« I Don’t Know, Sir, Y’all Are The Ones With The Largest Military In Human History | Main | Let Me Guess, You're An Art Student »

February 21, 2006

ThatKidInTheCorner Now Welcome In The Middle Kingdom!

A triumph of Sino-American relations not seen since the Nixon administration and Forrest Gump

ThatKid is live from The Middle Kingdom (Beijing, to be specific) this week. Whilst I may have complained during my visit here last summer that I couldn't access www.thatkidinthecorner.com while within the reach of China's proxy servers, it appears that I have finally made the big time: thatkidinthecorner.com is now an approved site!

My my, I must be moving up in the world!

Though I suppose we could ascribe this change in status to some larger movement to open more of the Internet to Chinese citizens (especially highly prized and valuable international content like ThatKidInTheCorner), even I'm not that vain. More likely, no one had ever tried to access ThatKidInTheCorner through those proxy servers until last summer, so they had no reason to approve it. But a couple page requests probably earned it a quick scan from the content robots, who were willing to sign off on it: mostly harmless. At best.

In other news, it's lovely to be back here. Quite a different sort of trip this time, though. Instead of "grubby backpacker slogging my way through the local saloons," I'm now "international business traveler looking for a partner in slogging through the local saloons." At the very least, the hotels are a little nicer this way. The downside is that I have to work a fair amount, and don't have as much free time for trekking up the Great Wall of China or visiting the jade factory.

Still, there's time for some quick hits:

And They Just Keep Building: the construction thing is just mind-blowing. There are gigantic buildings (not necessarily tall, but certainly huge) going up everywhere. It looks like they're doubling the size of the airport. New roads are under construction everywhere. It's all quite intimidating. And it really leads me to wonder what the hell is going on in all of these buildings? Could they all really be necessary? And then I remember that I'm in the capital of a nation of 1.5 billion people, a place where there are 258 cities with more than a million people. And then I feel really small.

My Favorite Chinese Characters: I was proud of myself for remembering the six words of Chinese that I know (and learning a few more on the flight over with the language files on my MP3 player) and even recognizing a few Chinese characters along the way. I definitely recalled the ones for "China" and "Enter" and "Exit." Though of course my favorite Chinese characters remain...well, I shouldn't print those. A free piece of jade (direct from China!) to the first person to list both of my favorite Chinese characters in the comments.

I Think I May Need A Coffee: I'm a little bummed there won't be much time for tourism, but hey, I'm here to work, and luckily I'd seen most of the sights last summer. Still, I think I'm within walking distance of the Forbidden City, and I could use a coffee before my meeting. Perhaps I'll take a little walk!

Kao!

Posted by thatkid at February 21, 2006 7:47 PM under ThatKid

Comments

Post a comment

About ThatKid

Copyright (c) 2004-2007 thatkidinthecorner