Chewin in the Chung

Just back from China, in Beijing and Liaoning for ten days total. Here's the dirt:

Observations:
My family there lives in a city called Fu Xin. It is a grey, industrial looking place, that looks like Beijing or Tianjin did about 15 years ago. I asked my brother-in-law the population of Fu Xin: 1.3 million. That is so China, having cities of over a million people that you have never heard of.

Here is Taiwan there is a popular liquor called Kaoliang jiu. I have thought since 1990 that Kaoliang was a place name, and I've always wondered why God would not strike down a city that had foisted this fiery liquid death upon an unsuspecting world.  So we're driving through the countryside in Liaoning and I comment that the corn looks kind of short for this time of year. My brother-in-law says: "That's not corn. It's kao liang mi. You can eat some when we get back to our ancestral home." (the family home in a small farming village). So I get a big bowl of kao liang mi later in the village, and I'm thinking that it must be Barley. (Look, I'm from Florida, and I don't know much about grains.) Looking it up in the dictionary last night, it says that kao liang is Chinese Sorghum. So, kaoliang jiu is sorghum liquor, and it's the same thing as Chinese bai jiu (literally: white liquor). Now I'm trying to figure out the difference between Chinese Sorghum and any other kind of sorghum. There is no place called Kaoliang, that anybody seems to know about. Oops.

Northern Chinese call potatoes tu dou. Literally: earth bean. Heh.

I tried to count the construction cranes used in building high-rises on the ride from the airport to the hotel in Beijing. I gave up at fifty.

You cannot read this blog (or anything on blogspot) in China.

You do not want to sleep on a kang, assuming you do not regularly sleep on stone or concrete.

I saw thousands of acres of planted Chinese Sorgum. I did not see any tractors or harvesting equipment. I asked and yes, they bring it all in by hand.

Beijing has Banana Republic stores. Taiwan does not. Not that I really want to buy anything at Banana Republic, but if I did, I couldn't do it here.

The Starbucks in the Forbidden City is closed. Starbucks everywhere else in Beijing are thriving.

Things heard:
"China could beat Taiwan in a war, right?"
-Beijing taxi driver

"We'll never know the truth about Tiananmen (June 4). Only you foreigners know what really happened."
-Same guy

"Taiwan is a part of China. You don't understand because you are a foreigner. Foreigners don't understand. Taiwan has always been a part of China."
-Old guy on train

"Do you play CS? What's your favorite weapon?"
-13 year old boy on train

"That's bullshit. China can't beat Taiwan in a war. We can't even take back the Tiaoyutai islands from Japan, and those are really ours."
-Loud but oddly insightful friend of brother-in-law

"They showed us on TV all these people in Taipei protesting against A-bian, trying to let us know that many Taiwanese people oppose him. I'm watching TV and thinking: 'Those people are in the street protesting the president. If you tried that here you would be beaten and arrested and your family would never see you again.'"
-Same guy