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This is a post I wrote up back in January 2017 but never posted about my first experience with a Chinese year-end party:

This past Tuesday night was our company’s year-end party, but it also doubled as the school’s five year anniversary. The entire staff was required to attend and the owner promised to go all out and spare no expense. Still, I had no idea how grand it would actually be.

It was held at the Five-Star Intercontinental Hotel, which doesn’t really say much because China likes to refer to every hotel from your average Marriott on up as a “Five-Star hotel”. This one definitely was, however, complete with a Rolls Royce dealership in the lobby.

Upon arrival, they had a luxurious red carpet to walk down where we got to pose for the cameras. This is when I first started to realize that this party would be on a much more epic scale than I had imagined. Our invitations called for formal wear, but for most foreigners, who don’t have a suit with them in China, it meant a shirt and tie, with a blazer. The Chinese, however, took the formal wear requirement uber-serious. The men were decked out in tuxes, and the women appeared dressed for their wedding day, or at the very least, prom. Many wore extravagant gowns and several wore qipao dresses straight out of Wong Kar-Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.”

Inside the banquet room, the school had hired a camera crew to document the event. And when I say crew, I mean a three-man team shooting with Canon Mark IV’s. ‘A’ camera was on a tripod catching a master shot of the room, ‘B’ camera was a man with a handheld, and ‘C’ Camera was a jib! They had a 20-foot jib in the banquet room to capture an “aerial” view of the proceedings.

After we were seated, a spectacular light show and a booming movie score cued that it was time for the party to start. The lights went out and when they came back up, five women from the Chinese staff performed a flawlessly choreographed K-Pop dance routine. Following their performance, our hosts bounded to the stage, looking as elegant as any Hollywood award show. The three of them welcomed us all before engaging in scripted stage banter.

Throughout the show, the entire staff took turns performing on stage. We were all told in December that we would all have to do some kind of song or dance routine. Most of the foreign teachers, however, didn’t take this too seriously, figuring it was akin to going to a KTV, or Karaoke bar. I decided to pair up with a female teacher and perform Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe”. It was an easy song and if we got ridiculous costumes, no one would care how badly we butchered the song.

Now it was time to sit back and take in what the other staff had put together. My jaw went immediately to the floor as groups of the Chinese staff performed song and dance numbers that they had clearly spent several hours a day practicing for the past month. Shortly before my partner and I were to take the stage, we discovered we had another handicap: no one from China knew who Sonny or Cher was.

Still, I donned my black wig and mustache, as well as a ridiculously patterned shirt that looked like it could have come out of the ’60s, that at 5XL barely fit me. Side note – clothes sizes in China are crazy. I ordered my shirt online and went for the biggest size they had because I’d already been warned. When it came, the 5XL shirt was so tight, I could barely button it. I later found a size indicator chart and it said that a 5XL should fit a 160-pound man! We went on and did our thing. The Chinese had no clue what we were doing, but they seemed to like it.

I thought that my singing for the night was done after that, but so much for wishful thinking. The hosts announced that a game was next on the agenda and they needed some volunteers. One of my coworkers made sure I was picked, so I warily headed back to the stage to meet my fate. The game involved putting headphones on the westerners and playing a Chinese song for them. We then had to sing the song we were hearing, in Chinese mind you,  back to our Chinese partner to see if they could guess which song we were attempting to sing. Of course, I was chosen to go first and slipped on the headphones. I belted out the Chinese ballad I heard as best I could and I must have done pretty well because my partner got it on her first guess.

Throughout the night they would stop the proceedings to award door prizes. Everyone there had their name in a raffle and would be drawn out one-by-one until everyone had a gift. When your name was called you would go up and pick from the pile of gifts on the stage, so you obviously wanted to be called early. My name wasn’t called until about 60% of the gifts had been cycled through, but I was still able to walk away with a nice juicer/blender combo.

The party lasted a little over four hours and food and booze were supplied in plentiful amounts the entire time. I left the party completely wiped and feeling like I would need a couple of days to recover, but unfortunately, I would have to be up for work the next day because for some reason they decided to throw this gala on a Tuesday, ugh!

Asian countries are home to some wonderful and often hilarious bathroom signs. Most of these are bathroom signs I’ve come across on my travels. A couple aren’t necessarily for bathrooms but i included them anyway. Enjoy!

With the Fourth of July this weekend, I find myself really missing baseball. While I can’t wait to see Gerrit Cole take the mound for my Yankees, I figured I’d share the experience I had going to see a Nippon Professional Baseball League game in Tokyo. Last August, I took in the city rivalry game between the Yomiuri Giants and Tokyo Yakult Swallows at the famed Tokyo Dome.

The Yomiuri Giants are the Japanese equivalent of the New York Yankees. They play their home games in the enormous Tokyo Dome and have won 22 Japan Series Championships. They have long been the dominant team in Japan baseball since the team’s inception in 1934 and have a massive fanbase throughout the country and, much like the Yankees, an even bigger cult of haters. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows may be the equivalent of the Mets. They also play in Tokyo but in the smaller Meiji Jingu Stadium. They were founded in 1950 and spent over a decade before they finished the season with a winning record. Their fanbase is much smaller and doesn’t usually stretch beyond Tokyo as the Giants’ does.

Unlike the US, baseball games in Japan often sell out well in advance of game day. I realized this when I first tried to attend a game in Osaka. I walked up to the ticket counter on a game day and was turned away with a laugh for being naive enough to think I could buy a ticket so late. In recent years, they have also cracked down on ticket scalping so I was out of luck that day. For the Giants-Swallows game, I learned my lesson and purchased a ticket three weeks out. There was only a handful left but I secured a spot down the left-field line in the upper deck.

Crowds at a Japanese baseball game are into it from before the first pitch till the final out. They have loads of different cheers and songs. When the starting lineups are announced, each player on the home team has his own cheer. Unlike attending an American game where the crowd goes through peaks and valleys of interest, the Japanese fans stay attentive to the game throughout and cheer nonstop whether their team is ahead or trailing. The remarkable thing is that they do it all while sitting. At no point during the games did the fans stand up to cheer on their team because that would be impolitely blocking someone’s view.

The Swallows entered the game with the worst record in the Nippon League, the Giants owned the second-best. Still, the Swallows jumped out to a big early lead. By the 5th inning, it was 7-0 and I decided to hit the concourse in search of some food.

I was amazed to see the assortment of ballpark food available in the concessions. Much like an American ballpark, they offered hamburgers, hot dogs, and peanuts, although no Cracker Jacks. They also had a wide selection of Japanese food that looked as good as you’d see in most restaurants. From sushi to pork cutlet to chicken curry, they all looked better than anything you’d find at a US sporting event. The best part was that every food item was under $10US, with most entrees around $5.

As for drinks, Kirin and Asahi are the two largest Japanese beer brands and their presence was felt all over the dome. Still, they offered quite a few craft brews, including a few selections from the Brooklyn Brewery. Highballs are also a very popular summer cocktail in Japan, so there were plenty of whisky carts that featured both the local, Suntory, as well as Dewars. These were mostly hawked by attractive young women in short shorts that winded through the crowd much the same way a cotton candy vendor would in the US. Despite all of the alcohol so readily available, and at a cheap price – both a large cup of beer and a high ball went for around $5 – I didn’t see a single fan that looked like he might have had one too many.

I ordered a pork cutlet and a Suntory and soda, alas I couldn’t resist the whisky sirens, and headed back to my seat. I came back just in time. The Giants had put runners on the corners with no outs and former Padre, Christian Villanueva, at the plate. Luckily, the manager called for a mound conference, as the ushers will only allow you to and from your seat during a break in play. As soon as I sat back down, Villanueva connected on a blast that came close to hitting the back of the dome, easily 450 feet or more! The Giants had cut the lead to 7-3.

The Giants would continue to come back. The game went back and forth in the later innings and was tied 9-9 entering the final frame. In the bottom of the 9th, a Giants player hit a bomb towards centerfield. I thought I was about to see a walk-off home run but at the last second, former MLB-er, Nori Aoki, leaped up and made a spectacular catch, robbing a home run. Unfortunately, the Swallows couldn’t rally off Aoki’s huge play, they posted a goose egg in the 10th, before the Giants would eventually eke it out in the bottom of the 10th.

I was disappointed that the lowly Swallows couldn’t pull off the big win but excited that I had seen such an eventful game. Afterward, I made my way out of the dome with the other 45,000 Japanese fans. No one had left early. The crowd politely made their way out of the dome. Despite the large crowd, there were only two concourses available for exiting the dome, yet no one pushed or complained. I hope to get back again to catch another game, hopefully, next time, I can see the Nippon League team that I’ve decided to adopt for my fandom, the Hanshin Tigers.

Another one-off gig I took was to appear in a Chinese commercial. The commercial was for a company called Haier, a multinational home appliance and consumer electronics company based in my city of Qingdao. The company designed the HVAC systems for our newly built subway system and this commercial was meant to show off this feat of engineering.

I had been introduced to a casting director from a friend who was cast as a westerner plant for a meeting. Many companies believe that having westerners involved in their companies is a sign of status. As a result, for large conferences and conventions, these companies will often hire western faces to pretend to work for the company for the day. Usually, they are not required to speak and are just supposed to show up, pretend to be involved with what is going on, and look like a proud westerner doing business in China.

My friend had been cast for a planning conference for the annual beer festival, the largest in Asia. His duties included showing up to a posh 5-star hotel on a Friday morning in a suit and drinking free beer all morning. For this, he was paid the equivalent of $600 USD. Hearing of this, I demanded an introduction to the casting director.

We met a few days later in a Starbucks. She took some photos and said she’d be in touch. Not too long after, she messaged me to see if I’d be interested in the Haier commercial. It was to promote the newly opened subway and I would play an engineer that designs the HVAC.

They gave me a call time of 8:00 the following Thursday morning at one of the subway stations. I asked them if they wanted me to supply anything costume-wise but was told it would be taken care of. Still, knowing how small Chinese clothing sizes run, I brought two sets of shirts, pants, and dress shoes with me. Better have it and not need it than need it and not have it has always been my mantra on set and I was determined to carry that ethos to working in front of the camera, as well.

I arrived at the subway station a few minutes early and met Ksenia, a beautiful blonde Russian woman, who would also appear in the commercial. They introduced us to the three Chinese actors who would be joining us in the commercial. None of them spoke any English but we introduced ourselves in Chinese and then went through the usual set procedure of checking in and then sitting around and waiting.

Very soon, the costume designer approached me with an H&M bag. Inside was my costume, purchased the night before, as evidenced by the receipt. The tags were still on the clothes and they asked me not to take them off, as they planned on returning them the next day. I pulled them out of the bag and realized that they’d decided to costume me in skinny jeans and a skinny-fit dress shirt. Needless to say, I don’t have the body to pull off skinny anything. They also provided a belt and shoes that didn’t match. I asked if they’d rather use some of the wardrobe options I brought but was told to please dress in the clothes provided.

I squeezed into my wardrobe, tucked the tags out of view, and walked over to the first camera setup. The first shot was to be a tracking shot following us, five talented engineers, walking down the subway concourse while looking up at a heating duct and then referring back to a set of blueprints Ksenia would be holding. We pulled it off without a hitch in just a few takes, walking and pretending to talk. We even made gestures from the blueprint to the ducts, just like real engineers.

We shot a few more things inside the subway station, culminating in us boarding and riding in an actual subway car. The city wouldn’t allow us to shut down the subway, so we had to shoot on a live subway. We boarded a car and the Assistant Director tried his best to clear out the tail car but a few old-timers refused to move for anything, so we waited patiently until they reached their destination before sealing off our car for a shot.

After the subway shoot, we broke for lunch and had a company move to an office location for the afternoon. Lunch wasn’t too bad, a spicy noodle soup with seafood. We ate in the office cafeteria which was right next to where we’d be shooting in the afternoon.

The first shot of the afternoon would be of the five engineers in a meeting, apparently discussing the planning of the upcoming subway build. They surrounded us with design photos and more blueprints as we gathered around a table, pointing to more things. As we were shooting, the director kept yelling out to the AD in Chinese that he wanted to see more of the “white faces.” He also repeatedly called Ksenia and me ‘laowai,’ a pejorative term for foreigner. Ksenia and I weren’t sure if he realized that we both understood Chinese enough to know what he was saying but we rolled with it.

Next up, would be my first big solo shot. The idea was to put me at a drafting table, working on the all-important design. They told me where to stand and how to make it look like I was drawing something without actually making any marks. Then, right before the camera rolled, the director approached and told me my motivation. In broken English, he told me that he wanted me to be “an artist frustrated.” I am trying to design the perfect air conditioner but I can’t get it right. I am repeatedly balling up and chucking a design before beginning anew on another sheet of paper. Finally, he tells me, inspiration hits. Then he wants my eyes to go big and for me to laugh. I ask him if he really means laugh. He replies, “Yes. ‘HA-HA-HA!’ I have done it. I have designed subway’s greatest air conditioner!”

I do as he says, but he wants me to go bigger with my laughing. I cackle like an evil villain, cartoonish and over the top and he loves it. I ball up the paper and throw it, but he wants me to try it in different ways. Shoot it like a basketball. Over my left shoulder. Over my right shoulder. We shoot it a dozen ways before he’s satisfied.

For my final shot of the day, they bring me into an empty auditorium. The shot will be of me sitting alone at a chair in the middle of the room while a lone spotlight shines down on me. This is to be my dark night of the soul. The night before the final draft of the subway plan is due. I am sitting in an empty auditorium, as engineers often do, I guess, having no clue how I will make the deadline. I sit alone and ponder my fate, wondering and hoping the muse will hit and I will create something that the subway Gods will approve.

After this last shot, I’m dismissed from set. The director shakes my hand and tells me to look out for the commercial in about two months on CCTV-1, the top channel in China. I’ve never seen the commercial, nor has anyone I know. I’m told it aired several times, though. I’ve asked for a link to the finished copy but the casting director hasn’t been able to get one. I truly hope that one day I can track down this gem and post it.

The casting director has called me for a few more roles but, unfortunately, the days and times have clashed with my job and I’ve been unable to accept them. I even had to turn down two film extra roles in two movies that turned out to be big box office successes. The first, Crazy Alien, would have had me working alongside Tom Pelphrey, who played Laura Linney’s brother on the most recent season of Ozark. The second was for a role as a scientist in Wandering Earth, China’s biggest sci-fi film ever, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Working in China, there are often many short term or one-off gigs that an English speaker can often pick up. Quite a few times, I’ve worked with Chinese companies to either teach their employees some very specific business English jargon relating to their field or educate them on American culture and how to connect with it from across the world.

One such gig was when I was hired to consult a wig company on American culture. Yes, a bald guy was being brought in to advise a wig company. They were a successful company in China but had only recently started expanding their sales to North America. Their sales and marketing staff spoke decent enough English but they really didn’t have a clue about how to connect with one specific subculture that had taken a liking to their wigs. Apparently, their wigs had become very popular in the crossdressing community, especially among drag queens.

So they hired me to educate them on crossdressing, drag queens, and the LGBTQ community. Yes, a cis white male mansplaining these cultures to a group of Chinese women and one gay Chinese man who were at times hilariously ignorant of terms or definitions. We watched and discussed clips of Rupaul’s Drag Race, as well as drag shows I was able to find online. I even played them the musical numbers from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

They had hired me to consult with them the week before Easter. While I was there, the manager of the company asked if I would mind checking out the English-language email that they were sending out to their retail partners in the US and Canada. I agreed and was extremely glad I did. Each email started with some version of, “Good day. I hope you are productively planning to celebrate your savior rising from the dead this weekend. Now please allow me to tell you about our upcoming promotions…” I convinced them to drop all the religious banter but finally relented on letting them wish their partners a Happy Easter.

With everything going on back home in the States over the past two weeks, I wanted to relay a conversation I had about racism with a Chinese colleague. From what I’ve experienced in Asia, racism is much more out in the open here. Many Chinese and Koreans will readily admit that they hate the Japanese, as one example. And some Cambodian and Vietnamese have told me multiple times that they hate the Chinese after telling them that I live in China. This obviously isn’t everyone and the younger generation is getting much better at moving past racist stereotypes and accepting people outside of their culture but, unfortunately, it is accepted in public much more openly than in the U.S.

With that in mind, the following is a conversation I had with a Chinese coworker. For the purposes of the story, we’ll call him “Steve.” Steve was educated in the UK, where he graduated with a math degree from a prestigious university. He was in his late 20s at the time and an otherwise well-rounded and intelligent guy.

Steve: “Tom, are you a racist?”

Yes, this is how the conversation started. We weren’t talking previously. He approached me at work and led with that.

Tom: “Um, no. I don’t think I am.”

Steve: “Americans always say that, but Chinese are different.”

Tom: “Are you a racist.”

Steve: “Yes. I hate Koreans, Japanese, and Indians.”

He was almost proud of it when he told me. Koreans and Japanese are pretty standard responses for Chinese to hate but Indians confused me a bit.

Tom: “Why Indians?”

Steve: “When I was at University in the UK, I lived next to three Indians. They were always very loud and the hallway always smelled like curry because of them.”

Tom: “Well, let’s put aside that there are definitely cultural differences between Chinese and Indians. Let’s pretend that these three Indians were complete assholes. All three of them – asshole, asshole, asshole. You do know there are over a billion Indians in the world, right? And as a guy with a math degree, do you think three is a large enough sample size to judge a billion people?”

Steve: “That’s a good point.”

Tom: “And you know Aarthi (a mutual friend) is Indian, right?”

Steve: “That’s true. And I like her just fine.”

Tom: “See it doesn’t make sense to hate a whole group of people just because of a couple of assholes.”

Steve: “You know, I used to hate black people before I knew any. But then I met two black guys at university who were both really good guys.”

Honestly, at this point, I felt like I was talking to an 8-year-old, but like I said this a well-educated, otherwise intelligent guy. It just goes to show how ingrained racism can be, especially in a place where it’s not looked at shamefully.

Tom: “Also, look at Rich (another mutual friend who is black).”

Steve: “Yeah, Rich is a good guy. So all the black people I’ve known have been cool.”

Tom: “True, but the next one you meet might be an asshole. But that doesn’t mean anything more than that guy is an asshole. Don’t get racist on black people because of him.”

Steve: “Okay, you make some good points. I still hate Koreans and Japanese, though.”

And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me baffled and trying to wrap my brain around our two-minute conversation. There was no context for it. It was apropos of nothing. He literally walked in the room, came up to me, had this conversation, and walked out. It was definitely something he had been thinking about and I still wonder what the impetus to this conversation was.

Obviously, this conversation in no way is meant to address the bigger problems of systemic racism in the U.S. It’s just as obvious that there needs to be major changes in the institution of policing in the US. Personally, I’ve long thought that we need to reform the influence that police unions have, as well as civil asset forfeiture, quotas, and qualified immunity. I hope that some good is able to come out of the dissension we’ve seen, not just in the last two weeks but in the last several decades, as this is not a new issue.

I have several friends in the law enforcement community. A few of them have told me about how they have tried to address problems in discrimination and policing tactics from the inside and that it is virtually impossible. This institutional change has to come externally. We need to put pressure on our elected officials and do so consistently until it is fixed, not just every time a black life is taken.

The other day, I witnessed a parking cop ticketing a police car that was parked illegally. At first, I just laughed at the absurdity but then something even more bizarre happened. The police officer whose car was being ticketed came running out of the government building he was in. I expected him to tear into this much younger parking cop for daring to ticket him. Instead, though, he pleaded with him. He told him that he would move his car immediately and asked him to please not ticket him. The parking cop refused and wrote the ticket. What I saw wasn’t unusual for China. Here, as in many Asian countries that I’ve seen first-hand, the police aren’t above the law. Sure, they may still be corrupt, ineffectual, or lazy, but they still have to pay parking tickets, even if it’s for their police cruiser. Could you see the same thing happening in the States?

The following is what life has been like in Qingdao since I’ve come back. Many of my friends and family have been constantly asking me what it’s been like here, so here it is. Apologies if it’s a bit on the long side.

I flew back to Qingdao from Cambodia on February 10. There were rumors that very soon, either China would cancel all incoming international flights, or Cambodia would stop its service to China. From everything I was seeing, it looked like the coronavirus, as it was still called then, was about to spread throughout Asia and I did not want to be stranded in Cambodia. While it has made great strides in the last two decades, its health care system still falls far short of other Asian countries.

Boarding the flight in Phnom Penh, I was asked to fill out a medical form about my recent travel history. They also took my temperature three times and a mask was required from as soon as I set foot in the airport. My flight connected in Shanghai, where I had a four-hour layover. As I deplaned, and before I entered the terminal, my temperature was taken again and I filled out another medical form. My temperature would be taken yet again as I went through Immigration and Customs.

Shanghai Pudong Airport is normally one of the ten busiest airports in the world. After I successfully made it through Customs, I took the shuttle to the main terminal for my connecting flight. I went through security and the other side looked like a ghost town. It was 9:00 am and just past the security check, there was no one to be found in either direction.

My flight from Shanghai to Qingdao was close to empty. Upon arrival, I had my temperature taken twice more. I picked up my luggage and caught a taxi home. My apartment complex is roughly half a city block with nine large towers of homes. There are two gates on every side, none of which have ever been closed or locked since I moved in a year and a half ago. When the taxi dropped me off, though, I found that only one gate was open; the others had been padlocked shut with barbed wire strung over the top.

At the gate, three men in security uniforms asked to see my passport. They wanted to know if I lived in the complex and where I had come from. They again took my temperature and made me sign in on a ledger tracking everyone that had come through the gate that day. After they made sure I wasn’t trying to sneak into the complex, they told me that I would have to self-quarantine myself for 14 days. I was not to leave my apartment for any reason. Finally, I was home and was able to take off my mask after wearing it for the past 11 hours.

I behaved myself and stayed in for the next two days but on day three, my cupboards were almost bare and I needed to restock. I decided to take my chances and walk to the supermarket across the street. I donned my mask and made it past the security at the gate without an issue. They barely looked up as I walked through. I still had to get back through, but at least I would have groceries at that point.

At the supermarket, I had to go through the same procedure as my apartment. I filled out a form and they took my temperature. The large supermarket was almost devoid of shoppers. I was worried about runs on staples like bottled water and toilet paper but both were stocked to the gills. Actually, other than the lack of a crowd, the supermarket looked completely normal. I bought enough food to last me the next two weeks and headed home.

I didn’t have the same good luck when I approached my security gate. There was a woman there that I hadn’t seen before and apparently she was the boss. She asked me when I had arrived and then scolded me for breaking my quarantine. If I needed food or supplies, I was supposed to ask a neighbor to go to the store for me. Finally, she let me go with the threat that if I was caught out again, the police would be notified and I would be forced into the government-supervised quarantine, which entailed checking into a motel that the government had taken over. I would be locked into a small room with no refrigerator or microwave, be served three barely edible meals a day, and then be billed for the stay at the normal motel rate upon checkout. A friend was unlucky enough to suffer this fate.

I spent the remainder of the two weeks inside. Although it was the middle of February, so it’s not like I’d have been spending much time outside anyway. On day 15, I felt myself going a little stir crazy and decided to go out and see what the neighborhood looked like. The security guards smiled and waved as I walked past them with my head held high. I was no longer a rule-breaker.

I live in a fairly busy part of the city. There is a large mall and the streets are usually constantly busy with traffic. Here I was, though, late morning on a weekday and it was silent. No cars. No people. The few I did see all wore masks, hurried to get where they were going, and they kept a good ten feet between each other. Every restaurant and shop I walked past was shuttered. As a rough guess, I’d say there are about 200 restaurants within a quarter-mile from my home, all of them were closed.

In late February, as businesses began to reopen, the government started using an app to track everyone’s health and movements. Wechat is an all-in-one app combining messaging, mobile payment, and social media. It is ubiquitous in China, with over one billion active accounts. The tracking app was run through WeChat and it was required to enter any business or public transportation. You would swipe your phone and, hopefully, it would respond with a green signal. This meant that you had been successfully tracked as well as confirming that you hadn’t been in close proximity of anyone that has tested positive for Covid-19.

On average, I scan this app about five times a day, meaning my location is being tracked everywhere I go. My temperature is also taken at all of these places, so about five times a day. As someone who is fiercely pro-privacy, this has been a lot for me to accept and I am very wary of its abuse. Still, moving to China, I knew I would always have to forfeit a lot of the privacy rights I enjoy in the States. Many Chinese are also apprehensive about this tracking app being abused and with good reason. One city, Hangzhou, has already proposed making the use of the app permanent. Its citizens responded with uproar, though, and when polled by a local news service, 95% of the Chinese responders were against it.

Things slowly got better. By the beginning of March, the first restaurants started opening, first for delivery, then by seating tables several feet apart, and finally, by the end of the month, it was back to normal. Except, it wasn’t. Normally, restaurants in China are always packed at night. It’s the main social gathering place for men. They will sit for hours, chatting, smoking, and drinking Tsingtao beer. Even now, the restaurants are, at best, half-full during peak hours.

Before the spread of the virus, I was scheduled to start back to work after the Chinese New Year holiday on February 5. We started teaching short online classes in late February, but I was only working about 2-3 hours each week. That has gradually picked up to the point where I hit 12 hours one week. Now, they have finally announced that school will start back full-time and in-person next week. Summer vacation has been canceled and kids will resume classes once their school passes a stringent safety inspection.

There is some good news. Weather-wise, today has been the best day of the year: 75 degrees and sunny. I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and through the large park that sits in back of my apartment complex. For the first time since this started, I saw more people without masks than wearing them. Also, handshakes have come back. And concerts. Well, small scale anyway. Last week, I went to a small punk club that could maybe hold 100 people to watch a friend’s band play. It was packed wall-to-wall and only a few wore masks. If that is happening in China, it is only a matter of time, hopefully, things will get back to normal in other parts of the world.

Many here are afraid of a second wave and there are lots of precautions being taken to avoid one but people are going about resuming their lives. It took four months of everyone staying in to flatten the curve. When we went out, we were aggressively tracked, required to wear masks, and health markers were checked multiple times a day. From what I’ve seen in the States and other countries, many of the precautions being taken are extremely reasonable. Stay home as much as you can and stay safe and this too will pass.

Working in China, Spring Festival is the most anticipated time of year. The two and a half week-long Chinese New Year celebration means a much-needed escape from the noise, smog, and cold weather. This year, I had spent two weeks island hopping in southern Thailand and was finally finishing up my trip with a weekend in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

I had been to Cambodia once before, in 2017, but spent all of my time in Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. While there, I spoke with many local Khmer about the lingering effects of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Virtually everyone in Cambodia has a personal or familial horror story. One young mother told me about how her grandparents were tortured and executed for the crime of being teachers at an international school. After hearing enough of these stories, I found myself wanting to visit the Killing Fields just outside of Phnom Penh to be able to truly appreciate the evil that happened in this beautiful country.

By the time I was boarding the plane in Phuket, the Covid-19 breakout was in full swing in China, although it was still just coronavirus at the time. Cities were on lockdown, flights were being canceled, and schools had been closed for the foreseeable future. Unsure of what I would return to, I decided to extend my stay in Phnom Penh to nine days to, hopefully, have a better understanding of the risks of returning to China. I was able to book a serviced apartment in the heart of the city at a discounted rate through AirBnB and figured if I wasn’t a big fan of the city, I could at least spend my time relaxing in the rooftop pool that the apartment provided.  

Onboard the train from the airport to downtown, I was quickly reminded of the overwhelming poverty in the country. Multiple times the train was forced to stop so that the driver could get out and shovel trash off the tracks. As soon as the train stalled, naked toddlers approached the train windows, begging for money and food. 

Phnom Penh feels very much like a city in transition. There is development everywhere. The Chinese have seemingly taken over the lower third of the city and have been busy building casinos and resorts. A Khmer local told me that the Chinese are aiming to create the next Macao.

My plan for Phnom Penh was just to explore the city as if I lived here. After two weeks in Thailand, I had no desire to see any more temples. The only must-see on my trip would be the Killing Fields, and sensing how affecting that visit would be, I decided to hold off till I had seen the rest of the city first.

Very quickly, I was amazed to find that Phnom Penh may be the best city for movie-going I’ve found in the world. When I checked the local movie listings, I was just hoping to find something playing in the English language. I was shocked to discover that seven of the nine Academy Award Best Picture Nominations were playing. Apparently, even in Cambodia, it was difficult to catch The Irishman or Marriage Story in a theater.

That first night, I went to a screening of 1917 at the closest multiplex. I found the ticket counter and was told that only one ticket was remaining and it was in the more expensive VIP section. I paid the VIP price, still cheaper than a matinee screening at many American cinemas, and found my seat in the packed theater. The audience was a mix of western expats, wealthy Chinese, and local Khmer.

When the film ended, I was shown another reason why Phnom Penh is such a great city for cinema. The theater remained dark for the entirety of the credits sequence and when I stood up to leave after, I saw that the theater was still full – no one left until every credit had rolled! I have been in theaters in China where they throw up the lights before the final image has even faded out and had ushers shouting out which doors to exit. Here, they paid attention to the credits as if they were expecting to see their own names.

Cinema has a rich history in Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk, who spent 35 years as the Cambodian Head of State between 1941 and 2004, was also a film producer, director, and actor with over fifty films on his resume. Norodom Sihamoni, Sihanouk’s son, successor, and the reigning King of Cambodia, formerly taught ballet in France and studied film in North Korea. Both leaders have been strong proponents of the arts. 

On my second day, I found another cinema treasure in the city. The Flicks is an expat-run independent movie theater. There is only one screen and the seats consist of futon mattresses and wicker loveseats. A combination of newer and older films screen seven days a week from noon till midnight with the schedule changing daily. The low price of $4 gains you admission for the day and as many films as you want to sit through. In addition to the theater, The Flicks also has a cafe, bar, and an English-language book exchange. I spent a few afternoons here watching movies and then chatting up Aussie and Irish expats in the cafe after.     

The trip to the Killing Fields and the S21 Prison site, where at least 20,000 Cambodians were tortured and interrogated by the Khmer Rouge, was horrifying to say the least. Both are sober reminders of the evil that humanity is capable of. At the S21 site, a handful of survivors sit at tables and tell hideous stories of their captivity. Most are selling books that document their stay in the prison and treatment by their captors. Talking to these men, most of whom are the same age as my father, is a terrifying reminder how recent this history is.

I was right to hold off on visiting the Killing Fields and S21 Prison as the experience haunted me for several days after. It definitely would have ruined the city for me if I went as soon as I’d arrived. The day after, I attended a screening of the 1984 film, The Killing Fields, at The Flicks. It was a surreal experience watching the Roland Joffe directed film about the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power and ensuing genocide a mere twenty-four hours after walking around the mass graves of tens of thousands Cambodians and seeing the casualties firsthand. 

I finished my time in Phnom Penh by taking a day trip to Koh Dach, an island known to foreigners as Silk Island, just north of the city. For centuries, the island’s inhabitants have made a living by weaving silk. Today, it seems, they make just as much money by charging tourists to visit the different silk shops and buy overpriced scarves and shawls from the ubiquitous gift shops. Despite this, the island is a welcome respite from Phnom Penh. Most of the islanders live in lovely homes on stilts and the island seems free from all the construction and development that is everywhere in Phnom Penh. One island resident did warn me, though, that the Chinese developers have begun buying up lots on the unspoiled island.

Being in Cambodia, you are constantly reminded of a terrifying statistic. Over a four year span, 1975-79, one in every four Cambodians were murdered by their government. Phnom Penh, as well as the country as a whole, feels like it is transitioning from recovery to establishing a new identity for itself. Its strengths lie its natural beauty, warm and welcoming people, and vibrant arts scene.

After nearly two weeks in Phnom Penh, I resolved myself to return to China and take my chances. I knew that I would have to immediately self-quarantine once I arrived home but it now seemed that this pandemic was stretching out to all of Asia and if I didn’t leave when I did, I might have been stuck for weeks in Cambodia, as flights were beginning to be canceled.

With a few days left of my May 1 holiday, I decided to go north to get away from the tens of millions of vacationing Chinese trying to find warmer weather. With that, I took a plane from Xi’an up to Genghis Khan country: Inner Mongolia.

I landed in the capital city of Hohhot, which I later learned means “Blue City” in the Mongolian language. It earned its name for its big blue sky, which is always a relief to see after a foggy and smoggy winter. The city is rather young for a Chinese city, though, having been established by the 25th generation grandson of Kublai Khan in 1580, and I was eager to get out of the city and onto the fabled steppe that Genghis Khan and his army once roamed.

Mongolia is a vast and sparsely populated place and, as such, it can be difficult to tackle many sightseeing opportunities. I had wanted to visit both the Genghis Khan Mausoleum and Xanadu, the fabled city built by Kublai Khan as a summer paradise where he kicked back with Marco Polo. The two places, though, are located in opposite directions from Hohhot and require a maddening combination of buses and trains to get to. Also, because of the May 1 holiday, many of the buses I would need weren’t running

Instead of just picking one place to visit, I decided on something completely different. At the local Anda Hostel, I signed up for a two day-one night tour out to the famed Mongolian grassland, as well as the nearby desert.

We left early Friday morning on a bus with about 20 other travelers for a two-hour ride out of the city. The passing landscape quickly changed from a modern city to acres and acres of farmland and pastures just starting to develop the lush green grass the area is famous for.

We arrived just before lunch and were shown to our yurt. A yurt, or ger, as the Mongolians call them, is a circular, wooden tent covered with animal skins to keep it warm inside. Yurts have been the housing type of choice in Mongolia for most of the last 3,000 years, although today, many Mongolians on the steppe live in more westernized homes.

If you Google image search “yurts”, you will see a selection of round luxury cabins. This was not our yurt. Our no-frills yurt had no beds or furniture, just a series of pads, blankets, and pillows that we could arrange on the floor for bedding. It could have comfortably slept four people. We were seven to a yurt.

The bathroom situation was that there wasn’t one. For the next 24 hours, I and the two-dozen other guests were on our own to roam the steppe and mark out our own territory for taking care of business. Being that the steppe is a vast, flat plain where you can see to the horizon in just about every direction, meant that someone would almost always be spying you during these moments.

Lunch was served shortly after we arrived. A lamb stew with vegetables and dumplings. The food was tasty and we all made short work of it while getting to know the other travelers. Many were Europeans that were living in Beijing or Shanghai and also trying to get away from the crowds over the holiday.

After lunch, we spent a couple of hours exploring our surroundings. Our hosts were a local family that raised sheep and cattle. Like many ranchers on the Mongolian steppe, they also welcome travelers to their property to rake in some extra cash. It felt a little silly, though, as us travelers crammed ourselves inside wooden sheds for the “authentic” Mongolian experience while our real live Mongolian hosts slept comfortably inside a large house, complete with electricity and running water.

We made our way among the sheep and cows, exploring the hills and a large pond, while constantly trying to avoid stepping in their droppings. There was an archery pit set up where we could take turns pretending we part of Genghis Khan’s horde, except where they could fire with deadly accuracy while riding a horse at full speed, most of us struggled to send an arrow 10 yards straight ahead with feet planted firmly on the ground.

To complete the steppe experience, they shortly brought us out in caravans to a nearby ranch where we were able to ride Mongolian horses, one of the smaller equine varieties. Having lived in Kentucky for six years, I’ve been around thoroughbreds, including coming face-to-face with one of the greatest racehorses of all-time, Seattle Slew. The only thing perhaps more legendary than Seattle Slew’s racing career may be his breeding career, having sired over 1,000 foals, of which 537 went on to win races. As prolific as Seatle Slew was a cocksman (cockshorse?), I don’t think he would have given a second look to any of the horses we were presented with, even as fluffers.

The horses that we were led to saddle looked like that they had been around since the last reign of the Khans. We mounted our soon-to-be-heading-to-the-glue-factory steeds and took off on a slow and steady trot. Here is where I’d like to say that like Jean Cruguet riding Seattle Slew to the 1977 Triple Crown, I took the reins and rode my colt masterfully across the steppe. Instead, my horse followed the same path that it probably trots a half dozen times a day with random foreigners on its back. My presence may have well have been a sack of potatoes for all it was concerned.

After the horse-riding, we caravanned back to our yurts where we were given our next mission: to wrangle up enough cow shit to stoke a good bonfire. While we were enjoying a balmy spring day, it isn’t rare for it to drop below freezing at night, and with heavy winds blowing across the steppe, the bonfire is a necessity.

We all set off with a dung basket in separate directions to collect all of the cowpies that we’d been carefully avoiding all day. Unsurprisingly, a dung basket is just like any other large basket, except that it is used to collect cow dung and absolutely nothing else. It didn’t take long, after all, the entire area was covered with cow droppings, and we took turns dumping our treasure into the fire pit.

Soon after dinner, the wind began to pick up and we gathered in a circle around our cow shit bonfire with a couple cases of beer. The sun had set and as the night went on, more and more stars became visible. In close to three years in China, I don’t think I’ve seen a single star in the night sky and here I was with hundreds of stars clearly gleaming overhead. Near the horizon was a red sphere, that I could only surmise was Mars. Despite its contents, the fire was odorless and, looking up, I was able to forget where and when we were. We were looking up at the same sky that Genghis Khan would have seen 800 years ago.

The next morning, we woke up shortly after sunrise. Breakfast was a tasteless traditional milk cookie and an equally bland milk tea with balls of millet grain floating in it. After breakfast, we packed up and loaded into SUVs for the long drive west to the desert. After sleeping on the wooden floor of the yurt, I was looking forward to the modern comfort of the Isuzu Rodeo and I promptly fell asleep.

I woke a couple of hours later. We were still on the road, the steppe turning into mountains, on the other side lay the desert. In one of the mountains, there was a temple built almost exactly halfway up. There were no roads at all on the mountain and as we were trading guesses on how they went about building the temple, our driver pulled off the road into another large temple, this one much larger, but on the ground, just off the highway.

After explaining that the other SUVs in our caravan would have stopped an hour or so back, for a bathroom and snack break, we kept on motoring down the highway so that he could show us Meidaizhao Temple, a site that obviously meant a lot to him.

We entered the temple grounds and our driver began to guide us through every detail. He was a Mongolian and a Buddhist and immensely proud of both. He explained how “dalai” was a Mongolian word meaning ocean and that the third Lama had traveled from Tibet to Mongolia at the invitation of Altan Khan, a descendant of Kublai Khan to spread Buddhism. The third Lama adopted the honorific title ‘Dalai’ bestowed on him by Khan and every Lama henceforth would be known as the Dalai Lama. This would later include Altan Khan’s own grandson, who would become the fourth Dalai Lama.

The tour was short, but it may have been the highlight of the trip, owing mainly to the passion of our driver as he played tour guide. When we left the temple, we saw that the others had caught up to us and we headed off for some lunch before entering the desert.

Similar to how the vast plains of the steppe spread out in all directions around us, the desert seemed like an ocean of sand arranging itself in dunes on all sides. We pulled into the parking lot of a tourist company that rented out ATVs and provided camel excursions into the desert. Unfortunately, we were not here for the dune buggies, but rather the camels.

Camels are hideous creatures. They are ugly and have a cantankerous disposition, although it’s fairly easy to have empathy for the beasts. Much like the horses we rode the day before, these camels lived the dull life of carrying annoying Instagramming tourists a kilometer into the desert while trying to avoid the snapping baton strikes of their handler.

Our listless camels carried us out over the sand dunes to one giant heap of sand, where we took turns walking up and sledding down on metal sleds. After 20 minutes, we all had sand in every place on our body that you can think of and just as many which you can’t. Finally, the camels returned us and we piled back into the Rodeo, where I fantasized about the sand-shedding shower that awaited me during our three-hour drive back to Hohhot.

I woke up early Monday morning, eager to get on the bus to visit the Terracotta Warriors, about an hour east of the city, but first… breakfast. The bus depot was about a 45-minute walk from my hotel, but I decided to take the long way, winding back through the Muslim Quarter yet again to pick up some local breakfast foods.

I stopped at a jianbing stand on one of the side streets. Jianbing is a popular breakfast all over China and every city tends to offer its own take on it. Put simply, it’s a crepe stuffed with some variety of vegetables, meats, chili sauce, and a crispy fried cracker, then rolled tightly, similar to a breakfast burrito. The Xi’an style one I ordered contained no meat but was packed full of veggies and the chili sauce was spicy enough to wake me up quicker than a pot of coffee. In fact, the spice brought such a kick, I had to stop at another stall to pick up another Xi’an breakfast staple, one of a sweeter variety. Zenggao is sticky rice mixed with dates, raisins, and beans in a sweet sauce. Not the healthiest option, but the perfect choice to cool off my mouth and fill me up for a day of crowds, bus rides, and sightseeing.

The Terracotta Army is located about an hour’s bus ride northeast from the heart of Xi’an. Two buses fill up and leave about every ten minutes from the bus station and the line to board is stretched long with tourists. It took me about 45 minutes in line before I was able to board. The bus makes a couple stops at other attractions before reaching the Warriors, or at least a strip mall parking lot that is a 10-minute walk to the entrance of the museum.

Inside the main gates, there are three separate pits dedicated to the Terracotta Army. I make my way towards the first and largest. The first pit is the size of an airplane hangar. There is a walkway along the perimeter, with the warriors, unmoved from where they were excavated, about 10 feet below.

The Terracotta Army was commissioned by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and built in the 3rd century BC. Construction began when Qin was only 13 and the objective was to build him an army for the afterlife as powerful as the one he commanded in life. Over 700,000 Chinese would eventually partake in the project of building this grand mausoleum. For over two millennia, the Army lay buried underneath one of China’s most important cities. It wasn’t until 1974 that the first pit was discovered when farmers were digging for a well.

Since 1974, over 8,000 warriors have been unearthed, as well as hundreds of chariots, horses, and nonmilitary figures. Only a small portion of the necropolis has been excavated to this point, though, due to the delicacy of the figures, as well as extremely high mercury levels. It is estimated that the total area could stretch to 100 square kilometers underground, and in that space lies Emperor Qin’s tomb, which is storied to be full of treasure.

Walking around, I was struck by the attention to detail. Garrisons standing at attention in perfect alignment. While over 2,000 years old, the soldiers look like they could have been built last week. They have often been called the Eighth Wonder of the World and it’s not hard to see why. Most of the figures in the first pit are soldiers, although there are a few chariots and horses mixed in.

The second and third pit paled in comparison to the first one, but they featured more exhibits explaining the history and construction of the Warriors, as well as the ongoing excavation. They also offered a variety of different figures to admire. After about 90 minutes, I had made my way through all three pits. The last thing to do was another bus ride; this time about 15 minutes to the burial site of Emperor Qin. As I’ve said, his tomb has yet to be excavated, but his choice of burial location couldn’t be more serene. Set in the middle of a park, it is on a hill surrounded by trees and overlooking a river in the distance.

After taking in the grounds of Emperor Qin’s Mausoleum, I boarded the bus back to Xi’an. Walking back from the bus station, I stumbled upon Ma’er Youzhi, a restaurant I recognized after having read about it making the city’s best Suantang Dumplings, another Xi’an culinary specialty. Suantang dumplings are soup dumplings, stuffed with beef and garlic and served in a broth of vinegar, chili oil, garlic, cilantro, and sesame. Obviously, I stopped in and ordered up a bowl. There was only one table available and two older Chinese gentlemen, who came in at the same time as me, suggested to make it a party of three. They quickly confirmed that these were indeed the city’s best dumplings, before getting lost in their own conversation.

The next day, I only had the morning before I would have to head back to the airport. I decided to start the day at the City Walls. The heart of downtown Xi’an is boxed in by City Walls that were built in the 14th century to protect against invasion. 600 years later, they remain one of China’s oldest, largest, and best-preserved city walls. At 14 square kilometers, the City Walls can be seen completely on foot or bicycle within a few hours. I didn’t see the entirety of the Walls, though, as the walk became a bit repetitive. Some of the highlights included a moat running along the south side of the wall, the flanking towers for archers, and the views offered of the city. Morning is definitely the best time to walk along the walls before the sun is high in the sky, and the top walkways of the walls were full of tourists, joggers, and old Chinese men practicing Tai Chi.

After trekking the City Walls for a couple of hours, I had time for one last meal before I made my way out to the airport and, luckily, I had unwittingly saved the best for last. Less than a block from my hotel was a little restaurant that always seemed to have a long line. In addition, it specialized in two more Xi’an specialties that I had yet to sample: roujiamo and liangpi. Much like jianbing, roujiamo is sold all over China. It’s often called the Chinese hamburger but is actually usually made with pulled pork or other meats, including donkey, which I’ve had a few times at a shop next to my work. Liangpi is a cold, noodle-like dish, often served with veggies and chili oil.

I took my spot in the cue and could already smell the pork from the kitchen. As I approached the counter, I could see the huge hunk of pork they were cutting off of for the sandwiches, with a juicy layer of fat covering the top. I got my sandwich and noodles and found a spot at the cafeteria-style tables. The first bite was absolutely perfect with robust flavors exploding in my mouth. The saltiness of the pork was met perfectly by the crispy, warm bun it was served on. The pork had a perfect mix of fat and lean meat. The liangpi was the perfect match to offset the richness of the roujiamo. In my time in Asia, this may be the best meal I’ve had and it cost less than $3.

It was hard to leave the restaurant. Despite being stuffed, I just wanted to continue to enjoy the taste of that pork roujiamo. I savored it as long as I could but eventually had to call my taxi for the airport and bid farewell to Xi’an.