To best appreciate the awesome-but-sadly-apparently-temporary powers of China’s weather gods, you must play this mp3 while reading:

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All these photos are from out our kitchen yángtái windows. The blue sky photos are from Oct. 1st; the less-blue ones are from this morning.

When we flew in to Beijing on Sept. 30 we could barely see the terminal from the airplane on account of all the kōngqì wūrǎn (空气污染). But not to worry, in China the They can change the weather. When there’s an important made-for-TV event, They make it rain the night before and… voila!:

That was Oct 1st, the even-more-important-than-the-Olympics 60th anniversary national day military parade. And this next photo was from this morning — apparently They didn’t have any photo-ops scheduled today:

Pollution is measured here in term of “blue sky days” (蓝天). True to form, since reality in China is whatever They say reality is (you really ought to read 1984), “blue sky day” doesn’t actually mean that the sky is blue or clear; it means the official pollution readings are below a certain level, which often is still thick with haze. And never mind that the cut off line for blue sky days is still considered hazardous by the rest of the world’s pollution monitoring scales, or that They don’t even bother measuring the most harmful forms of air pollution particles. In this last photo, you can see the colour starting to change in the top left corner; there were no clouds today, and if you looked straight up, you could actually see some faint blue.

P.S. – I think I’m just about done whining about the pollution, at least for now. Posts on karaoke survival, creative ways to stay connect with family back home, Tianjin’s suspiciously curvacious public statues, free One Child Policy baby accessories, and a racial Disney moment at the English school are all in the works.

Other pollution posts:

• Everything you wish you didn’t know about air pollution in China
• This week in Tianjin (photos)
• Chewing Tianjin’s Air
• Putting the OMG! in Smog

Pronounced: lóng hǔ dòu
Literally: dragon tiger battle
Means: (1) a fierce battle between strong rivals. (2) The name of a famous dish in Guangzhou combining cat and snake meat. (3) The ultimate destiny of many of Tianjin’s cats (for example, see here and here).

Went back recently to Tianjin’s old Nanshi hutongs to see what (if anything) was left, and found some slogans. A few months before the 2008 Olympics everyone was moved out and the partially demolished city blocks wrapped in high, long walls of billboards. The walls are still there, but inside it’s mostly flat and barren.

“Establish a sanitary city district, construct a beautiful homeland”
创建卫生城区 建设美好家园
chuàng​jiàn​ wèi​shēng​ chéng​qū​, jiàn​shè​ měi​hǎo​ jiā​yuán​

“A safe community is everyone’s duty, everyone participates in a safe community”
社区平安 人人有责，社区平安 人人参与
shè​qū​ píng​’ān​ rén​rén​ yǒu ​zé​, shè​qū​ píng​’ān​ rén​rén​ cān​yù​

These buildings house a primary school. The 200-year-old traditional courtyard compound featured in the posts linked below was attached to the side (picture’s foreground). Other than a small handful of occupied lowrise apartment buildings and some squatter camps (scavenging building materials), this is all that’s left; the entire place is flat. Even most of the rubble is gone.

Nanshi hutong pre-demolition photos and stories:

• Magazine article: Reduced to Memories: Tianjin’s hutongs
• Photo Gallery: Tianjin’s 南市 hutongs
• Photo-blog: Tianjin’s forsaken places – two months before demolition
• Photo-blog: Tianjin’s forsaken places – Part II
• Photo-blog: Tianjin’s forsaken places – Part III

China is literally being built by the millions of “migrant workers” who have left their rural villages and rural workload for a semi-legal existence as unskilled labourers in the cities. They are the ones filling the factories and raising the office buildings. Their children not only face routine prejudice from urban Chinese residents but also legal restrictions that either hinder their education or cause them to live separate from their parents: Neglect and Discrimination are Often the Fate of Migrant Children.

From the Washington Post: “Racial rethinking as Obama visits: Increasing diversity, born out of boom, forces Chinese to confront old prejudices.”

A seminar paper from Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin on the current state and trajectory of religion in Chinese society (audio file included).

Last night was “send cold clothes” (送寒衣 sòng hán yī), the day in the lunar calendar when millions of Chinese go out to the intersections to send burnt offerings to their ancestors. Here’s the sidewalk outside our apartment complex this morning:

Drawing circles around the pile is part of the tradition, it apparently helps the stuff intended for your ancestor not get mixed with anybody elses’ or stolen:

For better photos and a fuller explanation, see:

• There’s hell to pay
• Sending Winter Clothes to the Dead in Tianjin

Passed some street vendors selling paper clothes and ghost money while on my way to get Muslim food for dinner:

One of my friends in particular loves to practice his Chinglish on me. I in turn refuse to reply in English, opting instead to inflict him with my own Chinglish. For example, he just sent me this text:

Great! man I will going to the shan xi road on this Sunday. I’ll waiting for you at entrance. Time is 10:20am. Don’t be late,man! By the way! Don’t forget one thing. I needs give your lilian add hers cloths. Winter already was coming! I’m a superman. I can’t feel cold. Haha! How interesting! I said. All right then! Good night! Man Wish your baby has a sweet dream! See you soon!

I have no doubt that my Chinese sounds like this sometimes often. It always helps to keep a little perspective!

(P.S. – Friends don’t let friends use Grand Theft Auto to study English.)

Related Posts:

• Meet Liú Wěi – Coming of Age in a Changing China

This post translates a critique of the current Chinese exam-oriented education system in favour of a more moral and ethics-based education style by comparing how an American teacher (in the Chinese imagination) would teach Cinderella to how a Chinese teacher would teach Cinderella. The Chinese teacher rings true for the Chinese readers (also translated). It’s interesting to see a Chinese critique of their own education system, and to see how they imagine the American teacher, who actually comes across more as an ‘American teacher with Chinese characteristics’ (or maybe the other other way around). I suspect the “American teacher” is just supposed to be a medium to express the author’s preferred Chinese teaching style, rather than an actual American. Anyway, it’s interesting.

Pronounced: mèi xiào
Literally: “flatter/charming laugh/smile”
Means: a bewitching smile; an ingratiating smile. The closest thing I could find in Chinese to approximate a “come-and-get-me grin” (from Dierks Bentley’s “What Was I Thinkin’?”). According to my Chinese coworkers, mèixiào is generally considered less innocent than 暗送秋波。