Deciphering China, ideograms to menus

You have to keep your head up and your eyes peeled while riding a bicycle around in Beijing, especially during the lunchtime rush on campus, as this 13-second video shows.

We have been in country for two weeks now. Yesterday I taught my first class at Tsinghua University, where I am co-director of the Global Business Journalism master's program. The kids are the cream of the crop.

My bio, posted in the Journalism building, says nice things, I believe.

Hospitality

The staff of the university has dedicated enormous time and energy to help us get settled. They assigned graduate students to to go with us on our first shopping trips and visits to the administration offices, cellphone stores and other places where English is useless.

I wonder if U.S. universities are as thoughtful, hospitable and gracious with visiting foreign professors? I hope so. It makes a great impression.

The cost of everything

Rent is high here, equivalent to New York City, they tell me. So our apartment, given to us rent free by the University, is a really nice benefit. It is modest by U.S. standards but enviable by standards for what a Chinese professor could hope to rent.

In fact, many of the professors live in this university-subsidized housing. A couple of the Chinese journalism faculty live in the nearby apartments.

My new Gallop brand bicycle -- hand brakes, one speed, basket, bell, lock all included -- cost me $50. But a simple toaster that would cost you $10 in a Wal-Mart in the U.S. cost nearly the same as the bicycle, $47.

Point and eat

Last night Cindy and I went to a "hot pot" restaurant. They bring you a little pot of broth with spices, heated by a flame, and you drop in raw meat, vegetables and other stuff. We weren't doing it right but the waitresses didn't speak English so we just did the best we could.

Even menus with pictures are something of a mystery. The food is very good but what is it? On the menu it looks like chunks of meat but it might turn out to be tofu. Are those peanuts or soybeans that are part of that vegetable dish? We have to wait and see.

Manicure or pedicure?

The Great Big Lie that you hear everywhere in America is that when you travel abroad, "everyone speaks English". Well, if you are in a tourist hotel in an area frequented by Americans or Brits, yes. But most of the world does not fit that description.

Beijing's subway system and many of its stores are actually pretty user friendly with signs in English or in Roman characters.

But the normal language barriers are raised to another degree of difficulty when you cannot even decipher a street sign or any sign, for that matter. Are you on Haidian Street? If the signs are only in Chinese, and they usually are, you cannot know.

Seven thousand characters

Chinese newspapers supposedly use a limited number of ideograms, or characters. But still the total is 7,000. Will I ever try to learn the written language? I am not sure that I am up to it. At the moment I am learning a few phrases. The Berlitz books Cindy and I have are great because they show the English phrase, the pronunciation and then the Chinese characters. We show the appropriate phrase to the waiter or salesperson.

Store clerks have been helpful. 

When I use Chinese words or numbers, people usually say them back to me in a helpful way, with the correct pronunciation. They know it is difficult to get the tones right.

Written Chinese was simplified a few decades ago, so you have different written versions. The old form is much more ornate. An analogy might be the Gothic script you see in medieval manuscripts.

50% more density than New York City

Beijing has a metro population of 19 million, almost exactly the same as metro New York, but the population density is 50% greater, 3,023 per sq km vs. 2,050 in NYC.

If it weren't for the fact that so many people ride bicycles, the density would be unimaginable. As it is, the massive expressway system built for the 2008 Olympics has trouble handling all the traffic.

In general, Beijing residents appear to be like residents of New York, Paris or Madrid in that they are in a hurry and you might be in their way.

We rode the subway across town last Sunday. It was standing room only all the way. Given the density, the city is amazingly clean and orderly.

84 bicyclists run down and killed in Guadalajara in one year

I worry less about swine flu and armed drug dealers than I do about careless motorists.

Cindy and I don´t ride our bikes here in Guadalajara, nor would we be likely to try it anywhere in Mexico. It just doesn´t seem safe to us.

Today I got confirmation. I read in the paper (Mural) that in 2008, 84 bicyclists were killed in traffic accidents in the city of Guadalajara. Eighty-four! In one year! In one city!

In the first nine months this year, 272 pedestrians have been run down and killed by motorists in Guadalajara, but the authorities didn´t break out how many of those were bicyclists. That´s in one city, in nine months.

Drivers on cellphones, so look out

When Cindy and I walk in our neighborhood, we have to be really careful crossing the street. Drivers don´t seem to pay any attention to pedestrians. They ignore red lights, stop signs, everything.

There are lovely trees and bushes along the streets, but you can´t see the traffic, nor can the drivers see you. Even on the sidewalk, you have to dodge cars pulling in and out of illegal parking spaces.

It´s not just legendary Mexican macho. Male and female drivers seem to be on their cellphones all the time.

Driving on the shoulder

Two-lane highways have an imaginary third lane in the middle for use by the bold and impatient.

It´s just as dangerous outside the cities. There´s an unwritten rule that on a two-lane highway, there is an imaginary third lane down the middle for passing. So it is customary for all drivers to stay to the right with two wheels on the shoulder.

Note that our driver has two wheels on the shoulder.


I wouldn´t want to be a bicyclist on any of those two-lane roads.

There is talk of building bike lanes and bike paths in Guadalajara, but I have my doubts. Motorists would ignore the dividing lines, for sure, and if the bikeways were on sidewalks, people would park in them. That´s what they do with the sidewalks.

Bikes take over Guadalajara

Every Sunday the city shuts down a couple of main thoroughfares to all but bikes and pedestrian traffic. It turns into quite a rolling parade. Makes the city seem more livable.
Traffic here is always heavy. The metropolitan area is comparable to Baltimore in terms of total population, and everyone has a couple of cars. One of the big dailies had a story last week about the peak traffic hours, and the hour-by-hour graphic showed traffic at a high level from 7 a.m. till 9 p.m. I believe it.
You see lots of monstrous American cars, and getting around in traffic is tricky, which is a topic for another day.



Above and below are miniature ceramics that were part of an impressive exhibition of work from all over Mexico that we saw a week ago in nearby Tlaquepaque. The little cards in the display cases are the size of business cards, to give you some idea of scale. That´s Noah´s Ark on the bottom.



Tlaquepaque does a thriving trade by separating wealthy tourists from their cash in exchange for antiques and authentic handicrafts. We´re told that if we go to the next town over, Tonalá, we´ll get very nice stuff but at better prices.



Apparently, Mariachi grows on you after a while.


The Roman models of architecture are all over Spain, Italy, France and all of Latin America. Courtyards or atriums surrounded by the house, porticoes, arches and columns.


A fanciful sculptor´s bronzes of anthropromorphic furniture are all over the central plaza of the city. Cindy takes a break on one of them.

Work and home

Monday we move into an apartment on a busy street with all kinds of stores, restaurants and cafés in the neighborhood below. Our stuff from Baltimore should arrive this week. We took no furniture with us so we´re furnishing the place.

I´ve been meeting every day with various people at the University of Guadalajara who will be helping me to design the first course on digital journalism, which will be aimed at editors. We´re going to create it online, with an in-person part at the end of the course. The idea is for professional journalists to have the opportunity to work on the course on their own time and then break away for a week or less and wrap up the work.
Designing a course online is brand new for me. The University has a track record in this area and a lot of people with experience. They are excited about the project and pitching into it with a will.