Which Picture Has Been PHOTOSHOPPED?

A

or B?

ANSWER:

Both of them.

Great copywriter (Justin, in white) leaves CRI, and China (for the moment?). So long, and good luck!

Leaving This Mortal Coil (Temporarily)

The meditation group at my apartment has been going for about 3 years now. Decent number of regulars, which is nice. Numbers range between 2 and 11 (11 is pretty much capacity).

so that's nice.

And it's super interesting that some people, including a couple people who only started meditating w/ this group have been having some pretty deep experiences.

Like having weird visualizations about the colored flowers opening up along the chakra points... Last time a woman had feelings of floating away from the body, a post-orgasmal type of blood flush, and then she was so spooked and "fragile" feeling after she wasn't really able to talk for 10 minutes or so. I worry a bit 'cause it could potentially be dangerous.

Luckily, another woman in the group has a weird amount of out-of-body-experience experience, so was able to offer some guidance and insight.

Anyhow, i feel particularly good about the group these days. Of course it's good for me but i've been feeling more like it really offers other folks something useful and helpful.

Now if i could just get other folks to step up and lead or guide once in a while...

Dreams and the Butterfly-like Progress of Life

Part I

Last week, I had a weird dream. Me and some young friends were strolling along on a beautiful evening just before sunset when we stumbled across a sandy beach. The bronzed sun was just about to dip below the horizon. Overcome, we stripped off our clothes and joyously started charging toward the waters. I knew it’d be cold, but hey, I shouldn’t pass up the opportunity. So I ran along, slowing just enough to let a slice of log roll out of my way. It was rolling along in the shallow waters, weirdly pushed along by a current, and it momentarily blocked out the sun. I then plunged into the waters, quickly realizing that there was a strong current. It swept me along, and I couldn’t clamber back on shore. I was thinking fast about what to do when I spotted a nearby boat and managed to climb aboard. My friends had also climbed on, and the captain was trying to kick us off. Of course we all refused to get off since doing so would be death. So he grumpily took us back to shore, and I figured that even though I was annoyed at him, I’d certainly pay him much more money than he expected.

Then I woke up. And wondered, hm, that was a weird dream. What does it mean? If it tied in to anything, it would probably be the fact that I called Yoyo’s dad the previous afternoon to ask permission to request his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Analysis: ignorant youth, having fun, chasing beauty, living life. But potentially ignoring danger at the same time, which could have a monetary connection.

So, that eve I told Yoyo about my dream, because of course we don’t want to be dumb, jumping into marriage. Heck no, let’s check out and acknowledge the logs and current before jumping in.

But heck, by this point in time I’d already got the ring and wasn’t really considering the idea that marriage was the wrong move.

Part II

1.     I got the diamond ring, a very simple but nice one, that I sort of designed (‘cause it’s so f’ing hard to find a simple ring in this city!)

2.     I asked Yoyo’s dad to teach me to how to say “Will you marry me?” in the local dialect.

3.     It was the 1 year anniversary of the day we met.

4.     We went out for an fancy vegetarian meal.

5.     Then we biked to a park where I said I needed to run in and take a leak.

6.     On a little elevated plaza, i lit a bunch of candles and pulled out some wine and glasses. There were a few other people there, but I had no back up plan for that. Got all stressed out, ‘cause the wind kept blowing candles out.

7.     I said, “hey come see this thing I came across!”

8.     So while walking up, I recalled other local phrases I knew in that dialect, and added on the one new one (which I apparently completely mispronounced.) I pulled the ring out of my pocket and accidentally put it onto her wrong hand.

9.     Yoyo was totally surprised and said she felt like she was floating up above everything looking down.

10.   Then we had some wine and chocolate and just enjoyed sitting around a bit.

11.   Then we went out to a club to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitar player do his DJ thing. Incidentally we bumped into the friend who invited me to the Modern Sky party where we’d met exactly 365 nights previous. Then we got pretty drunk and had a rather fun time.

Yup, so now I’m a fiancé and I have a fiancée. Which is great. And now it’s no longer anachronistic to tell people about the target wedding date next May (in Beijing).

Of course, I feel a bit nervous, but also really happy. Yoyo’s really awesome and sweet. Aside from having a penchant to criticize my hair or fashion sense, she’s incredibly accepting of my many idiosyncrasies. There’s times when she really brings out the best in me. And hopefully I do the same for her.

My First Video Report for CRI

i actually feel pretty proud about this piece, Rocking It with Beijing Climbing Club. Nice to get some new skills. Got lots of helpful tips from my coworkers and brother along the way. 

Rub a Dub Dub

Today I officially became a voice actor for the movie above. I'm a cook who's all excited to serve Mao spicy food in camp. It's a tiny bit part, but it was fun enough. To make it fit the character's mouth, the director was calling out ideas from the control studio (I was in teh sound booth). "Try saying, 'I know you like spicy food.' or 'I know you like it spicy hot' or 'now the cooks here are very good' or whatever. It wasn't really sticking to the script that close. Felt a bit sorry for those bastards spending LOONG f'ing days in that lil' room. But that's what it takes to iron out a piece of government propaganda.

(The movie is all state-sponsored, and all sorts of dirty tricks were employed to get people into the theatres and to inflate ticket sales, ha).

Somebody said i'll be getting paid for it. Which'd be cool, though i don't really expect it. Either way, my voice didn't really fit that guy's face at all, which makes me worry that it might be a bit like the scene below:

statusq Sizzles to Third Prize

Every year the World Association of Chinese Cuisine has a cooking competition, and this year they created a rookie competition.

The "mystery" ingredient was beef, but statusq (and a Hindu contestant) had already declared they would rather be skewered than touch animal flesh.

So he prepared instead Buddha's Delight and a traditional Chinese dish of spicy sour shredded potatoes, neither of which he'd attempted before.

The six chefs and their assistants navigated a disastrously cluttered and dirty prep area, rinsing off vegetables in brown water, peeling, slicing and grating against the clock.

The crowd roared as the six chefs fired up their monstrously industrial hotplates. The audience quickly realized that statusq's Buddha's Delight was nothing more than a trumped up stirfry, but they were so wowed by the bright colours splayed out on a bed of napa cabbage leaves that they cheered anyhow. Statusq threw the dish onto the adjacent table so he could start frying his Sichuan peppers.

Crowds of who-knows-who were milling about, taking down extra stoves and tables and stuff. (The day at the food exhibition was almost over), but the contestants stayed focused.

Then at the end, statusq threw a few sticks of asparagus onto the side of the plate for colour and held the dish up for all to admire.

Contestants had been asked to prepare 8 servings of food. (4 for judges, 2 for people, and 2 for display), but in the end just one judge took a bite of each dish.

Unfortunately, statusq's Buddha's Delight had disappeared, probably thrown away by somebody moving tables.

The judge chose an Eastern European woman's 2 dishes as 1^st and 2^nd best (the one dish honestly looking like someone yakked on a pile of noodles), before announcing that statusq's potatoes were indeed the only dish there worthy of being given the prize of THIRD place.

Then the crowd, led by Xi Jinping himself hoisted statusq onto its shoulders and paraded him around Tiananmen Square. 

It's the least they coud do since there were no prizes or anything.

(thanks to Yoyo for teaching statusq how to make the potato dish. It's actually better when she makes it).

The Other William

Funny,  the Venerable Subharo, a monk friend of mine (once known as Dustin), recently moved to Tisarana Monastery in Perth, ON. (Feel free to pay him a visit there). And he bumped into a noteworthy fellow there.

Here's what his email to me says:

I was just thinking of you the other day, and then a visitor arrived, named William Bi (who I had seen a few times at Birken), and after getting to know him a little more, it turns out you have a lot in common with him:
1) He lives in Beijing
2) He's a reporter (for Bloomberg)
3) He not only meditates, but teaches a Theravada meditation group in central Beijing, called "Beijing Sangha" (you can apparently find it in Google Groups).  He also teaches yoga.
4) biking
5) Your first name!
6) You're also about the same age

Hm! How do like that? i'm particularly interested 'cause i didn't konw there were any other peer-led meditation groups in Beijing here.

Anyhow, I'll drop him a line soon.

Run Run Run Run Run, Take a Race or Two

Well, gettin' a bit more running in these days. Two wks ago was the Beijing Long Distance Running Festival, which was a bit of a ramshackle 10km race (check out my story Sweat, Sales Pitches and Scandal at http://williamwangwrites.tumblr.com/post/48030569477/sweat-sales-pitches-and-scandal-at-the-beijing-running)

and then the following wkend was another 10k race, out in the suburbs, weird course starting at a superduper posh international school, which progressed through some of the shittiest, stinkiest, poorest hutongs seen in Beijing proper.

But the exciting news is that Yoyo came out for both of them!

We ran the 1st race together, which was mellow and fun. Then the next race, she was like, "Don't worry about me. You just run ahead." and I was like, "well, yeah, that's what I was planning to do, ha."

Anyhow, 10k was way harder than i was expecting, (longer than i thouht, wanted to puke etc, etc) though i did manage to get my 45 minute goal.  Yoyo was somehow about 10 min faster solo than when she ran w/ me. Go figure. Go Yoyo!

Using Technology to Fix China's Enviro Probs!

http://i.imgur.com/lgK92VJ.jpg?1

Chengde, Take Three

For the third time, i went off to the nearby city of Chengde (not to be confused w/ Chengdu). Tomb Sweeping long weekend, and train tickets were sold out to Shanghai, Wuhan, Qingdao and Shijiazhuang. And i never even heard of Shijiazhuang before.


Well, Chengde's just a 4.5 hours away, which isn't so far unless you can only get standing room tix. Huh.

Anyhow, Yoyo's never been there before, so we hit it, and had quite a bit more fun than i was expecting. Pleasantly slept the first drizzly day away in the hotel. A barrage of Buddhist temples on the next. And a kind of boring last day in the Emperor's summer getaway grounds. Actually i knew it would be a bit dullsville, but if everyone who goes to Chengde wants to see the emperor's grounds, so be it.

Also, after all this overeating i'm getting a gut again. Lame.