NeeHow! Welcome to China!

I am blogging from Beijing, China!

This is amazing, because the Forbidden Kingdom may as well be called the Kingdom of the Forbidden Internet.

Internetting and tech stuff here is weird and unpredictable, and after not being able to access anything using a downloaded VPN (I have no idea what that even means) for days, the links online all of the sudden today worked.

And here I am!

A week ago I woke up and looked at my phone, which incidentally, without internet access, I would just like to note, is really more of a “camera.”

Anyway, the South Korean SIM card which was not supposed to work here in my phone was working. (The USA SIM card which was supposed to work here does not work here.) (I do not know what a SIM card actually does.)

So I woke up, looked at my phone, and my weather app was announcing the weather for: Today in Palmeira dos Indios. A nice, balmy 72F. Except I am not in Palmeira dos Indios. I had to look up where that is: Brazil.

I had no idea why that was happening, but for all I know, a huge number of people in Beijing woke up that day with their weather app relaying the lovely temperature in Palmeira dos Indios, Brazil. That could happen here. But it would not be headline news on the local station under “Weird Tech Events.” I doubt anyone would even mention it. And suddenly that particular episode of weirdness was gone; by late morning my phone had realized that it is here with me in Beijing. Where it is more like 30F.

But my phone and I are actually having a wonderful time! I have biked through Tiananmen Square with my younger brother Dan and seen the giant picture of Chairman Mao, and walked through traditional parks, and modern malls, and we have seen Lunar New Year dragons everywhere.

Dan, my younger brother, is a very knowledgeable Beijing tour guide. He is filling me in on history as we walk around. He also knows where all the nice bathrooms are. Dan speaks Mandarin, so he is helping me with vocabulary, which is not an easy thing to do. I wanted to learn how to say, “Thank you,” and he told me the word: “Shieh-Shieh.”

Apparently I can’t even say “Shieh-Shieh” correctly.

Dan listened to me try a few times and said, “You sound like a cat.” 

I said, “You mean like a small animal being stepped on?”

He said, “Exactly.”

Speaking of cats, I asked my brother to tell me the word for cat in Mandarin.

“Mao,” Dan said, “Almost like Chairman Mao.”

“Meow!” I said excitedly, “Cat in Mandarin sounds like Meow!”

“Not exactly,” explained Dan, “It’s close…”

So the word for cat in Mandarin Chinese is almost what a cat would call itself in Mandarin Chinese.