We’re currently on a 7 day break for National Day (which will be the topic of an upcoming post), and yesterday some of us went to Harbin’s Sun Island Park. It’s not far, but still nice to get out of the city a little, anyway. Have a look:

[The following is a piece of short fiction I originally wrote for a class in college. It's based on some things that really happened the last time I was in Harbin, and I thought it might be interesting to post the occasional piece of fiction here in addition to everything else.]

I think I was leaning a little heavily on Lauren as we stumbled out the dark gates and onto the street. It was quiet now, nearly midnight and the lights were switching off one by one inside the park fences. Outside, an old man sat on a rusty folding chair by the ticket booth, smoking a cigarette and regarding us with ambivalence. Was it because we were white, or just because there was no one else on the street to watch?

The problem with Chinese streets is that they all look the same when you’re drunk and it’s dark. Lauren was of the opinion that we were fairly close to Zhongyang Dajie, but neither of us knew which direction we should start in, so we picked one at random and began to wander. The streets were lit by the KTV signs of various karaoke establishments, some flashing characters in dancing Technicolor and some buzzing “KTV” in stationary neon, and we walked slowly. It’s possible we were just enjoying the evening, and it’s possible I just couldn’t walk any faster—I must admit that I don’t entirely remember the first twenty minutes.

That was only half my fault. I do like a drink every now and then, which is the reason we went to the park in the first place, but I had not planned on running into friends, and being compelled to sit and drink with them for several hours or risk appearing rude. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but even people with a higher tolerance than I eventually reach a point where “Gan bei!” starts to sound like a curse. Anyway, I drank whatever they poured me to be polite, and I can’t be blamed for forgetting a few minutes of nighttime wandering as a result.

My memory fades back in right around the time the flashing KTV bars began to be replaced with squat, industrial apartment buildings and sprawling lines of street stands, most of which were being packed up for the night. Sparks darted out clouds of charcoal smoke and sprinted towards the sky as grills were overturned and emptied. We walked through the stalls, weaving around discarded chairs, stools, and the piles of half-eaten kebabs littered around the tables. Many of the people packing up their enterprises for the evening didn’t stop to glance at us, or if they did, they did it subtly. A few stared, but no one spoke, save the one man whose stall was still open.

To call it a “stall” is actually probably misleading. It was really just a rug, or maybe a blanket, that he had laid a number of books on top of. Whether he was selling his personal collection or whether they were pirated was unclear, but I’d guess the books were his—he looked the right age to be a college student, and many of them seemed to be math textbooks. He had been lolling against a wall in the shadows with some friends, but when we got near him he walked into the light, calling out:

“Hello!” The accent was heavy, but the word frustratingly familiar. As a general policy, we don’t respond to “hello”, and I was in the middle of a pretty impassioned speech about the effect of culture on language learning, which Lauren was listening to politely and—I imagine—bemusedly. We ignored it, but a second later he realized we were speaking Chinese to each other and tried again in his own tongue.

“美女！美女! 你来看看吧！” he called, “Beautiful girl, come look!” pointing to the books and chuckling. Lauren laughed nervously and politely declined, quickening her pace a bit. I lurched forward to keep up with her and tripped over a stool, managing to keep my balance but eliciting a laugh from the man. His laugh was echoed by an invisible chorus; his friends leaning against the darkened wall, I imagine. Perhaps spurred on by their implicit encouragement, he raised his voice and yelled “美女！” Whatever inviting or comical tone might have been there before was gone now. His friends cackled as he raised his voice, and we hustled on until his voice was a shrill scream behind us in the blackness.

For those of you interested in political stuff, here’s an article you might want to read (and for the lazy or pressed-for-time, here’s a distillation of it). I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s still worth contemplating. Basically, the author argues that at least technically speaking, China is a fascist country, and that America is quickly becoming fascist as well.

Extreme, yes. However, as El-P once said, “In music [as in anything where you're trying to get people to think], you have to take the extreme point of view. Otherwise, motherfuckers aren’t going to listen.”

One of my old albums (Hope Flies) has been featured on the free music site MusicRebell. If you have a few seconds to spare, go there and rate the album using those little stars below it. Thanks!

(And, of course, if you don’t already have that album, or are missing ANY of my albums, they can all be got here).

One of the main reasons I’m here in China is that I think it’s extremely important Chinese and Americans understand each other. While I’m here, I can learn more about China and also help Chinese people better understand America.

Anyway, I sometimes ask my university classes what they want Americans to know or understand about China. The answers vary, of course, but the following are some of the things that come up again and again.

-Chinese people are friendly. Many of them want to meet and interact with foreigners, but travel is still prohibitively expensive for most Chinese. Still, they seemed to enjoy playing host to the world during the Olympics and would like to do it again. As one of my students put it, “Tell your friends we welcome them to come to China.”

-China is a developing country. They are aware that China has problems with pollution, product quality control, etc. They are working to fix these problems and make China a better country; what they need is time.

-Chinese people love peace. They have high hopes for the future, especially the relationship between China and America. Many Americans view the Chinese as a threat, but the perception among Chinese (at least among Chinese English college students) seems to be that America is a “developed” country that they hope to one day equal, and continually cooperate with. There isn’t much sense of rivalry.

-The China of today is NOT the same place as the China of twenty years ago. This is an especially important point to consider for the people to whom the mention of China conjures thoughts of Tiananmen Square, 1989. China has made great strides on many fronts (yes, including human rights, pollution control, etc.) since those days, and the way Chinese people think has changed since then, too.

-Americans should know some Chinese history. History is understandably less significant to people from a nation with less than three hundred years of it, but history is a powerful cultural force, especially in a culture as old as China’s. Learning a bit about the last hundred years in China, especially, might be helpful.

There were more things, of course–many more–but that’s the basic gist of it. They are genuinely friendly and enthusiastic about learning about America. Many of my students are reluctant to speak about this or anything with foreigners, but as one of them said today: “Although we may seem shy, actually, our hearts are full of enthusiasm.”

I wonder if the same could be said for American students. (And by “I wonder”, I mean, “it cannot, but I wish it could.”)

This morning I was woken up by the dulcet tones of an air raid siren. It didn’t look like anyone was panicking outside, so I wasn’t super concerned, but still, given that this isn’t 1940s London, I was a bit disconcerted.

If I’d been a bit more awake, I might have realized that today is September 18, the day the Mukden Incident occurred in 1931, giving Japan a flimsy pretext to invade China. I wonder how many people living here now were alive then. Not many, probably, but surely a few. Anyway, it was an interesting reminder for me of just how powerful an influence history sometimes has, especially in this country.

Also, if you’re reading this post, please comment if there’s anything particular you’d like me to talk about/look into/ask Chinese people about. I’m looking for more topics for video features, and I’d obviously like to cover topics people are interested in.

Be sure to check the other video I posted today, too!

Lest my father (and others) think that all semblance of the traditional respect for education in China is dead, I should tell you that yesterday was “Teachers’ Day”. I got a quilt as a gift from the school I work for, and one of my university students gave me a coupon for some free honey. Lots of people wished me a happy teachers’ day.

On a larger scale, the government has passed a couple of measures to ensure teachers nationwide are paid better, and some the unqualified, temporary teachers currently working are either tested and qualified or removed from their positions. Premier Wen Jiabao apparently said, “Teaching is the most splendid profession under the sun.”

I finally got my passport back today. I was starting to get nervous…

It’s a huge pain to get a working visa/residence permit from outside the country. Technically, it’s possible–I think–but the general procedure for people working in China is to enter on a tourist visa and then have their visa switched when they get here.

I entered about a month and a half ago on a 60-day tourist visa. Then the school took my passport and began the visa-switching process, which included a trip to the hospital for testing and a trip to some visa office for some questioning (not nearly as intimidating as I was hoping for, the lady was very nice).

Then, there was the waiting. In the past, the whole thing was apparently a fairly expedient process, but ours took weeks and weeks and I was beginning to get concerned. If you’re abroad without a passport, you are essentially nationless, and my 60-day entry visa meant that if I didn’t get my passport back in the next couple weeks I stood a decent chance of being deported. So when one of my coworkers handed it to me this afternoon, I was pretty relieved. I have a country again, and what’s more, I have permission to live in this country until August 21st, 2009.

I have no idea where that date came from, but I’m not going to complain. I’ve got a passport, and the bruise on my arm from where they drew blood 4 weeks ago is finally almost gone!

(Yeah, they apparently did a horrible job drawing blood).