Warning: If you’re coming to Beijing and looking for Olympics tickets, watch out for frauds!

A couple of MU students were scammed out of as much as $1,400 by a woman aliased Beatrice Sanchez. She has ads up on Craigslist and VivaStreet.

My friends did all they could to confirm the legitimacy of their transactions. Problem is, “Beatrice” sent them a false website. As it turns out, VivaStreet doesn’t even have an e-payment system. The money my friends sent through the false website is just gone.

I know it seems risky to buy tickets online, but a bunch of us were desperate after the mad rush we had to go through earlier. (See posts here and here.) In an on-line world, buying tickets through a website seems like the next-best thing. Unfortunately, awful people like “Beatrice” are there to take advantage of students like us.

Just wanted to warn anyone who is thinking of buying tickets online.
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Here's the video of me on the CCTV 9 show Dialogues.

Thanks to Uncle Larkin for the link!

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So today is the exact half-way point. I’ve been here for 30 days, and I have 30 days to go! It’s weird to think I’ll be going home soon. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve really gotten to know this city, and other times, I feel like I have a lot left to learn.

In honor of making it halfway, I thought I’d revisit my top 10 moments from blogging with Neighbors Go:

10. Seeing Beijing from the top of the CCTV tower
9. Eating purple dumplings
8. Discovering “my” Bamboo Park
7. Riding a rickshaw through a hutong
6. Receiving a custom drawing from a calligraphy artist
5. Seeing Chairman Mao’s body
4. Receiving a Chinese headdress from that random woman at the Drum Tower

Click (more) to find out what my top 3 blogging moments are!
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I have never appreciated Mexican food so much in my entire life.

Last night, I had dinner at Tim’s Texas BBQ, a good ol’ Texas ranch house complete with Dallas Cowboy posters on the walls. They even had a Texas flag hanging, although it was upside down. Close enough!

Every time I told one of the Chinese servers I was from Texas, they would grin and yell, “Howdy, partner!”

For dinner, I had the burrito, and the most Mexican thing about it was that it was wrapped in a tortilla. Otherwise, it was BBQ all the way! The burrito was stuffed with brisket and slathered in BBQ sauce. Delicious! Not quite Mi Cocina, but still a taste of home.

Tonight, we went to Saddle Cantina, a Tex-Mex pub in the popular Sanlitun district. It was a big work get-together, so I met up with the Chinese students who working with me in the National Indoor stadium. Originally

Click (more) to read about how I introduced my Chinese friends to chili con queso!

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In his first email to me after my CCTV 9 appearance, Loh Kien Voon wrote me in an email that “Yes, to understand China/Chinese, one must look at the Chinese's perspective.”

Kien Voon is referring to the part of the CCTV interview when the host asked me if I thought Chinese newspapers were “transparent” enough. I told him I buy the China Daily every day because it is a way to understand the Chinese perspective on current events. If there’s anything I’ve learned here, it’s that Americans and Chinese view the world in very different ways.

The other day, a Chinese friend and I were talking about Chinese characters. She explained that the characters often resemble the word they represent. “Like this!” she said, excited as she drew on my Chinese phrasebook. “You will be able to guess what this means, easy!” Here's what she drew:

I had no idea. No matter how hard I stared at the squiggles, it still looked like the number 4 with a line down the middle. Or like a slide with guardrails. But something told me she hadn’t chosen the Chinese character for “slide with railing resembling a 4” for my first lesson.

I looked back at her with a blank look, wishing I could match her enthusiasm. As I shook my head, her face fell.

“It’s a mountain,” she said, confused. “Can’t you tell?”

Sometimes, when reports from Western visitors differ with what Chinese residents say, I have to wonder if one side is seeing a mountain while the other sees a slide…

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So Dialogues on CCTV9 aired last night. To tell you the truth, I didn’t see it. (Watching myself on TV wigs me out. There’s a reason I want to be a newspaper writer and not a broadcaster!)

Luckily, I’ve got some amazing readers who caught the episode and filled me in on how I did! Here are a few of those comments:

From Kien Voon, my new e-pen pal who found my blog from Beijing:
“Even though a bit nervous at the beginning but overall you are doing great. I purposely deferred all my schedules in order to watch you in CCTV and  I am impressed. We Chinese sometime believes in fate.....getting to know you its fated..hahaha...well its true in a way.... I got to read your blog by chance while searching for other information, then I sent you an email and you replied then you appeared in CCTV 9, what a chance!”

From an anonymous Dallasite:
“I am from Dallas and am in Poland on business. I am watching CCTV this afternoon and there you are! Nice to hear a voice from Texas! Thank you. Good Luck in China.”

Click (more) for more comments!
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Went to an amazing dumpling place for dinner tonight! I’ve wanted to try Baoyuan Jiaozi since I found it on The Beijinger, and it was well worth the wait. Click (more) below for directions, in case you’re ever in Beijing and have a hankerin’ for some dumplings!

When you don’t speak the language, it’s hard to order dumplings in China. They all look the same! You can tell there’s something in that little white dough pocket, but it’s impossible to tell what. Unless you know the Mandarin words for “meat” or “vegetable,” it’s a total guess what’s inside your dinner.

At Baoyuan Jiaozi, the menus had English translations of what came inside. For less than 10 RMB (a little over $1), you could order 6 dumplings packed with your choice of pork, egg, and a huge list of vegetables.

And the best part? They dye them! For an extra 6 RMB, you can have your dumplings custom dyed purple, orange, blue or green. How fun!

There were four of us at diner tonight, and for about 20 RMB ($3) each, we got 6 purple pork and cucumber dumplings, 6 orange pork and celery dumplings, 6 regular egg and leek dumplings, lemon walnut chicken, steamed broccoli, two bottled waters and tea. Delicious and cheap!
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I did Chinese karaoke last night! And it was nothing like what I expected.

Karaoke is huge in China, definitely something a group of young people would do on an average weekend in order to “get to know each other better,” as my Chinese friend told me today. It’s really different than Western karaoke, where one person stands at the front of the room full of strangers and belts a power ballad.

Here, groups get a private room for karaoke, so you and your 15 closest friends go together, the way teenagers go to movies in the States. At the front of the room are several TV’s: one for the performer and some for the audience. That way, the whole group can sing along, but if the person up front really good (or really bad), everyone can still tell.

Click (more) to read about the karaoke bar where we went!

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Beijing is covered in strange smells: some good, most bad, and some just uniquely Beijing. So our trip to the Llama Temple, one of the city’s most beautiful and impressive Tibetan Buddhist temples, was a welcome change. The streets on the way to the temple are lined with colorful incense shops so people can burn their offerings inside the temple.

I didn’t burn any incense offerings. I just tried to stay out of the way. I felt very intrusive taking pictures and acting like a tourist in a temple where monks live and people are worshiping, but no one seemed to mind. Being in such a holy place for so many people was very centering and peaceful.

We also stopped through the Confucius Temple, just down the street and complete with interactive computer games for the kids. The Confucius Temple was more a museum (a very Western one, at that) than a temple, but there were still people kneeling in prayer in areas.

Click (more) for pictures!
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This is how I personally judge the air quality:
A) How blue is the sky?
B) How far can I see?
C) How easy is it for me to breathe?

For the last few days, the air quality has been awful. The sky’s been brownish white, and smog obscures the view of anything more than, like, 50 yards away. This is despite all Beijing's efforts to clear the air, like fewer cars, fewer factories and more subway lines.

When the smog is this bad, the heat becomes oppressive. I mean, when it’s hot in Texas, at least you can feel the sun on your skin! Here, it’s hot, but you can’t even see the sky. All of Beijing turns into an oven trapping heat from days before with smog from years before. I sweat constantly, even when I’m not hot.

That’s why news stories like this one confuse me. I mean, I’ve had trouble breathing this week, and I’ve seen a lot more Chinese people wearing face masks. But they say the air is better. Maybe the “official” measure of air pollution is different than mine.

When the air is this bad, I get exhausted after just a few hours of being out. So my blogging may not be as constant for just a day or two. Luckily, it’s supposed to rain this week, which usually clears out the air pretty quickly!


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