Seoul

When my best friend who is currently working in Seoul invited me for a visit, I had no reason to say no though I’d been to South Korea about 12 years ago. It’s similar to China in many ways and not an exotic country to me.

Seoul didn’t change much over the past decade. Its subway trains look old compared to Beijing’s brand new ones. Its sky becomes smoggy. PM2.5 must have flown over the yellow sea. Fruits are as expensive as in Europe. Street vendors sell the same knick-knacks as in China.

It’s difficult to understand a city’s soul if you don’t speak its language. For the first time after coming back from a foreign country, I don’t feel having a lot to write about. 

后海，应酬

上一次去后海全聚德还是08年，每次外地的客户来北京，后海便成了一个必去的景点。不记得从哪年开始，安静的小巷变成了喧闹的酒吧街。巴掌大的一片地儿总是熙熙攘攘。四年了，街边还是那几家酒吧，放着俗气的音乐，小店里卖着同样的纪念品，全聚德里的演员穿着同样的戏服，上演着同样的节目。第一次是新鲜，第二次就是无聊了。

上个周末陪苏州的客户奔波在千岛湖，30度的高温加上99%的空气湿度已经难以忍受。还有没完没了的敬酒、K歌、打牌，想象不出哪种应酬会比这更令人厌恶。白酒似乎是中国人餐桌上少不了的一个项目，不知道是喝酒让某些人像打了鸡血一样，还是他们本质如此。这些老规矩，或者说陋习早该弃之。

北京这一周的天气好得令人不敢相信，出去看场电影，回家上上网，突然觉得这样一个本来很平常的周末好难得。

3.5 hours across the Jinshanling Great wall

3.5 hours, 21 towers. It was quite a challenge, but definitely worth it!

Jogging

The best time for jogging outdoors is when the temperature is between 15 and 25 celsius. In Beijing it’s only a few days in Apr and May, when it’s not windy and the air quality is not “very unhealthy”.

Jogging for me is not an exercise, but an effective way to release pressure. Frustration, anger and other negative emotions will gradually disappear during the process of inhalation and exhalation. From a psychoanalytic perspective, I’m adopting a defense mechanism called sublimation, i.e. channeling unwanted feelings into more socially acceptable forms. It really works.

Business trip to Dalian

Part I Old impression

My last trip to Dalian was in the late 90s. I travelled by ship with my family. For a small town girl, Dalian was a large city with wide streets and blue skies.

Almost 15 years later, I found Dalian no different from other Chinese cities. The sky became smoggy. LV and Cartier opened their stores on Renmin road. The streets seemed narrower. Nay, the city did not shrink, but my horizon expanded. Nevertheless, I still felt comfortable in Dalian as its climate, dialect and cuisine were so similar to those of my hometown’s.

Part II Last minute task

The plane landed in Dalian at 11:20am. I turned on my mobile phone and saw a text message from my colleague telling me I needed to do product training for our cable operator at 1pm. She wasn’t kidding me! A training session wasn’t on the plan at all. I was caught unprepared. Fortunately my audience was busy preparing for a meeting in the afternoon and the training was postponed to the next morning, giving me some time to update the ppt.

Part III Drink and get drunk

Drinking is an indispensable part of doing business in China. The more you drink, the more impressed your clients will be. How I hate to see people getting drunk and losing control of themselves at the dinner table! (We were doing fine this time in Dalian. I was worried about our next trip to Suzhou. Every time I think about last year’s dinner with them, I wanna quit, no, retire.) 

One man’s meat is another man’s poison

Over the past few months my colleagues must have asked me more than 5 times why I don’t use weibo (a Chinese version of twitter). Well, I’m not interested. As the says goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

I don’t care who eat what in which restaurant. I don’t care who travelled where with whom. I don’t care whose dog is sick. I don’t care whose flight is delayed. And I don’t see any necessity for everyone to know my whereabouts. Living in an era of information explosion, we are being bombarded by all kinds of news and ads everyday. I’m eliminating the trifles and giving myself a little break. 

Last minute trip to Shanxi

2012 is my 12^th year in Beijing. It is the last city I wanna stay in for a 5-day Ching Ming holiday. On a lazy Wednesday afternoon, I stared at the map of China on a website, trying to find a destination for a spring fling – somewhere not too faraway as air ticket prices already went up at the last minute; somewhere not too close to bore me. On a whim, I decided to go to Shanxi.

I arrived in Datong in the morning on Saturday and met 3 girls at the airport. As we were going to the same places, I decided to join them so we could share a car. Later we found out that we were alumni! What are the odds! Knowing them was an amazing part of the journey. 

So, be spontaneous. Follow your hunches. Embrace the unexpected. 

Xuankong temple

Pingyao you won't see from travel guides

Next to a local Catholic church

Barry Lyndon

Epilogue
It was in the reign of King George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
Wow! If I could time travel to 1975, I’d love to watch the 3-hour epic movie on a big screen. The picturesque scenes would be more stunning in a dark theatre and soundtrack more tuneful even though I consider myself not having the ear for classical music. More compliments would be superfluous, just set aside a weekend afternoon and relive the dramatic life of Barry Lyndon.

If the prophecy were true

If 2012 were the end of the world, how would you spend the last 9 months? This may sound like a cliche question, but I can’t help thinking about it. I would quit my job and travel to the continents that I’ve never been to.


Sometimes I wish the prophecy were true, so I don’t need to think about the future, 10 years from now, 20 years from now…Only then can I leave everything behind and never look back or forward. But all I can see now is a blurry picture of the future, myself being overpowered by the daily routines.

Isn’t it good that everything comes to an end all together? We are but a minute particle in the universe. Let me quote the ending of Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism:


If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.


It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space.

When a pessimist reads Schopenhauer

I didn’t like philosophy and I used to have the preconception that those who do are kind of neurotic. However, Schopenhauer changed my view. The great philosopher awakened the pessimist living inside me.

 A few excerpts from Studies in Pessimism:

No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all."

The delight which a man has in hoping for and looking forward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleasure attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards deducted; for the more we look forward to anything, the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes.

To be continued...

修鞋记

一直觉得小区门口的修鞋摊是个很有人情味的地方。修鞋的女子大概三十几岁，似乎跟周围的街坊都很熟。

春节假期后的第一个周末去修鞋，路过的一些老人都会跟她打个招呼，问声过年好，顺便拉拉家常。聊天中得知她刚坐了三十多个小时汽车从甘肃回到北京，我问她是甘肃哪里的，她说老家在陇南那边，靠近四川。我这才注意到她脸上还真有一抹高原红。也许那只是常年风吹日晒留下的痕迹。

我不禁好奇起来。她在北京会住怎样的房子？过怎样的生活？为什么要背井离乡，来大城市做这么辛苦的工作？我想如果自己生在农村，大概会留在家乡种地吧。

类似的问题我考虑过很多年都没有找到答案。或者我只是在杞人忧天罢了。

修鞋那天天气还算晴朗，站在阳光下有感而发。

Ladies team

With a new employee on board this week, the number of staff in our China office reached 20 – 4 guys, 16 gals. Some have kids, all daughters by the way. This company is cursed.

Sometimes I really need a private moment during work, probably just 2 seconds to take a deep breath and sigh in the bathroom. But half the time it’s not vacant. It is the last place I wanna say hi to a co-worker.

Me, slim, average height, involuntarily became the strongest in our team since the only guy left last year. F*** my life.

Infant Joy

春节真是一个百无聊赖的节日，似乎前前后后的一个月都不在状态。节后的北京干燥寒冷，天空终于放晴。亮马河上已经结了厚厚的一层冰，记得放假前去河边散步，有人滑冰、钓鱼、冬泳，好不热闹。

A poem to my cousin who just gave birth to a boy

Infant Joy
By William Blake

"I have no name;
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!

PS: Technically I launched this blog in Feb 2007. So happy 5th year birthday!

Hope

What do people do when they meet during the Spring Festival? Exchange information about each other and their families. Some good; some sad. Anyway it’s a new start and let’s hope for the best.

Hope

by: Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I 've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Guilty pleasures

1. Doing nothing
It’s a long Spring Festival holiday, besides eating and sleeping, nothing else to do. Woke up early in the morning, quietly expecting a ray of sunlight to slant through the curtains. What an enjoyable moment!

2. ipad
We didn’t need an ipad before it was invented, but once we have one, we become attached to it. Every week I try the new apps and then delete them. That’s all. When it comes to writing, typing on a screen completely loses the rhythm of fingertips gliding over a physical keyboard. And for reading, I still prefer a real book – only for a touch of the paper.

3. taobao
I’ve written a post about online shopping before. Now with all the online stores closed in the holiday season, I’m a bit uneasy as if something is missing.

Midnight in Paris

Monet.
Paris.
A Moveable Feast.
A beautiful movie.

Ah! 2012

The new year means nothing but a change of number – 2012.

Look at the sky – still shrouded by smog, as if it were the end of the world.
More cars stuck on the roads as if running away from a catastrophe.
Supermarkets are packed as if a wave of panic buying were triggered.

The city becomes crazier than usual. It’s all because the lunar new year is coming!