Are Chinese really New Yorkers on steriods?

I returned to Beijing the other day to do some research and realized, as a I was waiting for a cab...for over an hour...I started thinking that Chinese are really New Yorkers on steroids. But they really aren't because no one ever loses their temper here...it is amazing.

New York city is not really like Beijing...New York seems small by comparison..perhaps it is because I know New York better? But it is hard to imagine the density here, particularly in Beijing and especially at the train station's taxi stop on rush hour. But imagine if you will several thousand people mulling around a taxi line that winds itself around in three different ways and as the taxis drive up, so do other kinds of vehicles, people on bikes and plenty of pedestrians...in a tiny two lane road.

It is totally insane..but as pushy as everyone is, no one loses their temper and smiling is the general rule. God only knows what they are saying to each other, as they roll their suitcases over each other's toes and push ahead of each other in line, but still no one loses their cool. It just doesn't happen in China. And after all of the mild pushing and positioning, they start to chat with each other and laugh, even offering cigarettes or something to eat. I mean, we are all in this together...right? But...still at the end, the women ahead of me pushed to get the next taxi..but the women who were right ahead of them didn't even notice. I guess they could understand. We were all on an overnight train and had been waiting for so long...so as the cab pulled up and the women in front of me hesitated and walked slowly, I thought about jumping ahead of them and grabbing the next cab..and then turning around to smile.

Great Wall Marathon

Proud to say that I completed the Great Wall Marathon a couple of weeks ago. It was a fantastic setting - an isolated, well preserved and restored section of the wall about three hours outside of Beijing.

This was my sixth marathon to date and I used this event to help keep me in shape during our stay here in Xian. What runner could pass up the chance to run a marathon on the Great Wall? Despite the obviousness of this course's difficulty, I completely underestimated the severity of the challenge. It was not really a traditional marathon, more of an endurance test. It began with about a half mile of flat terrain before you started a couple of miles up a winding hill to to the wall. Once on the wall you go up and down the thousand year old steps for about a mile an a half across this rugged mountainous area.


After a careful and slow descent down a very steep, rugged path the course is flat for a while before you begin an series of ups and downs across meandering hills, through three small villages, along a worn goat trail - all the while being encouraged along by very friendly townspeople. The combination of kids and older folks was amazing and gave you quite a boost.


However at mile 22, just about the point at which you hit the dreaded runners wall, you return to the Great Wall for a repeat performance. Only this time you have to go up the steep staircase (1000 plus steps, easy) to get to the wall and then face its unique challenges. I was monkey crawling at this point. The payoff is the descent down the back side of the course, by that point a very welcome site.



I finished in 5 1/2 hours and was very, very happy to have completed. Surprisingly, I had perhaps my fastest recovery to date - and did quite a bit of really nice site seeing over the next several days. The only thing I couldn't face were stairs...

Chai

Probably one of the most important characters in modern Chinese is "chai" meaning to pull down, dismantle. Ever since the horrific Sichuan earthquakes, Chinese television has been flooded with images of damaged buildings in various stages of being further dismantled. However, this nature caused destruction pales in comparison with the chai that goes on in the name of urban revitalization.

Chinese cities can accurately be described the world's biggest construction sites. Beyond the cranes, the dust, and the lattice work of scaffolding that dot the urban landscape, the image that I identify most with this construction boom is this chai character. It appears overnight, painted on the face of buildings to mark an area for demolition - once Chai appears the normal life of the area changes and all energies are focused on relocation, salvage and demolition. With a major new redevelopment project underway in our comfy apartment in Xian, we've been given a front row to this hallmark of China's rise.



The day of the Sichuan earthquake was also the day that demolition began on a 6 - 8 block area directly behind our apartment. Chai characters appeared all over the district along with legions of black garbed police moving into the neighborhood telling the residents that it was time to go. They had been given much advance notice about general development plans (a nice, modern mixed use residential area desperately needed to address the adjacent University's housing shortage), but as these things go, it is always a difficult realization for residents to make. There was a weird sense of disbelief - the earth was literally shaking beneath their feet as the inevitable order finally occurred and chai appeared. Despite the fear of quakes, people rushed to get things out of their dilapidated buildings as the metal recyclers and other scavengers moved in and started carting away anything of value.



Within a week the demolition began - heavy machinery complemented by hands on wrecking crews wielding sledge hammers. While it has been fascinating to watch the deconstruction of a whole community happen from our back window, the constant rat-a-tat-tat of heavy machinery chipping away at brick and concrete and the resulting dust clouds have tested our patience.

So while we watch the images of widespread natural destruction and human tragedy on the nightly news, we spend part of our days watching the much more focused destruction of our neighborhood. By demolishing at least a hundred medium to large scale buildings, we now enjoy new vistas - a fresh field of construction cranes working on another residential tower rises from the edge of the rubble. We now have three such developments, with a total of seven such multi-storied buildings, rising within view of our front and back windows. Amazing.

And it all starts with chai.

Thinking about our trip to Chengdu

It is hard for us to think about our trip to Chengdu.

We had such a magical time there but when I go to bed at night, I keep thinking about the kind monks who took us in at the monastery at the top of the mountain. The monastery was/is right between the epicenter of the earthquake and Chengdu.... We cannot imagine that the monastery made it but we have yet to hear anything.

It will take weeks if not longer for people to make the four hour trek up the mountain. I know that I would never return now...

The monks were young and old and they celebrated Hana's 11th birthday with us. We were the only people staying there and it was such an incredible experience.

A couple of seconds can change everything....

The girls are back to school. Parents still linger in front wondering if they are doing the right thing. What if another aftershock hits and it is closer to Xi'an. We've had over 160 aftershocks that register more than 4. We haven't felt them but wonder when this will all be over.

The governments now worries and admits that a harder phase awaits the country: rebuilding and developing the region. Within a week, they expect to have temporary housing for between 50,000-100,000 people. Given that 5 million are homeless, this is certainly not enough but it is a start. Factories and people are working round the clock (not that new or surprising for China) and people/students are descending on the area to volunteer and help out. They are looking for foster parents to take care of the thousands of children who are stranded and possibly orphaned by the experience.

We are looking forward to less eventful weeks in China.

Our recent trip to Beijing

Some pictures from Beijing. This is Julia and the boys in front of the Forbidden Palace.

The day after the earthquake we took a train to Beijing. We had read that on any given day there are 2,000 cranes working on Beijing. It seemed like many more.

Although the city is modern, it is massive and many parts of the city are in rubble as new facades are constructed and the city prepares for the Olympics in August.

Earthquakes

The first real earthquake was on the May 12th at 2:28, as you know at my school, their are two halves of the school day, at 12:00 there is a lunch break till 2:30, and so school had not yet even started for the second half when my desk started to shake. I had my chinese book out and was copying a character when the desk started shaking, I looked over at my desk mate Luyan, to see why she was shaking the desk but as I glared at her I realized she too was glaring at me!Then suddenly we both realized that we weren't shaking the desk, and so we started looking around,and I noticed that not only was my desk shaking but also the TV, walls and windows all were shaking as well, for a moment my whole class stared in stunned silence, then my teacher yelled, "DI JIAN!" Earthquake. Then everyone started screaming and yelling and running for the door, of course I didn't know what they were talking about, I had never learned the word for earthquake, I had never needed to, so as everyone screamed around me I calmly put away my chinese book and contemplated whether or not to bring a book. Finally I decided against and went with the crowds. We reached the playground and I found it was hard for me to stand strait, I kept falling forward or backward, and I thought that I was just dizzy. We stayed there for an hour and a half then parents came to pick up their children, it had given us all quiet the scare.
Hana

Chaos continues

Yesterday we returned from Beijing...we were tired by the time we got to bed. At 12 am we got a phone call saying that they expected another aftershock and that we should be ready to leave our building at any time. After an hour and a half we went back to bed. In the morning,we heard that the aftershock came and was a 5.4...but we felt nothing.

I walked the girls to school (Jeff is with his brother traveling around the southeast)...when we got to school there was a crowd and some kids were going in and others were returning with their parents...I let the girls go in to check.

As I turned around, I saw hundreds of eyes upon me; parents outside waiting to see what the official word was from the school authorities: would they cancel school or not?

I wish I had a camera. Knowing how much people love children here, having only one child and knowing what has happened just hours from here...the thousands of children who were trapped and killed from the devastation. All I saw were empty, sad faces looking at me, wondering -- I am sure --- what I was doing there and why had I dropped my children off?

The girls returned and told me that school was optional today..again...as there was another aftershock at 5.4..not far from here.

Today they are expecting/predicting yet another afterschock....oh well, life remains interesting...esp when there is a huge construction project behind our apartment and in front of it...hard to know where the shaking is coming from!!