Think again.

This evening, I attended a film festival in the 798 District, a super-trendy art and cultural space in Beijing. A gallery there was showing films from The 48 Hour Film Project, an international city-by-city contest in which filmmakers have exactly 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a short film. The best films go to Cannes.

I met up with Beijing resident and fellow Iolani grad Nelson Quan, who produced one of the films that was being shown, called "Monkey Love." Quan studied at the University of Hawaii's Academy for Creative Media (ACM) and interned on the set of Superman Returns. He has been working on different projects in China for the last year and a half.

The 798 District is awash in cafes, sculptures, galleries and lofts, most set up in defunct factories (the area used to be an enormous joint factory project between China and East Germany). Gigantic red Mao-era slogans can still be seen in some places, but the area is very different from what it was 30 years ago.

The dozen or so films were being shown in the Yan Club Arts Centre.

Inside, there was no air conditioning, and although temperatures were in the high 90s outside, the inside was even worse. We were granted an intermission halfway through the screening and fled outside to escape the sweltering heat.

"Monkey Love" was produced by Quan and directed by Jay Hubert, who also studied at UH's ACM. It tells the tale of a musician and his stuffed animal friend. The film was a definite hit and was warmly received by the audience.

All the films are shot over the same weekend. And all must be built around a few specified elements; for example, each film had to include Chinese alcohol and a character who was a musician.

I was very impressed by the quality and creativity of the films, considering the film crews only had 48 hours to put them together (Quan said he slept 8 hours total during the 2-day project). Although, some were too dark for my taste, and I probably couldn't fully appreciate some of the Chinese ones because of the language barrier. Some had lighter themes; others had darker political and social undertones.

Here are the faces behind "Monkey Love" (Quan is third from R, Hubert fifth from R). If the film wins, the group wins a bunch of different prizes, and their film is put in the running for "Best 48 Hour Film of 2009" and a $3,000 prize. The top 10 films of the 2009 Tour will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner in 2010.

The 48 Hour Film Project comes to Honolulu the weekend of August 7. See their web site for details.

--------

Speaking of the arts: I was utterly shocked this morning to hear that Michael Jackson had passed away at age 50. It is testament to the King of Pop's international stature that the news of his death was the very first thing my Chinese teacher asked me about in our 9 a.m. class.

The disruption came amidst stepped-up Chinese criticism of Google for allowing users access to "vulgar content." The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused Google of spreading obscene images, although it is not clear whether the Google outage and the scuffle over online content were related.

I was able to use Google's search engine when I returned from dinner tonight (Thursday).

I remember internet complications when I lived in Beijing in 2005, but I don't remember them bugging me as much as they do now. I'm sure part of it is due to the fact that I'm here on my own this time around, so staying connected to the people I love is extremely important.

Another part of it, though, is probably because applications like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and even this blog, have so tethered me to the web that blocking my email access is like yanking the IV from my arm.

I've written before about how I sometimes feel addicted to the internet. It's part of the reason why I've never had a phone with internet capabilities -- I'd never put it down!

But I also feel like the addiction is being fed by the expectations of others; for example, the expectation that if I don't answer an email within 24 hours, I'm either dead, snubbing the sender, or in Antarctica. I recognize the need for a quick reply, but seriously -- can't you just call me?

While slow connections and random internet outages are frustrating, maybe this year in China will wean me from the internet. At the same time, I can't help but fear that I'll somehow miss opportunities, become detached from the news or, worse, lose touch with people.

Maybe people trying to contact me will just have to lower their expectations. At least the occasional total Google blockade is a pretty good excuse for not answering an email within 24 hours.

----------------------

In the meantime, I've been meticulously documenting all of my meals.

Here's something cool -- Make Your Own Sushi Box.

A friend and I discovered this in the enormous food court of one of Beijing's huge malls, in the Xidan shopping area.

Each sushi piece is individually wrapped, so you can just select which ones you want and put them in your plastic container. It's probably not the freshest way to eat sushi, but it's certainly convenient!

The inari was really good. A box of six assorted pieces, including some salmon and tuna rolls, cost about $2.

Unfortunately, we picked a bad day to go -- the skies were very overcast and there was a strong wind blowing. But apparently, that didn't stop 11,000 people from visiting the palace that day. (General admission is 30 RMB - about USD $5.)

The Summer Palace, an elaborate collection of pavilions, temples, walkways and gardens, was built around Kunming Lake. The site was previously a royal garden before Emperor Qianlong enlarged and expanded it in the 18th century. Only a panoramic photo can really do the place justice.

The main visitor entrance is near the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, which is fronted by a courtyard with a collection of mythical animals made of bronze. This is the qilin, which is supposed to only appear on Earth during times of harmony.

The Summer Palace was used as a retreat by the royal family to escape the sweltering heat of Beijing around this time of year (the temperature today nearly reached 100 degrees).

On Friday, it was being used by hundreds -- thousands? -- of people for the same purpose.

Normally you can rent a boat to take out on the lake. But the wind was so strong that staff in motor boats were going out every few minutes to tow people in.

For an extra 10 RMB, we got to ascend a few long corridors of stairs to the Buddhist Fragrance Pavilion and the Cloud Dispelling Hall that sit on Longevity Hill. (Chinese royalty must have been extremely fit.)

Here's the view from the top -- again, I'll have to go back on a nicer day...

At the very top, a few statues of Buddha that adorn the Temple of the Sea and Wisdom were missing their heads. Signs attribute the damage to Anglo-French troops, who left their mark on many of the structures during the Second Opium War (1856-1860). The crest of Longevity Hill are more temples, walkways and gardens, all with spectacular views (on a clear day).

Continuing around the lake ... the Empress Dowager Cixi again expanded the Summer Palace in 1888 -- using funds that were supposed to pay for a modern navy. This extravagant marble boat was one of her additions.

I also tried some green bean ice cream from one of the dozens of vendors hawking snacks and toys inside the Palace. It wasn't tasty. I suppose the royal family ate better back in the day.

This photo was taken on Tuesday from the window of my apartment in Beijing. A thunderstorm engulfed the city that morning, but even after the rain, the city's notorious air pollution can be seen clearly.

Here's the same shot, taken this morning:

(Wow. So that building is actually YELLOW. Didn't realize that until this weekend...)

Air pollution was one of the biggest issues of the Beijing Olympics and, as you can see, it remains a big problem. In 1998, Beijing launched the "Defending Blue Sky" campaign and began publishing weekly -- later daily -- air quality data. Blue Sky Days are determined by daily Air Pollution Index (API) readings, which measure four atmospheric pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter. The higher the API, the greater the pollution.

During the Olympics, Blue Sky Days (days with an API less than 100) became a somewhat politically charged measure of how Beijing was doing on air quality improvements. According to data at least, things appear to be getting better. In April 2009, Beijing reported 23 Blue Sky Days and its best month of air quality since 2000.

Greenpeace China lists Beijing's daily API readings on its website. The data is published daily by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Today's API is 42.

Many measures were taken to address air quality and avoid embarassment ahead of the Olympics. Beijing closed factories or moved them out of the city; the government also only allowed drivers to use their cars on certain days of the week -- taking a portion of Beijing's 3 million cars off the roads -- and made an ambitious effort to adopt higher emissions standards.

Although many of these measures were temporary, some, like cars bans, have lasting policy implications for Beijing and other Chinese cities, like Shanghai, which is hosting the World Expo next year, and Guangzhou, which will host the Asian Games.

Still, almost a year after the Games, any visitor to Beijing can see -- and feel -- that the city has a long way to go in combatting pollution. I've been here a little less than a week and have already developed the dreaded "Beijing Cough," which TIME describes as "a hacking, lung-ripping cough that leaves the sufferer unwilling to draw a full breath for fear it might set off another bout[.]" Believe me -- it's not pleasant. I was up very late last night coughing.

Experience tells me that my Beijing Cough will go away once I leave the city -- but those who called the capital home aren't so lucky. For the sake of Beijing's residents, and those in cities with far dirtier air, I hope that more permanent steps will be taken and that Blue Skies become more than just a rare occurrence in Beijing.

When I came to Beijing in 2005, I expected all kinds of things as an American. For one, like many Americans traveling abroad, I expected more people to speak English. But with the Olympics a mere three years ahead, it was evident then that even a campaign to teach Beijing cabbies English basics hadn't made Beijing a friendly place for non-Chinese speakers.

There were other frustrations, too. This may sound odd, but there aren't a whole lot of food options other than ... Chinese. Sure, you can get Japanese, Korean and American (KFC, McDonald's) -- but those are often 5 or 6 times more expensive than your average local restaurant. Our language program allotted us the equivalent of about USD $3 for food per day. That's easy when you're only eating Chinese food; but one value meal at McDonald's would probably eat up your entire food budget for that day.

Although it's important to taste the local cuisine, Chinese food can be laden with MSG and oil (I gained 10-15 lbs the last time I was here!), and though you feel full just after you eat, an hour later you're hungry again. When you're living in China for an extended period of time, sometimes you just want a sandwich!

Oh, and don't even get me started on the squat toilets. It's the oddest thing to go out to a nice restaurant or club and imagining all the women there, wearing their best dresses, trying to manuever over a hole in the ground.

At first I thought: maybe I'm not supposed to live abroad. But facing these and other frustrations, and learning to deal with them, was actually a very positive experience in my life. I'd even say that my first experience living abroad was a life-changing experience -- it made me realize just how privileged we are as Americans, and how few people in foreign countries can expect the same basic amenities that we demand every day.

So when I saw that my room for the summer had a Western-style toilet, I jumped for joy. Even though the internet may not work and I may not have had anything to eat except noodles and dumplings since I arrived, in China, it's the small comforts that really make your day.

---------------------

Speaking of accommodations, check out this interesting tiling in my bathroom:

The words read: "Christians and Muslim," "worship Muslim," and "antiquity and the love" -- although my friend pointed out that the last word could be "have" or "laws." Not that that would make more sense than "love."

(This isn't writing on the tiles -- this is the actual tile pattern!)

Odd, for sure; although I guess I appreciate the spirit of religious ... unity?

Another frustration: pollution. Despite yesterday’s thunderstorm, Beijing’s infamous pollution has turned the sky white and buildings in the distance hazy for the last two days. I haven’t seen a patch of blue sky since I got here.

Yesterday afternoon, though, I decided to take my chances with the nitrogen oxide and walk about 30 minutes to the Beijing Olympic Green, where the 2008 Olympics took place just a little under a year ago.

There were plenty of people out when I reached the Olympic Green around 6 p.m. – as if it were a perfectly sunny day (note the Water Cube to the right in the photo). After walking to the Green, though, I started to feel my throat tighten in protest against the bad air.

I can’t believe these signs, with their awesome Chinglish, would be put in the park without someone editing them first. I’m convinced that the Olympic officials did this on purpose so tourists (like me) would take photos.

Here’s the Water Cube -- it's HUGE. All I wanted to do was to feel the panels (or try to bounce off one of them), but you’re not allowed close enough to touch it.

Next, I walked over to check out the Bird’s Nest. To say that Beijing’s Olympic venues are impressive is an understatement. There were people everywhere, taking photos and marveling at the massive structures. The Bird's Nest is now being used for concerts.

I noticed a number of recycling bins and notes about conserving water. With its growing population and lack of water resources, Beijing faced the threat of a major water shortage during the Olympics. Officials spent $1.59 billion to address water supply and water quality issues during the Games.

While Beijing put on an awesome show for the Olympics, much remains to be done in cleaning up its air pollution. Factories were closed and cars were taken off the streets during the Olympics, but it’s questionable whether those measures had any lasting effect.

At the same time, some changes are evident. For example, while walking around today, I noticed that most stores now charge you for plastic shopping bags. Also, the public transportation system has vastly improved since I was here in 2005 – now you can use one transportation card for the bus, subway and taxis. (Hawaii should take note!)

Thanks for tuning in to my adventures in China. I hope to have more for you soon (and hopefully a more stable internet connection tomorrow!).

Ni hao!

I flew into Beijing around midnight on Monday evening after traveling for about 16 hours. Actually, the flight itself wasn't too bad -- Honolulu to Narita was about 8 hours and Narita to Beijing was about 4 hours (with a 4-hour layover in Japan). It's roughly the same distance from Honolulu to D.C.

Yesterday and today were definitely NOT Blue Sky Days in Beijing. I woke up around 10 a.m. yesterday to the crash of thunder. Outside, it was so dark that it still looked like the middle of the night. Although the weather cleared up later, the pollution is still very heavy and the sky is white.

To update everyone -- I'm living in Beijing's Haidian District (known as the "University District" by locals) this summer while studying Mandarin, in preparation for a year of graduate work at the Johns Hopkins Center in Nanjing.

After taking a language test yesterday afternoon, it was frustrating to realize just how much my Chinese speaking and writing skills have deteriorated since I studied here for six months in spring 2005. So, while I anticipate that this will possibly be my most academically challenging year yet, I also expect that I'll learn a great deal from living in China for the next 12 months. I'm also hoping that my experience here takes me one step closer to figuring out what exactly it is that I eventually want to do with my life.

I have an internet connection in my room (althought it's a little spotty), so I hope to have more photos up soon!

According to the Hawaii House Blog:

The law updates Hawaii's harassment and stalking laws as text messaging and social media websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter grow exponentially in popularity. While technology continues to change and new forms of electronic communications develop, so has the increase in harassment and harassment by stalking through electronic communications.

(Read the text of the measure here.)

As many as 20 to 40 percent of stalking cases involve some form of electronic communication, according to law enforcement officials, and more than 40 states have already passed similar regulations. The Hawaii bill was introduced by Rep. Jon Riki Karamatsu, who blogs here.

KITV ran a story yesterday in which they interviewed teenage girls who said they were all too familiar with cyber-stalking, especially by male peers. So now, with the new law, hateful messages sent by your ex could plausibly land him in jail -- or with a $2,000 fine.

In my opinion, the law is a good idea, and one that is way overdue.

High school bullying is far more different now -- and much scarier -- than when I was a teenager. With the advent of the internet, bullies can harass others 24 hours a day, destroy the reputation of a classmate and even encourage strangers or other students to attack a fellow student on a public forum.

Of course, there's a problem with enforcement. For cyber-bullying to stop, both the victim and the bully have to know that there is now a law that places a heavy penalty on electronic harassment. (I suspect that most teenagers aren't aware of this news.) Also, how do you determine if an email exchange is harassment or just a fight?

Moreover, since cyber-bullying is a relatively new phenomenon (at least legally), I wonder whether Hawaii law enforcement officials currently have the tools and expertise to effectively combat electronic harassment.

In the end, hopefully the new law will make Hawaii teenagers and victims of electronic stalking feel like there is something they can do about threatening text messages or online harassment. What are your thoughts?

This will be the longest period of time I've ever lived outside the country (7 months), and I'm both excited and nervous.

Over the last two weeks, I've gone to two high school graduations. Watching the grads who are soon going to embark on adventures to the Neighbor Islands or the Mainland for college, I couldn't help but think back to the summer after my senior year of high school. I imagine that leaving Hawaii, family, friends and everything familiar probably fills a lot of Hawaii high school seniors with the same kind of mixed excitement and anxiety that I'm experiencing right now. At least, I distinctly remember feeling that way when I was 18.

How do you prepare yourself to leave somewhere comfortable for somewhere new and unfamiliar? Well, yesterday, I dragged out my old photo albums from my semester abroad in China in 2005 and re-lived some of the awesome memories.

Everyone visits the Great Wall on a trip to China. But not everyone has the idea to camp out of the wall. This photo was taken the afternoon before what was either the best or worst night of my life (I haven't decided yet) -- after hiking on the wall from Simatai to Jinshanling, our group camped out overnight on one of the turrets and, in the morning, watched the sun rise over the mountains.

They had told us that it would be cold -- what they DIDN'T tell us was that we were going to be given Chinese sleeping bags that were incredibly thin. As the temperatures dipped into the 30s that night, trying to sleep on the Great Wall was like trying to sleep on a gigantic slab of ice. Just before sunrise, we wrapped ourselves in our sleeping bags (none of us could sleep anyway), and cocoon-like, waited for the sun to make everything warm again.

While studying in Beijing, I also interned with CNN International. The most exciting part of my internship was assisting with the production of CNN's week-long "Eye on China" program. Here are the anchors and production team from the CNN Beijing and Hong Kong bureaus at the Shangri-la Hotel in Beijing, where the show was filmed. (I'm in the front row, second from the right, wearing all black. The tall woman wearing a white suit in the front row is CNN anchor and correspondent Kristie Lu Stout.)

One of my favorite places in Beijing is Panjiayuan -- the Dirt Market. Think garage sale/swap meet/craft fair/art market, where people sell everything from used household appliances to antique teapots to pearl necklaces (which may or may not be real). Bargaining is a must, and you always come home with way too much stuff.

Possibly my favorite weekend trip while in China -- Haerbin. Haerbin, located in the north, is famous for two things: its incredible ice sculptures and being really, really cold.

The big ice festival in Haerbin runs until February, but it was almost March when we arrived and we were worried that all the ice had already melted. On the last day of our trip, however, we stumbled upon one of the ice parks and, even though the guards standing outside told us the sculptures were already melting, we convinced them to let us in to look around.

There were enormous ice sculptures of the Great Wall and the Pyramids, and a huge ice boat that you could walk through. The sun was setting just as we left, which made the whole experience just perfectly awesome. This photo is of my friend Sian and I inside the big ice boat.

Okay, enough reminiscing. Back to packing!

Today was the 20th anniversary of the attacks at Tiananmen Square, where student protesters demanding political and economic reform clashed with the People's Liberation Army, leaving an untold number of people dead and wounded.

The event was highly significant for both international affairs and the media, as journalists who had assembled in the city to cover Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's meeting with top Chinese officials instead found themselves in a war zone, reporting chaos and death. Those images from Beijing strongly shaped Western perceptions of China then, and continue to influence how we see the country and its leadership two decades later.

In a little less than two weeks, I will be in Beijing and will probably walk to the city center to stand in Tiananmen Square, that expansive plaza fronting the Forbidden City. This will be the third time I have traveled to China since I was 18 years old, my second time studying in Beijing, and my longest trip yet (I'll be there for about a year).

Today, I read a lot of reflections about Tiananmen, and listened to a few news reports about the Tiananmen Mothers and other groups that have been trying for years to get the Chinese government to acknowledge what happened on June 4, 1989. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton even asked China this week to release those still being held in connection with the event, stop harassing people who are linked to the demonstrations or Tiananmen anniversary events, and start a dialogue with the families affected by the incident. Unfortunately, her remarks, as expected, only provoked anger from Chinese authorities.

This anniversary brings to the fore the conflicted feelings I have always had about studying China. There's no question that China is -- besides the United States -- the country that prompts from others the most fascination, unease and, occasionally, anger. The reactions I get when I tell people that I am going to study in China are mostly two-fold -- either they see my trip as a wonderfully interesting proposition or they caution me about being followed around by Chinese police and having my email monitored.

Despite these warnings, I'm not terribly concerned, even though I realize that blogging about the #1 Taboo Topic in China on the eve of flying into Beijing may seem, well, a little stupid. I'm not planning to make trouble or blog about anything particularly controversial while I'm in China. I learned when I lived there in 2005 that, as a foreigner, you'll probably be okay as long as you keep your head down and bring a lot of spare memory cards.

While I do feel that most fears about China are a little overblown, reflecting on an event like June 4, 1989, does make you think. The reality is that while China may soon rival the United States in international power, it still has a long way to go in the areas of human rights, media freedom and addressing uncomfortable parts of its history, like the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen. It's a struggle for Chinese leaders, who are determined to maintain stability by any means necessary in order to continue on the path to economic prosperty. But economics aside, the fact that many in and outside China worried about another Tiananmen happening during the 2008 Beijing Olympics makes you question whether the country has really come that far at all in political and social freedoms since 1989.

As I prepare to return to China, as always, I'll be keeping an open mind. One of the primary reasons why I study China is because it's interesting, and a turbulent history, skyrocketing growth and the constant clash between the government's desire for stability and its desire for its people's well-being are all things that make the country simply fascinating. I've met too many China scholars who see either one side or the other; those who are simply enamored with the place and who ignore the negatives, or those who are determined to fear and hate China no matter what. I plan to be neither -- I desire to see China for what it is, and I hope to be able to share those revelations with you throughout next year through this blog.

I mean, unless I find out someone is monitoring my email...

------------------------

Photo by Jeff Widener, who took this photo at Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989 for the Associated Press. This remains one of the most widely circulated and recognized images today. Widener now works for the Honolulu Advertiser.