Oh, dear friends, it was amazing. On Saturday night we went to a reggae “festival” (it was really just one band, and then some DJ setup), and did I mention it was amazing?

I’d listened to reggae before only occasionally, and I think mostly on crappy laptop speakers, and never really was into it. I think that is about to change.

The band – Long Shen Dao, “The Way of The Gods” – is 7 Chinese dudes (three of them with dreads – badass), the instruments as such: two electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, keyboards, saxophone, and a traditional Chinese string instrument – I think it was a guzheng. The way they blended all of it together was beautiful and, slightly surprisingly, entirely natural. The guzheng gave their music a very unique sound that managed to seamlessly blend traditional Chinese music and reggae. During one song, one of the guys rapped into it, and this too blended very well with everything else. It was magical, mon. They were great performers as well, gave it their all and the small crowd loved it. I would guess reggae is not particularly popular in China; about half the crowd were foreigners (this meant that this time around I would not be cool just for being white, like in a couple of the other places we’ve gone). Here is a bit of sad news, though: they’re pretty new and don’t even have a CD yet. Bloody hell, how they managed to sound that good so quickly I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that these guys will make it big. I will follow them online.

Their concert got the groove on, but what happened after was also very cool. This was the DJ set outside, with a smallish grassy area as the dance floor. I gradually came to an understanding about reggae that surprised me, since I’d never felt this way when I listened to reggae on my computer. As far as I can tell, reggae is completely about total immersion and enjoyment of the music – which, one could argue, is what music should be about in the first place – much more than any other type of music. Not rock ‘n roll, which I love, not classical music, not trance, only blues guitar solos have come close to me. This is influenced by my tastes of course – maybe it’s what all music is, and different people feel it towards different genres. But I’ve never seen it so clearly. When you stop and look at the individual people dancing, maybe take a step back, it’s probably going to look like an amusing little tip-toeing moron awkwardly trying to “feel it”. But you probably won’t stop and look like this, because you’ll be doing the same exact thing, thinking about nothing but the music. This I felt at least until I realized that it can be kicked up a notch – and this I realized when I saw a guy dancing, eyes closed most of the time, by the side of the crowd all by himself, in a circle three meters in diameter. And boy, was he using all of it. He was rocking out like I’ve never seen before. Dancing to reggae has no form, no style, no rules. It needs none. All it needs is the music, and the feeling that comes with it. It’s beautiful. It’s natural, it’s soul, it’s primordial, it’s oblivious; it’s what dancing should be. You could see in the smiles – the smiles of the dude from Turkey, the dude from Australia, the girl from Austria, the dude from Italy, the girl from New Mexico, the dude from South America, the dude from the Czech Republic, the forty-year-old Chinese lady, the dude from Belgium. Oh, it was great.

To take a step back, maybe it had to do with the setting; maybe if that Chinese band wasn’t so good, or the people around so chill, it would have been nothing like what it was. But that’s what it was, and that’s all that matters for now, isn’t it?

I will post some of the pictures taken with Jacob’s camera when I get them from him (I didn’t want to lug around my DSLR at a festival..).

I’d looked at the Forbidden City on a map and on Google Earth before, but the size of it still blew me away. The walls are so much higher and thicker than I thought they’d be, and the whole city just keeps going and going and going… I thought that it was really just an extended residence for the emperor, but now it seems like you really could fit a whole city in there.

The Summer Palace I actually enjoyed more than the Forbidden City. It feels much more tranquil (packed with tourists as it is), and there is obviously a lot of vegetation everywhere, which is nice. There are lots of little paths and corners where one can wander off and away from the crowds. The temples are awe-inspiring.

I want to point out one thing about the photos…on the pictures where the sky looks very blank and whitish and like it might be overexposed…it isn’t. That’s what it looks like.

Yesterday we met a Mongolian. He is from inner Mongolia, which is a part of PRC.

Mongolians feel very bitter towards the Chinese as well as the Russians (he got very excited when I told him that Czech people in general also are not too fond of Russians), and it seems that they have reason to. Some bars here in China even refuse to serve people from Mongolia. Beijing as a city was relatively unimportant until Kublai Khan made it his capital and greatly built it up. Speaking about Kublai Khan – there was (understandably) a melancholic air about him when he talked about what has happened to Mongolia since those days. Genghis Khan was the greatest man who ever lived, says he.

He learned English on his own, helped in part by a girl from New Jersey he met over – and only over – Skype. He is in Beijing studying journalism, which is obviously tough. I briefly mentioned Tibet, but of course this conversation could go nowhere – he only told us with a very serious face how dangerous it was for him to say anything about it. Tough to be a journalist. He likes America a lot; one day he says he will go there.

Before we went our separate ways, we wrote “communism” on a piece of paper and then watched as it went up in flames.

- 克勤

I uploaded a couple more pictures, taken throughout the first week. I expect I’ll be taking a lot more this weekend when we do some touristy things.

The Klog is still in beta, and a lot of things are unfinished / not working properly, and this will probably not change soon. Just thought you should know.

Today the air got worse again; I couldn’t tell where in the sky the sun was. Poor athletes.

- 克勤

Well hello, here’s some words.
We’re settling in; everything is starting to seem normal. One thing that sometimes still strikes me as odd is the large number of uniformed people – police, olympic volunteers, paramilitary, security – around. Their numbers might be inflated around here – we live about two miles away from the Olympic Village. The marathon route leads about 50 meters from the building we’re staying in. Should be sweet. One downside of the Olympics taking place during our visit is that the government is temporarily shutting down a number of things which are fun to do for people such as myself, but aren’t necessarily precisely the way the officials want China to appear. Und das ist schade.

We’re in lab most of the day during weekdays, so there’s not that much to report. We’ve gone about exploring Beijing a little by evening and night, but most sites close pretty early – by six or thereabouts – so there’s not that much to do. We saw some local rock bands play a couple of nights ago; one of them was REALLY good. Yesterday, we met a bunch foreign students studying at Beijing University – from a couple places in the US, Spain, Colombia (he said some very mean things about the people who made Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the way they made Bogota look in that movie), and Italy. A dude from Texas was a rugger – we sang some rugby songs, loud enough for the whole pub to focus in our general very specific direction. Rugby is cool.

The air took a slight turn for the worse yesterday and is now an infinite sea of single shade gray, about #D3D3D3. But I played football (soccer) with a couple Chinese fellas yesterday for a little while and the air didn’t really seem to bother me.

Here’s something I didn’t see coming: beer might just be as popular here as in the Czech Republic, which to me is a shocka. Most people have it for lunch and dinner, and maybe in between, too. In Dr. Tan’s words, “Drink beer – anytime, anywhere.” By the way, the beer is pretty good, too. Yanjing’s the most popular brand in Beijing.

Random: give Ventilator Blues from the philosopher Jagger and The Rolling Stones a listen. That’s all folks! Tsai chen

-克勤

That’s right, I have a Chinese name, 克勤. It was chosen for me, and it’s fairly official – it’s used to identify me on a number of Tsinghua documents. It is a good name.

We arrived in Beijing yesterday, 5 am local time. First things first: the airport is cool. Very cool. The air is not as bad as I thought it would be, right on par with Riverside. Then again, the traffic, industry, and other regulations are already in effect for the olympics. Everything is geared for the Olympics – there are banners everywhere, volunteers eager to help tourists, and tv is full of them, too. It’s gonna be big.

Here are some random observations and first impressions, jotted down in no eloquent form:

The traffic is crazy, maybe awesome, too. Cars and other motor vehicles hardly yield to anyone – a bus honks and drives through a crowd of people trying to cross the street while the “walk” sign is on. This happens even when the light is red and cars are trying to turn right. Holy shit. Bikes gotta watch out for cars and other vehicles, but don’t really care about pedestrians. Intersections are awesome little chaos, with loads of honking. There’s lots of cars, and lots of bikes, and lots of pedestrians, and it gets intense.

I really like the way people mix in Tsinghua, particularly in the smaller, older streets. There people old and young mingle with each other in cars, bikes and on foot. It has a very lively feel, and sort of makes a person want to belong. Some of the old facilities do not look dissimilar to that shack that was next to our Prague house back in the day, and people still live in them. Quite a contrast to the other things you can see. All of China is this way, really.

In the rooms we only get hot water at specified time intervals, apparently deemed appropriate.

Also, from the regulations on accommodation: “Decorating…or changing the room structure and function is forbidden”.

Tech shopping is holy shit. Went to the 6 story floor market – big stories, too – and there’s loads of little booths inside, each bursting with more sales people than customers. The sales people try aggressively to grab your attention – guiding your way to the store when they’re in your way, or clapping their hands when you’re not looking at them just to get your attention. And once you come inside, half the store storms you, eager to answer any question you might possibly have, and randomly throwing in discounts when it seems like you’re serious but hesitating. I didn’t have my camera because it looked like it was about to rain and we biked over there, but I will try to go back with pictures. I think I’m going to buy a webcam; they’re dirt cheap and haggling looks fun.

Pictures to follow…eventually.

- 克勤

In like an hour. Sweet.