Day Four: Routine Sets In

I am finally starting to feel a sense of routine about my day. I got up, did some pushups, showered, got dressed, went to work. I finally solved the darn problem with my bank account. Fucking irritating. I also paid my first month's rent. I've been asked "nicely" for second month's rent by Monday. I hope my withdrawal limit doesn't stop that from happening.

I got a glance at a gym in my apartment today. I need to look into that tomorrow. Hopefully it's already paid for (have I mentioned my apartment is swank?).

Work today was less exciting than yesterday, but not by much. The boss likes my initiative. The coworkers are calling me "Laoshi" (teacher) when they ask me questions about English. I have other skills, but acute knowledge of English is the one skill I have that everyone in the office lacks completely, so It's what I'm defaulting to as an intern, but the boss is going to try hard to get me into some real research next week. Not bad.

Went out for dinner again tonight, and I've found I can eat almost anything that's not made of some strange fish, and like it. I can even handle the spicy stuff, with enough Qingdao at my side to wash it down. I worry I might get fat here. I really thought I was going to end up losing weight. But we shall see.

I picked up a phone today! So I can make phone calls now. It's not even that expensive to call the US. So get your requests in now.

I'm getting a better sense of the Chaoyang area of Beijing (which, anywhere outside of China, would be a city on its own). At least, I've got a very good sense for having only been here four days. My Chinese is getting marginally better, too. Work is forcing me to think in Chinese for hours at a time, 5 days a week. Super good for me. Surprisingly, since I can get by on the street with short, simple phrases, I'm not learning much, except to listen to people who don't have crisp, educated accents.

But I'm learning about the culture, quite a bit. I'm learning the Chinese perspective; what nationalism means here, what money means, what consumerism looks like. I'm learning how the Chinese people view government, view Taiwan, view Tibet, view America and the West in general. And I can say for sure that most Westerners have it pretty wrong. I'm starting to realize I haven't had it quite right, despite a lot of studying. But coworkers and friends have been surprisingly happy to share their very frank opinions with me, and have been happy to listen to mine (though I tend to be more pro-China than the average American).

My Chinese friends have been genuinely confused when I mentioned that China scares a lot of Americans, though they understand better when I talk about the American perspective on Taiwan, on self-determinism/human rights and Tibet, and how overseas Chinese tend to deal with any doubts as to China's pristine perfection, etc. It's a relationship that needs a lot of healing, but one that can be healed through lots of talking. Good thing we're in the information age.

Anyway, I think I'm starting to learn exactly what I intended to. Everyone around me is eager to both teach me and learn themselves, so it's been a mind-bogglingly productive start to my adventure in Beijing. More pictures to come in later posts, promise.

Day Three: Work Begins

I'm keeping this short, but Horizon is awesome. The place is hard-working yet laid back... the team is very self-motivated. Everyone was thrilled to meet me, and I got quite a few invitations to go to dinner, bars, and karaoke--many of which I plan to take up.

I am the only white guy in the 400-person office. Most people speak English only a bit better than I speak Chinese, though my manager (Dr. Feng, who has enough charisma to knock an elephant out) speaks English better than I do. The team seems pretty excited to have an American intern--I got bombarded with MSN messages today, and lost a few hours to it.

I was worried at first that the language barrier would be a problem. It does make things difficult, but everyone's willing to be patient, and they all want me to learn better Chinese. In return, I'm helping run the daily English Corner at lunch, and will be giving 90-minute English lessons every Thursday. I'm doing a lot of English proofreading, and even translating. I'll be meeting with some clients and working on some research for an American company I can't name, but my hands are going to get pretty dirty pretty quickly.

I'm feeling a lot better about my Chinese. I am speaking rather brokenly to my coworkers, but they're so scared about speaking English to a real American that they sympathize. I sat through a 90-minute training presentation about, well, giving presentations, and it was all in Chinese. Dr. Feng asked me to summarize the presentation to him afterwards, and said I did okay. "Keep talking and listening," he said in Chinese. I'm not getting paid, but I'm there to learn about the language and culture. He knew that, and my colleagues know it. So it looks like work is going to be a great time.

Finally, I went out with Sarah and Kim tonight (both MIT students) to a great Hunan-style restaurant, where we got some rather spicy stuff. We all had our noses running and eyes watering by the end of it, it was great. My known territory in Beijing is getting bigger by the day; I'm hoping to know most of it pretty well by the time I get out of here.

And now, bed; it's too late already.

I found out today that on street-corners, 24oz. bottles of Qingdao beer cost 3RMB--that's less than 50 cents. I'm in heaven.


Also, the sky was blue today. It was kindof weird.