Prostitution

Warning: Naked butt below.

"Yeah she is kind of hot, isn't she, in a slutty way?" said the cabbie, as Zayd was ogling a girl in a magazine ad. Like many Beijing taxi drivers, he was a short and squat man, dressed in a blue short-sleeved collar shirt which was worn at the edges. His face was stout, accenting an impish grin that lasted for our entire journey. "So you guys study here huh? You guys have Chinese girlfriends?"

"Nope, our game sucks," we replied.

"Well I can introduce you to some. They're really beautiful and they'll help you with your Chinese! Yeah I can take you to a great KTV place, they're great in bed too and not that expensive. Then you can get their numbers later too, and its near where you live, not far at all. And the KTV joint is really clean!"

This was getting interesting. "What about the girls on the business cards?" I asked.

"No no you don't want the business card types, they'll quote a price and some girl who's not that attractive, will come to your place, then before she leaves, some big types will burst in and demand more money. Foreigners like you must be protected. It can be dangerous. But these girls I'll introduce you to, they'll be the best!"

Business cards with photos of attractive girls on one side and with a slogan or list of services on the reverse, are popular (see photos below). In Korea they're a bit more explicit and you get to see frontal and sometimes full nudity. I picked a few up in Korea off of cars, but the Chinese ones were literally thrown in my face as my taxi had stopped at a traffic light. This guy walking by flung a bunch of business cards in the open window and walked off.

Then there are the ubiquitous hair parlors. Barbershops open at night with neon pink lights and women sitting in the front, most often do not provide hair styling services. Usually there's a back room where things happen or the girls take you somewhere else. A friend of mine, recalled his first few months in China years ago, when he was walking down the street to his apartment and saw one of these places open at 11pm. Needing a haircut, his thought was, "China's great, I can get a cheap haircut at this hour? Sweet!" Not being able to speak or understand Mandarin, he boldly entered and indicated to the astonished women inside that he wanted a haircut. When they awkwardly put the haircloth on him, and grabbed a pair of scissors, he inquired whether or not they were going to wash his hair. He got the idea that it wasn't a traditional place to get one's hair cut when the woman indicated that they didn't have shampoo. On a second glance, he noticed that the women were wearing relatively revealing clothing and were giggling.

Korean Business Card

24 Hours, Massage and Event

Chinese Cards

The one on the left reads "Idle Massage"
The one on the right (in yellow type) reads "Feeling of Western Love." Below that (in red) it reads "Star Service"

The one on the left reads "Models, Young Students, will look after you. Below "Massage" it says something like "Pretty girls who are adept at tightening men's clock springs." Hey its what the dictionary gave me, make of it what you will. You can all read the English "The whole body cares to massage, the foot bottom cares to masssage, the that health cares massage, the Russian young lady massage. What's interesting is the Chinese beside it is completely different. It says, "Full Body Massage, Korean girl massage,Thai style massage, Russian girl massage," so the last bit matches up. Finally it says, "5 star service is a successful person's first choice." Oh and for everyone who wants to keep track of such essential business expenses, you know when handing in those tax returns and expense reports, they "provide real tax receipts"

Ok the one on the right is far easier, not only to translate but also because the Chinese and English actually match up. Top left says, "List of Services." Way bottom part says, "Models, Young Students."

In the end, we got the cabbie's phone number, but haven't called it. Seriously.

Photos from when Harith came

A buddy of mine from back home visited China a few weeks ago, and I got some pretty good photos out of it. More will be posted on facebook as I get more free time. Until then, enjoy!

Recently cleared area in what was once a hutong (a traditional Beijing neighborhood) in order to make way for a larger road, in downtown Beijing. Although surrounding hutongs remain intact for the time being, residents have been notified in the past year that their homes will also be torn down to make way for high rises and wider roads. While the people we spoke with (who were mostly older) seemed sad but resigned to the prospect of moving from their historic residences, much of the younger generation is looking forward to receiving its compensation and new housing assignments from government authorities. While still a touchy subject for many residents at first, they soon allowed us to take their photos while speaking to us openly. One couple even invited us to join them for dinner.


The Great Wall at Jinshanling. While the area in focus is restored, most of the section leading to Simatai, a 10 Km hike that Harith and I did, and is shown in the photo, is not. Photos such as this are simply unable to capture the true beauty and tranquility that one experiences on this section of the Wall. Another fantastic aspect of standing on an unrestored part of the Great Wall is that one can close his/her eyes and imagine what it must of been like to have been a soldier in the past stationed on the Wall.

The Bell Tower in downtown Xi'an.


Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Not exactly what one has in mind when thinking of the former British Colony, but breathtaking nonetheless.

Newspaper Reading Class

It's my second year studying in Beijing, which means that in addition to reading/writing, listening and speaking classes I also now have newspaper reading class. I know what most people think when I tell them this: "Whoa, you read Chinese newspapers now?? Wow your Mandarin must be really good! blah blah blah!!!"

I'll be the first to say that my Chinese is most certainly not awesome, since most conversations still begin with, "You speak Chinese very well! Where are you from?" Now I know that Mandarin is a more difficult language than English, but, when one hears a foreigner speak English well, no comment regarding his/her command of the English language is made. It's when we run into people who don't speak well that we say "No you speak well!"while grinning and staring at them like a retarded donkey trying to make out what they're saying.

But I digress. Anyhow, the class itself is one of the most boring classes I've had. I don't think there is a way to make it interesting. We just go over a passage in the book (an old newspaper article. Coincidence? I think not), review the vocab and answer questions that the teacher asks us (regurgitating the passage).

Where it gets interesting is the homework. Each week, we have to choose an article from a newspaper, then write a summary of it, along with our opinion and then pose two questions at the end. In addition we have to make note of any characters we don't know and write them out and their equivalent translations. Every Thursday, two students are picked to present their articles to the whole class.

While each article can take up to six hours to do (we don't even choose long ones), it's a rewarding experience because one learns so many new terms, phrases, words and grammar patterns, as well as abbreviations that are commonly used. It's also great because I can see how much my Chinese has improved and that I can grasp the basic meaning of the article, sometimes without even looking at the dictionary (though there are always at least 15 characters I have to look up to understand major details).