Lost in China

Today (Friday September 15, 2006) me and Fitrix did the Friday pray (sholat Jum’at) at NiuJie Masjid, Beijing. Located southern part of Beijing, near the Temple of Heaven to the west direction.

We (me, Andam and Fitrix) arrived at 11.40am and found out that Friday pray at this masjid started at 1.30pm. Well, at least we still had two hours and we decided to take a lunch first at moslem restaurant around masjid. On the way to the restaurant we found one big moslem Supermarket: NiuJie Moslem Supermarket. That’s brilliant…!!! Looks like this area is a moslem area, so many people with XinJiang faces, people from middle east and also so many moslem restaurant.

While we wait for our orders at the restaurant,  someone waving at me. From his face I could tell that maybe he’s from South East Asia (Indonesia/Malaysia/Brunei). I bet he think the same way that I think, that’s why he waved at me. Mmhhh…brothers…

The masjid is a mixture of Islamic and Chinese cultures. The outside shows the Chinese influence while the inside decoration is rich in Islamic flavour. Founded in 996 during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the masjid was rebuilt in 1442 in the Ming Dynasty and expanded in 1696 under the Qing Dynasty. It consists of an observation tower, prayer hall, and minaret with a pavilion on each side. The observation tower is just behind the entrance. It was built and originally used for astronomical observations needed for drawing up the Islamic calendar. The hexagonal wooden structure is also Chinese outside but Islamic inside, with Arabic designs on the ceiling and the beams.

At masjid, we found so many different faces: Chinese (including XinJiang faces), middle east, western and South East Asian. All together doing the same thing, praying. I’t been a long-long time since I arrived in BeiJing, I finally found the big moslem community. And guess what, we met other Indonesian people also at that masjid.

Next Friday, I will be on a flight back to Jakarta.

That’s it. I’s my one and only chance to do Friday pray at this magnificent masjid. I hoped I can do Tarawih in BeiJing, but maybe Allah wants me to go back to Jakarta, to face the Ramadhan together with my little happy family.

We’re back!!! from a 4-day geological trip to Ji Xian, Tianjin Province. What an exhausting trip, climbed up and hiked mountain and hills but nevertheless there’s something interesting and beautiful about Chinese people and culture we learned from the trip. So much things to tell but seems words are not enough to describe all. The most important thing is that because of this trip, we had been able to twine relationship with our chinese colleagues here. After 4 months having a hard time just to communicate with them eventually the ice now is melting down.  We don’t know after all this time, they were so eager to talk to us, but due to their poor english made them so timid and refrained.

One night, we approached a guy who supposed to act as our escort (??) during the trip to ask something about problems we had with our simcard, one simple question lead to another then it turned to be a pleasant conversation between people with contrast background. We chatted about many things, from simcard to communist party, from monogamy-poligamy to how expensive to buy a house in China, from our wife/bf-gf’s profession to Korean War, Japan War, Hongkong and Macau. I can say that this guy is very open minded person, I dare not say youth generation of Chinese nowadays all like him, i just can guess this man is different, unique, not only how open he was but also he can joke with us the way we do. A real cute and funny chinese young man.

At the other night, he revealed to me that he is not a Han Chinese but a Manchurian (you know that majority of Chinese, 90% is Han race and the rest are Miao, Manchu, Mongol and etc). No wonder I always thought his face is unlike typical chinese men, more like Korean or Japanese. His hometown is in Liaoning Province, Northeastern part of China, He said that in ancient times, 3 province in North Eastern China which covers Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang were belong to Manchus. The last dynasty who reigned China before China reformed to a national was Qing Dynasty, and this dynasty came from Manchu tribe. In old times, the Manchus earned living by hunting animal and used animal skin as their clothes, which is unlike Han race who mostly lived as farmers. We shared so much thoughts,  opinions, differences but at the end i realized that no matters what nationality, religion, culture, customs, tradition every people has, we are all just the same human being everywhere.

Dedicated to our dude, Gao Boyu…   

When I was down, I spent my Thursday cloudy afternoon by walking around the downtown. Walking to the city park, to the back area of the  downtown and spotted that the KFC will do the Grand Opening in Saturday.

Suprised. I was wondering what’s going on at the park at that hour then found out that some old people spent their time doing a game. Is it a ‘put put golf’…? Dunoo the name of this game, but seems those people really enjoyed it. Yeah, sure. Also I recognized some people playing cards and ‘gasing’(?) and some doing the calligraphy using stick and water. I think they wrote poem or something, interesting.

A couple doing the dance excersice at the center of the park and for sure you’ll find young people doing ’something’ at the back. Gosh, it’s hard to get the picture of that ‘hot moment’ hihihi…

In the morning, you’ll find old people doing dancing using flags and fans. And also some are interesting doing excercise using sword, fake one. Children this time playing with their rollerblade, and I think they have a coach. Yup, they have a coach.

Man, I was in the middle of no where.

Every TV show in China has a Chinese subtitle, no matter the shows are in English or in Chinese. Interesting one (for Chinese people, not for me), they usually use dubber to translate the English conversation (except in CCTV 9 as the English channel).

IMO, I will let the conversation still in English and put the Chinese subtitle at the bottom of the screen, so it’ll never disturb the sound of conversation itself. But, hey…lookslike every English conversation was dubbed and…it’s suck (for me). I can not understand what people said because it’s disturbed by the dubber. IMO it’s a silly way to translate, but maybe this is the China way and I have to get used to it.

Actually not just English conversation that was dubbed, but also every western movie. It’s dubbed to Chinese and (still…!!!) has a Chinese subtitle. Poor me. Can you imagine Michael Schumacher or Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones speak Chinese…??? Sometime I enjoying watching TV with Chinese language, but sometimes I just want to throw the ashtray to it.

Well, maybe this is the way how the China Government try to push the un-employment rate. They try to make many jobs for the people. And maybe this is the start point for China to be more open to the world. We’ll see.

photos by andam & edwin 

photo by edwin 

it’s just a simple and ordinary life…

Quotes from Bruce Lee’s movies, ’Way of the Dragon’, ‘Enter the Dragon’, ‘Fist of the Dragon’ etc:

   *)  In a count of three….i’ll be kicking you….

   *)  I’ll beat any man in this room in sixty seconds

   *)  Be like the nature of water. Water the softest stuff on Earth, but it can fit into any container. It seems weak, but it can penetrate rock.

    *) My brother can’t walk right. Can’t talk right. You have dishonored my family. I have sworn to kill you 2) Swearing is easy.

A movie channel in China will air Lee Siu Lung aka Bruce Lee’s movies this month (maybe to honor this man’s works), dunno! Yawn……I’m waiting for Jackie not Jacky Chan or Stephen Chow’s movies though.

I felt annoyed for the past two days due to several reasons.

First, was due to the ‘careless’ driver that driving us from the hotel to the office, pick us up for lunch then driving us back to the hotel. The drivers are always changing, not always the same person, and this one was the worst. Most of our drivers are lousy ones, we just couldn’t figured out how on earth they can get the license because safety is the last thing that ever come to their mind. Looks like they were actually born to be Formula 1 racer but due to unfortunate fate they just happened to be just ordinary driver.

The problem is they hardly hit on the brake if needed, they just don’t want to and they don’t have enough patient to wait and give a way to other cars. Sometimes, they took the opposite lane just because they didn’t want to wait and it’s quite often/common for us to be in a hell condition when our car had to face to face with other car or truck. 

After several days didn’t post anything, i feel a little bit guilty inside. I think having a blog and keeping it alive is similar like nursing a baby or growing a plant. It requires commitment and high responsibility, doesn’t it? It gives you satisfaction if your baby/plant grows well, the same if you get plenty responses from your readers, vice versa.

Last night we had a light chat with Mr. Xiao. He worked in Indonesia for 4 years at Bohai rig. Despite his room is in the same floor and exactly in the front of mine and fitrix’s room, we hardly know him. He found out that we came from Indonesia later, hence he is being kind to us, sometimes we thought too kind. A couple days a go, he invited us for a dinner in a moslem restaurant and he made every effort to find us a mosque for Friday pray.

Back to our chat with Mr.Xiao….we finally know the reasons on some strange things we encountered here. For ex. everytime we watched local tv channel, we always wonder why there’s chinese subtitle even if the languange is chinese. First we thought, maybe it was to accomodate the deaf to understand but….tet…tottt….we were wrong.The reason is because Chinese word characters is same all over China but pronounciation may differ a lot from one part to another part of China. Or the fact that Chinese always change everything into Chinese words/languange, even if it is a name of a person or a name of a country. For example, names Mary or David, in Chinese becomes Mali and Dawei. United States of America becomes ‘Mang Guo’….far different… but for Indonesia, it’s quite close ‘Uendo-nisia’. When Edwin and Suryadi came here, they tried to change their names into Dewen and Surayati….hehehe, funny isn’t it?