Chinese stories

For various reasons, the other day I set about trying to find a Nintendo DS in Beijing. Apparently it is officially sold in China as the iQue DS, and the official website lists places that are authorized to sell them, as well as a few of the games available in Chinese. I figured I might as well go to an official reseller so that I can be assured of getting good quality. Yea, right. First I stopped by Zhongguancun, because I was in the neighborhood, and wanted to check out what was available. On the second floor of the big electronics market there I found a “SONY” store that was also selling Nintendo Wiis and DSs. I asked about the DS, and they said “You just get the system and this little card, and we will show you how to download all of the games you want off the internet.” While the DS looked legit, there were not official games in sight, only the card.

The next day I went to the “official” reseller in Wangfujing, because it was near my work: the 4th floor of the Xin Zhongguo Toy Store. They had a tiny glass case full of game boys and what not, and a salesperson. I got the same story as in Zhongguancun—“Just get this card and the system, and we have a list of games you can choose from, and we’ll put them on the card for you.” I also found that I had to haggle at this place, and once I went low enough they had to get on the phone to who knows where to authorize allowing a certain price. Again, there were no official game cartridges for sale. Finally, after going there twice, they agreed on a price, and went to get the system for me. The salesperson disappeared for a good 10 minutes and came back with a “new” system. I turned it on and immediately noticed there were obvious scratches on the screen. “What are these scratches here?” “I don’t see any scratches.” “Here.” “Oh, that’s on the protective film.” “Well, if it’s protective film, it can be removed, right?” “No.” Give me a break. “Do you have any others?” “Let me check.” Disappears for another 10 minutes. “No.”

This is why I hate Wangfujing. I can recall another time going there into a prominently placed cell phone shop asking for a protective film for my phone. “Hold on, let us go get it.” 5 minutes later “that will be 50 yuan please.” 50 yuan?!? I got the one I have for 6 yuan in Haidian! If I wanted this kind of treatment I would go to the Silk Market.

A co-worker tipped me off about Gulou Dong Dajie. East of the Drum Tower in Beijing, it’s full of these little electronics and toy shops. The first one I went in only had little figurines. “Any DSs?” “No, keep going that way.” The next one was a gaming store painted all black inside with the Chinese equivalent of the Comic Book Guy: “Any DSs?” “No.” (keeps playing his video games on his computer) “Any in the shops nearby?” “Dunno.” Finally I found a little mom and pop shop called 酷玩e代  that also has a Taobao outlet. They immediately quoted me the price it took me 15 minutes to get to in Wangfujing. The lady kept chatting with online customers, while the husband got us the goods, no scratches, and the assistant expertly applied the protective covering to the screen. Finally a place with decent service, and that wasn’t trying to obscenely rip me off. I also noticed that they system they gave me was not the iQue, but the US version.

Now I know Nintendo is trying hard to fight piracy, as it says on its website, and have asked the US government to help address piracy problems. From the link:

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 14, 2008 – Nintendo of America Inc. has asked the U.S. Trade Representative to encourage specific governments around the world to take a more aggressive stance to combat piracy of Nintendo video games and systems. Nintendo filed its comments under a “Special 301” process, in which the U.S. Trade Representative solicits input from the public to underscore specific areas of concern.

While China remains the primary source of manufacturing pirated Nintendo DS and Wii games, Korea has emerged as the leader in distributing illegal game files via the Internet. Despite aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by Nintendo, Brazil and Mexico remain saturated with counterfeit Nintendo software. Meanwhile, Paraguay and Hong Kong continue to serve as major transshipment points for global distribution of illegal goods.
…

Below is a summary of Nintendo’s filing:

OVERALL: Nintendo recommends stronger laws in all countries against the circumvention of technological security measures. Video game pirates have developed DS game-copying devices and modification chips to target the security found in Nintendo’s hardware systems and allow the play of counterfeit software or games illegally downloaded via the Internet.

CHINA: China must pursue criminal prosecutions against people involved in large-scale piracy operations. Nintendo works with Chinese authorities, who seized more than 1 million fake Nintendo products in China during the past year. But not one counterfeiter has been prosecuted.

Apparently Nintendo entered the China market in 2003 selling the Gamecube in cooperation with iQue. But now it has been 5 years, and I still can’t buy official games and systems even in Wangfujing? For me if the legit things were available I would buy them, rather than trying to navigate the ROM websites which are likely to give my computer a virus, and when I don’t even know if they will work properly on my system. So I can sympathize with Nintendo for wanting to fight piracy, but I have to question their strategy: Asking the US to apply pressure and waiting around? Howabout making the real thing widely available and seeing if people will buy it? Not everyone is computer savvy enough to download the ROMs, install the programs, and whatnot, but if that’s the only option available, then people will learn real quick.

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Before I graduated my Chinese teacher told me that to really learn to speak Chinese I had to go live in China. So I decided to move there after graduation, and take whatever job I could find so that I could improve my Chinese. My current Chinese father-in-law says I came to China looking for love, but at the time I was just looking to get a better handle on the language. I had a friend in the Guangzhou symphony at the time, and I was a so-so horn player, so I sent them a tape, because they had some openings. That didn’t work out, so I scoured the internet for English teaching jobs. Eventually I found one in Beijing, which I decided was where I wanted to be, because it was known for its rich culture and having lots of good universities. This was a legit job with a real university, so the deal was that they would send me an invitation letter, which would get me a visa, and I would fly there and begin work.

So I packed my bags and flew off on my own for my second trip to China. This time there was actually someone to pick me up at the airport in a nice school-owned car. They took me to my apartment on campus so that I could get settled in. I didn’t have to start teaching for another week or so, and during that time I didn’t venture much further than the restaurant across from me or the school cafeteria. I think this was due to a combination of not being used to the stares and shouts of ‘hello’ from people, and not having anywhere to go.

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I came across this the other day and thought it was interesting. Beijingers will recognize the names of Huairou and Miyun counties that fall within Beijing municipality. It looks like their history is longer than Beijing’s from this little excerpt:

“梁灭，阿保机帅兵直抵涿州。时幽州、安次、潞、三河、漁阳、怀柔、密云等县皆为所陷，俘其民而归，置州县以居之，不改中国州县之名。”

“The Liang died out and Abaoji led his army directly to Zhuozhou. At the time the Anci, Lu, Sanhe, Yuyang, Huairou, and Miyun counties of Youzhou were captured and he took their people and returned. He established prefectures and counties for them to reside in, and did not change the Chinese place names.”

Abaoji was the founder of the Liao dynasty (907-1125). Excerpt from 赵至忠《阴山杂录》.

Also, apparently the area that is is now Beijing was called Nanjing during the Liao dynasty.

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While this is of course not as important as supporting the earthquake victims, it’s important for anyone who is a student of East Asian languages. UC Berkeley’s EALC has been hit with a 25% budget cut for next year, which means hundreds of students won’t get a chance to study those languages. (A friend told me about it, I don’t have any affiliation with the school.) Unfortunately colleges think it’s ok to cripple area studies programs when faced with budget difficulties. But as someone who just took Chinese for fun in college, and discovered that he liked it, I think we should afford others the same chance. So go sign the petition!

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I spent about 2 years teaching English in China from 2002 to 2004. I have nothing against the profession, it takes a lot of work to be good at it, and I don’t think I would mind doing it again someday, despite the poo pooing it gets from the expat community. While I think I made a lot of improvements in my teaching, I never got to where I wanted to be. Perhaps its an unattainable goal anyway.

I first spent two months in Qingdao during the summer of 2001 at the Qingdao International School. I got the job through a professor in NY who matches teachers up with reputable schools (a necessity to avoid nightmare scenarios). For some reason I chose not to fly from Beijing to Qingdao and have them pick me up at the airport. So I arrived in China with just 3 years of college Chinese and tried to do it on my own. Looking back it probably was a dumb idea. After learning how the Chinese wait in line at Beijing station and getting a ticket, I made my way to Qingdao. Oh yea, and I had no idea how to get to the school, or what it was really called. So I started wandering around for a while, then I remembered the name of the school was written on some paperwork I had with me. Soon after that a girl came up to me on the street and offered to help me get to where I was going. I started to get skeptical after she took me first to some scenic spots to take my picture and then to a pearl market. She then suggested we go to Lao shan to have some fun. I agreed, having no idea that Lao shan was basically in the next county. Once we got there I was pretty fed up, so I had her turn our taxi around and take me to my school. When we finally got there I think the meter was at around 100 yuan, and I started pretending I couldn’t understand her protests that she had no way of getting back into town (the school is way out of town). Too bad for me it was the wrong school, and I had to get another taxi driver to take me to the right place.

I was helping teach the ‘summer school’ classes, and was assigned the k-2 kids. The number of students varied from week to week from 3 to 10. I had 2 full-time assistants and several volunteer assistants as well. Sometimes there were more assistants than kids in class. There were a lot of languages spoken, some Korean, some Japanese, a little half-German boy, and a few Chinese kids thrown in the mix. Most of our days we would spend on field trips. We went swimming at a nearby hotel, golfing at a driving range (not so fun for my kids), bowling (a nightmare without bumpers… “Jimmy, stop running down the lane! Stop playing with the ball return!), to the beach (um, where’s Tyler??), and we also visited a couple of factories. I soon learned I was basically a foreign babysitter for these kids during their summer months. I remember one smart mouthed girl’s daddy was the manager at the Shangri-la. 

I got suckered into a few English corners on the weekend, but tried to get away to travel around Shandong when I could. One day I was given Friday off in exchange for staying with one of the other foreign teachers who was in the hospital. This guy was one of the long-term teachers, and had gotten sick a while back with a cough. He didn’t get it checked out right away, and eventually got so bad that he had to have surgery and couldn’t go back home. They found he had cancer, and his lungs kept filling up with water, so he was in a pretty bad way. The school set him up with the best care in Qingdao, but the nurses were afraid to be in the same room as him. They thought they would catch it from him. So some of the teachers had to stay with him, as he was getting worse by the day. Eventually the poor guy died. I guess that’s a lesson to not let things get too bad before its too late to fly back home.

The next year I came to Beijing to teach at a university…

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