The Forbidden Dance

Ok, this is a clip of me dancing inside the forbidden city. they were playing this music at 4:30pm to get the tourists out. i just started rocking to the beats while ryan filmed me.

don't hate because i got some wicked moves!

my friend jeff, helpped me post the video on Youtube. you can also find this video titled "Canadian Steve Dancing in Beijing" on youtube

Beijing Roast Duck

Here's a pic of me outside of of Quanjude pretending to eat its Duck mascot. We had the roast duck with BC's VQA Cabernet Merlot.

Hi everyone, (Nov 7th, 2006)

So I left Beijing monday at 8am. Didn¡¦t sleep much the night before partially because of the huge meal I had. Ryan and I had the world-renowned Beijing roast duck at this restaurant in Beijing called Quanjude. (http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/beijingduck.htm)

It's about 11pm here in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday night. I got into Taiwan yesterday afternoon from Hong Kong. Had dinner at my grandparents' house. They are both pretty old around 86. My grandma prepared her signature dish of this cured pig leg soup with tofu twists and bamboo shoots. Unfortunately she couldn't eat it because she only has 2 teeth left. She refuses to get dentures and she¡¦s just been over-cooking her food, therefore she wouldn't have to chew much. (I think a part of her knows that she won¡¦t be around for much longer so she's not willing to get something that will last longer than her. It's sad but true) She had some noodles and sweet potatoes for dinner, while my dad, grandpa and me had this feast she prepared for us. It's been about 10 years since I returned to Taiwan last. The neighbourhood around my grandparents' place has changed a lot. For example, the kindergarten I went to around the corner no longer exist. And there were these 2 huge fields where I used to set off firecrackers are now occupied with two 40-story apartments. Other than that, their apartment is exactly as I remembered. The same gold fish painting is still hanging on the same spot of the wall. The apartment still smells like my grandpa's vitalis hair grease. The 2 washrooms still have the same cases for the "May Flower" brand of toilet paper. My grandparents are the only major change. They got really old and wrinkly. Both had lost a lot of weight. I guess that's what happens when people get close to their 90's

The street in front of their apartment seems somewhat narrower, as it was packed with cars and more scooters. The windows in the stairwell leading up to their place on the 4th floor also seemed to be lower than I remembered. I guess I have grown a bit taller (and fatter) since 13. Their apartment doesn't have an elevator; therefore both of them have to climb the 8 flights stairs daily. My grandpa still works as a bookkeeper for this company he's been with for more than 40 years. (how crazy is that? I can barely stay with a job for more than 40 weeks). My grandma goes to the market for grocery along the dykes near a local bridge. My dad and I got to their place before grandpa got home from work, and I welcomed him in by answering the door on the 4th floor. It honestly took him about 7 minutes to get from the 1st floor (it only took me about 1.5 minutes if it was even that long).

The good thing is that they are both in good spirit and can still remember who I am. My grandmother gave me some braised duck wings to munch on and a few of these famous Taiwanese fruit called "Lian Wu" (some kind of pear http://taipeitravel.net/att/tw/album/p23-1001.jpg) You could get the fruit in Vancouver at TNT, but they are very expensive and poor quality. I think I will have one for tomorrow morning's breakfast.

I wanted to get some pics of them and me together, but my camera crapped out so I got a new digi cam today. This really sucks, I could have just gotten one in Beijing where digital cams are a lot cheaper than Taiwan and Canada. So after I got the camera, my dad took me to this Taiwanese gov't office to get some paperworks done. I had to fill out some forms there or otherwise I would not be allowed to return to Canada. Sounds pretty screwed up eh? In Taiwan, conscription is mandatory as long as you were born in Taiwan (males only). Since I left Taiwan before I turned 15, this doesn't apply to me. However, if I had stayed here for more than 4 months at a time or held a job here, I would have to serve a 2 year term in the army. This term applies until the age of 35. So if I decided to relocate to Taiwan to live and work before I turn 35, I would have to serve my 2 years in the army first. (unless I was disabled and/or mentally challenged). After getting the papers filled out, dad and I went to Keelong for some night market eats. Fortunately, there were no bugs or "sea-dogs" this time. Hahaha! I had some traditional Taiwanese food such as Oyster Pancakes, some rice noodle dishes, tempuras, and sweet taro & tofu dessert.

On the way back, I realized that the drivers here are also different from the ones in Beijing. Taiwanese drivers are way more aggressive, as they speed and change lanes at their will and of course without signaling. (I guess this doesn't help the asian bad driver stereotypes eh?). But I think that a driver from asia will have a easier transition to the north American way of driving than the vice versa. Simply because they know how to drive in an absolute pandemonium. I could just see a Canadian driver stuck in traffic because he/she doesn't know when to go and stop. The mindset of a driver must change and understand that the lanes and directional arrows are merely just a suggestion, not requirements. I dare not to try driving in Taipei because I will suffer a major panic attack and several strokes. Oh did I mention they have huge roundabouts here in Asia? They are not the little ones you see back home, but humongous ones for major intersections. I think I have seen those in Europe as well. Either way, I wouldn't know how to get in or out of that roundabout.

I tried my best not to be a backseat driver by talking to my dad about what I noticed about Taiwan for the last 36 hours. He doesn't seem to be happy about everything and anything in Taiwan. I am not sure why he¡¦s still living here. He's a strong supporter of the current Taiwanese president whom has "allegedly" involved in some corruption and "misuse" of the public's funding. The current president has served Taiwan for the last 5 or 6 years and was a lawyer and public servant prior to winning the presidential election. His progressive party had never been the party in power until he became president. Instead, they had always been the opposition party since the birth of Taiwan in 1911. I have never been a huge follower of cdn or world politics, so you might want to read up for more details on the web. During my flight to Beijing, I read an editorial in the Vancouver Sun about the current scandal in Taiwan. Apparently, the Taiwanese gov't system has been called one of the worst in the world because it¡¦s got both of the British/Cdn parliamentary system as well as the French/US presidential structure. If this was true, I'd say that Taiwan has done pretty well with this system, but I can't help but to think that the potential Taiwan has to be great with a better system.

Anyways, I am gonna finish up here. Let me take you back to my last day in Beijing 2 days ago. Ryan and I went to this Beijing International Christian Fellowship (http://www.bicf.org/) around 11am. Apparently the Sunday worship contains Christians from more than 60 countries. However, no locals are allowed to the service. They check id at the door, so I had to bring my cdn passport. * they didn't end up checking my id though. The reason is because the Chinese gov't doesn't want their people to be involved in any sort of religious service whether it is Christian or not. For those of you living Vancouver, you probably have seen this Fa Ren Da Gung shed on Granville street and 16th avenue. This particular religion had been banned by the Chinese gov't and a lot of followers have been punished.

Right next to the church (well actually a theater, but it is rented out by BICF on Sundays), there's a newly built Cdn International School. CIS is for anybody who wants to get a cdn primary and secondary school education in Beijing. It offers programs from kindergarten to grade 10. Ryan says that there are a few of these types of school around town and they are basically just business ventures. Apparently, these schools charge a ridiculous amount of money to enroll. So if you wanted to make a quick buck in Beijing, get in on opening your own school affiliated with a counterpart in a foreign country.

After church, we got lost on the way back to the city. This bus staff gave us the wrong direction. We spoke to her in Chinese and she even confirmed with us that the bus would take us to a subway station, which never took us there. (Note to self: they mainland Chinese would never tell you no or that they are not sure, but they will always give you an answer doesn't matter if it's correct). So we finally got to the forbidden city aka the imperial palace and it was super windy. We spent 5 hours on the palace property. That's gota be one of the biggest palace I have ever been to. It's basically a town inside these walls, I guess that's why they call it forbidden CITY. Inside the forbidden city, there are 99,999 rooms. All the major gateway doors have 9 golden dots across the top and along the sides (81 total). The reason why the Chinese love the number 9 soo much is because the way we pronouce the number 9 sounds like the word FOREVER in Chinese. 9 is pronounced "Jio" which corresponds with the word "FOREVER" in Chinese because they share the same sound much like FOR is to FOUR in English. (what's that term for words that share the same pronouciation but have different meanings?)

That was interesting to me because I knew the Chinese liked the number 6, but never knew about 9. I knew that the number 4 is not liked by the Chinese because it shares the same pronunciation as the word "death". If you ever been to any condos in vancouver built by a chinese contractor (there are all over yaletown area), they will most likely not have any 4th, 14th, or 24th floors. The funny thing is that they will always have the 13th floor. However, I've been to a few buildings in Vancouver where they have all the 4's and also the 13th floor in the building. They are definitely not built by the Chinese, I can tell you that much.

That's all for now. Update you guys another time.

KFC in Beijing- because I went to China to eat KFC

another update from china. the email title was beijing part 2.

The pic of me at the KFC in Beijing "because I went to China to eat KFC" (Russel, aren't you proud?) I wrote "Naa Gaa" on this piece of paper and waited in line. "Naa Gaa" in Mandarin sounds like the word "That". So when you hear Chinese ppl saying "Naa Gaa", they are saying they want "that one." according my mr. peters, he saw a black woman at a KFC in beijing........"I just see the stereotypes" "All I am saying is that she found the chicken!" - RP.

Hi everyone, (Nov 4th, 2006)

This is part 2 of the China trip. It's now Saturday afternoon at 12:20pm in Beijing. Yesterday, we went to the Great Wall. We walked around the great wall for about 4 hours. Hiked all the way up then down. Took many pics. I am looking to get an online photo album once I get back to Canada.

The great wall was pretty cool. You'd have to be there to really experience it. The bus trip took about 1.5 hours in total each way. On the way back, we took a ride from some stranger out of his minivan. Paid 6 dollars in RMB (Chinese currency) for the trip back¡­..that's not bad considering that's 90 cents cdn for a ride. Hahaha, but things changed when our driver started driving onto oncoming traffic. I asked him about it and he said it was a ONE WAY lane and he did it to save the 5 dollar RMB toll from using the other road. (yeh, can you say, that's questionable?) soon before we got into the city limits of Beijing, our driver was sick of the traffic, so he cut through this park's mudd field. And our van was basically off-roading 4x4 style. It was quite um, how do I put you say this, interesting?

So we finally got back to downtown Beijing safely. Ate at some street vendors, ­kind of like the Richmond night market in the summer. There were lots of weird stuff even I wouldn't eat. There were some bbq sea horses, deep fried cicadas or silk worms, deep fried sea dogs (yes, u read correct...what the hell is a sea dog?) it didn't even look like a dog. It was like a lizard of the sea. There were also snakes, scorpions, crickets, and many more peculiar things. I played it safe by eating only tofus, noodles, beef livers, and such. I thought I was pretty daring, but I guess I am pretty westernized. It's not soo much of the idea of eating bugs and worms, but I was thinking what the textures would be like from eating the deep fried silk worms.

So I have been living a lot like a Beijing Ren ( A local Beijinger) since I got here. We took the city bus everywhere, the subway rides too and just stayed on foot for over 10 hours a day.

For fun sometimes, Ryan and I just reverse our languages while sitting on the bus just to screw with Chinese ppl's mind. Ryan's white and he would just speak to me in Chinese. I would then answer everything in English and we would carry on a conversation this way for a while. You should see the facial expressions from the locals. They just seem soo confused and amazed that a Chinese guy is speaking perfect English and a white person is speaking perfect Chinese to each other. It's priceless. To make things even more interesting, we then reversed back to or mother tongue. i think the locals had to do a double take after that!

Went to Tian An Men square last night and took a lot of photos. I took a picture where it looks like I was kissing the former communist leader, chairman mao.

Anyways, here's a list of things I noticed about china over the last 40 hours:

1) Honking is a norm on the roads here. Drivers honk at each other constantly, but it's more to let everyone (pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers) know that "watch out, I am here!" and not soo much making an obscene statement.

Here's my list of ou know you are in china jokes:

- you know you are in china when the lanes on the roads are Optional

- when the traffic lights are merely recommended guidelines

- when ppl stand right in the middle on the escalator (they don't have a sense of staying on the right hand side so others could go by them. Actually the Chinese gov't are preaching (they call it the "Etiquette Sports") to their ppl about staying on the right hand side to prepare them for the 2008 olympics. It may seem funny to north Americans, but that's just part of the culture here. They have never been aware of this, that's all)

- when the public bathrooms do not supply toilet papers (yes, this brought back some memories as a child in Taiwan. We didn't have toilet paper at public washrooms back then either. It'd be interesting to see what has changed since 12 years ago) you gota bring ur own roll of TP.

- when your snot is black because of the air pollution

- all the construction workers wear no safety gears, but only sport blazers and dress pants (there's a huge gap between different social classes here, well, at least in Beijing) this is a "land of opportunities" for the ones that come from the rural parts of china. They come to beijing to work and send money back to their hometowns.

- when you hear some version/dialogue of Chinese that even the local chinese ppl have no idea what they are talking about (holla russel peters!)

- when you see propaganda posted all over the city. For example, there's a China & Africa Summit happening in town and the gov't had posted huge-ass billboards on buildings, inside the malls, on public transits. The slogan for the China-Africa Summit is "Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, Development." On the public transits, you would see Chinese messages that say Be Civilized riding bus or "Careful, touch head." The translations are terrible here. If I were to translate the first message, I would say "Please show proper etiquette when using the public transit" and the second message should say "Low ceiling, Watch your head."

- FINALLY, you know you are in China, when you ask for water at a restaurant, they give you a glass of piping hot water. (I should know better, Chinese parents/ppl don't like it when their kids drink ice cold water at any time of the day or year) they think ice cold water is bad for your health.

Alright, that's all for now. I probably won't update you again until when I get to Taiwan after next Monday or Tuesday.

Pics to come soon!!!!! (anybody saw the Borat movie? I am dying to see it. Here's a fact I just learned about Kazakhstan. it is between china and Russia and the ppl there look a lot like Chinese ppl)

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/kz.html

Beijing Nov 1 to 6th, 2006

i went to Beijing, China and Taiwan for my 2 weeks vacation this year in November. visited a highschool friend in Beijing and relatives in Taiwan. during my stay in asia, i wrote an email to my friends back home about my trip. here it is:

Hi everyone, (Nov. 3rd, 2006)

Hope you are having a good time back home in Canada. I have arrived in Beijing safely after a long 11 hour flight from Vancouver. My friend Ryan met me at the airport last night and we went to Hu Hai (literally means Queen’s Ocean even though it’s more like a park with a canal). It’s a touristy area where all the pubs and "foreigners" are. Had some Chinese beer and hung out with another highschool friend, Cecilia who’s doing her law school exchange here in Beijing.

Slept in today and walked around the area where Ryan lives had some food from the street vendors. Since Ryan doesn’t have internet at his place, I am actually writing you from his work place.

So no plans for tonight, we might just wing it. Whatever we decided to do, we’d be eating a lot of food. Might be visiting the great wall and the Forbidden City tomorrow or Saturday. There’s just too much to do before I leave next Monday for Taiwan. We’ll see how much I get done before I leave, but I know for sure that I definitely have to come back to China again in the future. In a sense, I feel like I belong here because this is where my people are, though I still consider Canada to be a permanent home. I was sitting on the side of the road today and thinking to myself that I could be one of these people living and working here (in Asia) if had I not left Taiwan almost 12 years ago.

I have compiled a list of things about Beijing and the Chinese people I noticed the last 22 hours.

1) There’s not really a sense of customer service here in Beijing. They don’t really use their P’s and Q’s here. It’s funny that when I was on the Air China plane, all the flight attendants basically just let the passengers serve drinks themselves. Try to picture this in the service area on the plane where ppl just gathered and hung out. It’s pretty funny.

2) When I turned the TV on this morning, they had sponge bob speaking Chinese. I had actually never watched any sponge bob stuff until today. Other than that, there were a lot of day time dramas whether it is contemporary or whatever story from a certain period of the Chinese dynasty.

3) There’s a job for everyone in China. For example, there are 3 bus employees on each bus. 1 driver and 2 staff that collect the transit fare from the passengers. It’s about 1 or 2 RMB (Chinese currency) for each ride, no transfers. That’s about 15 cents in cdn dollars. The exchange rate is currently at $1 cdn to $7 RMB. After the 2 staff collect money from you, they keep order on the bus, making sure everybody is packed to the back, therefore when more passengers are getting on, there would be room on board. At a convenience store, there’s one person that just sweeps the floor all day. Inside the elevator inside Ryan’s apartment, there’s 1 employee that just presses the floor for the residents all day/night. Outside the bars, there are always around 2 to 3 younger Chinese kids (age range from 17 to their early 20’s) promoting their pubs to us. Hollering at us and trying to get us into their bars. Apparently, these kids come to Beijing from the rural part of china to find work. More than often, their room and board is paid for with a couple of meals a day plus some money for their work.

4) People seem to really enjoy their lives in Beijing. They eat a lot……not a lot in amount, but very often. They do everything over a meal. For example, they conduct business and sign contracts over a meal. Just today, some locals gathered around this canal and starting fishing for tiny fishies with homemade netting. They were way too little to be eaten. I wonder what they do with the fish.

Anyways, I should go now. I will update you guys another time.

ps. the pic is me at this pagoda at this "rock garden" (wait, isn't that an oxymoron?) by the great wall.

Sometimes I Rhyme Quick

ok everyone, this is my first post. i am gonna keep it short and sweet! it's now Thursday, 11/30/2006 around 4:15 pm pacific time.

the pic is a restaurant in banff, alberta, canada when i was there last weekend for my work's xmas party.

i took the pic for no particular reason.