I can’t do a better job than this NYT article at describing this Saturday’s baseball game between the LA Dodgers and San Diego Padres here in beautiful Beijing.  It was apparently the first time in history that Major League Baseball has played in China, a country that apparently only has 100 baseball diamonds, total. 

Yesterday was beautiful:  cherry blossoms in bloom, the crystal blue sky dotted with rare poofy white clouds:  the perfect day to sit in a Division III college sized baseball stadium and watch two professional teams up close and personal, with a handful of non-comprehending Chinese fans and a sizable chunk of Americans who were mostly there to see each other and enjoy the sunshine.  At Wukesong Stadium, you could forget about the other breaking news going on in China right now (that I don’t feel comfortable writing about on a blog or even email), and instead focus on the animated hot dogs racing each other across the Jumbotron, the inflatable Padres’ friar mascot dancing with minimalistically-clad Chinese cheerleaders, the programs that didn’t even list the team’s lineup, and every once in a while, the game itself.  My favorite part of the afternoon, which the article left out, was when the bleacher creatures started the Wave.  I didn’t expect that, especially since none of the other attempts to rally up the fans seemed to work.  But there it went, looping around the entire stadium two or three times, and even getting the normally too-cool VIP section to join in.

It was so odd being there, as baseball is an American sport, like apple pie is an American pie.  No one at the game I talked to thinks that baseball will take off in this country, with reasons given ranging from poverty (requires too much equipment), land constraints (requires a specialized field), image (too clean cut — Chinese students prefer the counter-culture of tough guy basketball), or even tensions with Japan (where the baseball is well loved).

But we’ll see.  Baseball is a game of patience, and we’re only in the bottom of the first.

Cheers,
Liz

I’m not sure how to frame this. A few weeks ago, when I started writing this Aabservation in my head, while wedged between people (thankfully shorter than me) on Bus 120 going to work, I planned to write about the value of framing things.  I was going to talk about the photo contest — whose results are going on display in the Ginza Gallery next Saturday, March 22nd at 8:30 (come if you’re in Beijing!) — and how the art of a photograph wasn’t just noticing something and shooting it, but cropping it and putting it against the right background.  That in framing something, you add your own personality to someone else’s experience.  In the Aabservation I was going to write, I would’ve talked in saturated tones about how the red edging I added when matting some dreary grey photographs of China to bring out the a sense of hope in these shots.  Then, like in all Aabservations, I was going to expand out on this little micrometaphor, talk expansively about human nature, drop in a reference to China and gratuitously comment on how cute pandas are (well, c’mon, they are so cute!), before closing with some profound-sounding play on words intended to play on your mind for days to come.
 
Or that was the plan, until I had some black coffee.  Continue reading →

This New Year, I made a resolution to buy stuff.
 
One of the great things about being an American living in China is that you get two chances to make and break resolutions — one for the Jan 1st new year, and the other about a month later for the Chinese lunar new year.  For months, I have needed a new cell phone, some new clothes, a sofa that doesn’t resemble a wooden plank, earphones for my iPod to replace the ones that broke, and a bicycle to replace the one that broke my heart.  After a full week of commitment-free vacation days spent in Beijing, I succeeded in none of the above.  I did, however, buy three energy-saving light bulbs.  And some toothpaste.
 
If you know me, you know that I tend to hate stuff.  Or more specifically, I hate shopping.  I used to think this problem was a form of well-rounded cheapskateness: Slavic thriftiness passed down to me from my immigrant grandparents, people who fled a soon-to-be famine-filled Soviet Union to end up in a soon-to-be Depression Era America.  But then one day after college, I realized I was spending a lot of money, despite living rent-free with my parents.  According to Microsoft Money, which tracked every credit card swipe I had made during the year, I was spending almost all my disposable income on traveling and eating/drinking out (and business suits).
 
I am, as a friend once put it, an “experience spender.”  I will never spend $200 on a really nice shirt, but would definitely spend $200 on a really nice meal.  I like to think that I’m not alone, that being an experience spender is a hallmark of the nouveau jetset.  Having stuff makes it hard to move, and the more you move, the more you abhor stuff.  Thank goodness for alumni email address, because most people I know don’t have any other permanent address.  My current mailing address is my work address, as I’m more certain I’ll be a my company in a couple years than in this apartment.  So buying a lot of things that I will have to schlep around the world, sell or throw out is highly unappealing.
 
But what about buying a few really nice things?  I admit, I have a Juicy Couture leather bag given to me when my friend was moving out of Hong Kong (and abhorring having stuff).  While I first fell in love with the bag for how the leather and metal chains swing obnoxiously into passersby, especially if you saunter down the street wearing (knock off) Prada sunglasses, I quickly came to admire it for its utility.  It has toted variously my laptop, two bottles of wine, an entire pomelo, and my bike helmet.  It’s a really sturdy and well-made bag.  So the other night, it wasn’t much of a surprise that I found myself (sarcastically?) extolling the virtues of Gucci:  “A luxury bag is the great equalizer,”   I waxed poetically, straight-faced and perhaps even sincere. “Some people who don’t have much money, but can still muster together enough to buy one really nice bag, can skip over the middle class and enter the magical world of the elite.  A bag lets them enter the fantasy vision they have seen in magazines and billboards and ads.  It lets them live the dream.”
 
Buying stuff has been the American dream for generations now.  And this year, the Fed and the US government have made a new year’s resolution itself: to resolve the coming recession by getting Americans to buy more stuff.  Over here in China, in the manufacturing trenches of the world economy, where people are chocking on the pollution created by factories selling said “stuff” to America, I sort of wonder if America doesn’t need more stuff right now.  America extols itself as being a service economy, in terms of what it produces.  But it seems to me to still be a stuff economy in terms of what it consumes.  I don’t really want to buy the world a Coke.  I’d rather go buy you a drink.
 
China has leapfrogged a lot of development steps, and maybe will leapfrog growth through buying stuff too.  China’s leaders are starting to talk up shifting into services as the next engine of development; maybe they’ll try to encourage consumption of services too.  Tourism’s growth has been explosive in China, and coffee shops are flourishing like blue algae in Lake Tai.  So maybe…
 
As always, it’s a fascinating time to be here.  I’m finally going to go buy a bike now, so I can go out and experience it for myself.
 
Yours as always,
Liz

It’s quiet now. 

Of course, the sound of fireworks is incessant as Beijing-ren celebrate the New Year, tossing fireworks like grenades above the roof of my six story apartment complex.  But between each explosion echoes into hollowness.  As China goes on vacation this week, the silence is overwhelming.

I took a bus on New Year’s Eve day across Chang’An Jie, the main drag in Beijing, and a street usually jammed with traffic.  But this week, when the 15+ million people of Beijing stop building, driving, and working to go home to their families, this “Long Peace Street” finally earns its name.  My empty bus flew past the brand new egg-shaped Opera House and the army of red flags fluttering over Tiananmen Square.  The sky is so blue, with factories closed and cars eerily absent from the street, that from across town you can see clearly the two steel frames of the CCTV towers, slowly winding together like Pyramus and Thisbe into a permanent embrace.

Being here in Beijing, you can’t help but feel that we are on the cusp of history this year.  Someday Continue reading →

Tonight, my rusted red chain fell off my gears twice as I biked from
the Russian district to Alfa’s 80s night.  I had pedaled through the
starry night with my bike squeaking away, tires deflated and bell
decapitated, over dusty construction sites and behind rickshaws
stacked with four inch four pound plastic bags of paper to be
recycled.  I was taking my bike back from my office, as I had biked to
work yesterday morning, as each pedal a struggle.  Either I was
physically tired, my tires were flat, or my gears were jammed.
Something wasn’t right. Continue reading →

As soon as I got outside my apartment the other day, I stopped in my tracks.  It was clear I wasn’t going to get milk anymore.  I jumped on my well-loved bike — easy to spot with its very unique I <3 NY sticker plastered on the frame — and set off.
 
I think I knew that that would be the last pure day of autumn, before the air starts to smell like winter as you try to breathe in through a stuffy nose.  The sky was a brightly back-lit blue, and as I hurled through the archway of generous maples lining the street in front of the Canadian embassy,* I could feel every ridge and bump in the pavement clearly through my handlebars.  It was the kind of day that makes you notice the beauty in ordinary things:  the mini-thrill of a trunk pushing up the pavement into a baby jump; the comfort of the old ladies in well worn clothes sitting with their ankles crossed on a banister in front a sign encouraging studying; the man swept up by the flood of people leaving the subway but so satisfied biting into a steaming soft spring roll; or the women with bamboo poles along the river bank walking between the reeds.  I rubbernecked at the guy looking in incredulous and helpless awe at the invisible dent in the front of his pulled-over car. I slowed down to stay behind and watch a rollerblader listening to his headphones and waving his arms gracefully to the music. And I nearly got hit by a car when I realized the air in the alley ahead of me was full of spinning yellow leaves making their slow and final descent toward the yet untouched black asphalt.
 
People say that China’s economy is built on cheap labor, but it’s more than that:  this country is built on optimism.  It’s not just that people work for little money, it’s that they work hard for little money, and in large part because they think that it will lead to something better.  It’s one of the reasons I came here, actually, rather than Russia. Continue reading →

My good friend who was transferred 6 months ago to Beijing, working at Microsoft, wrote a note about China that I thought you would really enjoy reading. So without further ado, here are some excerpts:

“At this very moment, I’m sitting in the Industrial Bank of China, trying to pay my credit card bill.   The venue is like the Chinese version of the DMV, where you take a number and then spend forever waiting for your turn at the teller window.   The bank is packed with people; sophisticated folks with designer clothes, school children in their track suits, and even my favorite ma tuan (sesame ball) vendor with a wad of bills so thick I wonder how really makes his living.  What an inspiring place to write about my new life! Continue reading →

A good opening sentence should be like a vodka shot:  clear, quick, strong, and with a sharp finish that gets you reved up for what comes next — i.e. it shouldn’t ramble on like this Aabservation does with no intention of stopping, completely unrelated to the main topic:  in this case, the question “bells or brakes?”, a with-us-or-against-us type of question which came up last night, when I was biking to a party and panicked for a moment when I realized my brakes were worn out — but quickly regained confidence (and speed) as I realized that my bicycle bell at least was working, meaning that instead of slowing down, I could just announce my arrival and others would get out of my way, which I did, often, and in so doing realized that I would rather have a fully functional bell than fully functional brakes — perhaps a revelation about a change in my attitude toward risk-taking since moving to China (or perhaps the attitude that brought me here in the first place?) — and beyond just me, I started to wonder whether China itself is a country that values bells or brakes more — a question which, after a considerable period of high-speed contemplation (and pedaling), I came to conclude:  yes, China is indeed a country that would rather be able to slow down safely than charge forward bells a-ringing (think of China’s slow unwind of capital controls, its patient and quiet emergence as an international power, and the truly measured pace of its transition from a centrally planned economy to an open one), while the US is the country with the largest bells in the world, and which loves ringing them (think of the US’s strong attitude to foreign relations and its love of global media attention)… though I’d love to hear back from you whether you agree with this assessment and (perhaps more interestingly) whether you would rather have working bells or working brakes, with only one requirement for your reply:  that you, like me in this Aabservation, try writing using as many punctuation bells & whistles as possible (bonus if you can incorporate Chinese backward commas and <<>> quotes), but that you strictly forbid yourself from using a period to brake your train of thought (a ridiculous challenge — I know — inspired by a hilarious and geeky late night conversation on punctuation in a rooftop bar with a handful of copy-editors, writers, researchers and blumblum friends):  a gimmick which is (outside of Victorian literature and legal documents) only sustainable for so long, and eventually (as you can see) must at some point come to an end.

Cheers, Liz