A Different View of Time

Anyone who knows me knows that planning is in my blood. I just can't help it. I think its genetic. Being in China, however, has given me a very different view of time. When I first arrived in September, I kept trying to plan ahead for meetings and schedule things in advance, but I was continually faced with the response, "I don't know what my schedule will be that far in advance." Eventually, I got it, the Chinese (at least in Beijing), schedule "as they go." For example, I once asked a colleague of mine if she could contact someone at a local company and schedule a meeting. She agreed, but only if I was prepared to meet with that person this week. If not, it made no sense to make contact yet, e.g. until I was actually ready to meet. I was told that as long as people didn't schedule meetings in advance, their schedules were open for meetings that needed to happen. As long as schedules are open, why plan ahead? I had a similar experience with a class field trip that I'd set up 3 months ahead. Three days before the field trip, our host contacted me and asked if we could postpone it for a week. Fortunately, by this time, I (and the students) had learned to "go with the flow" and we just juggled things around and all worked out fine.

The cost of airline tickets supports this view of time. Instead of costing less to book your flights early, it costs more! I tried once to book a flight a month in advance and was told that I'd pay full fare, but if I waited a few weeks, I could get a discounted rate. In fact, they won't even confirm tickets on domestic flights until two months ahead.

Although it challenges my natural tendencies to plan ahead, I'm kind of enjoying this new way of operating. My calendar is open so that I have more flexibility and its less stressful. If, after I get home, you request a meeting or are planning a social engagement and I say "I just don't know what I'll be doing then," you'll know where it came from! Let's see how long I can last before the planning gene reasserts itself.

Pingyao - The Ancient Center of Finance

During Mark's recent visit, we went to Pingyao for the weekend. Pingyao is known for being the financial center of China. Paper money was invented here and this is where the first banks came into being. It is also known as one of the best preserved walled cities in China. We stayed in an ancient courtyard hotel, so it was really like stepping back in time. The photos show one of the watch towers on the city wall. As we were strolling the streets, Mark was approached by a group of boys who were doing a class homework assignment. They had to speak English with the foreigner, take his picture (with the students), and get him to write his name in a book. Mark did all of this, then insisted on a picture with them. It was great fun!

On the second day, we want to Mr. Xiao's (pronounced Chow's) Residence which is a huge courtyard home where the movie Raise the Red Lanterns was filmed. I remember loving that movie and it was really cool to see the courtyards where all of this took place. In case I haven't mentioned it, courtyard homes were a standard style here in China and many of them survive today. The basic structure is 4 rooms around a central courtyard. Oftentimes, the extended family lived in the courtyard home with each family group having a room off of the courtyard. Wealthier families would have multiple courtyards with 4 rooms off of each. Mr. Xiao (a wealthy merchant who made money from tofu and soy bean products) had a residence with at least 10 courtyards (many of which housed his concubines and their children).

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed in the Anhui province of China. For our class field trip, we went to Huang Shan which is a beautiful mountain in Anhui where the fog floats in and around the dramatic peaks and makes the whole place feel very mysterious. I think this is probably the most beautiful place I've been in China so far. I took loads of pictures and provide a few of them here. If you look closely at the first photo in the group, you can see the stairs winding up the side of one of the hill. We stayed at one of the handful of hotels on the top of the mountain, so we managed to see both sunset and sunrise. One of the photos shows me with Xiaohong and Leigh (the staff at the Stanford office here in Beijing) at sunrise. Hiking down the mountain, we ran across numerous men carrying supplies up the mountain (see photos of a man carrying a metal beam and another group carrying bags filled with bricks). The man carrying the beam told us that he makes 10 RMB (about $1.30) per trip and can make about 4 trips per day. He carried about 150 lbs each trip. That's hard labor! It was also possible to hire a sedan chair and be carried up or down the mountain by two hearty men. I kept threatening to do this, but it would have been so embarrassing... I also worried that if one of them tripped, I'd be dumped off the side of the mountain!

Street Snacks

All around Beijing, there are opportnities to buy snacks on the street. These range from the bizzarre at Snack Street to little candied "apples" at parks and on street corners. Snack street is a block-long attraction in downtown Beijing where vendors (highly regulated these days) hawk everything from deep fried soft shell crabs, to fruit, to crickets (yes, insects), to scorpians on a stick (see photo of what Snack Street has to offer). I haven't been daring enough to go beyond the soft shell crabs, although I've witnessed others chomping down on scorpians... yum! Snack Street is a bit of an anomalie, but elsewhere in Bejing, we frequently see chestnuts roasting, fresh kettle corn popping, jian bing (a snack in which a crepe is folded over a chunk of deep fried dough and slathered with sauce... honestly, not my favorite snack, but very popular with the students), and the omnipresent candied hawthorne. The hawthorne (see photo) looks a lot like a small candied apple, but they're more tart and really tasty. After an internet search, we discovered that the "haw" (as its locally known) or hawthorne is a relative of the rose and has great medicinal properties (e.g. alieviates stomach ailments as well as heart disease). I guess I'll have to eat more of them :-)

Cooking Class

On Monday nights for six weeks, I have the pleasure of going to the Li house for cooking class and dinner. Actually, its more dinner than cooking class, but we're learning a thing or two about how to fry a fish (see photo) and make dumplings with folds in all the right places. Grandma Li is hosting two Stanford students and me. She is all smiles and laughs and a joy to be around (see photo of Grandma Li in her kitchen). She speaks almost no English, but fortunately the two students, AJ and Jeff, help keep me in the loop. Every week, we sit down to an incredibly good dinner with Grandma Li and sometimes her grandson (see photo of Jeff, Grandma Li, AJ, and Grandma Li's grandson), her daughter and son-in-law. This has been one of the highlights of my stay in Beijing.