North Pole Must Be Too Cold

You can learn a lot by watching TV ads on the Beijing subway. For instance, Santa Claus lives in a temperate alpine valley, where he hand-selects chocolate chips to be mixed into a popular brand of ice cream.

Also, judging from cartoons that tout the Chinese emergency hotline, all criminals and crime victims in China are white foreigners.

Afternoon at the Old Summer Palace

Across the road from Tsinghua University is the Old Summer Palace, a large park with the ruins of several imperial palaces destroyed by British and French soldiers in 1860.

Obama

President Obama visited China this week. Little disruption in Beijing outside of the downtown area, where Obama discussed policy with President Hu and toured the Forbidden City.

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In response to a question on Twitter and the Chinese firewall at a Shanghai 'town-hall meeting,' Obama said he supported "non-censorship" but declined to criticize or even mention censorship by the Chinese government.

His carefully-worded answer came across as weak to many Americans, myself included. But since Obama did not criticize the government, his discussion of the role that Internet freedoms can play in a democracy made it into Chinese-language newspapers here.

Winter Arrives

The posting lull has ended.

Over the weekend I moved into an off-campus, three-bedroom apartment in the Wudaokou neighborhood of Beijing. I am living with the two guys with whom I visited Xinjiang. Arduous travel, including two 24-hour train rides in large-fridge-sized cabins, is a great way to determine roommate compatibility.

As the view out my window indicates, snow covers the capital. Thunder and lightning accompanied the storm that brought it last night.

The first snowfall of the season came on Halloween. That freak storm was boosted by the Beijing Weather Modification Office.

"We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," said Zhang Qiang, who is in charge of the office. Zhang said more than 16 million tonnes of snow had been artificially added according to the preliminary calculation.

Beijingers are pretty poor at driving in snow, walking on slippery sidewalks, and shoveling paths in a timely fashion. They are, however, adept at building snowmen.

Taste of Xinjiang

The arid, sunny climate in Xinjiang is ideal for growing grapes, melons, and pomegranates. Chinese families returning home from Urumqi during harvest season stock up on local fruits and nuts, boxes of which clog the luggage carousel at the Beijing airport.

Almost anything — from carpets to rice to plumbing fixtures — can be found at the Sunday Market in Kashgar. This stall was in the dried fruits and sweets section.

Hand-pulled laghman (拉面) noodles are served up in the market. Uighur laghman is usually cold and spicy, unlike the heated but milder laghman found in nearby Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

One of the guys I traveled with noted that the noodle-making process reminded him of Adam Smith's pin factory. One man did nothing but chop up lamb. Another pulled the noodles. Another prepared the sauces. The loudest and friendliest served as hawker and server. Older children, not yet ready for skilled labor, fetched ingredients.

Samsas (a distant cousin of Indian samosas) are salty baked pastries filled with meat and fat from a fat-tailed sheep, and seasoned with cumin and onions.

High Altitude

Karakul Lake and the 7,546-meter Muztagh Ata (Father of Ice Mountains), right off the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan in the Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang.

Some of the Kyrgyz shepherds in the area still live in traditional yurts, though the Chinese government promotes more permanent settlements (such as fixed concrete yurts).

Information Blackout

I spent National Day vacation with two classmates in Xinjiang, China's largest territorial subdivision. More than twice the size of Texas, Xinjiang encompasses ancient oasis towns, barren desert, and stunningly beautiful mountains. It is home to many ethnic minorities, including Mongols, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz.

Brutal riots between Uyghurs and the dominant Han Chinese erupted in the regional capital in July, leaving at least 197 people dead. As part of its effort to restore order, the Chinese government has blocked the Internet in Xinjiang. Completely. About 21 million people have no way to view websites or use e-mail.

This is far worse than the typical controls in China, which merely make it hard to access Facebook, blogs, and accounts of the 1989 protests.

Also cut off in Xinjiang: all mobile texting, international phone calls, and calls to any part of China except Beijing.

Vacation

I will be traveling to some smaller cities and rural areas west of Beijing during the National Day / Mid-Autumn Festival vacation. I will not have access to the blog until my return on October 10, when I will post photos of the trip.

Terror Pigeons

China has ordered that all pet homing pigeons in Beijing be locked up in advance of the National Day parade.

Dong Jingbei, president of the Dongcheng District Carrier Pigeon Association, said he understood China’s desire for flawless festivities. But he wondered what shape the pigeons would be in.

“This is totally unfair,” Mr. Dong said. “This is like locking up an athlete in a tiny little room. When they finally let them out on Oct. 1 at Tiananmen, they won’t even know which way is north!” ...

Still, he said, they understood that for a flawless parade day, no detail could be overlooked. Even the pigeons were undergoing security checks.

“I don’t know what kind of stuff you have in New York,” Mr. Dong said. “But people could strap all sorts of minibombs to pigeon legs.”

Booksellers

Several streetside book vendors serve the Wudaokou area. The sellers devote up to half of their carts to counterfeit English-language titles, which provide a glimpse into the reading preferences of Chinese university students (who vastly outnumber foreigners).

Biographies of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are very popular, as are mass-audience books on economics and social science, such as Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.

Harry Potter is always available, though I have yet to see a cart with all seven volumes. It is also easy to find modern fiction classics like Catcher in the Rye.

The asking price is typically 10 RMB (about $1.50) per book. Discounts can be obtained.

Pink Slips

And yellow slips. And white slips.

Some Chinese forms and receipts are woefully archaic: handwritten, duplicate or triplicate carbon copies, and stamped with a red ink chop.

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Classes began on Tuesday. I have been placed in the highest level of elementary Chinese, which begins about where I left off (Chinese 102 at Princeton). So far it seems to be a good fit.

National Day Approaches

Central Beijing is getting into lockdown mode for the 60th anniversary of communist rule on October 1. Streets downtown have been closed for parade rehearsals and fighter jets are practicing their fly-bys. Tanks, mobile missile launchers, and patriotic floats roll past Tiananmen.

To the northwest, the university district is much more subdued. The police presence around the nicest mall has increased. Some restaurants and clubs are checking passports and canceling open bar nights. Multi-hour lines spill out of train ticket offices, as Beijingers prepare for trips home or nice vacations.

International Students

Tsinghua attracts a wide range of foreigners. South Koreans are the most numerous — enough study here to support a small but thriving Koreatown outside the main campus gate. Kazakhstan, Britain, Germany, Australia, and the United States are well-represented. I have also met students from Burma, Mexico, Malaysia, Israel, Brazil, and South Africa. Few Japanese or Indian students come to Tsinghua, due to the strained relations between their home countries and China.

English is the default language for conversation, since most international students are not yet proficient in Chinese. The common draw for foreigners is a desire to better understand China as its role in the world continues to expand.

Photo: The Grand Auditorium, one of the oldest Tsinghua buildings, is modeled after the Rotunda designed by Thomas Jefferson for the University of Virginia.

Swine Flu Strikes

Tsinghua has raised its H1N1 flu alert level after several students contracted the virus. Although flu prevention is a serious concern on a campus of 31,000 students, the precautionary measures in place are rather humorous.

Dormitory staff check the temperature of arriving students with cheap laser-gun thermometers aimed at the forehead. These malfunction routinely, sending the young women at the front desk into fits of giggles when someone registers a fever of 300°C.

Posters in the elevators give helpful and dubious tips for staying healthy. Washing hands and avoiding sick friends sounds reasonable. But leaving a window open to the Beijing smog "2-3 times daily for 30 minutes each time" seems counterproductive. Also amusing is the photo of a Chinese woman lifted from a skin cream advertisement.

Fast Food

In addition to Chinese dining halls and a halal eatery for Muslim students, Tsinghua boasts its very own bootleg McDonald's.

QingQing Fast Food (清青快餐) serves up a typical menu of hamburgers, fries, chicken, soda, and milkshakes. You can also get some more exotic dishes, such as shrimp burgers and octopus pies.

Campus

The Tsinghua campus has a lot of nice parks and gardens, such as this tree-lined canal.

Air pollution is relatively low right now (as you can see from the blue sky). Internet restrictions, on the other hand, are worse than ever. China has managed to block popular VPN (virtual private network) software, which in the past could be used to skirt the Great Firewall.

North Korean crisis (and resolution)

As I entered my dorm suite last night, I noticed a small North Korean flag taped to the door. Inside, the common room was strewn with plastic buckets, water cooler jugs, and bags of Korean rice. Also quite a few rotting vegetables. It seemed that a very sloppy North Korean student had been living there but had left in a hurry.

In the morning I knocked on the other bedroom door. Nobody answered. A quick chat with the front desk confirmed my suspicions:

Will I have a roommate? Yes. Is he Korean? Yes, from North Korea. Where is he? He went back to his country. When is he coming back? I don't know.

I then went to the housing office, where I explained why an American with an interest in working for the U.S. government could not live with a North Korean. It took some time to express this in Chinese, but the office was happy to change my room. I have switched into a new suite with no mess and, for now, no roommate.

Hong Kong Airport

Waiting for my Beijing connection.

Going Back to Beijing

Tomorrow I fly to Beijing, where I will study Mandarin at Tsinghua University for two semesters. I plan to post updates and photos on this site throughout the year.

The picture above shows Tiananmen Square last summer, a few days before the Olympics.