What do Noodles, Nelson Mandela and Avatar Have in Common.

Bill took me to his favorite noodle house where I had a delicious meal of beef fried noodles and a Yanjin beer. A large bottle of beer is $.60 so, as you can imagine westerners down a lot of beer here. The noodle shop is open 24 hours a day and is decorated with an odd collection of murals on the wall. There are caricatures of Soccer stars, followed by a very beautiful portrait of Nelson Mandela. Then as you move around the walls things get a little weird.  On one wall is a pastoral scene with snow-covered mountains. A hairy yak stands in a field near a dairy cow that appears to be doing a dance move impossible for cows to do. An avatar is milking the cow and the milk is being directed into a bottle of Yanjin beer. You would think this would be enough but there’s more. A mastiff has his massive chompers around the avatar’s magical tail… ( Don’t ask me why).  I am told that the artist would come in and create in the wee hours building up his masterpiece. A new artist is now working on another wall with a wolf leapfrogging over a sheep. Should be interesting.

A group of Chinese men are drinking heartily at a table in the shadow of the milking avatar. They are getting loud and Bill starts to perk up thinking that one of the legendary fights he has been telling me about may be in the works. According to Bill a brawl will sometimes start with a man breaking a beer bottle over another man’s head. Sometimes plates are also used and when a good one breaks out, people will break off a chair leg and use that. It reminded me of a scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when the young female character played by Zhang Ziyi destroys a multistory restaurant during a fight scene. This could be an interesting night. Bill's friend Craig disagrees though. Naw he says, they are too happy. Bill is hopeful and even encouraged when one young man ducks out and returns with a bottle of alcohol that appears to be much stronger than beer. Not long after the same young man returns with another bottle. Bill is rubbing his hands together with delight. Craig is still betting on nothing more than loud happy drunkenness.

The young man who was leading the charge for booze came over to our table to say hello and seeing we were westerners told us, after multiple apologies for interrupting us, that his girlfriend was studying in New York. Excuse…. I am a little drunk he said over and over grimacing as he searched his mind for the right English words. He was from Inner Mongolia, which I learned is an autonomous region of China. His parents had sent him to study Chinese because they thought he would do better in life if he spoke Mandarin instead of merely learning to speak his native language.  He had just landed in Beijing and met his friends. In five hours he would be back on a plane to go home to see his parents. In the state he was in, that would be a tough flight. His friends were very concerned that he was bothering us and came over often to check. We assured them that we were not bothered. It is interesting to see how someone from areas controlled by China see things. Mongolians are very proud of their heritage. Craig offered that this mans parents sacrificed their heritage to offer their son a better life and he realized it. Even in his inebriated state, he offered that when he sees his parents, he is going to thank them from his bottom…”er excuse I am a little bit drunk”….of his heart. (Before ye judge his English, he speaks Mandarin, Mongolian and English and was very drunk).

When Bill and I worked together in San Diego, he had a habit of staying up all night at a restaurant talking about whatever came to him. Sometimes especially when he has had a few, he is very philosophical. There were times when I would drive him home and wished I had a voice recorder because the most amazing things would come out of his mouth. I mean really deep stuff. The man is brilliant.  So it seems he is still up to his old tricks. Stay up late fall asleep at the table (which you see a lot here) wake up and offer some thoughts and back to sleep. He and Craig have a deal that if they stay up until 5AM. They have to go to McDonalds for an egg mcmuffin. The 5am time is because that is when they start serving breakfast. So off we went to find a cab in the freezing cold of the early morning and race over to Micky Ds in Beijing for a mcmuffin. Sometimes you just go with it.  Sleep is going to be something I will have to work to get I think.

I bet you thought I was kidding about the mural! 

Up in the Air.

I arrived in Beijing after a 12-hour flight from San Francisco. Wasn't too bad except for the fact that I got stuck with a middle seat. I sat down on the plane and all of a sudden thought to myself. WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?!!!  Why am I leaving so many great friends and the family that I love so much? I looked around at all the foreign faces and thought I don't belong here! The sound of screaming babies was deafening. A baby screaming in Chinese sounds pretty much like a baby screaming in English. LOUD! So I did what any red blooded American would do in a situation like that. I put on my iPod listened to some of my favorite tunes and got out a book and sunk into my own private Idaho. After a while I was able to fall asleep. When I woke up I noticed something strange. I saw three fathers standing in the isles holding their babies. That struck me as funny for some reason. The father sitting a couple of rows ahead of me was being extremely attentive to his kids. He had a friendly smile and joked with them and listened while one of his kids who seemed around 4 or 5 talked non-stop about something he was very excited about. Seeing this was somehow comforting to me. I felt relaxed and at ease all of a sudden. If I am heading to a nation where this is the norm it can't be all-bad. 

After several hours of not talking to the two people seated on either side of me, the young man sitting in the window seat said in very good English, "excuse me" as he had to go to the bathroom. So all this time he spoke English? When he returned, I asked him if he lived in Beijing. He answered that he wasn't Chinese he was from Mongolia. His name was Tilu and he had been studying road construction in Washington DC and San Francisco and was going home for a friends wedding. He was tired as he had flown from DC to San Francisco then had the 12 hour flight to Beijing, a 15 hour layover and then two hours to his home in the capital city. All of a sudden my flight didn't seem so bad. 

I am reading a book called lost in planet China, which is a very funny and supposedly a spot on look at China from a westerners view. It didn't make me feel better about going to China though as he talked at length about the horrible air quality and pretty repulsive habits he encountered. (read you have to watch your step when walking because of the variety of bodily fluids, solids and otherwise material that form land mines to be avoided.) His description of drivers in Beijing was terrifying from a pedestrian’s point of view. Looks like I am in for a huge adventure I thought to myself. 

Sherry met me at the airport. Some people give you American names probably so you can have an easier time with it. She is from Human Resources. She and a driver took me to my temporary apartment. My company has a complex with two apartment buildings. One is for foreigners and one for Chinese who come to work in Beijing from other parts of China. The one for westerners is nicer and the rooms are larger. The Chinese live two to an apartment. So my temporary digs consists of a very small kitchen. (When I say small I mean really small) There is an even smaller room with a chair a tiny table and a tiny fridge. The bathroom doorway is just a little shorter than I am tall which means I have to duck to enter. The toilet is (western style) which means you don't have to squat over a hole. Thank God I thought. The bed is rock hard but after the flight I had, I was happy to lie down and quickly fell asleep. 

My friend Bill woke me up with a loud knock on the door. I jumped up like you do when you wake up from a deep sleep and opened the door.  We greeted each other and he started to give me the scoop. As he talked I knew that I was in for a real challenge. I will be assistant director of photography in a photo department where none of the photographers speak English. Neither does my boss the DOP. Apparently there are a couple of photo editors who speak some English. 

I will be trying to learn Mandarin, which is spoken in this part of China. Even if I manage to learn enough of that language to get around it would do me no good in Hong Kong where Cantonese is spoken or in many other parts of China where many different dialects are the norm. Ok so how bout those Chinese characters. There are by one dictionary 60,000 characters. To read a newspaper and get around you need to know 3,000. The average Chinese knows 4-5,000. To be scholarly, you need to know 12,000. So I know two so far. I know the symbol for net which will indicate where they have wi-fi but it can also mean they make nets or they have a tennis court with a net. I also know the one for male only because it looks like a little man with a square head. I know two words so far Ni hao _hello and shay shay- thank you. So far that has gotten me though getting a few items at 7-11 across from my apartment and exchanging money at the bank this morning. Not knowing the language here makes you feel like an infant. I can almost feel people looking at me and thinking WHO LET THAT LARGE TWO YEAR OLD OUT BY HIMSELF? HE COULD GET KILLED OUT THERE!!!  Challenging! 

OMG What Am I Doing?

As I stood in line at the Chinese embassy in Los Angeles to get my visa, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. People in the office were typical bureaucrats. Not helpful, a bit rude, blank stares back at you when you ask a question. Not the most welcoming situation when moving to another country. I imagined what immigrants in this country must feel like when they don’t speak English and have to muddle through the different government offices. I realized that there is no turning back now. I am moving to another country where I don’t speak the language, cant read the signs, don’t know the culture and have never even visited before.

I had just packed up my life, put some things in storage, gave things away and donated the rest to a local charity.  When you pack everything you own, you start to really look at what is important. Why did I keep this or that? Why do I have every business card I was ever given?  Why did I save mementos from some trip that I can’t even remember now?  Also I came acro

ss special things. a coffee mug given to me by someone I love, a photo that transports me to a special place. Sometimes these objects carry so much power. Power to bring up emotion.  Packing was a slow process because often I found myself looking at certain object and just holding on to the memories it represented. Some brought smiles to my face, others tears to my eyes.  So I put things in piles. Wrapped up the things I wanted to keep in paper, and taped up the boxes.

At times like this you tend to re-evaluate friendships as well. Who are my real friends, who are just acquaintances, who are not really friends at all?  As I said goodbye to people during the couple of weeks before I left, I realized something obvious to most people: When you have real friends, they don’t have to live close to you. Even if it has been years since you have seen each other, you just pick up where you left off just like you had seen them only a week ago.  I said my goodbyes to people I have shared so much with. Kayaking friends who I have paddled with in Baja and the Channel Islands. People I have sat around a campfire with. We remembered funny things that happened to us or to others.  I was so happy to experience all of that fun in my life. To meet some of the most amazing people that in many ways I don’t feel like I have a right to know. I am a very lucky and rich man when it comes to friends and people I have come across.

I had read a book called “ A year to live”. The premise was to live your life as if you only had one year to live. It was a good idea in theory but I had a very hard time wrapping my head around the concept. I mean if I only had a year to live I wouldn’t worry about things like taxes, I would probably not worry about doing things that weren’t good for me.  Living my life like this wouldn’t really be the best idea. I know that’s not what the author had in mind but I just couldn’t get myself to stop arguing with his idea. With this move and the saying goodbyes, I finally was able to feel the spirit of the book. I had to rephrase the premise a little. Live life as if you were going to say goodbye to your friends and family and may not see them for a long time. I noticed that I was appreciating everything around me more. The way light attached to the San Diego landscape late in the afternoon. The people that I really care for, every hour with my grandchildren all of a sudden seemed richer because I was more present. Every conversation with someone I consider a friend seemed more poignant. Every hug felt deeper and warmer. I was more present and connected in the last few weeks in San Diego than I can remember. I was in it! I wish I had discovered that much earlier in life. Live life not as if you will be dead in a year but live life as if you wont see your friends and family for a long time. Live life as if you were moving to China in a couple weeks.

At my goodbye/birthday party, Steve Wilson played the guitar and made up some lyrics for me. Everyone sang happy birthday. I looked around at all those faces and wondered when I would see them again. It was a strong reminder to live in the moment. Enjoy your friends and family while they are around. It was also a reminder that even when they aren’t around, you carry them in your heart.