Jim in China

Monday, December 1
[cross-posted to Beer30]

This has nothing to do with beer. But I have never heard the Queen of the Night hit so many high F’s in a row, so I am sure that beer is involved in some way.

I have been unable to look at beer30 behind the Great Firewall of China until today. I don’t know why. iTunes was verboten, and now it is reachable. KPOJ has been blocked for the last three weeks until today. WTF? HuffingtonPost is completely unreachable.

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! must have pissed off a lot of people behind the GFC. iTunes Error = -3259 [ firewall timeout issue].

The Philadelphia Inquirer has been blocked as long as I have been here.

But I can always read Fox News, if I wish to.

It is my duty to report that I suffered through the weekend by singing Christmas carols at the Weihnachtsmarkt at the German embassy and rehearsing Beethoven’s 9th. The Beethoven was sheer joy, and the Christmas market was extraordinary. The ambassador conducted us in “O Tannenbaum” and then served each of us mugs of gluhwein. I had two and felt completely snockered.

My own favorite was “Leise rieselt der Schnee”, which I had heard often as a child, but I never knew what it was called. There is nothing like singing in a German chorus to fix up your German in a hurry!

The beer was German, and was excellent. I have no idea what I drank, but it was delicious. The food was wonderful. VW Beijing is famous for making its own ketchup for its currywurst (8 squeals / 10 on the pig scale).

I had three different kinds of pig besides the currywurst. Barbecued pig on a seeded bun (8.5 oinks/10), pork-stuffed maultaschen (9.0 oinks /10), and grilled AND smoked pork sausage with Chinese mustard on a fresh roll (9.5 oinks/10, mostly because it had so much fett in it that the napkin underneath was as transparent as glassine paper).

I had a glass of champagne I couldn’t afford to turn down and tried to appear sober.

Of course, everywhere I went, I heard the Chinese kids (and their parents, sometimes) saying “Shèng dàn lǎo rén” - Christmas man. You must remember that I look like a 6′ cue-tip, and most Chinese think I look exactly like their iconic image of Santa Claus. I tell them that all westerners look alike, but they don’t get it.

Have fun with the Mozart.

Oh, yes. I read about it in the Guardian.