Pollution & "Blue Sky Days"

It's really hard to describe the pollution in Beijing. Most people who have not been there assume that we are being melodramatic or exaggerating the pollution situation. So I thought I'd post some "before & after" shots to give you a feel for the magnitude of this problem. Each set of pics was taken out of the same window from the hotel in which we stayed.

The first in each set was taken on March 17 (Monday) and was pretty typical of everyday we spent in Beijing. The second pic in each set was taken on March 23 (Sunday) the morning we left. This was my third trip to China and it was the first time I had experienced a true "Blue Sky Day" as the locals call it.







Different window.














As you can see, Beijing looks and feels like a completely different city depending on the air quality. We're hoping for those seconds pics come August 8, 2008!!!

Do as I say, not as I do!

With competitions over, the support staff decided to head into downtown Beijing to experience a last bit of Asian culture during our last night in China. Marcia, Karen B., Kim, Nikki and myself walked down to the subway station that would take us south near the Forbidden City. The half a dozen blocks to the train station afforded an ample variety of street food vendors.



I was hoping to stumble upon the strange looking pink bulbs on a stick I had seen people walking around with earlier in the week. They had a syrupy coating and a sweet smell and I wanted to try one. My street food karma did not fail me as halfway through the gauntlet of bicycle-truck food stalls I spotted what I was looking for- pink balls on a stick! I pantomime “how much?” as I point to the snack in question. Five Yuan? Done, I’ll take it! She pulls out the row of sticky pink balls piled on a stick and hands it over. I take a bite and chew. Can’t quite place the taste and texture. . . oh, it’s candied apple! I look at the inside of the sweet pink ball and realize it’s some type of mini apple. Not bad. We pass it around and each take a bite and decide that it's a great snack for walking the streets with.

OK, so far so good. We hop the subway and get off in time to hit a tea shop and the Beijing 2008 Olympic store. About a block down from the store is the area I had heard about; Donghuamen Night Market. This is the place where squeamish Americans dare not go. The intricate, worn awning leading to the alley gives a small glimpse into its history although I've heard it was officially established in 1984. We step inside and are disappointed that a lot of the stalls are already shut down for the evening. It’s late, but the stalls at the end of the alley are bustling. We take a few steps more and there it is. . . insects and reptiles on a stick. Actually, live reptiles on sticks. Live reptiles on a stick that are still moving. Click on the picture for a closer look!

At this point in the story, you know I have to do it. Should I be nervous or know better? Five years of nutrition education and lots of experience eating in foreign countries says “yes, I should know better.” But here I am, faced with a culinary adventure and I can’t say no. My eyes are drawn to the scorpions. Is it life threatening to consume scorpion venom? I’m still mulling over this thought as one of the scorpions starts to run away, except that it can’t run away because it's skewered on a stick. OK, maybe not the scorpion I think. Among my choices are scorpion, small snakes, sea horses, something that looks like a star fish, grasshoppers, beetles, and some type of small reptile I can’t quite place.

OK, I’m gonna go with the grasshopper and beetle combo. The vendor smiles and takes my 18 Yuan and hands my snack of choice to a guy standing by the fryer. He deep fries it then rolls it in a gooey brown sauce with chunks of seasoning in what looks like the lid of a metal garbage can. Wow, still looks like grasshoppers and beetles on a stick even after it's been deep-fried!

I find myself standing there with fried grasshoppers and beetles on a stick rolled in a seasoned sauce. I purchase a bottle of water from the stall next door and go for it. I start with the leg. Crunchy, pretty spicy, no distinct taste really. I bite into the body. Mushy, still no distinct taste. As you can hear in the video (click on the arrow button on the picture), Kim and Marcia keep asking me if it tastes like chicken. No not really. I take a bite of the beetle. After the initial crunch, it squirts a bitter goo into my mouth. OK, I’m done. In a survival situation, I’d dig right in, but this culinary adventure is now complete! I just want to emphasize at this point that I wouldn't have done this if the athletes had been with us. And just to put my mom's mind at ease, one of the women in this group is a doctor!!!!

It's easy as a foreigner to assume that these stalls are set up just for tourists. The whole alley scene plays out like an episode of the American TV show Fear Factor. The locals sitting around late-night snacking and the number of dirty wooden skewers discarded on the ground indicated that this isn't just a place for Westerners to come and see how tough their stomaches are. In fact, when we mentioned to our Chinese interpreter the next day that I had eaten grasshopper and beetle, he didn't bat an eye and stated that it is considered very good for health and vitality to eat these things in China. How about that. . . looks like I'm gonna have good health and vitality now!

We all head back in the direction of a nice bar we saw and celebrate a successful trip to Beijing. Thankfully, a nice glass of French Cabernet Sauvignon and a sampling plate of pastries moves us past the insect-eating episode and we all leave with a good taste in our mouths (pun intended!)!!

Rhythm of the city

One of the things I'm always fascinated with in other countries is how much daily goods cost. With the price of gas a major concern here in the U.S. I wondered how much it cost in Beijing. As you can see on this sign, 97 octane goes for 5.68 RMB per liter. With an exchange rate of 7 RMB to 1 U.S. dollar and a conversion factor of 3.79 liters to 1 gallon, that equates to about $3.10 per gallon. Premium is running between $3.60 and $3.90 right now in San Diego just as a comparison.

With the price of gas relatively high for the average person's income (average monthly income was U.S. $227 per month last June according to an article in People's Daily newspaper online), bicycles are a major mode of transportation for most folks. I'm not kidding when I say there are bicycles EVERYWHERE!

Although mostly old and run down, bicycles come in a variety of forms in Beijing. There are regular old getting-around bikes, then there are the utility bikes! We saw bikes hauling everything imaginable. From sticks and logs to trash, merchandise (TVs specifically) to little old ladies pumping their legs to haul what seemed like a whole apartment worth of furniture. No kidding, I saw a bike similar to this one with the wood hauling a sofa and two love seats! For all you cyclists out there, do you see how loose that single gear chain is in the pic? Now imagine hauling your own body weight plus probably a couple of hundred pounds of cargo with that!!!

Of course, you can cook out of these things also! From rolling produce stands to actual rolling kitchens, we witnessed all sorts of foods being cooked on the back of these cargo bikes. This picture is actually a very common scene around the city. Just in case you get a craving for baked sweet potato on your way home from work, there are multiple vendors on bikes baking some up in a 55 gallon drum for you!

Now, I don't know if it's because of all the carbon monoxide in the air or being exhausted from pedaling all these loads around, but it was not uncommon to see napping going on in some of the strangest areas. This pic was taken out of the bus window of guys literally on the side of the road (about 5 feet off a major highway) taking naps!

I hope this post isn't construed as making fun of the Beijing population. Just about everyone we met was very friendly and seemed genuinely pleased that we were visiting their city. Since I'm always asked back here in the States, I simply wanted to point out some things that struck me as interesting and unique from U.S. culture. Even though my current occupation qualifies me as somewhat of a white collar professional, I've always considered myself in the "worker bee" category, so I can appreciate folks putting in a hard days work. This picture of the lady sweeping up outside the Temple of Heaven seems to sum up the majority of folks we encountered on the streets in Beijing- hard-working.

Scavenger hunt in Beijing!

What a fun day today! The Internet at the hotel is super-slow tonight (and sporadic due to world events), so I'll have to add pictures to this post later. I wanted to describe the day though while it was still fresh in my mind. Today was a day off for the team and we sent them on a scavenger hunt. The athletes ventured out into Beijing in groups of three armed with a map, 200 RMB (Chinese currency), a camera, a watch and a list of things to accomplish. Being the competitive group of women that they are, they jumped right in and took off in taxis and subway trains on a mission! Their list of objectives took them to the Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, riding in a rickshaw, the Temple of Heaven, shopping in the silk market, the U.S. embassy and eating in the Orient Market. Their adventure ended by getting themselves to the Outback Steakhouse by 5:00 p.m. for dinner and group presentations on how their day went. After living the culture for a day, they were quite excited about ending it with Western food!

Two of the team staff and myself took off for a scavenger hunt of our own. The three of us had already experienced most of the sites on the athletes' list, so we had our own objectives to fulfill by the end of the day. We took the subway to Outback Steakhouse right off the bat to make reservations for the end of the day. From there, we found the addresses of apartments some of the athletes' families reserved for during the Games. It's hard for the athletes to focus on the Olympics when they are worried about their friends and families fending for themselves in a strange culture so far from home. It was helpful for us to put eyes on the neighborhoods and complexes in which they would be staying come August.

After our multiple address hunting, we took a taxi to the Beijing Harley-Davidson dealership. What a trip! With all the crappy little dirt bikes/mopeds/motorized bicycles you see on the roads out here, it was strange to see the shiny, LARGE Harley's on the showroom floor! I haven't seen a Harley on the road since I've been here and I have to admit I would be nervous (if not downright scared!) to ride my Harley in this city! The traffic is unbelievable and the driving skills are similar to what I experienced in Italy and Greece (i.e. crazy)!

From there, we taxied it to the Pearl Market for shopping and checked out the Temple of Heaven. It was built in the 1400s and is a complex of Taoist buildings that were used to pray to heaven for bountiful harvests.

The buildings are painted amazing fire-engine reds and should provide a crisp contrast between structure and sky. The day started out rainy but I was hopeful that the pollution would be lessened post-precipitation, but no such luck. The air hung so heavy with particulate matter and pollutants that the brilliant colors at the temple were reduced to a subdued pallet of hues.

Although chilly and polluted, it was still cool to see so many people outdoors on the grounds. There were folks exercising, playing a Chinese version of hackey-sack, playing cards, singing karaoke and playing instruments in the park. It's an open space area of the city that is certainly taken advantage of by Beijing's citizens and tourists.

After shopping and taking in the Temple of Heaven, we were off to the Outback Steakhouse at the Worker's Stadium to check in the athletes as they piled out of cabs and strolled up after a successful day of scavenger hunting. Everyone was full of stories, photographs and souvenirs of the day. We had some great chuckles over the adventures and misadventures of the girls' days.

We have an early practice tomorrow morning and then the final game of these Beijing Good Luck Games, so I'm going to sign off for tonight, but I'll try to add some pics to this story as soon as I can. Check back soon!

Chinese food

Yesterday was a day of meetings and meals! Meetings are meetings and are dull to blog about, but food on the other hand. . .

I happened to be in the right place at the right time yesterday to have a formal sit-down lunch with a group of USOC and NGB folks at the Jinchaoxuan Restaurant. I was in the right place at the right time because I couldn't find a taxi to deliver me back to the hotel at which I was staying! Traffic was so bad in the morning when I took off for my meeting that it took my taxi well over an hour to travel the less than 10 miles to the meeting site. After traveling to visit other sites, I ended up at a location of the city with a half dozen taxis cued up waiting for passengers. I handed the card to my hotel (printed in English and Chinese) to the whole row or taxis where I was promptly waved off with a head shaking "No".

Hmm, since I'm no where near a subway station and I didn't feel like jamming myself into one of the buses resembling a sardine can, I decided to take a taxi to a more prominent area of the city and hope to catch a cab from there. Long story short, I ended up having lunch where I was able to get an interpreter to explain to a taxi driver how to get to my hotel.

Lunch consisted of several courses, most of which are shown in the first pic. The order and assortment of dishes served closely resembled the formal meals I had been served on previous trips (and would end up eating again that night for dinner!).

Here's the menu (translated verbatim):

6 kind of cold dishes

Potato chips [french fries]

Two kinds of eating shrimps

The soup with corn grains

Chicken with bean flavor

Scallop with garlic flavor

Beef with chili

Steamed towel gourd with dumpling

Crisp sweet duck (second pic)

Steamed river fish with ginger (third pic)

Vegetables with broth

Fried noodles

Dessert (Cantonese flavor) (fourth pic)

Fruit plate

I really liked the steamed towel gourd with dumpling. The gelatinous orange ball jiggled a bit as I pinched it between my chopsticks to bring it up to my mouth. A tart orange-lemon tasting treat sitting on a slice of carrot and served with the ever-present dumplings found in all Chinese meals. I love dumplings actually! Some filled with green vegetables I can't always identify, others filled with various types of meat- all yummy!

Most of the people around the table would only try a couple of things that passed in front of their place on the lazy Susan, but I tried everything! I'm a bit of an anomaly when it comes to Americans in China when faced with somewhat traditional Chinese cuisine. Not only did I try everything, but I liked most of it! A couple of the cold dishes that served as appetizers reminded me of Cajun hogs head cheese which I never particularly cared for, but I tried them anyway. Not something I'd run out and buy at the grocery store, but for a cultural experience, not bad!

After stepping out of the restaurant with an interpreter at my side, I hailed a taxi. It took about 10 minutes and a phone call to the hotel for directions before the cab driver agreed to take me back to my hotel on the northern end of the city. I was feeling pretty smug about how it's not really all that hard to get around when I started to notice the panic in my taxi driver's face. I guess the muttering under his breath made me pay attention to the fact that he didn't look very confident about where we were going. The muttering turned to frustration as his voice began to raise a little as he read street signs (I think that's what he was doing because I can't speak Mandarin Chinese and he couldn't speak English). After pulling over 3 times to ask other cab drivers and random people on the street for directions, he finally admitted defeat and called the hotel. Finally, I though, they'll tell him how to get there and all will be OK. As his voice rose to shouting and little sputtles of spit spew at the phone, I realized this ordeal was not over. Oh boy, I have no idea where we are and I really have to pee at this point. Just wait it out. . .

An hour and a half later we drive past a building that looks familiar and my heart leaps with joy. I wait for the Cadillac dealership that I know should be around the next block and I start clapping my hands in relief as I see it come into view! I made it!!! Even my taxi driver broke into a broad, bad teeth smile and wiped his forearm across his forehead in exaggerated relief! I looked at the meter which was showing a fare due of 75 RMB (Chinese yuan). That roughly equals $10 for an hour and a half cab ride! He adamantly waves his hands no at the meter and will only accept 50 RMB which is what I assume would've been the original fare for the non-scenic route ride. I pay the man and walk into the hotel in time to join the team boarding the bus for a team dinner at a restaurant on the other side of town! I didn't take pictures of the dinner since it was a formal affair with international officials present, but as you can see from the menu, it was quite similar to lunch:

Six kinds of selected cold dishes

Seafood thick & pumpkin soup

Smoked duck with camphor leaves & tea

Fried shrimps with fruit cubes

Crisp-fried mutton chop

Deep-fried chicken wings with garlic flavor

Stir-fried beef tenderloin with chili sauce

Pot-stewed eggplant with chili and garlic sauce

Fried Chinese kale

Dumpling

Stir-fried rice Yangzhou style

Chinese pastry

Seasonal fruits platter

Man was I stuffed after all the eating and riding around I did! Needless to say, I slept pretty well last night even with the traffic noise right outside the window (more on that and the pollution later!)

That's all I'll post about my adventures for now, but stay tuned because there's more mischief from Beijing to report!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Okay, so it's not really St. Patrick's Day for you yet, but since I'm in Beijing, China it's already Monday for me! I arrived in Beijing on Saturday with the National Women's Water Polo Team for their test events this week. The flight is always long (4 movies long), plus we had a tough head wind so it took us almost 13 hours to get here from San Francisco. As soon as we were checked in at the hotel, it was off to the pool for a training session. Gotta stay awake until bed time to help with the jet lag! Plus some physical activity helps your body clock reset!


Sunday morning was sightseeing time for the team. The first picture is from a jade factory we visited on our way to the Great Wall. It's green and it's St. Patrick's Day, so I started off with that! We went to the jade factory because the Olympic medals that will be awarded in August will be inlaid with different types of jade. Unfortunately, there wasn't one there for us to view, but it got the team excited nonetheless!

The section of the wall we went to this time was different from my last trip. We went to Juyong Pass and did a little climbing from there. Just imagine a never ending stairmaster! As always it was enormous and hard to comprehend the amount of work that went into building it. Our bus tour guide said that prisoners worked on the wall and would just be buried in the wall as it was being built when they died. I'm not sure if that's just local folklore or the truth, but it made you think each time you put a foot on the next step up!

Today is a training day for the team and meetings for me. Most folks out side of the Olympic movement don't know how much background work goes into staging something as massive as an Olympic Games. Even just our little part for the American delegation has required years of meetings and prep work. Come August we'll see if we did our jobs correctly!

We're here for a little over a week, so I'll try to post again as the week goes on!

An afternoon at the zoo

Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous day here in San Diego. After a leisurely run on the beach and a stroll down to the public library, I hopped on my Harley and cruised over to Whit & Kathie's house. Whit is in the final crunch of studying for the last of his architect exams, so Kathie and I headed for the zoo! I hadn't been to the San Diego zoo since 1993 when I was out here for a Navy det to NAS North Island.

I have mixed feelings about zoos. I understand that they are needed in order for people to feel a personal connection with animals. Only through that personal connection will people be interested in preserving the habitats of the animals they viewed at the zoo. Even with that thought in my mind as I meander amongst the exhibits, I can't help but feel sorry and a bit ashamed that we are taking enjoyment in animals taken from their natural habitats and locked up for public viewing. Even though they are locked up, it appears that these animals are well taken care of and seem to be thriving in these artificial environments.

In preparation for my impending trip to China this Friday, we swung by the panda exhibit. We had to chuckle as we watched the huge parent pandas sitting in the middle of piles of bamboo and snacking the afternoon away. I guess life isn't so bad when huge piles of your favorite snack is brought out to you without any effort on your part!

As I was out here in San Diego enjoying the mild winter weather, I received this picture from my nephew Andy. He is currently going to college in Monroe, Louisiana where this picture was taken. Yes, that's snow in March in north Louisiana! He's standing on the top of the football stadium overlooking the field and the campus beyond it. Crazy weather!!!

That's the update for now. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and hopefully I'll be able to blog from Beijing next week!