Photos of the Week - The Great Wall From Jinshanling to Simatai

On July 1st in Beijing, Qian, a group of five friends, and I went to a section of the Great Wall a few hours north of Beijing. The section is a hike from 金山岭 (Jinshanling) to 司马台 (Simatai). It is widely known as the best, relatively-accessible, section of the Wall.

This trip was my fourth trip to the Great Wall. I went by myself in 2006, with my friend Meaghan in 2007, and my family, again, in 2007.

It's been great every time.

Here are my most recent photos:


The Wall and its forts go on and on


There were two quick rain showers while we were out there. I thought they were great. They cooled us down, cleaned the air and kept the sky immaculately blue, and also provided this ridiculous rainbow. It was the closest full rainbow I've ever seen. I couldn't take a picture of the whole arc. Quite the setting!


The 10km hike had some difficult patches


A few of my friends walking through the terraced fort


Another steep section


I'll be honest with you, I had an urge to go try to push this little wall over. I, of course, didn't. It just looked like it was about to fall at any moment!


This is the Simatai section at the end. We didn't hike this part. It looked incredibly grueling.


A look back at the Wall after we'd finished


Me and Qian. On my chance to endorse something with my clothing for my Great Wall pictures, I chose to wear my hapless Kansas City Royals hat.


Qian felt this was a nice setting to make a yoga pose

Friday Diversion

Last night, I adminstered a pub quiz at my favorite bar in Xi'an.

It was a lot of fun researching the questions and reading the quiz. I got a really good response from the teams that participated. Each team had four people on it. In total, six teams competed.

I'm going to post the quiz below. If you're bored at work or have nothing else better to do, this very well could take up a half hour of your day.

The quiz was designed for foreigners from North America or Britain living or traveling in China. You, of course, can't use the internet to help find the answers.

I'll post the answers in the comments section of this post.

Enjoy!

Mark's Pub Quiz: July 9, 2009

1. Thriller is the best-selling album of Michael Jackson's catalog. What is the second best-selling Michael Jackson album of all-time?

2. What are the three totalitarian super-states featured in the novel 1984?

3. Which southern Chinese "Special Economic Zone" city went from a population of 25,000 in 1979 to 8.6 million at the end of 2007?

4. Name 3 James Cameron-directed films that have grossed more than $100 million worldwide.

5. What is the freezing point of water, in Farenheit?

6. In terms of traffic, what is the most popular website in China?

7. Which country, on average, has the tallest people on Earth?

8. How many Paramount Leaders of the People's Republic of China have there been since the country was founded on October 1, 1949?

9. Cassius Clay is better known by what name?

10. Which corporation has the largest number of employees in the world?

11. What character did Robert Duvall play in the films The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II?

12. How often is Halley's Comet visible from Earth?

13. What make of car was Princess Diana riding in when she was killed in 1997?

14. How many bones are in the typical adult human body?

15. Name the three largest provinces and/or autonomous regions in China in terms of land size. Order doesn't matter.

16. Name three of the four sitting US presidents to be assassinated.

17. In what industry did the bin Laden family make its fortune in Saudi Arabia?

18. Which country has the largest AIDS population?

19. The oldest certified individual animal in recorded history was named Tui Malila. The animal was born in 1777 and died in 1965. What kind of animal was it?

20. In what year was China's one-child policy implemented?

21. What does the acronym "DVD" stand for?

22. On The Simpsons, what country is Groundskeeper Willy from?

23. What is the smallest planet in our solar system?

24. What is the deepest fresh water lake in the world?

25. Which prolific rock musician created the albums Joe's Garage, Sheik Yerbouti, and Wacka Jawaka in the 1970s?

26. In what year was the United Nations formed?

27. Which philosopher famously wrote, "I think, therefore I am?"

28. Which Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novel is based on the Joad family during the Great Depression?

29. July 20th of this year marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first manned-mission to the moon. Who was the first astronaut to exit the ship and walk on the moon?

30. In the poker game Texas Hold 'Em, what is the strongest starting hand?

Answers in the comments section.

Replacing the Old With the New

The changing of the guard in the world economy is easily seen on the 2009 Fortune 500 list.

From AFP:

Image from China Daily

WASHINGTON (AFP)--The number of U.S. businesses featured in the annual Fortune 500 list of top global companies fell to lowest level ever, the business magazine said, while more Chinese entries appeared than ever before.

Signaling the effects of the devastating financial crisis on the U.S. economy, a non-U.S. firm topped the list for the first time in over a decade, with Anglo- Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) coming in first.

The company brought in $15 billion more in sales than second-place oil rival Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) of the U.S.

China's fortunes rose across the board, with a Chinese company - oil giant Sinopec, or China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP) - appearing in the top 10 for the first time, the magazine reported.

Sinopec supplies about 80% of China's fuel.

Overall, China had an unprecedented total of 37 companies featured on the list, with nine new entries and the others climbing in the rankings.

Read On

This is no surprise. It is interesting to see this list of the top companies in the world on paper though. It's also incredible to think that as recently as the year 2000, General Motors was number one on this famous yearly list. But seeing that the company is still ranked number six makes me think that these rankings (based on gross revenues) don't really give a person a full picture of what is really going on in the business world. The list is still interesting to see nonetheless, I suppose.

Seeing all the Chinese companies on this list surely shows that the economy is moving and shaking and creating revenue. Seemingly unable to make a news post without pointing out bank lending (I know, I know), I have to wonder what's behind those moves and shakes though.

From Bloomberg:

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- China’s new lending surged almost fivefold in June from a year earlier, increasing concern that attempts to revive the world’s third-largest economy will lead to bad debts and asset bubbles.

New loans last month totaled 1.53 trillion yuan ($224 billion), the central bank said on its Web site today. First- half lending rose to a record 7.37 trillion yuan, more than three times the level in the same period a year earlier. The June number is a preliminary calculation, the central bank said.

Chinese banks have now extended 47 percent more loans this year than the central bank’s minimum target for 2009, after the government eased lending restrictions to counter an export collapse. The benchmark stock index rose 69 percent this year and property prices rebounded, while the banking regulator said yesterday that credit growth poses a risk to financial stability.

“There can be no question that China has now moved into dangerously over-stimulatory territory,” said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong. “The quantity of lending has taken undeniable precedence over the quality of lending and that policy now needs to be reversed.”

Read On

The article goes on to say that China is, in fact, concerned about this trend and that it is trying to encourage banks to buy bonds as opposed to lending more money. We'll see how that goes once things, inevitably at that time, slow down.

My recommendation: If you're with a Chinese business that has a short-term cash-flow problem, get to a bank now because the come-as-you-go days of super-happy-fun lending are (supposedly) coming to an end!

Life

My life is pretty hectic right now.

Am laying the groundwork for a Chinese celebration of pending marriage and a legal wedding in America. And I'm trying to figure out how the hell Qian and I are going to financially survive the next few weeks in addition to trying to streamline into the American workforce. It's going to be rough.

But in the end, I'm confident things life be OK for us.

That can't be said for everyone in the world right now though...

Forging Ahead

In an attempt at getting back into news blogging, I searched through Google News for China articles today. There's a lot going on here in the Middle Kingdom. I'm going to try to highlight a few of the pieces I found most interesting.

First, on the changing role of China's currency from The Financial Times:

Image from Daylife.com

China has taken another step towards internationalizing its currency and reducing reliance on the US dollar with the announcement of new rules to allow select companies to invoice and settle trade transactions in renminbi.

The regulations released by the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, will allow approved companies to settle transactions through financial institutions in Shanghai and other cities in southern China.

Offshore, the trial scheme will allow transactions to be settled in renminbi in Hong Kong and Macao, the two self-governing territories on China's southern borders, and later in a limited fashion in south-east Asia as well.

Importers and exporters will be able to place orders with authorised Chinese companies, and settle payment for them, in renminbi.

Although it has no short-term implications for the full convertibility of the renminbi, the announcement adds to the volley of political signals Beijing has sent recently over its dissatisfaction with the US dollar.

"To many minds in China the US dollar's time is almost up, the eurozone suffers from political paralysis and a too-conservative central bank, while two decades of economic stagnation and a shrinking population do the yen no favours," said Stephen Green, of Standard Chartered, in Shanghai.

"For them, the renminbi is an obvious, and imminent, replacement."

Far from being a replacement for the dollar as a freely-traded reserve currency, the move has been justified by the PBoC initially as assisting exporters buffeted by the greenback's fluctuating value.

Read On

Until now, China's yuan/RMB has not been an international currency. So, as I understand it, the currency is only capable of being used in the People's Republic of China.

I just did a bit of searching on why this has been the case. I couldn't find much except from this Wikipedia article on the Chinese RMB:

The second series of renminbi banknotes was introduced in 1955. During the era of the command economy, the value of the renminbi was set to unrealistic values in exchange with western currency and severe currency exchange rules were put in place. With the opening of the mainland Chinese economy in 1978, a dual-track currency system was instituted, with renminbi usable only domestically, and with foreigners forced to use foreign exchange certificates. The unrealistic levels at which exchange rates were pegged led to a strong black market in currency transactions.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the PRC worked to make the RMB more convertible. Through the use of swap centres, the exchange rate was brought to realistic levels and the dual track currency system was abolished.

The renminbi is convertible on current accounts but not capital accounts. The ultimate goal has been to make the RMB fully convertible. However, partly in response to the Asian financial crisis in 1998, the PRC has been concerned that the mainland Chinese financial system would not be able to handle the potential rapid cross-border movements of hot money, and as a result, as of 2007, the currency trades within a narrow band specified by the Chinese central government.

China is seeing the present-day as the time when it can life its controls on the yuan and begin implementing it as an international currency. Although the role of the Chinese yuan is changing, China says that the country is still fully committed to the US dollar and that the internationalization of the yuan will not challenge the US dollar as a world reserve currency in the near future.

Regardless of exactly how the yuan develops internationally, these steps from China towards getting the yuan out on the international market are a significant event.

The second article, from a few days ago in The New York Times, is about China's investment into oil in Iraq:

Image from Arabianoilandgas.com

HONG KONG — Oil companies from China, the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing consumer of oil, bid aggressively on Tuesday as Iraq began auctioning licenses in six large oil fields.

A partnership of BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation, or C.N.P.C., won the first contract awarded, in the latest indication of Chinese interest in Iraq, a country that has until recently seemed to be firmly in the American sphere of influence for natural resources.

...

Few Americans or Iraqis may have expected China to emerge as one of the winners in Iraqi oil, particularly after six years of war. But signs of stability in Iraq this year, and a planned American military pullout from Iraqi cities on Tuesday, happened to coincide with an aggressive Chinese push to buy or develop overseas oil fields.

The Chinese companies “have been interested in Iraq,” said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource policies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “They were interested in Iraq before the war, and now that things have improved somewhat there, it’s on their agenda.”

Some experts contend that the West should not be concerned about a substantial Chinese presence in Iraqi oil fields, because it gives China greater stake in improving stability in the region.

“If you want China to be a responsible stakeholder in the world, you need to let China buy stakes in the world,” said Mark P. Thirlwell, the program director for international economics at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, during a speech in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Read On

It's great to know that the 4,323 US soldiers killed in Iraq so far and thousands upon thousands wounded have expanded the universe of Chinese oil resources.

And third, from The International Business Times on China's stock market:

Image from Daylife.com

A nice little bubble is simmering away in China: not the vaunted stimulus-induced recovery, but the country's stockmarket which is becoming increasingly heated.

Chinese shares closed higher again on Friday, a phrase that has become all too monotonous in recent months as the market has soared.

Chinese shares have now jumped 65% since the beginning of this year.

Media reports suggest that tens of billions of dollars in bank loans are riding in the market; stimulus money that is being parked to earn big profits by banks and other companies before it's spent.

...

The surge in China has all the appearances of an emerging bubble, especially with reports in the local media of high prices being paid for property in Beijing and some other major coastal cities.

Read On

In a taxi last week in Beijing, Qian had a conversation with the driver that I could kind of follow along with. She was asking him about real estate prices. The driver told her that the prices are continuing to go higher and higher in Beijing.

I couldn't believe this.

One of the most striking things to me about Beijing is the endless skyline of twenty-or-so floor apartment blocks. When coming back from the Great Wall with our friends, I asked, "Are we getting into Beijing now?" Our friend who lives in Beijing responded, "No, not yet. There aren't any high-rise apartments around us. That's when you know you're starting to get into Beijing."

My friend, Elliot, had a good point. The sprawl that surrounds Beijing is vast. And the amazing thing is the ubiquitous scene of cranes putting up new apartment buildings.

I understand that Beijing is a massive city of about thirteen million people and those people all have to live somewhere. But it seemed to me, from being in the city, that the apartment situation is getting a bit insane.

To hear that China's stock market surge is, at least partly, being fueled by high real estate prices is concerning to me. I don't see how real estate prices can continue to rise when there are already so many apartment and so many more are going up and the world is mired in a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis.

I've talked before about Beijing's unfathomable commercial real estate glut.

This post was fun. Hopefully I can continue to find time to make posts like these.

On America's Birthday: 干杯！

As America celebrates its 233rd birthday, I raise it a glass and give it a big 干杯(ganbei) of 白酒(Baijiu)！

Explanation?

From The Financial Times

Image from 21food.cn

Beijingers call the hot and sticky months of July and August the "sauna" season. On muggy summer evenings, sensible locals sweat it out in the capital's old lanes with sticks of fatty lamb kebab and cold bottles of Yanjing beer.

But real men roll up their T-shirts under their armpits, ditch the pansy lager, and instead glug down the local firewater known as baijiu - a potent mash of sorghum, rice, unhusked barley and other grains.

For foreign businessmen forced to drink the stuff at countless banquets, baijiu provides an infamous challenge for the unconditioned palate. But this white spirit - generally 40 to 60 per cent alcohol by volume - is a mainstay of Chinese culture, first popularised during the Xia dynasty 4,000 years ago.

Baijiu, the world's largest spirits category by volume, traditionally dominated the domestic booze market. But in recent years, sales volumes of China's national liquor declined as beer, a foreign upstart, gulped up market share.

Now baijiu-makers are fighting back with a proliferation of new, luxury varieties designed to appeal to the country's growing band of big spenders. Revenues are shooting up at major distilleries and the spirit is giving beer a run for its money.

Read On

Anyone who's been to a Chinese banquet knows the culture of baijiu. The Chinese are serious about this liquor.

My first experience with baijiu in China was a bad one. The people I was drinking with told me, "Have some Chinese wine!" Thinking that I'd be drinking something in the same vain as "wine," I was all for it. After my first glass was poured and the glasses around the table were raised, I didn't even bother smelling the fluid inside the small shot glass. As the "firewater" hit my mouth and throat, I nearly gagged.

"This is wine?!" I remember yelling as I was short of breath after my drink.

The Chinese around the table all laughed and immediately poured me another glass.

I don't need to get into the details of what ensued. You can easily guess. Let's just say the next day I had one of the worst hangovers of my life.

For the next couple years I was staunchly opposed to baijiu. Whenever I was at a wedding or event where people were drinking the stuff, I'd take a drink or two out of politeness but rarely ever imbibed any more than that.

My attitude changed towards baijiu changed last fall when my friend from America, Andy, came to visit me in Xi'an though. On our way out to travel out in Gansu, Andy and I bought a bottle to drink on the train. We then ended up having an absolutely excellent drunken time. A week or two later, we drank some more baijiu at the north peak of Hua Shan when we stayed at a guesthouse there. Another truly great experience.

So since those positive instances last fall, I'm totally fine with drinking baijiu. I can't say I do it that often, but when the occasion arises, whether it be a wedding or a house party, I'm happy to participate.

To America on its best holiday of the year, 干杯 and have a great day!

After 403 Days...

Qian and I arrived back in Xi'an today after an incredible week in Beijing. Despite my crotchetiness with the young backpackers at our hostel, the four days we spent in Beijing were delightful.

The highlight of the trip for me was renting an electric-powered motor boat and taking that out on Houhai with our friends Richard and Ling. We got into the boat at sunset and cruised out on the water as Houhai and the bars surrounding the lake went abuzz with the darkness. A surreal experience.

Other highlights included watching Qian see Tiananmen Square for the first time (I'll post some goofy pictures of her there in the coming days), the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall at Jinshanling and Simatai, hanging out with a number of different friends we know in Beijing, and having a cup of coffee with probably one of, if not the best, China blogger on the internet.

As great as our few days in Beijing were, the biggest news for me at the moment is the news Qian and I received this morning.

When Qian and I got back to Xi'an a few hours ago, we checked her email. Yesterday we'd sent an email to Guangzhou asking about the status of her visa to America.

Well, today the consulate in Guangzhou responded that they'd received all of the documents they needed, had reviewed our case, and have given approval to Qian for a visa to the States! Wooooohooooo!!!!!!!!!! The Land of the Free (and adjustable rate mortgages), here we come!!!

The final step will be going back to Guangzhou again in the coming weeks (Ramesh, Qian and I would love to buy you dinner) to get the visa in Qian's passport. We then will have a party for us here in Xi'an (an event with bells and whistles celebrating our upcoming marriage, but without an actual marriage certificate or anything official... we need to still be unmarried upon entry to the States) and then going to America.

Today, July 3rd, 2009, is a good day. We sent in our first application for Qian's visa to the States on May 26, 2008. So only 403 days after initially sending in information to the United States Customs and Immigration Services, we've received confirmation that Qian can come to America on a fiancee visa.

Someday in the future, I'm going to give a detailed plan for how to get through this process. We made a few mistakes and it cost us a significant amount of time. I'll try to type up something clear and simple explaining how one should go about this K1 visa process.

Until I do that, I'm going to enjoy life as much as possible here in Xi'an, wrap up all of the loose ends that I'll need to after being in China for more than three and a half years, and Qian and I are going to do our best to prepare for the insanity that will be getting married and going to the US in the next couple of months.