Day 14: Beijing (6/11/2009)

According to my faithful Facebook updates, I've been in China for two weeks. Unpossible, I say! But more than that, improbable!! And yet it is probably true. Oh, well, that's that.

I finally bit the bullet and installed Hotspot Shield for its proxy bypassing abilities. And then in the process of doing so, realized that I already had it installed. D'oh. :| I am a dummy. (I always wanna spell it "Dumby," because it looks like it would be so cute) At any rate, I now have access to all the Firewalled sites in China! At least, such would be the general idea. In practice, the Internets is still slow as a snail on a hot summer day. ...I don't actually know if heat plays a factor in snail speed. I digress. The point of this paragraph was originally to point out that, well, my travel adventures belong on this site. I will have to update the past two weeks' Facebook notes here when I get a chance, but for now, the least I can do is to start posting my updates back here on Blogger.

I'm feeling mildly better. The bugs in my stomach are a little less ferocious! It could also be that I've been starving them, but they only bother me now when I eat. This won't be a problem for another few weeks, because psh, who needs food?

We actually had a very chill day today. After our morning editorial meeting, we were free until 4 p.m., when we visited the Wall Street Journal bureau. Again, swanky building - this time in the same building as a shopping center, whoo whoo. It's not like I actually did anything there besides pick up hygienic products like shampoo and lotion and soap with Tracy, but knowing it was there was half the excitement. Oh, I'm talking about the shopping, not the WSJ - which was highly interesting, although the room was very warm. I'm really enjoying all of these briefings we have. It's too bad we're not really allowed to talk about half of them. Suffice it to say, though, that I have come out of everything this past week with the following information...

To become a foreign correspondent in this day and age:
1) The financial news market booms while the rest of the industry crashes, so if you can get over your fear of business journalism, you will not have to worry that journalists are a dying breed.
2) Know the basics of journalistic writing. Think fast on your feet and learn the local house style as quickly as you can.
3) Have at least some working knowledge of how to illustrate a story visually. Multimedia experience is only going to get more valuable as time progresses.
4) Learn a foreign language, and learn it well. Most places will want you to be conversationally fluent and able to comprehend a basic news article. Bonus props if you can write in said foreign language. Obviously, this is exponentially harder in most Asian languages than in, say, Romance languages.
5) Bonus sprinkles on the top include a working understanding of economics/accounting/finance, science/math, and being well-read.
6) 10-15 minutes of research before any interview can only make you look better.

We may or may not go to a jazz club tonight. When I say "we," I make it sound like it's a group thing... but really, I just mean Me and My Stomach Bug. I think I will name him Fred.

I always forget that I can't access Xanga/Blogspot in China, so Facebook must bear the brunt of this Pepys-esque account. (I will even tell you what I had for lunch!) I'll update these to my respective blog locations later when I can. But today, it's way too late and thus no time for Pepys behavior.

I missed a chance to be an extra for Jay Chou last night + hang out with Cindy Wu at the same time, because of bad timing. That's all I have to say about that. It was disappointing.

I got on a plane for Beijing this morning! Direct flight from Taipei is awesome. Here you can see the paranoia about H1N1 (swine flu) peeking out behind me. I thought that masks, the having to wait to de-board the plane until all of our temps had been taken, and the health forms/various checkpoints in the terminal were the worst of it all. I was wrong.

One of the Maymester students ended up stranded/quarantined in Shanghai because a passenger on his flight had flu-like symptoms. I spent an hour or two in an Internet cafe looking him up on Skype/video Gchat/AIM, trying to find his hotel room/name/number (because it was all in Chinese) based on information he remembered, like what the area sounded like. It was the most frustrating thing that's happened with Chinese communications yet, and we've had a lot of those (cell phone problems, no Internet in the rooms [which we need for this program], firewalls on blogging sites and more).

We finally found him with satellite view... Huzzah for beating The Great Firewall!

I have unfortunately been forced to purchase unwanted quantities of tea at exorbitant prices in order to access this free wireless in this [nice] coffee shop a 15-minute walk away from my hotel. Rawr. This better resolve itself... I do not want a repeat of 2008. (Also, this year I didn't get a cash stipend ahead of time, so must budget... must... budget...) Also, I am being drowned in the cloud of cigarette smoke that seems to pervade China. Ew, these people and their lung-killing habits! Although the air of Beijing alone is said to be as toxic as the equivalent of 70 cigarettes every day. That's a little extreme, although my boogers prove there must be some truth to the matter.

I also had to switch hotel rooms once within 10 minutes of getting here, and spend 3 hours attempting to figure out Why I Can't Get Online In My Room (not just for my sake, but for the team's sake). Um, I need to learn a lot of things - networking (not the social kind), simplified Chinese, and the simplified Chinese characters for networking terms. I'm just guessing at "proxy" and "server" and whatnot as it is... and then you want me to read hastily scribbled simplified Chinese characters describing these things as my solution for lack of Internet? I'm not a genius! Geez. :|

OK, I have to walk home in the dark now. So I'm going to get to work on that. See you tomorrow! (I plan to get up at 6 a.m. to go running. HAHA)

Goodbye, dusty dirty city of fun

We're leaving Beijing for Xi'an (by sleeper car!) in a coupla hours, so this is a quick recap.

Went to church this morning... apparently there was one a 5-minute walk from my guesthouse. D'oh. ;p I also got there late (assuming they started at 10, which they did not). So I missed out on about half of it. But it was still really awesome to see such a huge (and looks like semi-rich, by Chinese standard!) church. Will elaborate on church experiences in Beijing later.

After that, I found out that I was out of church by 10:30 so I went to the Silk Market with Carol and Michelle. That place kinda stresses me out, but it still was pretty much like heaven for me. ;p I walked out with two pairs of knock-off Puma shoes, two knock-off (but real leather) Chloe bags, a pair of brown boots and a cardigan/sweater set for my mom. Now I should officially end shopping (although Shanghai sounds tempting already) and get myself another suitcase. ^^ I think I'll just ship all the Crossings girls' stuff from Taiwan - that way I will have more luggage space. Win. Plus it's not like I have time or space to mail things out from Austin... But yeah, anyway, I'm happy with the shopping around here.

The air, however, is killing my lungs and throat. :P

And my suitcases are bulging. I don't even know how I'll carry all that stuff. :\ Lol.