Rowing against the water and supporting it hard, and retreated to Qianxun. Dynamic zeroing is the most important thing in persistence. Tips: Citizens living or working in Fengtai District are requested to work from home and do not go out, actively cooperate with health monitoring and nucleic acid screening, pay close attention to the official announcement of epidemic-related sites and trajectories, and sometimes meet or pop-up window personnel to report truthfully. Guarding the hard-won prevention and control results is inseparable from your consciousness to respond to the call.
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Monday, May 30, 2022
Texts from Prevention Control Office: Multiple Risk Points
It is everyone's responsibility to fight the epidemic. At present, there are still multiple risk points and sporadic infections in Fengtai District, and there is a risk of epidemic transmission. Citizens who work or live in Fengtai District are requested to continue to work from home, actively cooperate with nucleic acid screening, and report suspected symptoms in time. It is not necessary for personnel in Fengtai District not to leave the district, and personnel in other districts do not need to go to Fengtai District. Thank you for your understanding and support.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Sketchy Much?
In China, you have to register your residence with the government. At all times. This is true if you are zhongguoren or foreign, here for a few days or a lifetime. Everyone has to say where they live. If you visit China, it's pretty easy -- your hotel registers you. If you live here, live here, it gets a bit more confusing.
At my first school, they registered us. Once a year, we took a walk down to the police station and stood there while my Handler filled in some paperwork. When I left that school, I learned that you are supposed to do this every time you leave and enter the country, even if you haven't changed visas or residences. It's just that my old neighborhood was backwater enough that the police knew where to go complain if a laowai was found doing something untoward.
In my new neighborhood, the university district, things got more complicated. The place is chock full of crazy foreigners getting drunk on Thursday nights (because they are at university after all), so you have to register. And the rumor is that the police station there is the most strict about the rules.
At my first apartment, the apartment management office would register me. I went down to the office with my old registration and my passport, and I'd get it all back in a day or two. Easy-peasy. My new apartment, not so much.
My real estate agent registered me the first time. When I got back to China, I talked to one of the Chinese admin staff about what I needed to do to register, and it got largely ignored. My friend who lives in the same complex somehow registers at the neighborhood police substation (that maybe isn't supposed to register us), but there names are on the list. Mine isn't. So we ignored that route. And then, and then... it just got too late. Once you haven't registered in time, it becomes easier to wait until the next time you leave the country. And then the next. And the next.
But, I just got my new visa for next year, and if there is a time you should really register, it's with your new visa. I texted my real estate agent, but he didn't get back to me. Then I went to the management office in my building, because there is some form you need from them. That woman sent me away, like I needed to talk to someone else. I have no idea what she said. I texted my landlady. Nothing.
This is supposed to be some super-important thing, and I can't get one person to help me out. It's ridiculous. I need to know what piece of paper to get so I can go check a box and sign another piece of paper. I can get a plumber to fix my sink on a Sunday for $3.20, but I can't do this legal bit of red tape.
Finally, my agent called me back. For 400 kuai, his friend can do it. Fine. Sure. I'll pay. It needs to be done before I end up in some red-tape-police-station-registration Hell where I need to give someone a "gift" to take care of it. He comes by my place to pick up my passport. He doesn't need my housing contract or my old registration. He tells me to meet a woman, about 30 years old, at the bank next to the police station. And I'm not to say anything.
Ooooooooookay.
I go down to the bank. I'm there on time. No one is there.
No one.
No.
One.
I wait 15 minutes. It is Beijing. There is traffic. Still. Nothing but hungover college kids buying fast-food breakfast from street vendors.
I call my real estate agent. (Realize, please, that I only know him by one English name. We'll say David. I have no Chinese name. No family name. Nothing other than a phone number and a hint that his office is near/in the Wenjun Hotel.)
I get a message explaining that "the subscriber can not be reached at this time."
Let me repeat that for you. The one person whose phone number I have can't be reached, the woman I'm supposed to meet isn't there, and I DON'T HAVE MY PASSPORT. I try him again. And again. And again.
I try not to panic (but let's be honest, I'm panicking). I've known David for two years. He registered me before. If this has been a con to get my passport, it's been a long con indeed. A really long con.
I consider calling a friend. I consider going to the police station. I. I. I.
My phone rings. It's a woman. She speaks no English, of course. She hands off the phone to someone who speaks English, but he doesn't know what's going on, either. She just hands him the phone. I try to say that I'm at the bank. We agree to meet at the Haagen Das at the mall across the street. I meet him.
He seems to think I'm a total neophyte despite my assurance that I've lived in China for four years. And to be fair, if I can't even register myself at the police station, what good am I? Breaking the rules, I say that I am a teacher at Tsinghua (which usually garners some respect), and that I do live in the apartment complex that I live in. He says it's OK, there are plenty of things in China that seem sketchy, but aren't. Like I didn't know that, having handed over my passport the previous evening. I wasn't even sketched out for the first eight minutes or so. It wasn't until a full 15 minutes had passed AND I couldn't get my agent on the phone that I thought something was up.
But nothing was up.
We cross back over the street to the police station, and there is the woman. Not only does she have my passport, but she already has the registration. That's it.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
At my first school, they registered us. Once a year, we took a walk down to the police station and stood there while my Handler filled in some paperwork. When I left that school, I learned that you are supposed to do this every time you leave and enter the country, even if you haven't changed visas or residences. It's just that my old neighborhood was backwater enough that the police knew where to go complain if a laowai was found doing something untoward.
In my new neighborhood, the university district, things got more complicated. The place is chock full of crazy foreigners getting drunk on Thursday nights (because they are at university after all), so you have to register. And the rumor is that the police station there is the most strict about the rules.
At my first apartment, the apartment management office would register me. I went down to the office with my old registration and my passport, and I'd get it all back in a day or two. Easy-peasy. My new apartment, not so much.
My real estate agent registered me the first time. When I got back to China, I talked to one of the Chinese admin staff about what I needed to do to register, and it got largely ignored. My friend who lives in the same complex somehow registers at the neighborhood police substation (that maybe isn't supposed to register us), but there names are on the list. Mine isn't. So we ignored that route. And then, and then... it just got too late. Once you haven't registered in time, it becomes easier to wait until the next time you leave the country. And then the next. And the next.
But, I just got my new visa for next year, and if there is a time you should really register, it's with your new visa. I texted my real estate agent, but he didn't get back to me. Then I went to the management office in my building, because there is some form you need from them. That woman sent me away, like I needed to talk to someone else. I have no idea what she said. I texted my landlady. Nothing.
This is supposed to be some super-important thing, and I can't get one person to help me out. It's ridiculous. I need to know what piece of paper to get so I can go check a box and sign another piece of paper. I can get a plumber to fix my sink on a Sunday for $3.20, but I can't do this legal bit of red tape.
Finally, my agent called me back. For 400 kuai, his friend can do it. Fine. Sure. I'll pay. It needs to be done before I end up in some red-tape-police-station-registration Hell where I need to give someone a "gift" to take care of it. He comes by my place to pick up my passport. He doesn't need my housing contract or my old registration. He tells me to meet a woman, about 30 years old, at the bank next to the police station. And I'm not to say anything.
Ooooooooookay.
I go down to the bank. I'm there on time. No one is there.
No one.
No.
One.
I wait 15 minutes. It is Beijing. There is traffic. Still. Nothing but hungover college kids buying fast-food breakfast from street vendors.
I call my real estate agent. (Realize, please, that I only know him by one English name. We'll say David. I have no Chinese name. No family name. Nothing other than a phone number and a hint that his office is near/in the Wenjun Hotel.)
I get a message explaining that "the subscriber can not be reached at this time."
Let me repeat that for you. The one person whose phone number I have can't be reached, the woman I'm supposed to meet isn't there, and I DON'T HAVE MY PASSPORT. I try him again. And again. And again.
I try not to panic (but let's be honest, I'm panicking). I've known David for two years. He registered me before. If this has been a con to get my passport, it's been a long con indeed. A really long con.
I consider calling a friend. I consider going to the police station. I. I. I.
My phone rings. It's a woman. She speaks no English, of course. She hands off the phone to someone who speaks English, but he doesn't know what's going on, either. She just hands him the phone. I try to say that I'm at the bank. We agree to meet at the Haagen Das at the mall across the street. I meet him.
He seems to think I'm a total neophyte despite my assurance that I've lived in China for four years. And to be fair, if I can't even register myself at the police station, what good am I? Breaking the rules, I say that I am a teacher at Tsinghua (which usually garners some respect), and that I do live in the apartment complex that I live in. He says it's OK, there are plenty of things in China that seem sketchy, but aren't. Like I didn't know that, having handed over my passport the previous evening. I wasn't even sketched out for the first eight minutes or so. It wasn't until a full 15 minutes had passed AND I couldn't get my agent on the phone that I thought something was up.
But nothing was up.
We cross back over the street to the police station, and there is the woman. Not only does she have my passport, but she already has the registration. That's it.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Monday, June 17, 2013
I'm Moving on Up
(with apologies to The Jeffersons)
I'm moving on up
Moving on up
To the top
Moving on up
To a deluxe apartment (one floor up)
Yeah I'm moving on up
Moving on up
Across the street
Moving on up
I've finally got a bedroom do-oo-oo-oor
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
I'm moving on up
Moving on up
To the top
Moving on up
To a deluxe apartment (one floor up)
Yeah I'm moving on up
Moving on up
Across the street
Moving on up
I've finally got a bedroom do-oo-oo-oor
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Location:Qidaokou, Beijing, China
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Free (to Wear Anything)
While getting ready to go out to dinner with my friends last night, I took a moment to glance in the mirror. Oh my, I thought, was a disjointed bit of fashion. Nothing was horribly bad, but it didn't particularly hang together, either.
I was wearing a sapphire v-neck t-shirt from UNIQLO, black Old Navy capris, nude wedges (Clarks), and a 70s maroon leather jacket from the Bins. Oh, and what to do for a bag? Maybe my red and gold batik number from Bali. Ugh. I traded in the capris for jeans, added a cream zip hoodie (for warmth), and called it good. It was still not quite great, but maybe it was OK for an evening at The Restaurant Formerly Known As Outback with the Boys.
Of course, TRFKAO is a bus and three subways away from me. While in the midst of a transfer, I was standing behind a woman who suddenly made me feel downright good about my fashion choices.
She was sporting tan open-toed sandal-like city-boot shoes that zipped up the back, except one zipper was unzipped with black tights with a large polka-dot pattern and a rather large run at her knee, an ill-fitting pleather pencil skirt, some sort of horrible red-ish top with awful pleats at the waist and shoulders, and top it all off, a feathered mullet dyed the hideous shade of black-hair-dyed-blond-so-it's-actually-red so common among Chinese women of a certain age.
This town can be incredibly liberating. I can wear whatever I want and it still won't be the worst thing around.
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
I was wearing a sapphire v-neck t-shirt from UNIQLO, black Old Navy capris, nude wedges (Clarks), and a 70s maroon leather jacket from the Bins. Oh, and what to do for a bag? Maybe my red and gold batik number from Bali. Ugh. I traded in the capris for jeans, added a cream zip hoodie (for warmth), and called it good. It was still not quite great, but maybe it was OK for an evening at The Restaurant Formerly Known As Outback with the Boys.
Of course, TRFKAO is a bus and three subways away from me. While in the midst of a transfer, I was standing behind a woman who suddenly made me feel downright good about my fashion choices.
She was sporting tan open-toed sandal-like city-boot shoes that zipped up the back, except one zipper was unzipped with black tights with a large polka-dot pattern and a rather large run at her knee, an ill-fitting pleather pencil skirt, some sort of horrible red-ish top with awful pleats at the waist and shoulders, and top it all off, a feathered mullet dyed the hideous shade of black-hair-dyed-blond-so-it's-actually-red so common among Chinese women of a certain age.
This town can be incredibly liberating. I can wear whatever I want and it still won't be the worst thing around.
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Location:Beijing, China
Friday, March 22, 2013
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger
This thought was flitting around my mind as I sat, sick, uncomfortable, with a tinge of very real fear, on the boat back to Bali. My thoughts were as turbulent as the waves.
But this upset stomach (the sick part, not the seasick part), I thought, will at least build up my immunity. It will leave me better. Stronger. Depending on how sick, maybe faster, too.
And I started thinking about it: if it doesn't kill me, will it make me stronger? Last year, one of my students forced me to read a (badly written) sample SAT essay on that exact topic. The student, in a rather obvious way, felt forced to agree for lack of any real ideas.
It was definitely the subject of an essay by a writer suffering from terminal cancer. I wanted to read the end of the essay, but I got distracted by a student. Had to go teach. Needed to attend a meeting. Something, and soon the essay was off my Facebook newsfeed. Maybe I book-marked it, but that was a whole computer ago. I do recall that the author had issues with the phrase. He was living the slow process of getting killed quicker than the rest of us, after all.
So, do I agree?
Well, maybe. If you come from a cultural perspective where strength is valued, then yes. We certainly interpret all of our struggles as making us better, therefore stronger. More courageous. Better able to deal with a similar adversity in the future and overcome it. Beat it. Best it. We are a culture of winners.
But, it could just as easily be something else.
(No, I am not suffering from a terminal disease, at least not that I know of. I have survived my boat trip, and am now writing this weeks later. I am not dying of anything, unless you realize that Death will always be in the last place we look.)
Still, why does adversity make us tougher? Why can it not do something else? Why not... Make me kinder. More compassionate. A better listener. More thoughtful.
And does it really always make us stronger? Ask someone with an illness that leaves them weak or disabled. Ask a woman or a child who has been abused. Does the periodic, aching pain in my knee make me stronger? Or does it make me sad and grumpy? Angry, even, if I'm sometimes honest.
But it can make me kinder.
Earlier this month, I received some rather mean, hateful emails from a student. And I won't lie, they hurt my feelings. I wanted to find the child(ren) tormenting me, and kick them out of school. I wanted to cry. I was scared it would ruin the place I was making in my school, with my administrators, fellow teachers, and students.
And while I did talk to my circle of friends about it, I tried to keep it fairly close. I tried to not let if affect my classroom. I tried to smile more. To talk to more students. To be nicer.
You know what I noticed? My students still talk to me. Wave to me from across campus, too. One of them asked me explicitly to come to her soccer game (I couldn't because I was already going to the MUN conference, but I made her promise to tell me when the next home game is). My classes seem to be going smoother, too.
Maybe compassion is better than strength.
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
But this upset stomach (the sick part, not the seasick part), I thought, will at least build up my immunity. It will leave me better. Stronger. Depending on how sick, maybe faster, too.
And I started thinking about it: if it doesn't kill me, will it make me stronger? Last year, one of my students forced me to read a (badly written) sample SAT essay on that exact topic. The student, in a rather obvious way, felt forced to agree for lack of any real ideas.
It was definitely the subject of an essay by a writer suffering from terminal cancer. I wanted to read the end of the essay, but I got distracted by a student. Had to go teach. Needed to attend a meeting. Something, and soon the essay was off my Facebook newsfeed. Maybe I book-marked it, but that was a whole computer ago. I do recall that the author had issues with the phrase. He was living the slow process of getting killed quicker than the rest of us, after all.
So, do I agree?
Well, maybe. If you come from a cultural perspective where strength is valued, then yes. We certainly interpret all of our struggles as making us better, therefore stronger. More courageous. Better able to deal with a similar adversity in the future and overcome it. Beat it. Best it. We are a culture of winners.
But, it could just as easily be something else.
(No, I am not suffering from a terminal disease, at least not that I know of. I have survived my boat trip, and am now writing this weeks later. I am not dying of anything, unless you realize that Death will always be in the last place we look.)
Still, why does adversity make us tougher? Why can it not do something else? Why not... Make me kinder. More compassionate. A better listener. More thoughtful.
And does it really always make us stronger? Ask someone with an illness that leaves them weak or disabled. Ask a woman or a child who has been abused. Does the periodic, aching pain in my knee make me stronger? Or does it make me sad and grumpy? Angry, even, if I'm sometimes honest.
But it can make me kinder.
Earlier this month, I received some rather mean, hateful emails from a student. And I won't lie, they hurt my feelings. I wanted to find the child(ren) tormenting me, and kick them out of school. I wanted to cry. I was scared it would ruin the place I was making in my school, with my administrators, fellow teachers, and students.
And while I did talk to my circle of friends about it, I tried to keep it fairly close. I tried to not let if affect my classroom. I tried to smile more. To talk to more students. To be nicer.
You know what I noticed? My students still talk to me. Wave to me from across campus, too. One of them asked me explicitly to come to her soccer game (I couldn't because I was already going to the MUN conference, but I made her promise to tell me when the next home game is). My classes seem to be going smoother, too.
Maybe compassion is better than strength.
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Kindness
I'm spending much of my weekend chaperoning my students at a Model United Nations conference. It's here in Beijing, so it's not really all that stressful, but it does mean spending some time in the meeting spaces of a hotel on the other side of town.
And *that* means being that much closer to some of my favorite restaurants. This evening, my co-chaperone agreed to hang with the kiddoes while I went off on a self-imposed burrito mission. Yes, Gentle Reader, about as close to a real, American burrito as big as your head as you can get (because the kind of burrito I'm talking about is American, not Mexican — those are good, too, but different).
However, I was heading out right at rush hour, so taxis were not to be found. A nice Asian woman started talking to me, and suddenly we were talking about U.S. cities and sky-diving and we agreed that we were going to a close-enough place to share a cab. (Actually, the Doorman suggested It, and I figured out what he was saying and agreed before she could decline on my account.)
When, 20 minutes later, a cab was finally found, we sped off into the traffic and continued to talk about food and travel. She admitted she was a flight attendant for Qatar Airlines (hence all the traveling). We talked about the size of steak in Texas, and American-style barbecues, and the giant "party size" bags of chips that are as big as her t-shirt.
She and her companion (who obviously didn't have much English because he was not joining in the talk) got out first and left the driver with more than enough money. She refused to take anything from me. "Nope," she said. "Americans are always so nice to me when I am in the United States, and now I have the chance to do something nice for you."
What can you say to that but, "Thank you."
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
And *that* means being that much closer to some of my favorite restaurants. This evening, my co-chaperone agreed to hang with the kiddoes while I went off on a self-imposed burrito mission. Yes, Gentle Reader, about as close to a real, American burrito as big as your head as you can get (because the kind of burrito I'm talking about is American, not Mexican — those are good, too, but different).
However, I was heading out right at rush hour, so taxis were not to be found. A nice Asian woman started talking to me, and suddenly we were talking about U.S. cities and sky-diving and we agreed that we were going to a close-enough place to share a cab. (Actually, the Doorman suggested It, and I figured out what he was saying and agreed before she could decline on my account.)
When, 20 minutes later, a cab was finally found, we sped off into the traffic and continued to talk about food and travel. She admitted she was a flight attendant for Qatar Airlines (hence all the traveling). We talked about the size of steak in Texas, and American-style barbecues, and the giant "party size" bags of chips that are as big as her t-shirt.
She and her companion (who obviously didn't have much English because he was not joining in the talk) got out first and left the driver with more than enough money. She refused to take anything from me. "Nope," she said. "Americans are always so nice to me when I am in the United States, and now I have the chance to do something nice for you."
What can you say to that but, "Thank you."
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Location:Beijing, China
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