May 26 - 06

Colombia es pasion. A couple of videos I found on youtube.com:

- a new campaign launched by the Colombian government called "Colombia is passion"

- the memorable 5-0 against Argentina in Buenos Aires

May 25 - 06

Back in Shenzhen for a few days. Check out the picture gallery for some new photos: Shekou - My new place

May 13 - 06

A new life. So here I am, starting a new life in a somewhat familiar place. I’ve been in Shenzhen for three days now and it’s been quite an experience, here are some thoughts I’ve had during my solitude.

I left Beijing Wednesday night on a flight that was supposed to take off at 20.05 but instead was on the runway ready to go full throttle at around 22.30. It took us about three hours to get to Shenzhen. As they opened the airplane’s hatch, a impenetrable cloud of humidity made its way through every chair and passenger on that aircraft. In less than five minutes the air conditioning had lost a battle it was never even meant to win against the air in Shenzhen. At that point I was already dripping sweat as I carried my camera, laptop, back-pack, paraglider, small suitcase and a huge duffle bag. I took a cab to a hotel in an area called Shekou. A local girl I had met through an internet ad on a Shenzhen website recommended it to me.

So here I am and I’ve been looking for apartments for 2 days straight. Nicky, the girl I just mentioned is going to be my roommate for at least six months while I really settle down and decide which part of town is the best for my purposes of coming here.

It’s a new city. It’s a new city in a very foreign country I already now. It’s a new city filled with people that I somehow recognize but still don’t identify. I like this feeling of arriving to a completely new place and being completely lost. I don’t know where to buy the cell phone cards; nor do I know where that little ‘baozi’ place where I will most likely have breakfast every morning is hidden. I still haven’t met the fortunate guy who’s going to make great business by sewing all my pants and don’t know where the best agency to buy bus, train, plane tickets is at. I haven’t created those rapports with the people that will surround me during this next stage of my life in China. Every street I walk has a new face and leads me to the next corner which even more distanced. The trees, the sidewalks, the buses are all foreign to me, I feel completely lost and at the same time I don’t. Fortunately I can talk to anyone on the street and get around with incredible ease.

This being said, what is it of Beijing? Alas, Beijing is behind me now, but very much alive in me. It’s the place that took me by the hand and taught me what I needed to know in order to prosper in this huge country. Sure I’m going to miss my friends but I think the things I will miss the most are those little details which combined and intertwined made up the complex web and network that symbolizes a person’s life. And many things I will miss. I will miss the bicycle lady by my building selling those warm and cholesterol egg-saturated ‘jian-bing’ ( 简饼 ). I will miss saying hi to that black-cab driver every morning who we think stole money from a friend’s girlfriend one time. I will miss fighting with the parking garage 15-year-old security guard Xiao Li ( 小李 ) because he kept forcing me to get a monthly ticket which I refused to pay. I will miss that little tiny red door guarded by a 110kg Chinese dude where I used to change Dollars or Euros into Renminbi. I will miss those spicy kebabs under the metro station. I will miss the guy selling those little chocolate fish near BLCU’s west gate (if you’ve had them before, you will understand why I’ll miss them). I will miss all the guys at the paragliding club (Flying Man – Feiren). I will miss the guys at the bike shop who kept promising me they would get that hose that broke on my bike last October but arrived to Beijing last week. I will miss my English classes and my Korean students. I will miss Beijing’s pollution and sandstorms. I will miss the fact that sometimes, at noon when the sun is straight over our heads, the air is so thick we can stare directly at the sun and it looks as if there was an eclipse. I will miss the kid that delivered food from that Japanese restaurant we always ordered from. I will miss those cold weeks during the winter during which I literally wouldn’t go out of my apartment for 5 days in a row (yea, it was that cold).

All these things and many more will be missed, but here I am, in a new place, creating new relationships, new experiences that one day will become memories and material for reminiscence.

May 10 - 06

Some fun stuff. Here are a few funny shots Andres took recently:

May 9 - 06

Bye-bye Beijing. Tomorrow I take my first step out of Beijing. I found a cheap plane ticket to Shenzhen so I've packed more than half of my belongings and off I go. I will post some updates from Shenzhen when I get there. For now, here's a map and some information that will help you understand it's geographical position.

A little info about Shenzhen and why I decided to move there:

Twenty years ago Shenzhen was nothing more than a small fishermen's village. A few canoes here and there, it looked like any other village in China. Today, Shenzhen was named a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by the Chinese government. Situated on border with Hong Kong, it has become the cheaper backyard for the more upper-scale Hong Kong residents. Chinese people however, are not all granted permission to enter Shenzhen, as it seems to be a little more developed and open-minded that the rest of mainland China.

This being said, it's definitely not that I dislike Beijing, it's just that I like to change and start a new life whenever I get a chance. I will know the streets of another city, I will meet the guy that fixes shoes or the highly illegal little rooms that change money behind the darkest alley. I will meet new black-cab drivers and will be familiar with restaurants in a completely new place.

Also, for work purposes, being located down South (near Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Foshan, Taiwan, Shantou and Xiamen), logistically it makes a lot more sense than being in Beijing, the culture and education capital of China. Business is all down south. Another reason that appealed to me was the weather in Shenzhen. Air temperature rarely drops bellow 10 degrees celsius in December, January and February (while in Beijing people must withstand arctic climates at -20 degrees). That alone makes a big difference since I've never really been good friends with winters.

May 4 - 06

Heavy metal, Ni Hao! This is a week during which Chinese people travel, stay home, go back home, relax, take a few days off work, and do not much at all. Then again, I can assure you most businesses are still up and running. Beijing is opening itself more and more to the outside world this year offering numerous events for locals and foreigners. One of them was a music festival in Haidian Park (not too far from where I live). I'm generally not the concert type but I decided to make an exception since I had never really been to a concert in China, so why not give it a try.

Tuesday afternoon, after coming back from a tiny paragliding competition I participated in, I took a quick shower, grabbed my new camera, jumped on my motorcycle and rode like the wind to Haidian Park before it was too late. I wanted to make sure there was still enough light to capture what you're about to see.

The festival consisted of five main stages playing different genres such as heavy-metal, electronica, some rock-pop, hardcore, etc. As I walked to the entrance barricades I immediately distinguished the oh-so-characteristic smell of...umm..how to say...well you know. I just want to keep my website active and avoid Chinese censors. At that point I had entered a different Beijing, a different China. Pierced faces wearing 'power to the people' - 'smoke weed' type of t-shirts surrounded me. Where was the government at that point? (yea, well for this I might get on their watch list). Although I didn't go to Woodstock, this seemed to be a smaller and much more controlled version of it. See, that's what was interesting, I wasn't there for the music really, although I did hear a decent band. What really intrigued me was how I could identify this culture we can all recognize at the catch of an eye in our western culture. We have it pretty well stereotyped, and when we see a guy with long hair wearing tight black jeans, leather boots, a piercing here and there, it's pretty obvious what kind of niche he moves in.

When I looked at these 'out-of-place' young Chinese people, I thought to myself that most of them (I would say a good 98%) have most likely never left their China. Let's face it, people in the Ming Dynasty did not dress like that. So all this culture was transmitted either by the very select few that had lived in other countries and participated in this type of culture, or simply by watching TV, magazines, hearing stories, music videos, etc. Still, it just did not seem like them at all!! Where do these people hide during the day? I had never seen a Chinese person dress or act the way there were when I get on the metro in Beijing. What's the deal people??

It's not over yet. Watching them jumping around like crazy, pushing each other, stepping over one another and getting semi-violent at the pace of the raging music was not the culmination of my surprise. The best part was when, at 9.30pm sharp, they said the concert was over. Suddenly, everyone stopped jumping, people picked up their tents, and in exactly 60 seconds, an audience of several thousands of people had quietly dissolved in the most orderly fashion I have ever seen. One could just see it in their faces, in their blood, how they were accustomed to following these types of commands no matter how reckless and uncontrolled the situation was becoming. When the last lead singer said 'thank you everyone, good night see you tomorrow!', everyone walked towards the exit and walked out of the park in the same way I used to walk in line when starting classes at 7am in school.

An extremely long line of guards standing in the shape of a snake stood by the side of the barricades, not because they feared something would actually happen, but maybe just as a reminder of the past. It seems that they know exactly what happens when orders are disobeyed.

So today, I learned something new about China. Here's a curious example of communism powers clashing directly against non-communist actions in what I call a severely confused country. Amazing.