Hiding in Haidian

I haven't really been posting much which is an indication of my poor time management here. Much of life here is occupied by the World Cup, which is one of the most amazing events the world knows. I still prefer the Olympics but have found myself fully enveloped in football mania, reading the bios of Lionel Messi, Diego Forlan, David Villa and that awesome Turkish-German midfielder. This is also by far the best World Cup I've ever had. Previous cups featured games in morning or early afternoon times in US EST. While there was some charm to waking up to a 7:30am showdown, it doesn't quite match up to primetime. The first round games here were 7:30pm, 10pm and 2:30am. The first two times were amazing and I caught almost all those games, including US-Slovenia and US-Algeria. The latter is quite problematic and the only two games I tried to watch (England-Algeria and US-Ghana) I fell asleep a bit before the ending. Adding to the excitement is the international presence in Beijing. The European, African and South American expat population in Beijing continually has strong showings, notably a large and loud Spanish contingent that I watched lose to Switzerland.

The US-Ghana game started with me at Pyro Bar and found me back in my apartment by the start of the second half. Somehow I saw all 3 goals before passing out in extra time and waking up to a dubbed version of Sponge Bob Square Pants. I gotta say that even though we could have gone very far in this tournament, I am very proud of our performance. With a roster that essential amounts to a bunch of B-listers and two marginal world class players (Landon Donovan and Tim Howard) we displayed grit and resilience throughout and made our country proud, in a sport that we will care more and more about. While we could have beaten Ghana, there is no way we could match up talentwise with Uruguay.

Anyways Beijing has been a slow but exhausting whir of cheap and interesting food, language practice, terrible air and the occasional exciting field trip. Notable dinners include Uyghur (a cuisine I memorably sampled towards the end of my last visit here), Hot Pot and dumplings, and I'm eager for more. I have started sampling a local restaurant that specializes in Lanzhou food, which I had never even heard of but essentially amounts to especially tasty Northern Chinese food. I think it is literally impossible to spend more than 30 kuai at this restaurant, and I typically spend from 8-15 for a very nice meal and drink. The beer glasses they used here are Tsingdao glasses sponsored by the NBA. I remarked that they were special and they gave me one for free, which almost paid for my meal and now holds my toothbrush.

After a few weeks of frustration, my Mandarin has started to improve and I'm gaining fluidity again. My general strategy of practicing by talking to strangers is similar to last time, but I've refined it and spend a lot of energy learning characters and vocabulary. I will make a post specifically about the trials and tribulations of learning the Mandarin language.

Last Saturday I did one of my few touristy trips in a city that I've now spent about 4 months in, going to the surprisingly little known LuGou Qiao southwest of Beijing. Also known as the Marco Polo Bridge for the Venetian's laudatory comments about the bridge that brought it fame in Europe, the bridge is a 700 year old sturdy architectural marvel that contains about 140 delicately and uniquely carved lions. Today it is almost equally as famous, especially within China, as the site of the beginning of World War 2 (or the Pacific War between Japan and China) in 1937. I definitely appreciated the history of the bridge, from imagining Marco Polo walking along the same path 500 odd years before me or crouching Chinese soldiers resting their guns against the lions in a dark July night. Getting there was even an adventure as I needed to take a 45 minute one transfer bus ride. That doesn't sound particularly risky, but buses here are very scary to me. There are almost 1000 different lines, the maps are nearly all in Chinese and the place names are all strange to me unless they're at a subway stop, and they don't always announce the stops when you're on the bus. As a result, I never went on one last time I was here (nor did I need to with the usefulness of the subway). I spent an hour and a half on the bus website beforehand figuring out my route before managing to execute it properly.

That day, I had 3 people ask me what country I was from. This is pretty rare as most people don't ever approach me in Chinese. The first person was notable. I was literally getting in the elevator of my building when this guy in the elevator asked me what country I was from. I said American, and he told me I don't look American. I told him that there are many different types of Americans, and he responded that, "no, I definitely looked Arabic." He proceeded to lecture me on my own features and why they were Arab, particularly my dark eyebrows (??) and eyes. Then he said I looked like a word that definitely sounded like "Iraqi." I finally asked him if he had ever seen an Arab. He paused, then said "Yes. Yes. On TV." Sigh.

A few days ago I was working at my boss Conrad's apartment when Conrad brought back a family he was trying to hire. I had no idea where they were from so I introduced myself in English. I then hear Conrad tell them in Cantonese about my dad and how he lived in Brazil. I come back and ask him in Cantonese if he's talking about my dad. The family was immediately startled and asked me how I knew Cantonese. I told them that I was ethnically Cantonese, what did they think I was? They thought I was Brazilian. So if you're keeping score at home, this summer I've been thought to be Southern Chinese (somewhat true), hapa, Korean, Thai, Malaysian, Iraqi, and Brazilian. I think that my mistaken identities could perhaps make a pretty good soccer team.