28 June 2007

你好！ Two quick thoughts.

First off...

A first-two-weeks impression of Beijing. This city feels like it’s taken straight out of a futuristic movie. The hot, rapidly-changing weather (regular and violent lightning storms), the architecturally modern buildings’ griminess and the Chinese fashion sense render Beijing a little surreal, at times even eerie. On sunny days, men and women ride around together on bicycles carrying opened umbrellas. Days when the pea-fog sets in, or when it’s pounding rain, women still slip into feathered or sequined high heels and traipse off to teach English. Beijing reminds me of the gray and noisy cities of Blade Runner and the Matrix, in which humans, unaware of the large-scale changes taking place around them, doggedly out their to-do lists.

Second...

I, as some of you are well aware, have a habit of eating off of other people’s plates. In America, this is somewhat frowned upon—I’ve tried to stop, but have so far been unable to kick the habit. I also tend to take small portions over and over. (The sentence, “Justine, you have to take the whole cookie” is one that I’ve heard many times.) The problem, I’ve happily realized since arriving in China, is not me but rather American culture. At Chinese restaurants, everyone orders, but all of the plates are placed on a lazy susan and sent around the table for eaters to pick at. Each person’s individual plate is roughly the size of a DVD, so there’s no way to take a lot—if you like a dish, you take a mouthful... then another mouthful... The only thing that would make the experience better would be if on every lazy susan there was also a pint of Haagen Dazs. And spoons.