels, so it's only fitting that my next post will be from Beijing (I fly out in the morning). Until then, if you're geographically close enough to visit a grandparent, don't wait another day. If distance keeps you apart, don't let the telephone sit silent another minute!