Democracy is here.

Those of you who've known me for a while must have figured out by now that I have a strong inclination toward weird and terrible hairstyles. It started when I was younger, but really bloomed in college, when my parents were living on the other side of the world. I would shave my head at the beginning of the summer, forget to cut it for six or seven months, then do something crazy with it in the spring. Then I'd shave my head again and start over. Basically: rinse, lather, repeat. One year I had a mullet, which digressed into a rat-tail, and the next year I got a perm and went from jheri curl to clown hair.

And as you've probably guessed, it's that time again. It's been a year since I last cut my hair, and I can safely say that this is the longest my hair has ever been. I've been fighting an uphill battle, too, because I've had to endure all my students laughing at me or calling me "a girl". Which I find strange, since I see plenty of guys with long-hair, but, admittedly, they're all mostly the same type of guy. Which would explain why most Chinese adults automatically assume I'm some kind of artist or musician because of my long hair. Because my original haircut last September had been some kind of funky layer, when my hair grew out, I started to take on a strong resemblance to one late entertainer's later years. Some of my friends convinced their kids to call me "Jacko Shu shu," or Uncle Jacko. Ha ha...

M has really been a trooper throughout all of this. She gives me a hard time about it by saying that she's shown her true love by enduring the mullet and the clown hair, and that she should only have to take so much of this madness. A few weeks ago, M was trying to convince me to cut my hair, and I confessed that I was kind of sick of it and wanted to cut it, but that there was just too much pressure. "What do you mean?" she asked, to which I blurted out, "Well, I'm just such a...block of marble!" M had a good laugh at that, but she knew exactly what I meant. Since this is the longest I've ever had my hair, the possibilities are virtually endless. I've been thinking for week and I just can't make up my mind. Should I go for the Asian pop star look? Or the crazy crimped style that's all the rage here in Beijing right now? I could revisit the fro or the mullet, or go for the (just checked the length) 22cm mohawk.

And then I realized, I don't have to decide. I can do this democratically. Unfortunately, I've put this off for too long, so I don't have much time. I'm starting a new job with a department at Tsinghua, and I kind of have to look professional for class. Basically, Wednesday and Thursday I have some introductory classes, and then I start next week, so I've only got a few days to rock a really terrible hairstyle. My weekend classes will be in for a treat though.

So here are the rules. I will accept one vote per person in the comment field of this post. Voting will close right before I get my haircut, which will probably be Thursday afternoon. Anonymous comments will not be counted unless you specifically state who you are. You are welcome to look up sample pictures and link to them in your comments. And feel free to comment more to try and convince others. M will probably try and sway all of you to vote for some very professional clean-cut hairstyle, but don't listen to her. She has to live with it. And if you just randomly stumbled upon this, or were sent a link by a friend, feel free to vote even if you don't know me. In the event of a tie, I reserve the right to make the final decision.

My commitment to you: I will document the process and post the post-haircut pictures. I will try and keep the style for as long as I can before I have some kind of function where it would be inappropriate.

Here's what you have to work with:

Literacy Motivators

Well, last post is a tough post to follow. So I haven't been too sure what to write next.

By way of news, I've finished up Summer Camp, which means all the things I've been putting off until work was done are now catching up to me. I've got some cleaning to do, emails to send, but more importantly, I'm starting my career as an author today.

Which isn't entirely true. Mostly I've just decided to try and be an author, and I'm starting to write this week. So it's not really a career yet, since nobody's given me any money.

I may actually put up a second blog for stuff I'm working on, so stay tuned on that one.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some thoughts on the things that inspire me toward literacy:

Salty Soda and Lime Green Tea Mentos Gum.

Random, I know.

But, as most of you know, I'm mostly illiterate when it comes to reading Chinese, so when I'm out and am buying some kind of new product, I'm very in the dark as to what it actually is. Most of the time it's not that big of a deal, but I had a couple jarring accidental purchases.

Salty Soda: 7-11 got in this new soda from a brand that I recognized, with the picture of a refreshing lemon on the front. It looked decent, so I bought it, but discovered upon drinking it that it was actually salty. Hmm. It wouldn't be so bad if M and I hadn't done that Lemonade Cleanse a few years ago, complete with the salt-water flush in the mornings. It's a long and exciting story involving some very urgent trips to the toilet. So the combination of lemon and salt-water made me feel like I was back on the cleanse, which was unpleasant to say the least. When I took the bottle home to show M, she pointed out that right on the front of the bottle it says "Salty Soda!" in Chinese. Ah. Good to know.

Lime Green Tea Gum: And then a few days later, I'd had too much garlic and onion for lunch, so I went looking for some gum to buy. Mentos seemed safe enough, so I bought the green stuff, which looked like spearmint to me. But alas, not so. I had M try it and we couldn't quite pin down the flavor(s) until she read the label for me. Lime and Green Tea. Hmm. Actually this gum wasn't really that bad, just weird. The salty soda on the other hand...

(On) A More Sober Note

Living in Beijing for the past year has, for the most part, been a very safe experience. There are, of course, the ever-present fears of pickpockets or becoming a victim of vehicular maiming and dismemberment, but overall, it's a safe city. One of our Chinese friends once quoted a Chinese proverb to the effect of "No one tries anything at the foot of the emperor," as her explanation that Beijing was indeed quite safe.

On Sunday evening, some of the guys in my small group and I were heading out to grab some food when we noticed a crowd gathering outside the gate of an apartment complex. As we approached, it looked like a man was beating a three-wheel cart with a wrench. The four of us slowly realized the horror of the situation, and ran up to see what was really going on. We were pretty sure that there was a guy in the cart; we couldn't see him from our angle, but he must have been beat up pretty bad. As we ran closer, the guy with the wrench and his two friends threw a few parting kicks at the guy in the cart, and took off running. The injured man stood up, covered in blood, and stumbled his way toward some of the bystanders, who tried to convince him to sit down and wait for the police to come. Meanwhile, dozens of Chinese onlookers just stood around gaping in shock. A police vehicle and ambulance drove past, but the police took several minutes to actually arrive on scene. My friends and I left the scene, unsure whether we could actually help by getting involved.

The experience was surreal. Maybe it's that I've seen so many Chinese movies with this exact situation that when it actually does happen in real life, it's hard to believe it's real. Or that I never expected to be a witness to something like this and feel so helpless about it. I don't know how the system works and I can barely blurt out a full Chinese sentence. I wasn't even sure which of the four emergency numbers to call.

It's been a few days since the incident, and I've noticed that my experience of the city has changed. Maybe it's overly dramatic to say it, but it was traumatic. Is the city still (generally) safe? Yes. But for months I've had the impression that most Beijing residents live with latent anger management issues, simmering until some final straw brings the rage to a boil. A shouting match on the side of the road as two angry drivers argue about who is at fault. Vendors arguing over prime street positions to sell their wares.

My entries are usually pretty light-hearted. For me, humor can contribute to just about any situation. But this experience has left me sobered. I wasn't really sure how to write this up without having it be a jarring transition from most of my (not so) recent entries, but I'm coming to realize that as we keep this blog about our experiences here in Beijing, these awkward incongruities will happen. If only because urban life (especially life in a city which is at once so very prosperous and desperate, hilarious and horrific, pragmatic and absurd) is itself so full of these switchbacks and surprises.

So there you have it: a more sober note. And a commitment to be honest with you about life in this city, be it comic or tragic.

Random?

I was scootering to work the other day and something fell out of a tree into my lap, landing with an ominous thud. Then it rolled out of my lap and fluttered away. I was going pretty fast, so I didn't get a clear look at it. But, I'm pretty sure it was a bird.

Scooters are awesome!

The Beans in the Plastic Bubble

I've been saving this post for a few weeks, slowly figuring out in my head what to write. It's that awesome, so I hope I can do it justice.

Basically, about a month ago, M and I were dorking around on Facebook when she spotted some strange video on one of our Chinese friend's wall. She had filmed someone inside of a large plastic bubble rolling around on top of a large kiddie pool. Using her razor-sharp detective skills, M realized where the pool was: the U Center mall right in Wudaokou. We both looked at each other and yelled out, "We have to try this!" For us, it was just another one of those China experiences that you accumulate.

I was really worried that the event would close up shop, so I kept going by the U Center to find out when I could seal myself into one of these floating hamster balls. The security guards and cleaning ladies told me that it was only open from 4-7. Why someone would take the time to blow up a giant kiddie pool but only have it open three hours a day is beyond me...

So a couple Fridays ago, I had the day off, and I told myself: "The one thing I have to do today in order to call my day a success is get in that plastic bubble." I waited around all morning and afternoon, until around four, my friend Jeremy and I biked over to the U Center (stopping by Mcdonalds on the way to have a couple chicken wings and a coke). We could see the event organizers getting set-up, but they hadn't gotten started yet. We ran up to get in line, but they told us they were still waiting for some power and wouldn't start until 4:30. At which point, I made one of the more stupid decisions of my adult life. Right in front of the U Center, there was a little shack and patio with beer on tap, so Jeremy and I decided to have a beer while we waited for the bubbles to open. It ended up being a really crappy beer that didn't sit well, especially since I chugged it in anticipation of climbing in that crazy ball. Finally, a little after 5, they had all the extension cords they needed to pump up these balls and get started. By this time, I was experiencing a weird mixture of hype and disappointment. Weird, I know, I'm not really sure how it happens.

I climbed in first, and sat roasting in this plastic ball while 5 Chinese men tried to figure out how to pump it and then zip it really quickly before it deflated some. I'm pretty sure it took a good 10-15 minutes for them to figure it out. Right around then, M ran up and snapped a picture of me pretending to be an American (err Chinese?) Gladiator.

Finally, the ball was pumped and zipped, and they pushed me on my merry way. I wandered away to get my bearings while Jeremy was zipped into his ball. A crowd of Chinese people had gathered to watch and document the craziness. A number of them began picking up the floating plastic fruit that was bobbing in the pool and flinging them at my bubble, so as I walked around the pool, I kept hearing these echoing Zinging noises as lemons and pears ricocheted off my plastic force-field.

The water wasn't actually that deep, so my feet would kind of touch the ground, which struck me as a little dangerous, since if I fell on my head, it would pretty much just smack the concrete, slightly protected by a couple layers of plastic. But it wouldn't be a Chinese Bubble Party without a little bit of head-trauma risk, now would it? I got up the courage to try some acrobatics, and promptly ate it:

Once Jeremy was ready, I attacked him. Apparently, bubble dueling is a really interesting sport. I floated my way over to his bubble, put my hands against the wall of mine and then pushed them down really hard, making both our bubbles spin. I knocked him over a few times since he hadn't quite figured out how to keep his balance, but then he quickly learned and knocked me over quite a bit.


Eventually, M got suited up in her bubble, and the three of us spent a few minutes attacking each other.

After a particularly strenuous burst of energy, I was knocked over and found myself lying at the bottom of the bubble gasping for air. Whether it was the heat, the exertion, or the fact that I'd probably converted most of the available oxygen in my bubble into carbon-dioxide, I could only gasp little shallow breaths of air. Dizzy and disoriented, I fumbled my way over to the corner and the security guards unzipped the bubble and let me out. I stumbled around on dry land for a couple minutes while M and Jeremy finished up. The whole time, that stupid line from the Matrix kept running through my head: "He's gonna pop!" (Freakin' Cypher).

Here's what I've been trying to figure out how to write. How can I describe to you how utterly foreign and disorienting being in that ball was? I was simultaenously experiencing vertigo, seasickness, asphyxiation, dizziness, heat stroke, over-exertion, dehydration, and mild tipsiness. It was a pretty warm summer day, so the inside of the ball was really hot (and echo-y), and since the ball was always moving, we were basically constantly running in order to stay up. So I came out of the ball really really nauseous. I walked around for a bit, but was too dizzy to walk straight, so I ended up sitting down to try and cool off. M and J were out of their bubbles and came over to see how I was doing. I think because I'd been in their the longest, I was the most oxygen deprived out of the three of us. I started to feel better, so we headed over to the grocery store to pick up some stuff for dinner, but every few minutes I'd get hit with another wave of nausea and have to sit down for a bit. M ended up doing all the shopping while I waited for her outside. On the way out, I felt really sick again, so I decided I'd just go to the bathroom and vomit so I didn't have to worry about it. I went into the bathroom and puked a little bit, while the cleaning dude watched in dismay. It wasn't that much, but I felt tons better.

Anyway, later when I had to tell my friends the story, they asked me if I'd do it again. And the answer is a resounding "Yes!" Although next time without the beer, or chicken wings, or coke.

Rabbit's Revenge

A few months ago, M and I dropped in on a dinner with some of her Michigan classmates, but we didn't get a chance to eat, since we were eating with other friends after. But the food they ordered looked really delicious, so when our friend Steven came through town on his way back to the states, we thought we'd take him back to this Sichuan restaurant for his Last Supper in China.

And, since it was his last supper, we decided to try something crazy. We flipped through the menu looking for crazy things, finally deciding on Goat tripe. But alas, they were sold out (?!). So we settled on Spicy Fried Rabbit's Legs. I know rabbit isn't a China-only food, since most of us grew up reading about people eating rabbit on a spit in old-time England and America, but it was the weirdest thing on the menu that we actually wanted to eat (or wasn't prohibitively expensive).



When the dish came, I had us all pick a piece, name it after a famous rabbit, and then all take a bite together. After which, we all promptly coughed from the painfully spicy peppers, since, as most of you know, Sichuan food is some of the spiciest food in China. Over the course of the meal, we ate Roger, Peter, Buster, Bugs, Babs, and the rabbits from Watership Down whose names I couldn't remember.

Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that naming the rabbit legs probably put is in the negative with the karma department because the next day, the three of us were all feeling the effects of "Rabbit's Revenge". Spicy in, spicy out. Oh well, I still don't regret it.

From the Outside

Well, I'll just go ahead and say it: Happy Fourth of July. Ours is already over, but yours should just be beginning (not that I expect our American readers to just instantly read this once I post it).

M and I were reflecting on how different our last July 4th was. Last year, the rain seeding reached a peak on the Fourth, resulting in one of the worst rains we've ever been caught out in. After retreating back to our dorms, we decided to brave the rain with our friend to meet up with some of her friends, eventually ending up in a small Spanish-style bar in a hipsterized hutong, watching newfound acquaintances pound a couple racks of home-brewed tequila shots.

We weren't planning on doing anything too special this year, as I had to work and M and I both had some volunteering to do. However, somehow by accident, I bought mostly American today: 7-11 and Mcdonald's for breakfast and lunch.

So after I got off work, I kind of kept the streak going by heading to Lush (24 hour pancakes, burgers, beer, hookahs, you name it. It's like an always open ex-pat homesick remedy) for their discounted burgers. Plus, I'd heard through the grapevine that a couple of our friends were going to be playing some music, so we decided to stick around and check it out. Although the patriotism in the bar was often drunkenly over the top (three guys, arms linked, free hands raising beers toward the American flag, slurring the words to American Pie), it was surprisingly cheering. Despite all the crap She gets, America's a great place to have been born and raised. These days it just isn't that cool to be American, China not being an exception, so taking a day out for Freedom was refreshing. Especially when it involves rowdy singalongs of heartland favorites: the Star Spangled Banner, Sweet Home Alabama, American Pie, etc. Jason and Kanene are freaking rockstars.


But my ultimate favorite part? Marissa's awe-inspiring dramatic performance of the Presidential speech from Independence Day. Epictacular. Really makes me want to kick some alien butt.