10/21 Saturday

This morning I woke up at around 8:00 after falling asleep at 4:00. Colm got up soon after and we talked, over chocolate milk, about everything ranging from my plans in China, to my plans for the future, law school/business school/graduate school, and the things I could potentially do in China. One idea we came up with, since I randomly packed a pair of soccer cleats (I found them in my closet while packing and thought, 'hey, these are really nice cleats and not too used, and hey, I really like soccer and so do people in china.' So in the bag they went...), is to sponsor a couple of schools outside of Beijing (1.5 hours) that can hardly afford books, in order to build soccer fields for them as well as buy them uniforms and soccer balls and to teach them how to play the game. I went to a sports store and found that a decent soccer ball costs around $5 while shirts will cost even less.

I met a man named Zhu Wei in the late morning, a friend and colleague of Colm at Cummins Engine Company. He used to be a lawyer but is now an engineer of sorts. He has recently been the technology mastermind behind a project to install GPS broadcasting units on Cummins driven busses and trucks so that the company can track and respond to their breakdowns. Sensors in the engine would also gather and send information on the cause of the problem so that a repair crew could come fully prepared to the scene of the breakdown. This project is the first of its kind in the world; not even the American Cummins division has such a system.

I went exploring around Wang Fu Jing later in the morning, heading north then west then south. I was looking for good spots to take pictures, as well as places to eat. In terms of picture taking, the smog in the city is pretty bad so I am not sure pictures will come out very well, and well, there's no 'heavy smog' preset on my camera. Maybe 'cloudy' will do the job.

On the main concourse in Wang Fu Jing I met a pair of kids from Taft school. They noticed my Choate track jacket and came up to meet me. Apparently there is a group of about 60 students, most of whom are juniors and seniors, doing an entire year abroad in China from a few boarding schools including Taft, Deerfield, and Loomis Chaffee. I got their cell phone numbers and I plan to hang out with them at some point during an upcoming weekend when they have time off.

For lunch I went down an alley way off Wang Fu Jing, in fact the same one I went down for breakfast my first day. I went into a different shop and ordered a dish of cold pickled vegetables for 3 yuan. I actually didn't quite know what I was ordering, but I knew it was some type of vegetable, according to the Chinese characters, and I hadn't had very much in the way of vegetable matter since I'd arrived, and I wanted some. I looked it up in my dictionary after eating it to discover what it was. I think that is a good way of trying things out because I won't have any pre determined notions about what I am eating. 20 minutes after I ate my veggies, my stomach began to hurt for around 5 minutes, but the ache resulted in nothing more. I had heard that the vegetables bought on the street can sometimes be grown in very dirty water. As of now, I still have much faith in the strength of my stomach.

I wanted a day pack to travel around the city with, so I tried to buy a messenger bag at a shop near the pickled vegetable restaurant, but the salesman was driving an extremely hard bargain and wouldn't let me get away with only paying 100 yuan for a 108 yuan bag (i had already bargained it down from 135). I am going to find another bag tomorrow that isn't quite as expensive, maybe one of the canvas Mao Ze Dong bags.

In the evening we met up with a bunch of Colm's work partners, who are mostly Chinese, and went to a Xin Jiang style restaurant on the other side of Beijing. The Xin Jiang province is in the north west and is therefore heavily influenced by the Middle East. It is also home of the ethnic group the Uighurs. People from that part of China can look almost Caucasian but speak Chinese. We had lamb kebob, lamb leg, Chinese wine (lots of 'cheers!' and 'bottoms up!'), and many other dishes while watching an elaborate show of belly dancing and a Uighur trio of guitars and drummer. At the dinner, I met a man named Huang Bo, with whom I may be working in the future, assisting him and helping him with his English. He manages a significant part of the Cummins company in China, and seems like a very nice man. He showed me some pictures of his cute baby daughter at the Chinese seaside.

After dinner we went to do karaoke. Unfortunately this is where I really started to feel the age gap with Colm and his business buddies (all 30's-40's), because everyone started singing 80s English songs, most of which I didn't really know. We also sang some Chinese songs, a few of which I knew from my previous trips to China. So far, I feel that my karaoke experiences in Japan and Korea have been better, but maybe when I get a chance to sing with some people my age that will change.

I am beginning to brush the rust off my Chinese, and hopefully I will be at a good level again in a few weeks time.

*Sorry about the delay on the post. I had some computer trouble this morning and had to do a system restore.

*I will post some pictures of the dinner as soon as I am able to upload them.