Oh man, I had better get myself to bed before I see the sun rise. Typical Beijing night out though. Fun, but I'm glad I don't let myself do this too often anymore. Ken Ishii was djing at Cloud 9 this evening: fantastic beats, fun crowd, and totally worth the 60RMB cover.
I do feel this pang of anxiety that I should have been working on something more productive than partying the night away, but I try to find comfort in that I would have been wasting my time sleeping anyway. A joke, but there's some truth to that, the desire to feel constantly productive and efficient. I'd finish the thought, however I'm exhausted so this thread will have to be dealt with some other time.
Friday, October 15, 2004
I know I should just google this or something, but I'm wondering if you can actually "see" the individual groups of retinal cells that are excited by certain wavelengths of light. Not that this in of itself matters to anyone, but it would be nifty. I think I can or at least I can imagine what it would look like (little tiny dots of light in a dark situation, think Seurat) but I think our brains probably do a lot of the filling in-between the cells. However, I think my eye doc has told me that I have fewer retinal cells than I should so maybe I'm special.
In arguably more interesting news, I found a Chinese opera group practicing by Bei Hai this evening. That's one of the few things that has met my preconceived notions of China. We expect to find random pockets of rich Chinese culture--and, lucky for us, we do. Each singer took turns singing what were probably famous songs with the five-piece orchestra. The only instrument I knew the name of was the erhu. I'm guessing the songs are well known since every so often random old people would join in for a few bars. I'm not a good judge of these things so I can only say that, in my opinion, they sounded great. All this was nearly in the dark, illuminated by a distant green light, next to one of those ubiquitous excercise playgrounds, the kind you find in any city in China. It made my night.
In arguably more interesting news, I found a Chinese opera group practicing by Bei Hai this evening. That's one of the few things that has met my preconceived notions of China. We expect to find random pockets of rich Chinese culture--and, lucky for us, we do. Each singer took turns singing what were probably famous songs with the five-piece orchestra. The only instrument I knew the name of was the erhu. I'm guessing the songs are well known since every so often random old people would join in for a few bars. I'm not a good judge of these things so I can only say that, in my opinion, they sounded great. All this was nearly in the dark, illuminated by a distant green light, next to one of those ubiquitous excercise playgrounds, the kind you find in any city in China. It made my night.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Make it all go away
The blanket of pollution suffocating Beijing this week has yet to move on its merry little way over to plague Seoul and Tokyo. Ah, second hand smoke. I honestly don't remember Beijing being this incessantly polluted for this long. No blue sky for over a week now, not to mention that visibility is under 500 m. Please tell me the sun is shining somewhere else in the world.
Waiting for rehearsal this afternoon, I wandered into the tourist trap of all tourist traps: the Silk Market, the place to go for overpriced fakes in Beijing. I saw hapless tourists get ripped off left and right. While I do feel a little sympathy for the tourists who have no idea what the going rate is for a fake Ralph Lauren shirt, I figure they usually feel happy about they price or they wouldn't pay it, so their loss if they pay 200RMB for an "adidas" cap. But a couple things really bothered me today. 1. A vendor started sputtering fight'n words (the words that have to be typed like this: $#$%@*!) after an American tourist refused to look at her wares. 2. I yelled at a vendor who, to prevent her from leaving his booth of fake hermes bags, had grabbed an elderly woman's arm. I told him he had crossed the line and he hissed at me for making him look bad. We gave each other the evil eye for a minute or two.
I got the same evil eye from the guy who tried to pickpocket me last night, because I caught him in the act, before he could get at my money. I'm pretty sure he had been scouting the ATM where I had just withdrawn money. What I don't like about Beijing--perhaps just big cities, is that people see that there's a pickpocket or you ask for help in dealing with him and they just sit there warming their hands under their a**es.
I feel a little awkward that my pickpocket was Uyghur, therein fitting the terrible Han stereotype that 'all Uyghurs are thieves'. Obviously not true, but I hear it a lot. Even after that incident, a woman watching the exchange came up to me to tell me so. My own stereotype of Hans is that they are the most racist toward Uyghurs.
I don't really care what the stereotype is ("Laowais have so much money so they deserve to be ridiculed and trash-talked for being cheapskates when they refuse to buy and for being suckers when they do." or "Uyghurs are poor and uneducated so they should be feared because they are violent and will steal from you."), both kinds of racism that stem from such misunderstandings are unacceptable, and maybe that's why I'm so grumpy today.
Waiting for rehearsal this afternoon, I wandered into the tourist trap of all tourist traps: the Silk Market, the place to go for overpriced fakes in Beijing. I saw hapless tourists get ripped off left and right. While I do feel a little sympathy for the tourists who have no idea what the going rate is for a fake Ralph Lauren shirt, I figure they usually feel happy about they price or they wouldn't pay it, so their loss if they pay 200RMB for an "adidas" cap. But a couple things really bothered me today. 1. A vendor started sputtering fight'n words (the words that have to be typed like this: $#$%@*!) after an American tourist refused to look at her wares. 2. I yelled at a vendor who, to prevent her from leaving his booth of fake hermes bags, had grabbed an elderly woman's arm. I told him he had crossed the line and he hissed at me for making him look bad. We gave each other the evil eye for a minute or two.
I got the same evil eye from the guy who tried to pickpocket me last night, because I caught him in the act, before he could get at my money. I'm pretty sure he had been scouting the ATM where I had just withdrawn money. What I don't like about Beijing--perhaps just big cities, is that people see that there's a pickpocket or you ask for help in dealing with him and they just sit there warming their hands under their a**es.
I feel a little awkward that my pickpocket was Uyghur, therein fitting the terrible Han stereotype that 'all Uyghurs are thieves'. Obviously not true, but I hear it a lot. Even after that incident, a woman watching the exchange came up to me to tell me so. My own stereotype of Hans is that they are the most racist toward Uyghurs.
I don't really care what the stereotype is ("Laowais have so much money so they deserve to be ridiculed and trash-talked for being cheapskates when they refuse to buy and for being suckers when they do." or "Uyghurs are poor and uneducated so they should be feared because they are violent and will steal from you."), both kinds of racism that stem from such misunderstandings are unacceptable, and maybe that's why I'm so grumpy today.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Dancing Queen
Everyone in Beijing is accustomed to seeing elderly women, usually over forty, dance niuyangge in the neighborhood and streets. Most often it's accompanied by clashing cymbals and barrel-sized drums keeping beat with the silk fan waving and prancing. (Althought, in recent years, niuyangge groups have had to relocate to underneath overpasses due to noise complaints.) Just another day in the neighborhood. Or so we think.
This evening I saw a man dressed in a traditional women's silk outfit with a fake bun wig decorated with little red flowers and lipstick and eye shadow under his spectacles dancing along with the gray-haired Chinese women. Maybe it was because he was keeping good time with the cymbals, or because he shook his booty as well as any of the others, or because he was always there, but the rest of the people on the street didn't seem to notice that one of these grannies was not like the others. Perhaps they noticed but couldn't decide what to do about it. This queen defied my stereotypes and assumptions about old Beijingers. As much as I thought I was starting to understand China, I had no idea a queen here could be so liberated.
There are those who would argue that there's a long history of accepting or even revering queens here: from traditional Beijing opera stars to, um, okay just traditional Beijing opera stars. The other night I even saw a dongbei style drag show with gaudy costumes and some very convincing queens. But the difference is that the drag show was on the fringe of Beijing society, tucked away upstairs of an unknown gay bar. Niuyangge groups put themselves out in the middle of neighborhoods and next to busy intersections to be seen. The cymbals and drums are not just for the dancers but are to attract audiences. The only explanation I have at the moment is that those women allow him to be a part of their group because they can see that he loves to dance just as they love to dance. A superb reason, I think.
This evening I saw a man dressed in a traditional women's silk outfit with a fake bun wig decorated with little red flowers and lipstick and eye shadow under his spectacles dancing along with the gray-haired Chinese women. Maybe it was because he was keeping good time with the cymbals, or because he shook his booty as well as any of the others, or because he was always there, but the rest of the people on the street didn't seem to notice that one of these grannies was not like the others. Perhaps they noticed but couldn't decide what to do about it. This queen defied my stereotypes and assumptions about old Beijingers. As much as I thought I was starting to understand China, I had no idea a queen here could be so liberated.
There are those who would argue that there's a long history of accepting or even revering queens here: from traditional Beijing opera stars to, um, okay just traditional Beijing opera stars. The other night I even saw a dongbei style drag show with gaudy costumes and some very convincing queens. But the difference is that the drag show was on the fringe of Beijing society, tucked away upstairs of an unknown gay bar. Niuyangge groups put themselves out in the middle of neighborhoods and next to busy intersections to be seen. The cymbals and drums are not just for the dancers but are to attract audiences. The only explanation I have at the moment is that those women allow him to be a part of their group because they can see that he loves to dance just as they love to dance. A superb reason, I think.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Blowing off steam
I have to vent.
I thought that by now things would be different. When the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. four years ago, I was furious but took comfort in the faith that it could never happen again, that the American people would be wiser the next time around and at least show up at the polls. At that point I couldn't have predicted 9-11 (although George W. had the means) nor did I know that he would charge forward and trample the UN on a unjustified war in Iraq, but I still had faith in the American public.
Now, I see frighteningly amount of red on the U.S. November election map. Is there something you people see in this monkey that I don't see? The gut wrenching feeling I had after Californians approved a proposition to make it legal to try children over the age of fourteen as adults has returned. What seems so obvious to me is obviously not so obvious to everyone else. A lot rides on this election, but what is more troubling to me than having Little Bush around for another four years (at least there's a two term limit) is losing my faith in Americans.
I thought that by now things would be different. When the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. four years ago, I was furious but took comfort in the faith that it could never happen again, that the American people would be wiser the next time around and at least show up at the polls. At that point I couldn't have predicted 9-11 (although George W. had the means) nor did I know that he would charge forward and trample the UN on a unjustified war in Iraq, but I still had faith in the American public.
Now, I see frighteningly amount of red on the U.S. November election map. Is there something you people see in this monkey that I don't see? The gut wrenching feeling I had after Californians approved a proposition to make it legal to try children over the age of fourteen as adults has returned. What seems so obvious to me is obviously not so obvious to everyone else. A lot rides on this election, but what is more troubling to me than having Little Bush around for another four years (at least there's a two term limit) is losing my faith in Americans.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
I just watched a Chinese documentary on martial arts films. I saw a clip of the interview during which Bruce Lee remarked, "Be formless, shapeless, like water... You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot... Now water can flow, or it can crash, be water my friend." I think I had read the quote somewhere before, but hearing the way he says this makes it all that more memorable. Why did people in the 70s talk that way? It's so melodramatic that I'm not sure if he's serious or not.
Holidaze
I know this sounds ridiculous, but I think in a country with 1.3 billion people, not everyone should go on vacation at the same time. It's beyond me who's going to divvy up the national holiday vacation days, but as the Chinese middle class grows and the expansion of permissable vacation destinations (like the opening up of Europe this year to Chinese tourists), something has got to change--for sanity's sake, if not humanity's sake. Chinese tourists are at least equivalent to American tourists: Loud, pretentious, disrespectful, and often appear as if they believe that they are the center of the world.
I went to the native home of Kongzi (Confucious, as we Westerners like to call him). I had to pay a chunk of RMB to wander the grounds of his family mansion, actually the mansion built by his descendents, since during his time, Kongzi was a mere peasant and most likely lived in a little hut. Why did a man at the bottom of society (however he was at least a man) create a philosophy of hierarchy that kept him there?
Tai Shan was no better. By the time we elbowed partway to the top, we were sapped of any enthusiasm to take pictures. Upon trying to get to the top, Wei and I became so disgusted of the rear-end view of other tourists that we decided that no matter how famous Tai Shan is, it wasn't worth it.
The real highlight of the trip was actually finding Wei's relatives at his ancestral home in Shandong. His uncle is a county leader (magistrate, governor, mayor?) in a extremely average looking county south of Jinan, the capital of Shandong. Other relatives included a hospital director and a head of the county transportation bureau. On our way to the county seat, we passed through miles and miles of farmland. They had just taken in the corn, which lay spread out upon the road to dry, narrowing the two-lane road into a half-lane circus of trucks, cars, motorcyles, and bicyclists. At the pale dusk after sunset, both sides of the road were lit with red-orange bonfires of dried corn stalks. The smoke hung hazy blue as it drifted across the fields and spread into the horizon, creating a surreal multi-layered background that faded into a dream I had when I was eleven.
The "successful relatives" were a direct contrast to the other relatives we met the second day. One family had three children (two girls and a youngest boy), of which the youngest two didn't even have hukou, which they wouldn't get until their father paid the steep fine for going over the one child policy. Each of the two brothers were responsible for giving the father 100 RMB a year, but due to a sibling rivalry, one of the brothers was no longer giving his "fair" share. Of course this story was not apparent right away, it was revealed layer by layer, much the way the land was revealed to us through the bonfire smoke. In the afternoon we went to where the Wei ancestral forest once stood. It had been razed in the zealousness of creating more farmland for the Great Leap Forward in the late fifties. Wei's great grandfather's tomb still remained somewhere under the field. His 80-something year old great uncle marked the spot were the tomb should have been, and they burnt paper and incense with dried corn stalks in a furrow as all present kowtowed in respect for the dead. Even though Wei's great grandfather has been dead for decades now, I left that field feeling like I had just attended a funeral, if not for Wei's great grandfather, then for China's shattered history.
I went to the native home of Kongzi (Confucious, as we Westerners like to call him). I had to pay a chunk of RMB to wander the grounds of his family mansion, actually the mansion built by his descendents, since during his time, Kongzi was a mere peasant and most likely lived in a little hut. Why did a man at the bottom of society (however he was at least a man) create a philosophy of hierarchy that kept him there?
Tai Shan was no better. By the time we elbowed partway to the top, we were sapped of any enthusiasm to take pictures. Upon trying to get to the top, Wei and I became so disgusted of the rear-end view of other tourists that we decided that no matter how famous Tai Shan is, it wasn't worth it.
The real highlight of the trip was actually finding Wei's relatives at his ancestral home in Shandong. His uncle is a county leader (magistrate, governor, mayor?) in a extremely average looking county south of Jinan, the capital of Shandong. Other relatives included a hospital director and a head of the county transportation bureau. On our way to the county seat, we passed through miles and miles of farmland. They had just taken in the corn, which lay spread out upon the road to dry, narrowing the two-lane road into a half-lane circus of trucks, cars, motorcyles, and bicyclists. At the pale dusk after sunset, both sides of the road were lit with red-orange bonfires of dried corn stalks. The smoke hung hazy blue as it drifted across the fields and spread into the horizon, creating a surreal multi-layered background that faded into a dream I had when I was eleven.
The "successful relatives" were a direct contrast to the other relatives we met the second day. One family had three children (two girls and a youngest boy), of which the youngest two didn't even have hukou, which they wouldn't get until their father paid the steep fine for going over the one child policy. Each of the two brothers were responsible for giving the father 100 RMB a year, but due to a sibling rivalry, one of the brothers was no longer giving his "fair" share. Of course this story was not apparent right away, it was revealed layer by layer, much the way the land was revealed to us through the bonfire smoke. In the afternoon we went to where the Wei ancestral forest once stood. It had been razed in the zealousness of creating more farmland for the Great Leap Forward in the late fifties. Wei's great grandfather's tomb still remained somewhere under the field. His 80-something year old great uncle marked the spot were the tomb should have been, and they burnt paper and incense with dried corn stalks in a furrow as all present kowtowed in respect for the dead. Even though Wei's great grandfather has been dead for decades now, I left that field feeling like I had just attended a funeral, if not for Wei's great grandfather, then for China's shattered history.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Anenome or My Enemy?
Going with flow. It's what we Californians do. I find myself passively arriving at parties I didn't plan, eating restaurants I didn't choose, and chatting to people I didn't seek out. This has usually worked out well for me, because then I get to try new things and meet people I might not have met otherwise. This also makes me a sea anenome waving with the current.
On the other hand, there is something to be said about agency and that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you made a certain decision and life was better because of it. For lack of taking a more active approach to my life here, I've also experienced being ensnared at less than exciting parties, spending more than I wanted on food, and talking to assholes.
Not planning enough and planning too much can both backfire however. To throw in a baseball analogy for Wilson, you overanticipate and expect a fast ball when in fact life throws you a curve ball (to be honest, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Pro-baseball pitches all look pretty damn fast to me.) Not planning enough: you show up to the game and realize the reason everyonen's laughing is because you're not wearing pants.
Perhaps a marginally better analogy might be sanda. I just started taking a sanda class in Beijing. My new teacher, Zhang Laoshi, teaches a loose stance and encourages throwing more of your balance into a punch, always believing that a good offense is the best defense. He plays a looser game. I'm trying to adapt. Back in California, Wong Laoshi always taught us to keep everything tight and play a balanced game. Let your opponent try to come in and use up his energy. Don't leave your punches out there for any longer than lightening, just in case you can't get them back. Keep your balance over both legs as much as you can. Above all, stay in control.
Both teachers advocate speed and technique over brute force. Wong Laoshi is twice Zhang Laoshi's age, however, and I'm tempted to take Wong Laoshi's advice: Know when to be on the offense and know when to be on the defense. You cannot afford to only be good at one and not the other.
While life is not a fight, sanda can teach us lessons about leveraging adaptation and agency. Sometimes, we need to be sympathetic. Other times, we have to be self-righteous. Maybe it's not really about always choosing the ultimate attitude towards life, but pursuing the appropriate attitude for the moment.
On the other hand, there is something to be said about agency and that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you made a certain decision and life was better because of it. For lack of taking a more active approach to my life here, I've also experienced being ensnared at less than exciting parties, spending more than I wanted on food, and talking to assholes.
Not planning enough and planning too much can both backfire however. To throw in a baseball analogy for Wilson, you overanticipate and expect a fast ball when in fact life throws you a curve ball (to be honest, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Pro-baseball pitches all look pretty damn fast to me.) Not planning enough: you show up to the game and realize the reason everyonen's laughing is because you're not wearing pants.
Perhaps a marginally better analogy might be sanda. I just started taking a sanda class in Beijing. My new teacher, Zhang Laoshi, teaches a loose stance and encourages throwing more of your balance into a punch, always believing that a good offense is the best defense. He plays a looser game. I'm trying to adapt. Back in California, Wong Laoshi always taught us to keep everything tight and play a balanced game. Let your opponent try to come in and use up his energy. Don't leave your punches out there for any longer than lightening, just in case you can't get them back. Keep your balance over both legs as much as you can. Above all, stay in control.
Both teachers advocate speed and technique over brute force. Wong Laoshi is twice Zhang Laoshi's age, however, and I'm tempted to take Wong Laoshi's advice: Know when to be on the offense and know when to be on the defense. You cannot afford to only be good at one and not the other.
While life is not a fight, sanda can teach us lessons about leveraging adaptation and agency. Sometimes, we need to be sympathetic. Other times, we have to be self-righteous. Maybe it's not really about always choosing the ultimate attitude towards life, but pursuing the appropriate attitude for the moment.
Monday, September 27, 2004
106 Year Old Soul Searching
A fog of uneasiness decended upon me this afternoon as I realized that I haven't accomplished any of my goals in the last month. While I have a vague notion of what I want to do here, all I have going for me right now is a role in a dinner theater role as a stereotypical 106 year old chinese great grandmother. This is disturbing because the role requires a Chinese accent and acting skills. I possess neither. The character development process has left me making funny faces at my reflection in the subway and muttering "velly velly goo-de". Also, I've been doing a little soul searching for grandma. What is a 106 old woman who's seen the fall of the Qin Dynasty, the May Fourth movement, the rise of Republican era, the ups and downs of the Mao era, and the super-development phase of the last 25 years like? Not that she needs be so believable as mere slapstick comedy relief, but I can't help it.
I realized I wasn't sure about my motivation as me, the 24 year old. I know where I've been and I have a sense of where I'm going but somehow it has become so selfishly about me, myself, and I. I found myself wading dangerously close to the deep end last night, as I unconsciously revealed some paternalistic attitudes toward the public health system in China. How did I suddenly decide what was right and what was wrong? In a wee morning conversation about my current favorite saying about good intentions, "Wicked" the musical, and corrupting young minds, Kemin reminded me that we live in a world of perceptions and perspectives. Who's right and who's wrong can often depend on where (even when) you are standing. We live in this binary world of 1's and 0's, yes and no, day and night, female and male, black and white, yin and yang, and right and wrong. I always know that theoretically my universe is that of spectrums, periods, orbits, pendulums, full circles, black holes, and that undefinable range of time that we always label twilight, but it takes effort to remain in the shadowy infinite plane of grays. Regretfully, when I get tired, I find myself retreating back into the cave of simple light and shadow. Rather than bemoaning them, I need to face my fears and embrace the complexities in my life.
As for Kerry, people say he doesn't take a position, but perhaps he actually faces the reality of our complex world. Bush's good vs evil world exists only on paper and in his incomprehensible speeches. While people feel better with simple conviction, we do ourselves a diservice by denying that the world is a complicated place with complicated problems that usually require complicated solutions.
I realized I wasn't sure about my motivation as me, the 24 year old. I know where I've been and I have a sense of where I'm going but somehow it has become so selfishly about me, myself, and I. I found myself wading dangerously close to the deep end last night, as I unconsciously revealed some paternalistic attitudes toward the public health system in China. How did I suddenly decide what was right and what was wrong? In a wee morning conversation about my current favorite saying about good intentions, "Wicked" the musical, and corrupting young minds, Kemin reminded me that we live in a world of perceptions and perspectives. Who's right and who's wrong can often depend on where (even when) you are standing. We live in this binary world of 1's and 0's, yes and no, day and night, female and male, black and white, yin and yang, and right and wrong. I always know that theoretically my universe is that of spectrums, periods, orbits, pendulums, full circles, black holes, and that undefinable range of time that we always label twilight, but it takes effort to remain in the shadowy infinite plane of grays. Regretfully, when I get tired, I find myself retreating back into the cave of simple light and shadow. Rather than bemoaning them, I need to face my fears and embrace the complexities in my life.
As for Kerry, people say he doesn't take a position, but perhaps he actually faces the reality of our complex world. Bush's good vs evil world exists only on paper and in his incomprehensible speeches. While people feel better with simple conviction, we do ourselves a diservice by denying that the world is a complicated place with complicated problems that usually require complicated solutions.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Back online
Change of plans, my friends. Documenting my experiences in Gansu got be less than cathartic, considering my silly coding system. Besides, at some level, I hope that someone other than myself can come to understand my ramblings. A quick recap of where I've been since July. Max and I traveled in Xinjiang and to Dunhuang for two weeks. I went to Qinghai with Wei, Jackie, Baoming, and Zhanglei. My advice? Don't rent a Hongqi car in Xining; it's not worth the heartache. I also went on a weekend trip to Hebei with four gay men. Yes, it was a blast.
After a short stint in Alaska with my relatives and California with Wilson, I'm back in Beijing. There are a lot of things I love about China, but any "china person" (defined as expats or people who study China) will tell you that there will always be "china days" (defined as a day or any period of time during which you flip out about the red tape, bureaucracy, and inanity of getting anything done here. Usually entails asking oneself "Why am I in China!?"). This is my "china week". A lesson in patience to be sure.
After a short stint in Alaska with my relatives and California with Wilson, I'm back in Beijing. There are a lot of things I love about China, but any "china person" (defined as expats or people who study China) will tell you that there will always be "china days" (defined as a day or any period of time during which you flip out about the red tape, bureaucracy, and inanity of getting anything done here. Usually entails asking oneself "Why am I in China!?"). This is my "china week". A lesson in patience to be sure.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Top down and that's it
A rather frustrating day in the field monitoring local health examinations for The Survey, I've experienced for myself the great benefits of a strong top-down model of organization and the terrible inefficiencies that poor horizontal collaboration across departments produce. It's a little tongue in cheek to say that they PRODUCE inefficiencies, but it feels that some people truly do go out of their way to make their own work more difficult.
Yesterday, I spent the day in FC, KT with the KC CDC and was impressed by their experience and thoroughness, not only in planning and arranging schedules and children for their health examinations, but also in their work verifying that the children were indeed our sample children.
Today, I bounced along more dirt roads with the QYS CDC in EC, JT monitoring the health examinations. This is where many of the problems begin. They made no effort to get in touch with the local SSB and tried to go it alone on old data from 2000 with only the help of the township level hospital head. At one point, they could only identify 9 out of 20 of the sample children from that village! They were working up a sweat and getting absolutely nowhere. In addition, they people actually doing the examinations were poorly trained.
I have also just changed my plans for the next week. Instead of going to XX XX and another P as I had been planning, I will be continuing my work monitoring different counties in GP.
Yesterday, I spent the day in FC, KT with the KC CDC and was impressed by their experience and thoroughness, not only in planning and arranging schedules and children for their health examinations, but also in their work verifying that the children were indeed our sample children.
Today, I bounced along more dirt roads with the QYS CDC in EC, JT monitoring the health examinations. This is where many of the problems begin. They made no effort to get in touch with the local SSB and tried to go it alone on old data from 2000 with only the help of the township level hospital head. At one point, they could only identify 9 out of 20 of the sample children from that village! They were working up a sweat and getting absolutely nowhere. In addition, they people actually doing the examinations were poorly trained.
I have also just changed my plans for the next week. Instead of going to XX XX and another P as I had been planning, I will be continuing my work monitoring different counties in GP.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Lessons learned, thoughts thunk
Here is to the start of Helena sitting down and documenting her daily musings and lessons learned in the field. Some entries will consist of simple facts learned that add texture to the bigger picture of development and growth here. Others will be my own opinions and interpretations of what I see. All this plus a sprinkling of the dour hilarity that presents itself in everyday life, like the back of my bus catching on fire last week. To be honest the real reason I haven't started this blog until now is because this is the very first broadband internet cafe I've found in the backroads of GP. Updates are pending on internet access.
Here we start in GP. I will begin by trying to place each experience within three contexts: local, national, and international (mostly with respect to my own experience living as an Asian American in the United States). Having been to 10 P and 3 M, I hope that I can offer a perspective grounded in both experience and books.
GP is not a p well travelled by foreigners. The major tourist attraction is the XX XX in northern GP and no one usually comes for anything else, and much less for the P capitol. Much of the population in the P capitol, can not call it their ancestral home. Migration movements in the 20th century make P capitol the city it is today. By now, many the state owned enterprises have been shut down due to ineffiency and poor quality output. A necessary step for the central government but has caused a noticeable shiver in the state social security system. In the words of a cab driver (where many foreigners seem to get their information, reliable or not), the laid off workers with skills go on to big business and the laid-off workers without skills go on to little business, like peddling goods on the streets. Logically, it's usually the unskilled workers that get laid off first. The overall population in GP is poorer but not as dense as that compared to the eastern coastal P. In some areas with extremely limited natural resources, like DX, there's a saying that claims that the families are so poor they can only afford one pair of pants. The mother must wait for the father to come home from the fields so she can put on the pants to go to market. However, a cab driver, again, told me that, even in DX, things have improved in the last five years.
My raison d'etre at the moment is The Survey. To say that this survey has been my life for the past month would be an understatement. I won't go into detail here, but be warned that The Survey very much colors my experiences and thoughts about GP thus far.
Here we start in GP. I will begin by trying to place each experience within three contexts: local, national, and international (mostly with respect to my own experience living as an Asian American in the United States). Having been to 10 P and 3 M, I hope that I can offer a perspective grounded in both experience and books.
GP is not a p well travelled by foreigners. The major tourist attraction is the XX XX in northern GP and no one usually comes for anything else, and much less for the P capitol. Much of the population in the P capitol, can not call it their ancestral home. Migration movements in the 20th century make P capitol the city it is today. By now, many the state owned enterprises have been shut down due to ineffiency and poor quality output. A necessary step for the central government but has caused a noticeable shiver in the state social security system. In the words of a cab driver (where many foreigners seem to get their information, reliable or not), the laid off workers with skills go on to big business and the laid-off workers without skills go on to little business, like peddling goods on the streets. Logically, it's usually the unskilled workers that get laid off first. The overall population in GP is poorer but not as dense as that compared to the eastern coastal P. In some areas with extremely limited natural resources, like DX, there's a saying that claims that the families are so poor they can only afford one pair of pants. The mother must wait for the father to come home from the fields so she can put on the pants to go to market. However, a cab driver, again, told me that, even in DX, things have improved in the last five years.
My raison d'etre at the moment is The Survey. To say that this survey has been my life for the past month would be an understatement. I won't go into detail here, but be warned that The Survey very much colors my experiences and thoughts about GP thus far.
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