Return to Innocence

Bei Jing to me is all about memory, especially memories from my childhood and adolescence. I like old Beijing, the time before new development took place. I particularly like the old style architectures such as “Hu Tong” and “Si He Yuan”. Some of them survived from new developments and now they have been protected by the local government as a way to remember history, remember who we are and where we are from.

I needed to drop off some documents for my mum to her previous working place, the no. 25 middle school, where I also studied for a year and a half. The school has more than one hundred and thirty years of history and you are able to find some old style architecture there. It has been changed a lot since I left but I was able to dig some of my memories out of my brain. When I was standing on the playground, looking at boys and girls running and playing, I was thinking I must be looked the same when I was at their age. The important things for them would be which NBA team is going to won the championship this year and which girl from a lower grade they are going to follow after school. It was the most memorable time of my life even though it wasn’t full of happiness.

Come out from the school, heading south, you can reach one of the oldest shopping streets of Bei Jing, the “Wang Fu Jing”. Nothing much left from the ancient time, only the newly made sculptures try to capture the old days. Forget is the start of change, of moving forward, possibly. So I picked the color of my new Crocs which I would never get before. The limited Bei Jing Olympics edition released in China which the colors of China’s national flag. Maybe I would like to try some changes, little by little.

Photos of the No. 25 Middle School

=================================================================

Photos of "Wang Fu Jing"

Hot Pot

Hot pot (steam bowl) is one of my favorite food. As a child, my happiest time would be waiting for my father lighting old style metal steam bowl (flaming coal inside) before dinner. The preparation of a hot pot meal involves washing and cutting vegetables and meats, and making source. Mushrooms, fresh green leaf vegetables, tofu, fish balls, sliced lamb and beef, seafood, eggs, bean noodles and so much more can be cooked in a small steam bowl and the soup is full of flavor (sometimes can be oily). Especially in cold winter, steam bowl can be a perfect meal for a family of three as well as a large gathering. High quality materials are important for a good steam bowl meal, however traditionally, the source and the soup paste are the most important elements in the whole meal. Some commercial steam bowl restaurants use their own secretly home made source and paste to attract customers. Today’s hot pot does not have many ingredients, but the best meal I had since I come back, simple but delicious.

To Alcohol!

Many people have asked me if I like Beijing or New Zealand better. This is a difficult question to answer and possibly I am never able to answer it. But I clearly know that New Zealand life style suits me better and I enjoy the most while I am traveling and staying in New Zealand. I have left my footprint at many places, both North Island and South Island, in New Zealand; but in China, I hardly travel. It is almost a week since I have arrived Beijing, and now both my body and my mind have reaction to the environment.

I went to “Zhong Guan Cun” yesterday, a place called China’s Silicone Valley. My grandparents used to live there more than 15 years ago. In my memory, the place had a small street with about a meter deep channel on each side of the road. I used to run down to the channel and then climb up to the top, over and over again with my cousin who is a year younger. Now it becomes a modern place full of business apartments and shopping centers. “Hai Long”, one of the (possibly the oldest) electronic markets here contain thousands of small shops and you can find the latest technology products range from ipods, digital cameras to laptops. They sell those products as selling vegetables in the morning market, seasonal, cheap and fresh; but remember to bargain because most of their quotes are still overpriced especially if you are not familiar with the market price.



I bought a GPS receiver for the company. It perfectly shows how technology can invade people’s privacy (there is no privacy in Beijing anyway) and ruin our lives. Besides normal use, the product can be used in the following ways:

1 If you doubt your partner having an affair.
2 If you want to chase someone who owes your money.
3 If you want to know what your business partners or competitors are up to.
4 Of course cops can attach it with a criminal or someone who received home detention.
……….let me know if you can think about more



Great! Google knows what we are after, Amazon knows what we like, GPS knows where we are, RFID tag knows who we are, what a fantastic world to live in. I believe in the near future, there won’t be any prison and all we need is to adopt Holmer’s philosophy, “if something is hard to think about, it does not worth to think about” -------“To Alcohol!”

If there is no wind, it is a luxury thing to see blue sky. I bet the depression rate is higher here than other places that are smaller and less polluted. It is difficult to know what makes us truly happy, at least here with all the materials, I feel something missing. I definitely need to go back to bush soon….but right now I have to stay in Beijing, a giant machine.

I start missing New Zealand.

Good Morning Bei Jing

Every day can be full of excitement when you wake up in this busy and noisy city. I mean a real city in terms of both population and size, not the NZ standard “city”. In the community I live in within about the size of the area inside Massey ring road, there are about 100,000 people, more than the population of the entire Palmerston North city. I like the feeling of being an outsider here. What I mean by that is I am not functionally involved in this city right now (make a living here). As an outsider, I like walking on the street and watching people walking, shopping or talking. Thinking that each of them has a unique story, personality and life style but when people passing by, no one caresabout who he really is and what he means to you. Everyone is a piece, in total, all pieces construct a game on the game board. I feel lost when I am alone on the street. It

is like a scene in a movie, a little girl holding an umbrella standing at the traffic crossing. Then the camera rolled onto the top, in the movie screen, you see many colorful umbrellas and car roofs moving around expect one little static red umbrella.

Yes, at here, you play the game by following game rules. In my grandma’s place, I met my cousin who is in her last year of high school, 2 months before the most important exam of her life—the university entrance exam. She said she does not forsee anything in front of her and don’t know what to study when she enters university. She is a little bit depressed but is strong and optimistic. Based on what she has achieved, she is good enough to go to the first class Universities in China. To survive well, you job is to play the game, not to make rules. She is a good player even though not so happy. Pragmatic is one of the principles of life here and it is a neutral word. I have told my aunt that New Zealand just opened working holiday scheme to China by allowing 1000 Chinese citizens aged between 18 and 30 to come to NZ for work and travel. As I believe, this is a good opportunity for my cousin to see the world and she will gain experiences which are valuable to the rest of her life. But unsurprisingly, my aunt and her husband are not that interested at all. To them, the best way for my cousin is to follow what most people do, get into a good university and then find a good job. They believe this one year working holiday will bring nothing more valuable to my cousin than following the standard life, at least not what they can see. Being pragmatic, following the rules and playing the game -- that is the principle, hard to shake.

Yes, Miss Tomo is right for two things, one, black and white; and two, Jordan type. She knows me well enough to guess that I bought a pair of Nike basketball shoes. The power of PhD in psychology remains even at a distance of the ocean and for sure this is nothing to do with science. Jordan XI, the year he lead Chicago Bulls breaking the NBA record by winning 72 games in a season, he was wearing this pair. They are my favorite basketball shoes by all time and they were the pair that I was dreamed of when I was 17. Yes, I have grown up but sometime I just want to be childish to fulfill my childhood dream even though I don’t get the same excitement as I was 17. When you start losing hair but gaining weight, you want to “smell like a teen spirit”, at least once a year.



It is a new day and you will never be able to return to yesterday, so why not put a smile and say “Good morning BeiJing”.

Home Sweet Home

13.5 hours flight from Auckland to Beijing did not seem to be that long after four hours’ sleep and couple of movies. All the latest blockbuster movies can be found in AirNZ entertainment system including Slumdog Millionaire, Trwlight, Australia, KungFu Panda, Doubt etc. It is a good thing for travelers who are paying too much for the services but the lesson I leaned is that before traveling, try not to watch too many movies else you will limit your choices of enjoyment on the flight. After all, the Simpsons and the Family Guy are always the best mates no matter how often you hang out with. No to mention, NZ87 is a joint flight between AirNZ and Air China, for sure AirNZ leaned some good stuff from Air China that to make picky and grumpy travelers feel their money worth, you need to fill some young and pretty ones rather than those highly experienced ones in to their cabin crew, sometimes it is all about the looks. Yes, just like to make myself happy, I have to go for McDonalds rather than a huge piece of steak when I am jailed for almost 14 hours.

Flight is an amazing invention like Doraemon’s anywhere door, when you open the gate, it is another world. The first real meal I had in the past 48 hours made me feel home….home sweet home. No matter how BeiJing changes, some things remain the same. They are all what you need and what you care about, and they make the special place HOME. I have to admit that I was wrong by saying my cooking is better than mum’s, her cooking has improved a lot since she started living by herself. I don’t know if it is a good thing or not, surely I feel guilty.

Things become wired when you open your own door, besides home, I am sometimes not sure if the place I am at is the place I spent all my childhood and adolescence years. I feel Palmy more the place I like to be even it might not be the best place in New Zealand. I feel I am a stranger to here, like you have been traveling for years and when returning to home, you found that you just got a step father…….and a step mother. I was jogging on the playground of my mum’s school. while she was teaching a class. Poor students in their final high school year have classes even on Saturday for the sack of their Uni entrance exam preparation. Luckly I have done with Chinese schools and will never go back unless as a teacher. Amazingly I was the only one jogging there and even more amazing I was the only one wearing short sleeves (it is even warmer than Palmy). The most amazing thing is that my appearance triggered my mum’s students’ curiosity and they came to the playground to check me out. Am I a KungFu panada or somethings? Thanks God I was told by my mum after worth so I did fell like I was being displayed in the zoo.

You will be amazed by how expensive things have become since I left the first time. For sure cheap things can still be found and someone earn as little as $500 NZD per month can still survive here. But to have a quality life here, you really need to get a decent job. It’s a shopping heaven if you have money. Come on, a pair of Nike basketball shoes cost $1250 (more than NZD $300) and only the Nike section of the department store got more shoes than the entire Rebel Sports in Palmy. Surely Nike makes more money of selling the same shoes in China than in US or even NZ. Maybe I should just give up buying a new pair here and go down to Rebel Sport and pick one out of the only five or six styles (that’s the range of basketball shoes, if you are looking for Nike, max 3 styles).

It a place with four times the population of the entire New Zealand. It a place filled with concrete forests. It a place very materialized and with very busy walking people. It a place keep changing and developing every single second. It a place has huge potential to become a very influential spot on the earth both economically and politically. It is a place further and further from me. All in all, it is the place I call HOME, at least for now.