Huolong's

I moved my blog to http://ChangGuohua.com/e

2007-06-23T13:13:00.001+08:00

Welcome!

I'm now at http://ChangGuohua.com/e

Beijing Botanical Gardens

2007-05-25T21:04:00.000+08:00

Here comes a singing rock

2007-05-24T21:14:00.000+08:00

Another video I shot from yesterday's day-trip to Xiang Shan (Fragrance Hills).

By the way, does it sound all right to call the singing thing a rock? What about calling it about a stone? I checked a dictionary, but got no hints.

Photos of my day-trip to Xiang Shan

2007-05-15T21:09:00.000+08:00

[URL=http://picasaweb.google.com/guohua.chang/AMondayDayTripToXiangShanFragranceHills]Here are more photos from the trip...[/URL]

2007-05-04T21:15:00.000+08:00

Inconsiderate people

It never seems to occur to them that they should consider people or things other than themselves. They don't think it a big deal smoking near others, standing in the way of others who have to get off a bus or overtake them on the road, leaving food wastes in the sink even though they are sure the wastes cannot pass through the drain, let lights or other electrical devices on even though they don't need so, or worse, never wanting to learn to be considerate......... I'm not implying that I can be considerate every time and on every occasion. But, at least, I want to be considerate and am ready to learn what I can do to be more considerate.

Animal welfare activists and vegetarians who carry things too far.

Unless humans award citizenships to animals and allow them to form states, elect their leaders and build armies to defend their interests against human encroachment, the animal welfare activists can rest assured that humans will remain on top of the food chain and will not treat animals as equals.

Vegetarians, in my view, should die a hungry death because of the absence of "right" food. The animals, fishes, birds, snails, and others that produce meat for humans to consume as foodstuffs are no less sacred and respectable life forms than rice, maize, barley, potato, apples, melons, wheat and other plants that form the "vegetarian" diet. It then follows that vegetarians will have nothing to eat. Maybe they can rightly eat stones and coals. For that matter, stones also have the right to remain to be stones and coals might be a fossilized life form.

People who are not Chinese may have difficulty understanding the following two peeves of mine:
Grown-ups who sponge off their old parents for jobs, spouses, and houses.

If their parents can well afford all these things, it's quite OK they freeload off their parents. But, the problem is that lots of Chinese grown-ups take it for granted that their parents should give up everything they have for the offspring's expensive, luxurious welfare. They do so as if their parents owe it to them.

People who say "China occupied Tibet in 1951", "Taiwan should be independent of China" or things like that.

China's ownership of Tibet dates back to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Tibet was an administrative region of the Republic of China (1912-1949) that had been created out of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) which ruled Tibet as a province. Today, Tibet is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China.

As shown by both the Constitutions of the Republic of China under which the politics runs on Taiwan and that of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan is not a separate identity outside of China as defined by the two Constitutions. The very reason for the existence of the surviving ROC on the island, a leftover from a technically unfinished Chinese civil war, is that Beijing has elected NOT to dismantle it after it assumed starting from 1949 the exclusive role of exercising sovereignty over the whole of China including Taiwan. To read more about my views on Taiwan, please visit http://surefire.cn/atig .

I wrote this entry in response to Here comes my six pet peeves in which solid copper "tagged" me to write my own peeves. I came up with four of them.

Coriander in a flowerpot

2007-03-28T20:31:00.001+08:00

More photos to come...

By titling this post "coriander in a flowerpot" and uploading the above photos, I don't mean that I will only write about the spicy plant I like very much as garnish and vegetables eaten raw. Lots of thoughts are crowding on me now. And I don't know where I can begin to write about them.

First, the house. By "house", I mean the place that houses my home and that I can call my own. I'd like to guess that the houses in China are the most expensive property around the world. Take residential houses in Beijing for example. Even if you buy one of them, it's difficult for you to call it your own, because what you actually buy is the ownership of the house and the "right" to use the piece of land above which the house is located. This means that you do not buy the ownership of the land below your new acquisition.

Chinese laws say that land is owned by the State and you pay rent to have your house built over the piece of the land. For residential purposes, the land above which your house exists is rented (perhaps, jointly with others) to you in a 70-year lease agreement. And it will be the job of the State to decide whether or not you can have your lease renewed. When this lease expires and you fail to have the lease renewed, the State has the right to take your house away, for free.

This is only a small part of the story. Considering the short history of the People's Republic (1949- ), no one have actually seen houses build after the founding of this State standing in a place for 70 years. As it is, most of them are dismantled to make space for new property projects before they live to be that old. So, these questions crop up in my mind. What if the house you buy is torn down, say, in 40 years from now? Will you be compensated for the rent you've paid to use the piece of land in the 70-year lease agreement? If yes, how much? I didn't check the newly passed Property Law at the recently concluded National People's Congress and don't know if the law provides answers to my questions.

Again, the above is only a small part of the whole story. In Beijing, even if you don't buy the land that comes with your house, the money you pay to own your house is not any less than the amount another guy, who works and earns in a comparable foreign city where land can be privately owned, would pay for a house that comes with the ownership of the piece of land above which it exists. And, of course, I'm comparing you and the other house buyer in the foreign city in terms of income/property price ratios.

Second, ... ...

I will pick up where I leave off when I feel like it. Please wait, if I may say so.

Coriander in a flowerpot (2)

2007-03-18T22:05:00.000+08:00

More photos to come...

Now let me continue with my newly found seven-year's itch I feel about my work. Last night, it suddenly dawned on me that I'd been working as translator for seven years. As I write this post, I also recall that I kept my last job for three years. I now realize they are the legendary three-year and seven-year itches though they are mostly associated with marriage in my reading. Perhaps, the itches might apply in a much wider area than marriage. As time goes on, people are becoming more and more discontented with themselves and everything and everyone around them. Then, they at least want a break from them.

I quit my last job and that saved me from the first itch that broke out last year.

But now, in the seven-year itch, I find myself getting totally stuck between what I want to do, what I can do and what I should do. I want to be a simultaneous interpreter or do some other kind of work. But, I can now do nothing better than just translating in front of a computer screen. And I don't know what I should do to earn more than enough to cover everything.

My family needs a home. My wife and I will plan our kid in a few years. And with the kid comes the caring and schooling bills. Currently, I'm not covered by social security network and I have good reasons to worry about my pension and have to figure out how I will be able to support myself in my retirement years. My wife still studies medicine and worries about where she can get a good job. My mom and dad are sharing my dad's pension. And my wife's mom and dad are better off: they each have a pension.

Moms and dads say they don't need our support now and instead want to help us buy a home and babysit the little one. But, we want to pay for everything on our own and don't want to use their money they would otherwise use to support themselves.

I hope that I can figure everything out in the shortest possible time.

I've never seen such dense fog

2007-02-21T10:11:00.000+08:00

The best gift New Year gives to Beijing?

Look down from my aparment's window

The air-conditioner outside of my apartment's window

The apartment building opposite mine

Fireworks at midnight

2007-02-18T12:10:00.000+08:00

Photos of my wife and I back in the 1990s

2006-10-16T10:38:00.000+08:00

Taken on a picnic in the 1990s
when my wife and I attended an elementary school
in Heilongjiang province, China.

This was the photo we had taken right before our graduation from the elementary school in 1990. As you can see, the clothes of my wife and I were the same as those in the photo of the picnic. My wife and I are seen in this photo squatting on both ends of the first row. The one in yellow and the one in grey (is it?).

Complain to myself...

2006-10-14T14:38:00.000+08:00

It's mid-October now. And the room turns cold almost overnight. The run-up to the starting of heating is hard to endure just as the "run-down" after the heating is turned off each spring. I have an air-conditioner fitted in my room after all.

And considering the extra electricity costs that need to be shared by other housemates if I turn on the device since occupants in the apartment have unmetered use of utilities and share the costs per capita...

I hate myself because I tend to waste so much time doing nothing by clicking through links on the webpages or navigating nearly every "interesting" links in my Favorites. The stupid point here is that I do absolutely nothing. Anyone else have my problem?!

Hungry, now...

Tian'anmen Square at night

2006-10-03T22:46:00.000+08:00

My wife with a portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, first president of the Republic of China, in the background. (Oct. 3, 2006)

This is me with the Beijing Olympics mascots in the background. (Oct. 3, 2006)

With no specific plans for the National Day holiday, my wife and I made a foray to the Tian'anmen Square at night on Oct. 3, the third day of China's weeklong holiday.

I hadn't expected there would be so many people thronging and roaming around the Square and the place was a virtual huge night market. For what didn't those people stay away from a throng at night? For fun. But what they actually experienced might be of frustration just like my wife and I did --- there are too many people to make walks there enjoyable.

Thronging people at the Tian'anmen Square on the night (Oct. 3, 2006).

A small replica of the giant Three Gorges Dam at the Tian'anmen Square (Oct. 3, 2006).

My friend in Egypt

2006-09-25T22:06:00.000+08:00

I've known Mostafa Elmasry for around 6 years. We used to chat over Yahoo messenger when I worked in Harbin, Heilongjiang province.

I wanted to say sorry to him about me not contacting him just because I've been quite busy with life since I came to Beijing. But, being busy is always an excuse. Everybody is busy, or at least busy with doing nothing!

Things seem okay over here. Though my wife and I live in different cities: she is now in Guiyang, Guizhou province for graduate studies in medicine and I work freelance as translator in Beijing, we never feel we are not together. Good communication between us is a two-way street that keeps us connected. I've come to know that good communication is part of the recipe for keeping a happy marriage.

Read big and write small

2006-09-25T21:39:00.000+08:00

I seem to like thinking and writing big. Cut! Let me write something small.

Mmm…

Today, without notice, or without other guys in this apartment seeing that notice, my apartment building had a water outage that started after I brushed my teeth this morning. When it finally occurred to me that I hadn't washed my hair and face, I found there was no water coming out of the faucets. So, I didn't wash my face until water supply was restored around 6:00 pm. Today, for once in a blue moon, I didn't wash my hair. And, I bet it was a bad hair day for me!

Reading for knowledge, peace of mind, and more...

2006-09-03T12:05:00.000+08:00

* Like in any country, you need to have enough literary, historical, artistic and philosophical knowledge to appreciate the culture that nurtures you and the people admired in your society. I want to appreciate the cultures of the English-speaking world and their roots and origins. And I want to be admired. One old friend of mine, who used to be my colleague back in Harbin where we both worked for his brother's company, teased me: "You continue learning and studying English? You want to teach Englishmen English?". I wish I could. But, not to be mistaken. Such deeds have been accomplished by others whose native tongues are not English at all and whose books on the English language have become authoritative ones in the English-speech world. I can set my goals as ambitious as theirs. After all, as I said, or rather I quoted another person as saying, "Nothing happens unless first a dream." Who can be sure you, Chang Guohua, are not to become Guohua the Great for Something?...

* Let me now preach a little about the European culture to those with little knowledge of it. Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian elements characterize the culture, just as Confucius and Buddhism have deeply influenced the Chinese culture, though maybe to a lesser extent.

* I now know that, after reading, the term "Bible" means different things to different people. For Judaism, it is the Old Testament as known to Christians. Judaism only accepts the Old Testament as the true Bible and rejects Jesus Christ as the Son of God. But, for different denominations of Christians, it is a collection of different books or different versions or translations of them divided into the Old and New Testaments. (20050920)

* "You know what you're doing?" I have found myself facing a totally different world of cultures, histories and arts. There is too long a list of strange people, events, places, wars, styles of buildings and culture-charged passages I want to understand, appreciate and remember. I've decided that I must be a man knowing almost every facet of the cultures behind the English language. Without this knowledge, no major process can be made in my preparing to become a competent interpreter. When I opened the book that introduces me into the wonderful world of European culture, I might be as happy, pleasantly surprised as a famous man when he for the first time came across the ancient Greek mythology.

* Renaissance is a "rebirth of classical learning and knowldge through the rediscovery of ancient texts and also a rebirth of European culture in general". ( Wikipedia.org) The term Renaissance (文艺复兴) seems to me a happy, historical period in the West during which a large number of artists (Leonardo da Vinci, etc.), buildings of different styles (Gothic, etc.), paintings, sculptures, music and others combined to create a great age that built up a great force leading to the Industrial Revolution. In my mind's eye, the Renaissance was the turning point when the West started to overtake China. I was very sad to find in my reading no Chinese thinkers, philosophers, scientists or artisans that were matches on their Western counterparts when the West was doing their "Renaissance". Renaissance refers to the period between 15th and the mid 17th century in Europe and roughly corresponds to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in China. The Chinese people were busy trying to fossilate their long-accustomed feudalism glory and refused to be jolted by a rude awakening from their pipe dream of prosperity and fool's paradise-like pride. China was actually rotting inside with its outside appearance buoyed up only by its accumulation of the past, including tradition, wealth, knowledge, ideology, and burden of thousands of years, instead of innovations, inventions, and discoveries that might grow out of the past.

Now, I'd like to give you some more information you might need to make you updated on the idea of Renaissance. This term is now often replaced by "Early Modern". Renaisssance, like the Bible, means different cultural movements that started "at different places at different times". In addition, the period did not seem so happy to all the contemporary people, especially the poor, who even felt their Renaissance life worsened, compared to the dark days of the Middle Ages. ( Wikipedia.org) (20050925)

* I believe I have chosen the right way to grow to be an interpreter or a simultaneous interpreter. First, establish a strong foundation on which I can build an empire of whatsoever knowledge and skills I need. Second, build this empire with whatsoever I can find and need.

* Here is what I want to tell myself: Set a goal and work towards it, and you will achieve it. Set another and approach it in the same way, and you will achieve it, too. WORK, DO NOT WAIT FOR TIME. (20051112)

*Good homework is what I need now. I know this might sound a little strange or disappointing after having spent so much time working and studying for a goal I've always failed to define. Yes, this is in fact what I've always wanted to do---good homework that is purely a phase I must go through before anything else. Two or three years are not long. Just look back at how many years I've been in Harbin (2 years and 9 months) and in Beijing (3 years and 7 months). And consider all my failed New Year resolutions or attempts to finish the Collins, a wonderful source of information on the English language.

I also bought dozens of Chinese classics, all in paperback. These perfumed books are churned out by a Jilin province-based publisher and feature, unfortunately, proofreading and editing under par. I've always understood the importance of a good publisher in producing quality books. This is easy to figure out: Sony's cameras are better than Aigo's, and they are all cameras though under different names. Nonetheless, I'm reading one of them, a collection of Bai Juyi's poetry, and have finished a collection of Su Dongpo's works. The books still have their own values and serve as a source of literary information.

I placed an order of another Longman dictionary to Joyo.com. The book offers a great source of information that is encyclopedic up to a point, which is different from the Collins. And I want to finish it, too. (20060617)

*I know what my problem is. I don't have the means by which to communicate in the language with native speakers: I don't know what to say when I'm supposed to say something. For example, I don't know how to decline an invitation to lunch at lunchtime, and have no small talk and always get right down to business in phone conversations. I even deliberately avoid conversations with a British man also working for the newspaper. My philosophy here seems to be a pursuit of perfectionism: if I don't know how I can sound sociable in these situations where pleseantries are exchanged, I don't even bother about them.

It is a painful realization that I have inadequate communications skills when I speak English. In the Chinese context I'd be even thought of as talking too much sometimes.

Reading can help me again. Now I'm planning to read a dictionary of spoken English. That might be a good start.

Amway and I

2006-08-27T12:07:00.000+08:00

I met a couple the other day when they were referred to me by a friend of mine for translating a letter and a certificate to be presented to the French Embassy for visa application. The couple are Amway's Executive Diamond distributors. One of my former colleagues later told me that Anway's Diamond distributors hold high positions and earn a lot without having to work. It didn't came to me as a surprise when the couple later approached me by inviting my wife and me to their home for a "simple meal". I thought they had their own ax to grind. But, I nonetheless accepted their invitation because the meeting might give me something inspiring.

After a meal prepared by his family's cook, Chen, the husband, introduced my wife, me and the friend to how Anway operates to benefit its members, or Independent Business Owners (IBO) in Amway's parlance.

I was moved by his successful presentation. Before reading what its critics say about Amway and other multi-level marketing (MLM) companies, I almost thought Anmay would provide me with an opportunity to create "my own business" that benefits my "customers" and myself. I was disillusioned to find that higher-rank Amway distributors earn most of their incomes by providing books, tapes, and other "tools" to their "downlines" and maybe by conducting brainwashing "seminars" where existing and potential IBOs gather religiously. All these are paid for by the distributors' "downlines". I hate this. I don't want to take advantage of my friends and Anway reminds me of pyramid selling.

"Amway (and its online incarnation, Quixtar) have been controversial for years because of allegations that these companies are pyramid schemes. Critics claim that most of the products sold by Amway are to the Independent Business Owners (IBOs) themselves for personal consumption rather than to retail consumers who aren't enrolled as IBOs. Buying products from Amway or Quixtar gives IBOs points and they are paid back on the number of points that they generate from personal consumption. It is claimed to be a business opportunity and hence an existing IBO can help others to get an IBO number and divert their buying habit from other stores to Amway or Quixtar. Thus the business grows as a greater number of people join the group. The share of profit is based on the leverage that an IBO has.

Typically, IBOs spend a large amount of money on tapes, books, and seminars (known as "tools" in AMO parlance) which are ostensibly "required" to "hone the business skills of the IBOs". These are not provided by Amway itself but organizations often described as Amway Motivational Organizations (AMO) in general run by people in the higher ranks of the organization. Claims regarding the support material range from "can be of help to an IBO " to "are absolutely required" to "build a big business". However, undercover investigations like one done by MSNBC Dateline in April 2003 suggest that most of the money being earned by these successful individuals was coming from the hidden "tools" business rather than through selling the company products. Critics also claim that the materials are specifically geared towards encouraging IBOs to continue working for a non-economic return, rather than improving their actual business skills.

Dexter Yager's organization, the International Dreambuilders' Association/Digital Alliance (usually simply referred to by the abbreviation IDA) is arguably the largest and best-known of the AMOs, and is probably the one most commonly associated with Amway. "

(Source: Wikipedia.org as quoted at Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/amway, accessed on August 26, 2006)

P.S. Recently, I've been thinking about what I should and could do to make a better life for my family...

Global Competitiveness-Getting the U.S. back on Track

2004-12-05T13:08:00.000+08:00

*This is my book report for reading Global Competitiveness-Getting the U.S. back on Track.

*This is a book written by some worrying people in the late 1980s about the seemingly likely decline of the United States. They were afraid that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge out to its international competitors, such as Japan and Germany. (Of course, no China-relating issues were mentioned in the first chapter depicting those days when Japan was the star performer, except the fact that China was one of the biggest exporters of immigrants to the U.S.) In the first chapter, author Richard D. Lamm insisted that everything in the U.S. ranging from its legal system to its political system, tax system, and even Americans' "hubris" be changed to regain the U.S. dominance over its competitors. The United States needs a "generation" to conduct institutional before it can lead in the pack again, he declared.

Well, it sounds quite strange to me. What I knew was that in the 1990s the United States led a revolution called Information Technology that saw a nearly decade of strong economic growth in the U.S. It did not, as Lamm believed, take a whole generation for the country to lead the world again.

The book was published in 1988 and probably had been in the making during the 1980s. Things happened beyond his wildest dreams almost in the wake of the book's publication. In the 1990s, things tipped in favor of the U.S. productivity and economy though its institutions or problems remained there, which he clamored to change or correct.

What on earth happened after the publication of Global Competitiveness-Getting the U.S. back on Track? The awfully sounding predictions, having a doomsday-of-the-U.S. air to them, made in the book proved upside down. I will read other books to find it out. But, as the first step, let me see what about the U.S. made Lamms squirm so uneasily in their chairs in the whole 1980s.

(Considering the upside down predictions, I have one more point to add, that is, predictions are no more than predictions. They just charter future changes based on current changes. They are all about changes. So, if predictions go awry, I'm amused, instead of amazed. They also remind me of the recent "Peaceful Rise of China". Will it last? Is it something we can take for granted? What can hinder it, stop it, or even reverse it?)

Which one is more difficult to learn, English or Chinese?

2003-11-13T13:08:00.000+08:00

Of course, they are two greatest languages in the world. One exerts the most powerful synchronic influence over the face of the Planet. The other, on the contrary, is the strongest diachronic language that has been weaving together the history of a single largest country in population and later its much smaller neighbors since its first emperor froze the writing system of the language for the first time when the country proper came into being in A.D. 221.

Which one is more difficult for a foreign learner to learn to speak and write? I believe it is Chinese. Someone has commented that one needs three months to learn good English, three years to master French and at least thirty years to be proficient in German. As I see it, he has to double his efforts he has put in tackling German to speak and write good Chinese, and those foreigners who manage to speak and write good Chinese must be geniuses.

Does this sound a little too exaggerated? I believe not.

For one thing, most of native Chinese speakers (e.g. me) find it hard to write things in decent Chinese because they have long been isolated from the traditionally accepted and correct way of writing and do not know what rules to follow in their writing. When it comes to foreigners learning Chinese, they have to find decently and elegantly written Chinese texts and use them as examples. In everyday life in China, they may find that good Chinese writings are in short supply. It seems to me that the correct, smooth and natural tradition of writing Chinese was broken somewhere (during the Great Cultural Revolution?) so that its modern speakers are at a loss to know how to write their language. For example, earlier dated writings, more often than not, sound too old-fashioned, especially those written before 1949, and even before 1978. You can easily come across badly written news reports, government documents, corporate files, etc. Experts, or rather those of at least writing good Chinese, are hard to come by these days, I'm afraid.

For another, as far as I know, no complete and generally agreed Chinese grammar system has been established out of the language and the current system, if it is one, is believed to be a poor relation of its Western counterparts.

Communist bureaucrats and their ghost writers write bullshit

2003-07-25T14:37:00.000+08:00

What you do is somewhat good---reform and openning up. But what you are talking and writing bores any sensible and thinking people stiff and sometimes I feel like vomitting because of what you say or write, meaning to "educate" me. First, the well-known "Three Represents". OK. You represent me. That is good though I have never voted you for one single time. But do you have to regurgitate the Represents every time you do something that you should do by law and by duty? For example, tax collectors collect taxes (and just to line your good regurgitating comrades's pockets), corrupted investigators investigate rotten "people's public servants" (the most powerful and richest "servants" in relation to their "masters" in the world!), or police officers police the red light district and keep it morally good and hygienically clean for a while.

Shut up! Keep quiet! I do not want to see your idiotic tongues wag.

One more thing. You should hire more sober-minded ghost writers, at least to make yourselve believe what you're bullshitting. Your present ones are awfully retarded and I bet they're delirious sometimes at night and give me for translation what they're dreaming about in their constantly disturbed nightmares.

Why don't I translate what I wrote?

2003-07-17T12:26:00.000+08:00

Because I think translation is a stupid thing to do. I would like to reserve the difficult job for someone else to do. Tie him or her to my way of wild thinking in Chinese. Make s/he crazy, curse, and feel themselves to be idiots to be translators. And even worse, make them doubtful about their abilities of using the two languages involved and about the reason for their being.

Nostalgia

2003-04-03T13:09:00.000+08:00

I always seem to associate a song or several songs with a period of my life in which I listen to them a lot.

Time is racing ahead. I can't stop it. Neither can anyone else. Nostalgia.

When I listen to songs such as Le Jour s'est Lev, one of the three incomprehensible French songs I got in exchange for three songs by Luo Dayou with a Frenchman, it never fails to reminds me of those days at Brightsun in Harbin, when I just began to learn of the Internet as a new guy at the company with the brand-new status of being an employee after years of being an English student.

Wei-ai-chi-kuang (Crazy About Love) by Liu Ruoying brings me back to those days when I was beginning to learn love, yet another brand-new topic to a freewheeling, awkward, and stupid boy.

And shengxia-de-guoshi (Fruits in Midsummer) by Mo Wenwei comes to me as a reflection of those lovely summer days in Harbin.

Now, new songs, which now I'm not aware of, will serve, when I listen to them again in the future, as nostalgic ones associated with my beginning days in Beijing. Even Delta ForceⅠwill come to me as my first ever computer game I have played for years, when mom is Beijing to see me and US and Britain are invading Iraq.

Time, you don't stop continuing and we don't stop aging and dying.

MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW

2002-11-21T12:28:00.000+08:00

Looking for a job in Beijing

To come here was a tough decision. I doubted my decision of giving up my long accustomed life back home. I was awed by the uncertainties of future in Beijing and the disbeliefs of my competence racked me. Nonetheless, I came here on November 10, 2002.

Life here can be real tough. Without enough money to pay for things I need, I will have to live with a poorer standard of living than at home, for example, sharing with my roommate a cold room in a one-story house without an indoor toilet in the winter.

Beijing is different from Harbin. It's a national city, if not an international one while Harbin is just a regional city. I hear Chinese people down the street in Beijing speaking every language and dialect known in China. Sometimes I may sit in a corner on a bus and be amazed, wondering if I'm really in China because a Chinese man who presses his cellphone against his ear talks a total foreign tongue, neither English nor German, it's an unknown Chinese dialect no other people than himself on the bus can understand.

Being in a national city means I have more opportunities than in a provincial city. The bad news is that I may have more than I can chew.

It's the second week I'd been in Beijing that I decided the adjustment to a new invironment was enough--I needed a job desperately. I sent numerous resumes through 51job.com, chinahr.com and zhaopin.com and printed dozens of copies of my application letter and resume and sent them out to my potential employers by post.

I still remember three of those job interviews.

The first one appeared to be a success for the immediate offer of the job. My job would involve translation in the fields of communications and set-top-boxes, something attached to the top of a TV set to receive paid programs.

I balked at the second interview. I crossed from the western to the eastern part of Beijing after changing several buses. When I got there, it turned out to be a PR (Public Relations) company that had something to do with The Oracle. The first interviewer was a formidable young man wearing a dark business suit. He told me that his was a medium-sized PR company hiring dozens of people and the successful candidate would deal with translations of PR materials.

After he left the room, a woman came back to test my spoken English. I told her that I might have come to a wrong place to look for a job because I didn't think I was good with people which were an essential part of a PR position, otherwise PR would make no sense. I did not bother to take the following written test designated for each applicant. I came out of the impressive, imposing building, sighing. A company full of sexy women and big men is not my place. I'm happier with a much smaller company with a relaxed working atmosphere or a larger one without the dressing-yourself-up routine. Let me just think. Actually, I am not sure I like a large company because I've never been in one and don't have an idea of it.

The third company, a translation firm, was extremely small and amazingly young. It's not only that it just got started, but its boss was also a burgeoning one. I am sure we were born almost the same year and we should be friends, not employees and bosses. After a short spoken test and a long written test, he decided to hire me. But I had decided I would not accept a job offer from a company with a few girls looking like university kids under a young, novice boss. I left the young company, envying the young man's position of being am employer. I'm also young, what am I?

Things did not happen as expected. Jiang, the man who had made his immediate offer of the translating position, seemed to be reconsidering his "rash" decision when he made a follow-up phone call right after I left his office in a corner office building, telling me to do a test of translation. Later on, I did another test. I failed all of them. The translation of contracts regarding Set-Top-Boxes was more than I could chew.

There are at least two kinds of open positions in Beijing when I look for a job--one that I'm worthy of and the other that I'm not.