Hello All -
Sorry for the delay. I'm sure you've all been worried sick, and given the pathetic tone of my last post, you might have had good cause. Anyway, after four days of train travel across China, I've finally arrived at Tarim University in Ala'er, China. I've never felt quite so far away from home, and with good reason. I will expatiate on the trip west at great length and a leisurely pace with virtually no respect for the attention span of my audience in my next post, and on Ala'er and the University very shortly. Stay tuned!
In order to tide you over, I've posted, with distinctive and interesting comments, some photos of Beijing. You can find them, and any future photos posted, here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/zachary.j.roberts/WinterInBeijing#
If you have any problems viewing the pictures, let me know. Ta ta!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Everybody's Talkin'
I'd remembered it from living in Beijing over the summer two years ago, but it feels even stronger now. As I walk down the streets of the city, I can't help but hear the dulcet strains of Harry Nilsson in rhythm with my footsteps, and imagine myself as a young Jon Voight, neon Chinese characters drifting past my head (if you don't get the reference, ask your parents, or the internet). In some ways, I'm in a similar situation, except I'll be fruitlessly prostituting myself to the Communist Party instead of wealthy New York heiresses. Sadly, I've left my cowboy hat at home.
Beijing feels like a very different city now than it did just two years ago, and before I get too maudlin and Tintern Abbey-y, it should be worth noting that objectively, things have changed tremendously. For instance, since I was here last, they've completely modernized the subway system. You used to have to wait in line, and an old woman would rip up your paper ticket as you entered. Now they have digital machines, like those in New York, and sleek, fashionable trains. In addition, they've completed three entire new subway lines, including one to the airport, in just two years. I've also heard that they closed down the veritable Elysium of a beer garden in the Wudaokou area that I used to frequent. I'm too heartbroken to go out and check.
Part of my sensation must also come from the fact that I'm traveling alone, and that no city is the same in the summer as it is in the winter. I went to Tiananmen Square today on a walk, and it was surprisingly empty, though a long line of Chinese tourists wrapped almost halfway around Mao's tomb. It was a remarkably clear and cold day, and the snow that had fallen the day before was melting on the rooftops. After snapping a few photographs, which I'll post later, once I figure out how, I walked up to Jingshan Park, which is probably the highest point in Beijing, affording a view directly over the Forbidden City, and by extension across the entire metropolitan area. Looking to the northwest, I could make out the three curved towers of the subway station where I'd lived before. I imagined that returning to a place to which I've had some sort of attachment would evoke either the sort of fond remembrances one receives when tasting the vintage of a smell one hasn't known for a long time (the type of experience that Proust makes such a fuss over); or a sort of elegaic disappointment over the lack of such delight. I've gotten neither so far. In the summer, a metropolis such as Beijing or New York accepts you willingly. She lets you in and promises a season of lightsome pleasure. In the winter, you are only grudgingly admitted.
I'm leaving tomorrow for parts unknown. I have a terrific headache from lack of coffee. I almost bought a cup at the park, but it was 36 RMB. I could eat three huge meals for that price.
Gosh, what a lousy post. I didn't even give any of the essential details. Please bear with me while I figure this blogging thing out. I'll try and compose future posts a bit more beforehand. Unfortunately, the medium is not bending to my loquaciousness. Maybe I'll have to learn a thing or two.
Beijing feels like a very different city now than it did just two years ago, and before I get too maudlin and Tintern Abbey-y, it should be worth noting that objectively, things have changed tremendously. For instance, since I was here last, they've completely modernized the subway system. You used to have to wait in line, and an old woman would rip up your paper ticket as you entered. Now they have digital machines, like those in New York, and sleek, fashionable trains. In addition, they've completed three entire new subway lines, including one to the airport, in just two years. I've also heard that they closed down the veritable Elysium of a beer garden in the Wudaokou area that I used to frequent. I'm too heartbroken to go out and check.
Part of my sensation must also come from the fact that I'm traveling alone, and that no city is the same in the summer as it is in the winter. I went to Tiananmen Square today on a walk, and it was surprisingly empty, though a long line of Chinese tourists wrapped almost halfway around Mao's tomb. It was a remarkably clear and cold day, and the snow that had fallen the day before was melting on the rooftops. After snapping a few photographs, which I'll post later, once I figure out how, I walked up to Jingshan Park, which is probably the highest point in Beijing, affording a view directly over the Forbidden City, and by extension across the entire metropolitan area. Looking to the northwest, I could make out the three curved towers of the subway station where I'd lived before. I imagined that returning to a place to which I've had some sort of attachment would evoke either the sort of fond remembrances one receives when tasting the vintage of a smell one hasn't known for a long time (the type of experience that Proust makes such a fuss over); or a sort of elegaic disappointment over the lack of such delight. I've gotten neither so far. In the summer, a metropolis such as Beijing or New York accepts you willingly. She lets you in and promises a season of lightsome pleasure. In the winter, you are only grudgingly admitted.
I'm leaving tomorrow for parts unknown. I have a terrific headache from lack of coffee. I almost bought a cup at the park, but it was 36 RMB. I could eat three huge meals for that price.
Gosh, what a lousy post. I didn't even give any of the essential details. Please bear with me while I figure this blogging thing out. I'll try and compose future posts a bit more beforehand. Unfortunately, the medium is not bending to my loquaciousness. Maybe I'll have to learn a thing or two.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Seven Months in Not Tibet
Hello Friends and Family -
Welcome to my new blog, "No Country for Blond Men" (a title that, unfortunately, was not without serious consideration for comedic effect and the appropriate level of self-deprecation chosen). I'm frankly a bit sheepish about it, and have only now set to typing an introductory post after a couple glasses of wine while still here in Connecticut. However, I've decided to create a blog deliberately, to show you some of what I find about a place to which you're likely not to go, to see what sorts of comments I might get from all and sundry, and not, when I come back to the US, to discover that I had not kept in touch with anyone at all, and that I've ruined all of my relationships.
For those of you who know no details, I'll be spending the next five or so months in Ala'er, a small city in the western Xinjiang Province of China teaching English at Tarim University, a school that focuses mostly on agriculture and related fields (yuk yuk). It's rather difficult to find information about either the school or the city on the internet, given its remoteness, size, and inexplicable variability of possible Romanizations (for the hopelessly brief Wikipedia page see Aral, Xinjiang). If you click on the link and read for 20 seconds, you'll be about as well informed as I am about my new home. The univeristy was founded in 1958, I believe, as part of the Great Leap Forward (its original designation was the "Tarim University of Agricultural Reclamation"); the city itself was only officially incorporated in 2004 as an administrative region under the direction of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which was founded in the earlier stages of the Great Leap Forward to promote agricultural and economic development in the restive and ethnically un-Han region, and strengthened during the years following the Cultural Revolution. In truth, I know almost nothing about Chinese political history, and won't be bold enough to inform anyone further on the matter.
What I do know is that Ala'er is situated on the Tarim River and at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The Tarim River holds the somewhat dubious honor of being the world's largest inland river, though it does boast some rather beautiful diversifolious poplars. The Taklamakan is, I believe, the largest sandy desert contained wholly within one nation (another dubious honor), and whose name translates roughly in Uighur as "you go in but don't come out," a phrase best heard, I imagine, from the cracked lips of some wispily mustachioed and turbanned shepherd, followed by a protracted spell of rheumy and diabolical laughter. The existence of such a heavily irrigated agricultural settlement in such an arid and inhospitible place can only be the product of decidedly political motivations, and I harbor no fantasies of experiencing an authentic "Silk Road" city such as Kashgar or Turpan. Luckily, having come of age in the 21st century, I'm even more fascinated by the inauthentic, and am very excited to see first-hand this city founded with the point of a finger, to see the river and the desert, and to see more stars and night than I might see at home.
Anyway, I hope this initial post may give you some reason to return for future ones. It's rather likely that my growing insanity caused by living in such cultural isolation will motivate some blasphemous, hilarious, or even poetic eructations, so stay tuned. I look forward to hearing from anyone, and to making you an involuntary audience for any and all of my petty grievances and/or philosophical breakthroughs.
Wish me luck!
Welcome to my new blog, "No Country for Blond Men" (a title that, unfortunately, was not without serious consideration for comedic effect and the appropriate level of self-deprecation chosen). I'm frankly a bit sheepish about it, and have only now set to typing an introductory post after a couple glasses of wine while still here in Connecticut. However, I've decided to create a blog deliberately, to show you some of what I find about a place to which you're likely not to go, to see what sorts of comments I might get from all and sundry, and not, when I come back to the US, to discover that I had not kept in touch with anyone at all, and that I've ruined all of my relationships.
For those of you who know no details, I'll be spending the next five or so months in Ala'er, a small city in the western Xinjiang Province of China teaching English at Tarim University, a school that focuses mostly on agriculture and related fields (yuk yuk). It's rather difficult to find information about either the school or the city on the internet, given its remoteness, size, and inexplicable variability of possible Romanizations (for the hopelessly brief Wikipedia page see Aral, Xinjiang). If you click on the link and read for 20 seconds, you'll be about as well informed as I am about my new home. The univeristy was founded in 1958, I believe, as part of the Great Leap Forward (its original designation was the "Tarim University of Agricultural Reclamation"); the city itself was only officially incorporated in 2004 as an administrative region under the direction of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which was founded in the earlier stages of the Great Leap Forward to promote agricultural and economic development in the restive and ethnically un-Han region, and strengthened during the years following the Cultural Revolution. In truth, I know almost nothing about Chinese political history, and won't be bold enough to inform anyone further on the matter.
What I do know is that Ala'er is situated on the Tarim River and at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The Tarim River holds the somewhat dubious honor of being the world's largest inland river, though it does boast some rather beautiful diversifolious poplars. The Taklamakan is, I believe, the largest sandy desert contained wholly within one nation (another dubious honor), and whose name translates roughly in Uighur as "you go in but don't come out," a phrase best heard, I imagine, from the cracked lips of some wispily mustachioed and turbanned shepherd, followed by a protracted spell of rheumy and diabolical laughter. The existence of such a heavily irrigated agricultural settlement in such an arid and inhospitible place can only be the product of decidedly political motivations, and I harbor no fantasies of experiencing an authentic "Silk Road" city such as Kashgar or Turpan. Luckily, having come of age in the 21st century, I'm even more fascinated by the inauthentic, and am very excited to see first-hand this city founded with the point of a finger, to see the river and the desert, and to see more stars and night than I might see at home.
Anyway, I hope this initial post may give you some reason to return for future ones. It's rather likely that my growing insanity caused by living in such cultural isolation will motivate some blasphemous, hilarious, or even poetic eructations, so stay tuned. I look forward to hearing from anyone, and to making you an involuntary audience for any and all of my petty grievances and/or philosophical breakthroughs.
Wish me luck!
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