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2 years, 7 months, and 26 days, and I'm heading back to America.

I have an immense amount of conflicting feelings about leaving Beijing and about returning to the US, but the time has come. Tomorrow morning (this morning, oops), I'm boarding a plane for a horrible Beijing->Shanghai->Los Angeles->St. Louis trip.

I'll be in St. Louis for a couple of weeks, and then I'll drive from St. Louis to Portland for school. If any of you are in the general westward direction from St. Louis, let me know, and I'll swing by. It feels like a good time for a long drive.

No backing out now, I've got a real ticket to Thailand.

It feels quite strange to be planning this trip. I haven't traveled, other than two trips home, in nearly two years. Two years ago May I had a week in Xiamen, and a week in Tibet. Both were great, albeit in very different ways.

Beijing begins to wear on us after a while; everyone I know that lives here says the same thing. After a while the dirt, the pollution, the spitting, the overpopulation--everything gets under your skin, making you forget the good things that keep you here in the first place. My friend Gerry, an American-born Chinese, would shake with fury over mostly unimportant matters. Finally he told me that he had to leave before he just hated everything about the place.

It's something I never thought I'd see - a memorial service for a bulletin board.

China's cracked down on public discussion sites, as they did before with some of the blogging providers.

Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei describes the latest update:

Some arm of the sour and corrupt Nanny authority has resticted access to Internet bulletin boards (BBS) hosted on servers at Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nanjing University to students and people with university Internet accounts. These BBS were formerly available to the public.

Furthermore, all students who still have access to the BBS will apparently have to register with their real names if they want to continue posting to the BBS. The above-mentioned BBS were previously sources of lively debate about social, economic and cultural issues.

Way to go Nanny!

This may not seem like much; after all, it's just a BBS, and the students can still post. But by blocking outside IP addresses, it will effectively kill the culture of the BBS. And without any hope of anonymity, there won't be much left for the students.

On Saturday Qinghua students gathered to mourn the BBS. One student took a lot of pictures, and posted them on flickr with the name "smth dying". Check it out.

Spring festival in China is always accompanied by temple fairs; kind of like county fairs back in the US. I went to one on Saturday in the Liulichang neighborhood. Here are some pictures. Happy Year of the Rooster!

That's one of the benefits of living in China: You get two New Year's Eve parties within a month and a half. Wednesday was officially the start of Spring Festival, so I had a bit of a party. Traditionally the evening is spent with family, eating dumplings and watching the grand Spring Festival Variety Show. But for those of us without family, we either temporarily join a family for baijiu, as I did last year, or make a family of our own. On that note, a bunch of people came over for a pot luck dinner.

A good time was had by all, even if it was a pain in the ass to find. Despite my neighborhood being old, and every taxi driver recognizes it when they come up to it, not a single driver in Beijing knows it by name. No one does. Wu Nan's friend Pallavi told the driver to go to 朝阳公园西里北区 and he flat out told her it doesn't exist. Directions came out to be something like, "Tell the driver to go to Maizidian. He'll always go this way. If he doesn't, then you're in trouble."

The food was great. Bjorn brought lots of cheese, Rita made dhal (or is it spelled daal?), April and Bri made some dumplings, Wu Nan made a couple Chinese dishes, and Ken brought KFC. Ken's not so big on the cooking thing.

Lee came a bit late, and was appalled that we were not watching CCTV's special. She thinks it's the best thing ever—especially the MC, who she thinks looks like a vampire. I think he looks more like Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. We turned it on without the sound, which is far less annoying. I was a bit disappointed to see that there was no appearance by Yang Liwei, the astronaut. I guess he's so year of the monkey.

过年快乐!

This Friday I had the good fortune to meet up with Dave and Jingyu Sullins, old friends from UMR and KMNR. Despite Dave's getting sick right upon arrival in Beijing, we went out for a meal of curry hot pot and a drink. Here's a bad picture of them:

Sorry about the picture, guys. I'll get a better camera before next time.

On Saturday, my good friend Shawn came in to town. I can't remember when he was last here; I can't remember the last time I saw him, but it's always a great time. He never has more than a day or three in Beijing at a time, since he's here on business, but luckily he came in on a day there was a good show.

First stop was out for hot pot. My favorite place in town calls itself "Thai hot pot," but it doesn't bear much relation to any Thai food I've had before, except for the excellent curry soup. Let me tell you - curry in hot pot is 100x better than chili oil or chicken broth. Take my word for it. Joining us were Bruce, Shawn's client, in China for the first time, Qi, Shawn's old friend from Jilin, and Qi's wife.

After dinner we went out to see two of my favorite bands, Ourself Beside Me and Rebuilding the Rights of Statues. Shows are never late unless I'm running late, so we missed the first three or four songs from Ourself Beside Me. Rebuilding... were taking over for Hang on the Box, who dropped out at some point. That's all right with me - Hang on the Box are incredibly inconsistent, and the expat crowd that gathers for their shows are obnoxious. Rebuilding... are great as always, though.

Another friend was in town as well. Fraser worked with me at my first school for a short time, but at the beginning of last summer he went back to his first home in China, Jilin. He was passing through during his winter break from school. It was great to see him again. I'd forgotten how long it had been. I tried out my Scottish accent on him again, but I still sound more like Yakov Smirnov than Scotty from Star Trek.

It was there last day in town last night, and we tried to go see one of my new favorite musicians, 周云碰 (Zhou Yunpeng), a blind Mongolian folk singer. He called in sick, though, but it wasn't such a disappointment, because Shawn and I ended up arguing about politics at loud decibels.

Shawn loves to argue. So do I. We're on the same side, of course, but that doesn't stop us.

Him: Where to?
Me: Hepingli North Street, near the Hepingli Hospital.
Him: Ok.
...
Him: So, where you from?
Me: The US.
Him: Ah. I hate Japanese people.
Me: Uh...
Him: Yeah, I really hate the Japanese.
Me: Do you know a lot of Japanese people?
Him: (looks at me for a moment) No, I hate the Japanese.
Me: ...Ok.

Sounds like a comic book, doesn't it?

It's not often that I see bands from out of town, much less out of country, and even less that are quite as strange as Toydeath. All their music is made with old toys; talking barbies, car/driving toys, ray guns, and assorted noisemakers mash together to make vaguely electronic music. They did two shows here in Beijing.

I heard that a Chinese guy (who was taping their show at the New Get Lucky on Saturday) saw them in Australia and wanted to bring them here. Unfortunately that was a little out of their abilities, money-wise, so they took a job teaching English at a summer camp in South Korea to pay for it. Next they were heading back to South Korea to make a bit more money, and then off to Japan. They'll love them there, I think.

I don't know if they'll ever make it to the US, but if they do you must see them. Especially you, Jim.