Shifting to Hailaer

Tuesday, June 1, 2010--Manzhouli   Today is International Children's Day.  Thank goodness the U.S. has not adopted it.  Here in China where families are restricted to having only one child and spoiling is rather common, the children are taken to the amusement parks, bought gifts, etc.  Almost every child I have seen today has been carrying or wearing something that appeared to be a new gift.   I spent the day wandering around Manzhouli.  I first headed northward out of town.  I walked until I reached the Russian border.  There was a highway parallel to it and a fence designating the border.  The border crossing was further to the west, but I had no interest in walking further.  On the way back into town, I explored a park that I had seen.  It had several yurts set up in it, but when I approached them, it was obvious that they were still being set up and were not the shops yet that they probably will become.  I wandered through the park which was mostly vacant except for two young men taking photos of each other as they climbed upon a cow statue.  I stopped at a pavilion for a while and read from my current book.  Then I continued to another section of the park near town.  A young boy, maybe 10-12 years old, turned off the path with two of his friends and walked beside me.  Eventually, he turned toward me and used the back of his fingers to stoke my arm about 3 times.  It had to be due to interest in either the hair on my arm or the white skin.  My guess is that it was the former.  I continued through an amusement park in the downtown area of the park watching the families and the hawkers selling cheap toys and snack foods.    I would have enjoyed visiting with someone, but it is not easy to do here.  Most people speak Russian rather than English as a second language.  They talk to me in Russian, but then they wander away when they realize I don't understand them.  Furthermore, I get the impression that many of them are not very fond of the Russians who I am told come here and party while declaring how cheap everything is.  Therefore, I am sure that some people just avoid me due to thinking I am one of "those" people.   Lilacs are blooming here.  I have smelled them several times today.  They are so wonderfully fragrant.  I was sitting reading in the park across from my hotel when I started smelling them around 18:00.  Apparently, they become more fragrant as the heat dies down; or maybe just the wind changed a slight direction.   One thing I have noticed thoughtout China both on this trip and on previous ones is the great waste of money related to construction projects.  Today, I saw several examples, so it is on my mind.  It is common to find buildings uncompleted after years.  For instance, my guidebook which was written around 2007 and published in 2008 (with a 2009 date on it) commented that a Shangri La Hotel was being built in downtown Manzhouli and should be open by the time the book was published.  Well, that hotel is standing downtown with no work being done on it and with only about 60-70% of the project completed.  Another building I passed going to the border was at a slightly more advanced stage of completion with no work being done.  The exposed steel beams were showing weather aging indicating that no work has probably been done in a few years.  It was apparently a government building that was never completed but already had its glass dome in place on top.  A different problem is buildings which are completed and then abandoned after just a short period of time due to over-construction.  There are many buildings like this that have had stores or offices in them and are now setting there empty and dirty.  A further problem, which was reported on TV here recently, is buildings that were built not long ago (less than 20 years ago) and are falling apart or do not meet building standards.  These are having to be torn down or retrofitted.  It's all such a waste of money.  Corruption is part of the problem.  Apparently it is a standard practice for the builders getting a contract price to cut corners--using a lower quality steel, fewer beams placed further apart, or a thinner layer of concrete, for instance--and for inspectors to accept a payoff not to notice.  Then after a few years the building starts to deteriorate.  The government has highly publicized a number of charges of corruption to try to keep this from happening, but it seems to be so widespread with every town having many examples that there is no way they can stop it without taking most builders and inspectors to court!  Of course, all this waste of money is good for the U.S.  China has so many U.S. bonds these days that it doesn't need more; the more it has to spend on reconstruction--on products for the building projects from the U.S.--the better for lessening the out-of-balance trade situation between the two countries.   Wednesday, June 2, 2010--Manzhouli to Hailaer   I didn't want to pull out my alarm clock and set it last night, so I left a curtain partially open so that the sun could awaken me.  What I didn't realize was how early the sun comes up here!  At 4:00 it was shining in brightly and I was checking my watch to see what time it was.  I tossed for 2 1/2 more hours sleeping occasionally.  Finally, I just got up, cleaned up, and headed to the train station early.   It's a 2 1/2-hour train trip between Manzhouli to Hailaer.  A young man was sitting opposite to me and smiled at me several times.  Three men from one family were sitting across the aisle and looked my way.  No one spoke to me.  I imagine none of them can speak more than a couple of words of English.  Instead, I watched the grasslands passing me by and thought about things.  At one point, we passed a village with about 15 yurt tents and a Buddhist temple beside it.  One of my thoughts was the usual worry regarding the difficulty of finding a decent hotel.  Along with that thought was a hope that Hailear, being further from the Russian border, would have western letters (vs. Russian cyrillic ones) as the secondary langage on signs.    Among the other thoughts that popped into my mind on the train:   I only read one book while Wes was with me.  Now that I am alone, I have completed a second and am about 1/3 of the way through a third one in just 3 days!  Hope I don't run out of books.  Or, if I do, I hope it won't be before I am somewhere that is an easy place for buying English novels such as Sri Lanka or India.   For some reason, Chinese people do not sit in their assigned seats on trains or buses.  As a person enters at later stops, he has to assert himself to get his seat if he wants it.  Most just take another seat.  That just compounds the problem when another person later boards and wants his assigned seat, since an even greater percentage of the seats that are occupied are not the correct ones.  Some people actually change seats 3-4 times in a journey taking a different incorrect seat each time someone insists on having his assigned one.  It seems such a waste of effort.   Upon arrival in Hailaer, I used my hand-drawn map from Google to find my way toward town.  Just as I came to an intersection and was wondering what the streets were so I could see if they were on my map, a man, maybe in his mid-50s, stopped on a bicycle and tried to help me.  His English was very poor, but he genuinely wanted to be helpful.  We communicated about my being American and that I was looking for a hotel though words, pictures, and motions.  Fortunately, one of the students on the train the other day had written in Chinese characters, "Cheap Hotel."  I pointed to the words for him to read them.  He pointed to a hotel across the street and indicated with his fingers that it should be a low price.  But he started looking for someone passing who might speak more English who could help him tell me about where else I might go.  After a few minutes, I just indicated I would check the place across the street.  He went with me.  He asked the price and helped make sure they understood that I was one person needing the room for two nights.  Then he went with me to look at the rooms.  He discouraged me about one of them because of the noise of traffic.  After that, I paid for the room, and he left on his bicycle.  He had told me he is a professional pianist.  I feel sorry that I did not have a way to try to suggest that we meet later for me to buy him a beer or something for the great favor he did me.   And it was a great favor.  The hotel is probably the best I have had on this trip to China.  The room is clean and very modern with HD TV, nice linens, good lighting, air conditioning, etc.  The bathroom is is very clean and is stylish.  Best of all, the room has its own computer.  The only thing it is lacking is a mini-fridge so I can keep cool drinks.  I can overlook that, though.  The price:  $26 per night.   Hailaer is a bigger city than Manzhouli.  It is obvious that my hand-drawn map shows only the major streets.  But I was able to follow it as I went out exploring this afternoon.  I walked through the center of town.  Then, as I crossed the river, I could see many people sunbathing and swimming along the concrete steps beside it.  I headed that way.  It was mostly men ranging in age from maybe 18 to their 60s.  I sat and watched until I became too warm.  Then I headed further to find a park I had marked on the map.   Across the street from the park was a shopping center with a supermarket.  I went inside and bought a large Coke Zero and 4 cookies.  I took them to the park and ate two of the cookies and drank part of the Coke.  I watched people just having fun.  Several elderly men were flying kites using very professional reels for their lines.  Two girls were inside inflated plastic balls that zipped up and were rolling down an artificial stream within the park.  Children were riding small cars.  Other people were just strolling.   After a while, I headed back to the river.  With my cola, I was hydrated and thought I would enjoy sunbathing some myself.  I was already wearing my shorts, so I just pulled off my shirt.  At that point, I became the center of attention.  EVERYONE was curious about my white skin!  Then they all went back to doing their own thing.  I never tested the water of the river, but I bet it is cool.  I just sunbathed about 30 minutes--15 minutes on the front and 15 minutes on my back.  Then I dressed and returned to the hotel stopping only briefly at a nearby park to watch some men in a heated card game that was attracting a crowd.