Anyway, I was in London for my dear friend Katy’s wedding back in May, and I saw this sign as I was walking to the ceremony venue from the nearest Tube station. I actually laughed out loud (not like the typical usage of the term these days) because, well, the euphemism is quite apparent.

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

In my case, after finishing my undergrad in Canada, I moved to Germany for work, then London for a grad degree, Kenya for my dissertation research, back to London for more work, and now I’m here in Beijing. All the while, I’ve tried to take the opportunity to travel around those places while I’m there, because, well, why not? What’s the point of going somewhere you’ve already been, unless you’re visiting someone?

So career nomads are avid travellers; that’s usually the reason why they never settle down in any one place. And as cool as all this might sound, one difficult thing about being a career nomad is reaching the point where you finally call a new place “home”.

For some people, it’s around the time they meet a certain number of friends. For others, it’s when the local shopkeeper remembers your name. For others still, it’s when that certain someone is with them. And sometimes, if you’re unfortunate, you may never really get to that point.

But there are usually signs that you’ve adapted to the new place, things that might make you suddenly realize that you’ve established yourself there. Here, in reverse order, are my top 5 indications that your new home is actually indeed your new “home”:

5. Changing your home airport – Most travel and flight websites require you to fill out a profile which contains travel-related data, such as whether you prefer a window or aisle seat. One specific item usually found is the ability to designate a “home” airport.

I have a friend who somehow gets really attached to his home airport. It’s a source of comfort for him, so it usually takes him a little while to change his profile, to acknowledge that he finally feels at home.

4. You know all the shortcuts – Career nomads usually have no problem moving but we’re still creatures of habit and comfort. When you first move, you might have a map of the new place but that’s no substitute for the familiarity that experience brings, the knowledge that you know your way around your neighbourhood.

The first habit to form is the route you take to go to school or work. It’s usually the most logical way to go, but frequently it’s not the shortest or the fastest way. I start feeling at “home” when I know the best way to get home, no matter the time or traffic conditions.

3. Cheering for a local sports team – The ties that bind you to your hometown are strong, especially when it comes to sports. To this day, I still cheer for all my hometown teams, though it’s been over 14 years since I’ve lived there.

However, you’re bound to meet local people wherever you move, and they’ll be fans of a local team, and you might find yourself cheering for the same local team, especially if it’s a different league or even a different sport than the teams you support. That’s a pretty good indication you’re “home”.

2. You start to hate tourists – When you first arrive in a new place, you’re bound to be like any other tourist: you go out to the same places, see the same sights, do the same things. After all, you’re trying to get to know the place.

But at some point you will become familiar enough with the area that you start wondering why tourists don’t obey the local customs and traditions. You start cursing under your breath about all the tourists who get in your way. You get frustrated at how tourists seems to take up extra space with their big bags and cameras and unfolded maps. You know what that means, don’t you? You’re “home”.

1. You miss it when you’re gone – Now this usually comes about with a jarring realization that you do indeed consider your new place your home. It’s usually something you’d think quite insignificant that makes you realize it. Maybe it’s the smell of fresh bread from the bakery on the corner or the smile from the cute barista at the coffee shop near your work.

It happened to me recently after spending 5 months in Beijing before going to Hong Kong for a couple weeks to visit relatives and friends. Midway through the second week, I was already starting to miss the sights, sounds, and yes, even smells of Beijing. I didn’t think I would, but I did.

I couldn’t wait to get home.

If your palette runs a little less adventurous than others, then you probably haven’t sampled in what many Chinese consider to be delicacies: shark’s fin, abalone, chicken feet, jellyfish, beef tendon… you get the idea. However, chances are you may have eaten, or at least seen, Beijing’s eponymous local dish: kao ya, or roast duck. You might know it as Peking duck, after the capital’s old spelling.

If you’re thinking of your local Chinatown and the roast ducks that are hanging in the storefront window… think again. That’s Cantonese-style roast duck, which tastes different to and is eaten differently from Beijing-style roast duck. Even Cantonese speakers call it Beijing duck, to distinguish between the two.

Beijing duck is cooked to order, features much crispier skin, and is usually eaten wrapped in a thin pancake with spring onions and hoisin sauce. Most decent restaurants here in Beijing will serve kao ya, but there are a few which are really quite famous for specializing in the dish.

The granddaddy of all kao ya restaurants is Quanjude, which brought this former imperial dish to the masses starting in 1864. Its reputation was cemented through loyal patronage by the Chinese government, and has even hosted state dinners with foreign VIPs. The picture below illustrates the Quanjude style of arranging the slices of meat.

All that said, I felt a little let down by Quanjude. It’s not that it was bad… it just wasn’t mindblowingly good, which is what I was expecting. It was nevertheless a good meal, and really, when you’re eating Beijing duck with friends, that’s never a bad thing, right?

More recently, I went to Duck de Chine, which has made a name for itself by presenting Beijing duck in a new manner. I think they called it, “a French take on a Chinese classic”, though maybe that’s what I inferred from the name. In any case, the restaurant was very modern and chic, and the service was quite attentive.

The soup made from the rest of the duck we didn’t eat was excellent, and the waitress prepared for each of us an interesting combination of hoisin sauce, sesame sauce and roasted garlic. But the name of the game is the duck. And again, I was a little disappointed by the fare.

I’m not sure if it’s because I have ridiculous expectations, but if you’re paying over twice as much for one duck as you could get in a local restaurant, shouldn’t the duck be at least noticeably better? Methinks yes.

Now, lest you think that Beijing is a culinary black hole, let me relieve your burden by saying that there are many very good restaurants and even a few excellent ones. So in my opinion, if you want Beijing duck, if you want the best kao ya this city, nay, this country has to offer, then you have to go to Da Dong.

The duck, both times i went, was superb. Very light and cripsy skin, with only a hint of the fattiness you’d expect. Eight different condiments to go with the duck, including sugar, which tastes much nicer than you’d think. You’ve even got a very light and tasty pastry puff to try, which I actually prefer to the pancake. Throw in the excellent non-duck dishes and you’ve got yourself a very classy meal (exhibit A: the main picture at the top is from Da Dong).

What could possibly make such an experience better? Go to the Da Dong branch in Dongsishitiao. The two-storey restaurant there matches Duck de Chine for chicness, but you have the option to choose your own duck as they’re roasting. That means you get to go into the kitchen and check out the massive ovens where they hang the ducks to cook. Awesome.

Tune in again next time where I’ll likely be posting from Hong Kong about Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Gung Hey Fat Choy!

But aside from all the theatrics and digital fireworks, the one thing that kept drawing my attention was the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. These two magnificent buildings were the highlight of the ceremonies for me (and really, only overshadowed by Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt in the whole thing).

Close friends know that I’m a massive fan of architecture, and coming from that perspective, how can you not admire them? I’ve been to a few of the biggest and best sports stadiums in the world, like Wembley Stadium and Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in London, Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, and um, the SkyDome in Toronto, and the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube are right up there.

Of course, it is now a year and a half after their introduction to the world stage, and I can tell you the Water Cube has seen better days. Maybe it’s the winter sun, or the snow on the ground now, or maybe it’s just the harsh conditions of Beijing, but it only looks a shadow of its former self. The bubble-like panels are dull and lifeless, though I haven’t been to the Olympic plaza at night, so I’m not sure if it still lights up all pretty and wonderful.

The Bird’s Nest, on the other hand, has weathered quite nicely. The geometric wackiness of the nest still leaves me in awe, and a recent tour of the stadium has shown that it must’ve been quite nice to have attended the Games. Seats are generally comfy, lots of legroom, great sightlines… I think the one deficiency I noticed was the general crappiness of the refreshment counters, but maybe they were different during the Games.

I did wonder about what they were doing with the stadium nowadays since China isn’t known for its professional sports (aside from maybe ping pong?). With the freakishly cold temperatures and more snow than they know what to do with, the powers that be decided to put in a winter wonderland thing, complete with an obstacle course, inner tube sleds and a stage for live performances. Only in China.

I’m not the only one who really enjoyed the visit to the Bird’s Nest though. Lots of people were really happy to be there, literally jumping for joy, while others liked to strike the Usain Bolt pose. You knew that would happen.

As always, check out these and other pictures on flickr.

Also, a programming note… Congrats to the postcard winners from my last post. Thanks for commenting and proving to me that you people need incentives to do something like that, hahaha. Unfortunately for my friend Nathalie, who has deemed herself too busy to reply back to my email asking for her postal address, I’m now making her postcard available again.

Let’s see, how can we make this interesting… The postcard will go to the first person to correctly name all the languages (and major dialects) that I can speak with at least a beginner’s level of competence. Previous winners not eligible, except Nathalie whom I will allow to attempt to redeem herself. Have a go in the comments.

So if you’ve known me for any stretch of time, you know that I may or may not have a skill for falling asleep just about anywhere. I’m not narcoleptic, but I can succumb really easily to the urge to sleep, especially after eating and i’m warm and cozy. But my friends know that I’m capable of dozing off in the most random of places: cars, subways, trains, planes, restaurants, bars, clubs, in class, at work, watching TV, in front of the computer… zzz… even while you’re talking to me.

One of the interesting things about Beijing is that there are many apartment complexes. It’s not just one or two buildings. I’m talking about collections of up to 20 buildings that all look similar and offer similar accommodations. Usually these complexes will offer 24-hour security, which seems great at first, but once you understand the reality, it’s not so great.

You see, I’m not the only one who can fall asleep in weird places. So while the guards seem to do stuff during the day like, um… stuff, they will inevitably catch a few Z’s in the wee hours of the night. I don’t begrudge them for doing so, particularly since a friend here said they can work 12-hour shifts, but 24-hour security isn’t really secure if they’re asleep, right? I’m not sayin’… I’m just sayin’.

Ok, so for you hardcore readers (or stalkers… hello!), here’s something for you. If you’re one of the first 10 people to comment on this post, with a real email address I can reach you at, I’ll send you a postcard from Beijing! How ’bout them apples!

If you’re one of my 1208 Facebook friends, then maybe you already have an idea of what Beijing nightlife is like, or rather, the one that I experience. There’s lots of student hangouts in my neighbourhood, there are a lot of bars and clubs in specific areas like Sanlitun and Houhai. There’s a good night out to be had any day of the week. But these generally serve a small slice of Beijing’s population: rich locals and foreigners.

For everyone else, it’s a bit different. Oh, you can still drink with your friends and get drunk, as the swift sales of baijiu will attest to. But hang out with some locals long enough and you’ll see that they’re not doing the same bar-and-club routine that us Westerners seem to cling to. Wait, scratch that – you don’t even need to hang out with them. You can just walk around and get a feel for it.

A really popular pastime, especially among older gentlemen, is to play Chinese card games or Chinese chess out on the street or some other public place. You’ll see a bunch of them gathered around a chessboard (as pictured above) or huddled around a small box flipped over to be a table, playing some game and being rather loud and animated. Usually you’ll also have some spectators, whether friends or random people, who will not hesitate to offer their opinions.

I think this is all pretty cool, but does anyone else find it strange that they don’t play somewhere with a table and chairs where it might be a little more, you know, comfortable? Maybe it’s just me.

If your game is weak and you’d rather be filling your belly, there’s no shortage of street food to choose from, and not the weird and wacky stuff I wrote about last time. Now, if you’ve been to Asia, this will not surprise you, but the sheer amount and variety of food available from street vendors here is mindboggling.

You can choose from things like roast lamb skewers, caramelized fruit skewers and boiled meat and veggie skewers (are you sensing a trend here?) to roasted sweet potatoes, mystery meat sandwiches and stuffed pancakes. Some vendors are out during the day, but others are out til late, like past 1am during summertime.

Maybe you don’t want to eat and you don’t want to play. Well, the only thing left to do is shop! And if there’s one thing Chinese people seem to be good at, it’s selling you stuff. The informal street markets and hawkers will spring up out of nowhere, selling anything from kids’ clothing to electronics to pets. Yes, pets. I do recall someone with 5 really cute and young puppies in a box during my first week here.

But the book vendors are the ones that usually get my attention. They’ve got pirated books for sure, infringing on any number of copyrights, and the quality of the paper and ink does leave one wondering about health issues. But the selection of books is quite remarkable – I got Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers in paperback here before it was even available on Amazon! How is that even possible? Frankly, I don’t even care. I’m just glad I can read more now without breaking the bank.

Anyway, there’s a little more than 13 hours until 2010, so to all a very Happy New Year! May all your resolutions fall swiftly by the wayside.

What’s the quintessential Chinese dish for you? Kung Pao chicken? Sweet and sour pork? Or, God forbid, chicken balls and fortune cookies? Because, for me, Chinese food is essentially Cantonese food, from the southern province of Guangdong. It’s what I grew up with, it’s what I like best.

That’s not to say I don’t like other types; I love Shanghai-style xiao long bao, Fukien-style fried rice and Taiwanese 3 Cup chicken (really, if you haven’t tried it, you’re SO missing out). But give me dim sum, seafood congee, PDSYJ, ginger and green onion lobster, or dry-fried beef noodles any day and I’ll eat it all.

So to come across the snack street market near the Wangfujing pedestrian-only shopping street is a bit of a shock to the system. It’s a small, 200-metre section of road here in central Beijing which has been cordoned off and used for what I reckon is the most insane collection of street food you can find in the world.

The stuff available for sale reads like a Top 10 list of what you wouldn’t eat unless faced with death: scorpions, silkworm cocoons, starfish, sheep penis, seahorses, tarantulas, beetles, lamb testicles… No, really. There’s penis and testicles to be consumed. I’ll wait for you to finish gagging…

I don’t, for one second, think that Chinese people, even the locals, think that any of these foods are actually tasty, despite the urgings of the stall workers (the guy selling sheep penis is especially keen for you to try it). I mean, at least they’re all fried or barbecued so you’re not eating anything raw, but who in their right mind is actually volunteering to eat any of this stuff?

Oh right. Me. Perhaps a bit out of sheer curiosity but mostly because some friends and I had a little bet to see who would flinch first. There were no winners or losers in the end, since everyone did rather well (check out the pics below for the gruesome details). Trust me, none of it, save the scorpions, are anything you’d want to be eating on a regular basis.

Silkworm cocoons? Gross. Starfish? Nasty. Lamb testicles? Almost puked. We didn’t bother with the sheep penis, seahorses or tarantulas; none of us seemed willing to go that far. But the fried scorpions? Well, at least for the little ones (not the giant black monster scorpions), they were rather quite yummy and crunchy. I actually wouldn’t hesitate to eat them again.

For the less adventurous, there is some normal food available, like lamb meat skewers, fried dumplings and shawarma-type sandwiches, but it’s not that good and really, you’re not trekking down all this way just to have normal street food, right? It’s about the spectacle of the weird and (not so) wonderful.

If you’re in the area, don’t forget to go to the Wangfujing shopping street which boasts numerous stalls all selling the same kitschy souvenirs and trinkets, the kind you get for friends when you know you should get something but don’t want to spend more than a few dollars.

For full-size versions of these and other pics, check them out on my flickr page!

However, if you’re adventurous like me, sometimes you’ll get the opportunity to go to a rather remote section of the wall and spend 4 hours hiking up the hillside through the forest, then across a long section of the wall and then settle in for the night at a makeshift campsite in one of the guard towers.

While we call it the Great Wall, the Chinese themselves call it a name that translates to “the long wall of 10,000 Li”, where Li represents a character that is used as a unit of distance equal to about 500 metres. For those of you scoring at home, that makes it out to be about 5000km. We probably covered 5 of the 10,000 Li (or 2.5km) during our climb (hence the numbers in the title of the post).

Badaling and Mutianyu are the most popular spots to visit, but we went to an area called Jiankou, which was a bit further away and much less touristy. We weren’t the only ones there, but the only people we saw were some Chinese hikers and photographers, and a few other foreigners who were camping as well.

We started off trekking from a small village near the wall, through the forest and up the hillside. It wasn’t that difficult, but I didn’t help myself by lugging around my big camera gear in addition to the sleeping bag and mat that we had borrowed. Most people had to carry their own tents, but I decided to carry less stuff and brave it out in the open.

We hiked along some parts of the wall, climbed up others and there was one part that was virtually vertical. The views were amazing, spectacular even. Unlike the other sites, the Jiankou section isn’t well maintained. In fact, there was one part of the wall that was more or less impassable, so some of us scaled up the side while others managed to find a route that skirted around the section entirely.

We eventually settled on one particular guard tower to camp at. It was still in a pretty good state, and the surrounding area was suitable for tents. Luckily we arrived pretty early, because there were other people who arrived after us looking to camp there.

Dinner came quite early, around 5pm, courtesy of some of the village locals who were unbelievably kind enough to deliver a meal up the mountain to our campsite. It wasn’t anything to write home about, just some meat and veg on rice, but given the circumstances, it was welcome nourishment. Unfortunately, we actually ran out of food and the poor fellows had to make another trip up.

Of course, eating that early meant we had a lot of time to kill. It’s not too hard to entertain yourself, especially when you’re in a group of 30 people. We had some campfires going, some card games, some Mafia games… some of us were quite content to just sit and gaze at the stars, something you don’t get to see in Beijing.

A lot of people went to bed early, after the day’s exertion. Of course, being the slight insomniac I am, I stayed up later than most people, chatting with other late-night owls and even going with Simon to venture further up the wall to the next guard tower. Eventually though, I got sleepy and settled into my sleeping bag with a couple extra layers of clothes and my indispensable silk sleeping bag liner. A lifesaver!

I didn’t think it was cold until the next morning. The campfire had gone out long ago, and the crisp morning air bit at my face and managed to slip into the sleeping bag if I didn’t scrunch up the mummy hood. Thankfully, it hadn’t snowed like some people had said.

We made it back to Beijing quite intact – no major injuries (though someone sprained an ankle on the descent) and we all had a night full of good memories. I’m not sure mid-October was the best time to go… in fact, I’m quite sure that September would be perfect. Still warm though not blazing hot, and nighttime wouldn’t be as cold. I wouldn’t hesitate to go again!

Check out the video below that I compiled during the hike, and as always, check out the entire photoset on Flickr.

So one of the things that had most intrigued me and simultaneously most scared me about moving to Beijing was this idea, this concept I had of China’s central government playing Big Brother in the daily lives of its citizens and visitors. Indeed, I recently read an article somewhere on the interwebs about what it was like just 20 years ago, when foreign visitors were almost always accompanied by a state monitor, whether it was overt or not.

I’m sure the practice didn’t end then, but the change that took place between then and now must’ve been enormous because, from all that I’ve seen and experienced so far, there is little to suggest that the government is really poking its eye into everyone’s business. Rather, I think it’s really when you start making a name for yourself doing something they don’t like that they start to monitor you.

I’m not suggesting that everything is A-OK here. They’ve still got websites like Facebook and Twitter on lockdown (go ahead, if you’re in China, try clicking on one of those links), and I’ve heard that the government has literally cut off all internet ties to Xinjiang region, where there’s been some, er, activity since the summer. But it also hasn’t been the 1984-ish world that my parents had me expecting to see.

Nowhere was this more evident than the lecture on Chinese history I attended a while ago. Every week at the university where I’m studying Mandarin, there’s a lecture (delivered in English) on some aspect of Chinese culture – cuisine, philosophy, poetry, etc.

Well, one of them was on Chinese history, and the lecturer was a professor from the university. Since Chinese history spans something like 5000 years, it was really going to be impossible to do anything in an hour, but the professor tried to give us what she considered to be highlights. Amongst them was the theme that the change between every dynasty was rather brutal, whether they be due to external forces attacking or internal pressures like peasant rebellions. In fact, much of China’s history involves quite ruthless or cruel rulers, with sporadic periods of enlightenment that would always eventually be crushed under the weight of greed and corruption.

So imagine my surprise, when a question about what today’s China could learn from its own history, posed during the Q+A session, was answered with two simple words: “Human rights.” I nearly fell out of my chair. Did I just hear that?

The professor explained what she meant: with so much of Chinese history characterized by the greed and brutality exercised by the ruling class and suffered by the peasants, the Chinese people should collectively learn about how to treat everyone with more dignity and compassion, in order to create a longer-lasting harmony between the government and its people.

Still, I was really quite shocked by what she said and what it implied. I actually looked around the room to see if anyone else was in the same state as me (sadly no, which I’m sure explains more about me than them). And I’m quite certain that though there were many foreign students there like me, there must’ve been some local Chinese students in attendance as well. The lecture was being videotaped too, for future viewings I’m sure.

And yet there were no Big Brother interventions. No stormtroopers to drag away the professor in mid-sentence. Maybe they’re a bit more discrete about it now, but I didn’t sense that the professor thought she was going on a limb to say what she did. Just the opposite actually – she ended with the admission that she wouldn’t have said something like that as recently as 10 years ago.

So now I’m left in a strange place. The informal street markets that seem to spring up everywhere, these street vendors and hawkers who are exercising capitalism in its most basic form, were illegal in the not-too-distant past. The scenes of masses of bicycle commuters have been replaced by masses of car commuters (and some of the most ridiculous driving you’ll ever bear witness to). The rich and their BMW X5′s and Audi A8′s co-exist with the poor and their slow, labouring, single-speed pickup tricycles.

This isn’t the China that my parents and grandparents fled after the Communists took over. It’s not the China that I was told about and warned about. It’s not the China that I was expecting to see, but I’m glad to have found it.

Truth be told, there wasn’t really a lot of volunteering involved. We didn’t really get to do much. We visited an AIDS orphanage and a kindergarten, but all we really did was to bring some gifts or supplies and spend an hour or so with the kids. There wasn’t any teaching or building or anything of that sort of work. I felt like we were just passing through and dropping off some stuff.

A missed opportunity in my opinion. Partially because I would’ve loved to have done something much more constructive, or at least helpful, but mostly because the rest of the trip was spent largely getting from one place to another, whether by train or by bus.

Then again, it’s hard to figure what you can do for these kids in an afternoon. I’m not even sure what we could do for them if we were there for a few days. But I just think it could’ve been structured so much better, so that it didn’t feel so… chaotic and aimless. Our time visiting both locations could’ve and should’ve been much more productive.

I can think of at least one place, the Xixia dinosaur egg park, which was entirely forgettable and not worth the time. The only redeeming feature of that place were the carnival rides which we scored for free because we were foreigners.

Lest you think it was 5 wasted days, I still enjoyed myself. We did see a much more “real” part of China than the mini-UN that is the university district of Beijing we live in. Village life doesn’t appear to have changed much, aside from some additions of modern technology like mobile phones and TVs. It’s still very agricultural and still very poor. In fact, I’m sure that the roadblock we encountered on the way to the kindergarten was put there by the local villagers in order to extort a bribe from passing traffic using the detour.

We lit our own wish-lanterns and saw them float away, during the Mid-Autumn festival in a park in Nanyang. We climbed a mini-mountain (and almost fell off trying to reach the very top), then took a zipline and a slide back down. We also visited the Shaolin temple near Zhengzhou, where we saw some pretty cool demonstrations of Shaolin kung-fu.

I was one of the fortunate few who was not stricken by some illness (one friend got tonsillitis, another was felled by some allergy or infection that he needed 4 medications for). The hot pot dinner we had at one random place may have been the best meal I’ve had in China, but another guy got so sick, he was still a zombie after 2 days. I also really liked the self-grilled street meat we had in Nanyang.

And the icing on the cake had to be the two nights in the same club in Nanyang where we befriended a whole gaggle of people including the singer who did a remarkably decent MJ cover and the Russian dancers who spoke neither Mandarin nor English but understood completely the meaning of gambei (bottoms up).

I’ve got loads more pics in this flickr set. Check it out!