Kind of like a week of going away events.
Wang Wei, Zizzo, and Leo. Gangster. i guess one of the benefits of living in commie land is you can buy cuban cigars.
rode my bike farrr, past the 5th ring road, past wudaokou to the sprawling Beijing Sports University to find some martial arts supply stores. I found 1. they had mostly wushu crap. I was looking for some new "kung fu" pants like the ones i got in New york but they only had silky silky wushu pants. i wanted to find these quasi shoe/sock things that the sifu at the san da school i saw wore but they didn't have those either.
silky tai chi outfits too and weirdo weapons
a sword maker on premise!
is he responsible for these gross euro/12 yr old boy fantasy swords too? wish i would have gone to this area when i first came to beijing cuz i could have bought a heavy bag cheap and other cool stuff.
it is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, basically of communism in China. in 1949 Mao and his boys founded the PRC. october 1st is the day. that is why me and a lot of other foreigners visas expire on oct 1st. but i don't care cuz i get to move to japan! anyway there is supposed to be a display of 50 or so new weapons systems in the big parade on the 1st. I have not felt the ominous communism that you think you will feel when you come here until the last couple weeks here. last weekend i stayed home because no one was going out because roadways were closed down in the southeastern section of beijing for parade practice, effectively stopping nightlife. businesses also were forced to close, people were not allowed to look out their windows. kite flying, pigeon flying, and even balloons are banned until oct 8th. there are police or army guys at all big intersections and also wandering around. i've seen police cars come into my apartment complex. they also have mobilized their huge volunteer force which is basically senior citizens that don't have anything better to do but pin one of those red arm bands to their shirt arm and sit on short stools on the sidewalk and talk trash with their buddies. What better way to get people to work for free though than play on humans weakness to feel like they are watching out and reporting bad activities by making them extra special volunteers and giving them red arm bands? what are they looking out for? They have also stepped up the subway "security" now there are like 5 guys there to try and make you xray your bag. and recently they started making people have a swig of their water in their water bottles i guess to make sure its not alchohol or liquid nitrogen or soemthing? anyway this happened to me today and it is annoying and stupid so i bulldozed through 5 pairs of arms and then the last guy chased after me and i pushed him away and said some not nice things and went to the train. i probably should'nt do that again in hind sight. anyway i feel eneasy here now, as a foreigner because it feels like the whole city is on the look out trying to rat anyone out or make your life difficult. fighter jets in the sky, constant helicopters in the distance. these lights are in my apartment complex and are to celebrate the 60th anniversaary of the PRC. i guess they did a really good job with their propaganda cuz all these people seem to have no grudges. there are even two big propaganda movies out now "Tiananmen" and "the founding of a republic" that several people i have met said they are going to see. It still amazes me that people don't hate Mao.
in the part a big gathering around guys playing old time commie songs, all the old folks sang along and were getting really into it. this is probably the old people feeling nostalgic for the commie times that Angel is always talking about. nationalism is a scary thing.
Moon festival time. you know that festival where you are supposed to eat moon cakes. well i guess no one really likes moon cakes. i mean i still see people carrying expensive boxes of them everyday now but i've asked around and no one really like them, but its traditional so they still buy them. Zizzo says lots of people just eat these river crabs now as part of the seasonal festivities. expensive, but not as expensive as the hairy crabs but those are not from rivers. Zizzo brought too for us to eat at lunch the other day.
no tools required. just bite on the semi hard exoskeleton in key places and you can crack the shell off. not a lot of meat, messy, and a lot of work. little little claws. it was good though the little morsels i could get.
time for a rant, its been a while. Moving from China has been a huge pain. First of all the post office will not mail any cds, dvds, scissors, liquids, paint, batteries. i have a lot of all of these, so everytime i would take a box to mail out they would hand me back all of this stuff and say in a stone face we won't send this. They say you need a reciept for all media. even all my burned data back up cds. not resonable. steam coming out ears, pressure rising. They also must rifle through everything, and i don't mean poke around, they will take eveything out, look through every book, open every little box or container, shake everything, and then jam it in their own box! i spent a long time putting the stuff in these box so they wouldn't get broken and then these post office idiots manhandle my stuff and slam it back in another box that is too small. they also put those plastic cinch ties around everybox. It took me 4 hrs to send 3 boxes. this is because chinese people do not wait in line. they cut all the time. almost as bad as cutting is the squeezing in the side of the window and asking questions to worker. every post office is horrible understaffed, i dont get it cuz every other business in china is over staffed. i was so p!ssed. everyone stop asking this one guy questions while he is doing super important things like inputing shipping numbers and f'ing wait your turn!!!!! I yelled at one lady and she stopped trying to shover her box in front of mine for about 2 min and then went at it again. I had to go back yesterday to mail 1 more box and they kept saying they won't send the box i need something, these old hags behind me kept pointing to their chinese id cards and freaking out and having bug eyes, i wanted to punch everyone out so bad. obviously i'm not chinese you stupid hag so i don't have a mother loving chinese id card! Now all of the sudden you have to have your passport to mail anything just because of this 60th anniversary sh!t. feeling the commie burn. I guess that is how the gov reminds people who's the boss. old hags were pointing to some computer print out sign on the wall probably about having your chinese id card with you all the time.
condom machine i just noticed on the side of the hutong bathroom by lake xi hai. "Please use condom for preventing the dreaded sexually tremsitted diseases and AIDS."
long story short, a going away party was had, fun was had, rain, rain in the early am, singing in the rain performed. thats a wrap.
another crazy super inconvenient adventure in trying to move out of china. China eastern only allows 1 suitcase at 44 lbs/20kg. wat the f! 44 lbs is nothing. you can't even fill a suitcase all the way and not go over. that means i had to send my other suitcase as unaccompanied baggage. at least that is wat i thought i was doing. many phone calls to many places resulted in me finally getting someone that spoke english at this cargo company. i guess they are not part of china eastern airlines at all, they are a private cargo company. i dont really know whats going on. first i call the lady that can speaks englishe's cell phone and she says no one is working at the office today cuz its saturday. first of all what the F! this is the biggest airport in the world and there is no one that can speak english at the office and then it isn't even open on saturday? she says she will meet me and take me to the place where i need to take my suitcase finally. meet me and take me there? wat is she talking about. the taxi drops me off on the highway! he kept insisting that is where she said to drop me. so there i am in the middle of nowhere, not near the airport terminals at all with my bright red suitcase waiting for this lady. after 15 min of being on the phone with her they finally found me in this shady crappy van. so shady that im waiting by the highway, then get in a shady unmarked van. i get in and we go to the actual f;ing cargo loading docks. turns out my suitcase is gonna be sent as cargo under the plane. i saw a bunch of boxes labeled "semiconductors". that means my suitcase is gonna be smashed to bits. at this point i dont have a choice though. the usual emptying everything out of my carefully and efficiently packed suitcase and inspecting everything happened. at this point i am a properly sociallized good little chinese citizen and take all their abuse and don't mind at all that all my undies are laying on the floor. suitcase is wrapped in plastic and then blasted to the moon.
these pics are not good representations of wat is going on around. tons of cargo and forklifts everywhere. wat the f is wrong with Beiing's airport? i had to take a van ride to the actually loading dock to get my suitcase sent! then i had to take another van ride to the "office" which happend to be in someones apartment. wat the heck, its not even at the airport. then a car ride to the customs office. no normal mortal ever goes here cuz you are not filling out waybill forms for cargo! what an awesome place that customs office was. i paid the little cargo company guy $170 and took a cab from the middle of nowhere back to my house. 4 more hours gone.
