Adventures in Guangzhou!

I guess the end is in sight though and that means my summer tenure here in the nation's capital is winding down. I think my experience has been affected by a few different factors but overall I have to say that I continue to be unimpressed. I am extremely curious to see how much more progress they can make before the olympics in 2008. I have no doubt that the olympic facilities will be done in time and that the games will run smoothly, but what about the rest of the city?

Right now the streets are a complete mess and that's no exaggeration. It must be in part due to the massive construction and large number of cars, but it's dirty everywhere. I thought Guangzhou was dirty but I hadn't seen anything. We had another day of sun today, which was awesome, but that still only makes three days of something resembling a blue sky (in over six weeks). I read once in a magazine an author jokingly asserting that China's penchant for smoking cigarettes will do more for their population control than the One Child Policy ever will. I think you can change this now to say that simply breathing the air in China will do more for the population control than the One Child Policy. Sad, but true. The building I have class in went up about a year and a half ago and started off white. After only this short time period, they are being forced to repaint because the exterior is now grey, bordering on a muted black.

All that being said, Beijing isn't the capital for no reason. I went with my friends Kelly and Dan to a remote section of the Great Wall and did a 10k hike last weekend which was incredible. The sky wasn't all that clear but it was still breathtaking. Both times now that I've trekked out to the wall I've had similar thoughts: first, I wonder if everyone laughed at the first emperor who told his royal subjects that he was going to order the construction of a 6000+ mile wall. It seems like a ridiculous concept but it certainly puts in perspective the sheer man power that China (still) has at its fingertips. Second, I wonder what the guard in the watch tower thought when he saw Khan leading a massive army down from Mongolia. Sure, the kingdom might survive but the guard sure is in trouble.

I have also treated myself to another Beijing specialty-- kao ya (Bejing roast duck). A solid crew of us went this past Friday and it lived up the hype and then some. Kelly had been to a place somewhere amongst the "hutong" (the older neighborhood with the narrow winding lanes of homes and shops) so a crew of us went in search of this famed eatery. It really was lost amongst the historical hutong so it took us a while but was well worth it. What's sad is that the government is trying to tear down these areas as quickly as possible in order to make way for sparkling new high rises. As far as I understand it, foreigners find this much more objectionable than the natives, but still.

Another thing that Beijing has (that Guangzhou is lacking) is a very lively, self-sustaining ex pat community. I can't decide if this a good thing or a bad thing, but for the moment it's okay. Not only can you get almost kind of food in the world, you generally don't have to go looking too far for it. In GZ you can get almost everything but you definitely need to know where to look. I have also discovered that Beijing has quite a few alums from my alma mater and I have been very happy to attend barbeques and happy hours with old friends and acquaintances. Again, this is nice for the here and now, but I don't think I'd like to live in that sort of environment. Might as well stay in the U.S., right?

Another benefit of the strong expat community is the presence of various athletic opportunities. I've been playing football (read--soccer) twice a week here and am actually iin decent shape for the summer which is nice. Last week the owner of the pitch we play on informed us of an upcoming tournament. Hmmm, tournament? Count me in! I was pleased to discover that I was not the only one around with an insatiable appetite for competition. Of course it wasn't until after we signed up that I stopped to think about who we'd be playing. We really had no idea but I had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't be easy.

I was right. We had the first round of play on Saturday and faced two really solid teams. We had the luxury of playing the first team after they had already had one match and, without any subs, they were pretty exhausted. The five guys they did put on the field were five pretty big and highly skilled guys from some Arabic-speaking country. They weren't too pleased that we had four subs to run them down but that's the way it goes. We dominated most of the game but ended up escaping with a 5-4 victory.

The second game was, well, not quite as successful. We were feeling relatively good about ourselves heading into the match but our hopes were dashed by an even better opponent. This time it was a group of Chinese that barely seemed to exert any effort in running us around the field. Despite their advantage, we went into halftime only down 4-6. Then it fell apart. I'm not quite sure what the final score was, but lets just say that it wasn't close.

We were hanging our heads as we walked off the field but we were somewhat encouraged to find out from a spectator that the team includes at least three former national team players. I'm pretty sure my intramural team from college could NOT compete with these guys. As we sat down to take stock of our chances, we looked around and discovered that this was Beijing's own little World Cup. We defeated the Middle East, lost to China, and still have Africa (whose team includes a former national team guy from Nigeria), Hungaria (a bunch of older businessmen), Italy, and perhaps one more. As for us, we span the globe so we settled on a team name of "Lao Wai," or "Old Foreigner," which is how Chinese tend to refer to white people when they see them in the streets. Wish us luck this weekend.

I'm glad that with my busy schedule of Chinese class, football, and food that I don't have too much time to think about what's going on in the rest of the world. It looks like China might just be the safest place around. I just hope everyone has peace on their minds and that the people in this world can start to put some of their differences aside. That shouldn't be so hard now, should it?