Well, work finally re-started in earnest on Monday but it still looks like things will be minimal. Given that a lot of universities have shuttered their campuses for the time being and the uncertainty of being able to study abroad later this year, it doesn’t look good for the work load.
Although I am glad to be back at work because, after six months of this time off, I’ve started to wonder what I even do in Beijing any more. I mean, why am I here? I can’t say I was enthused with the idea of having to get up, get dressed and get out the door earlier in the day, but the one shining spot for me is that I can get a bike ride in twice a day for at least 60 minutes. So there is an upshot to the commute to work.
But work load aside, something else has changed. We have gone much more digital in this restart yet something feels different. To be sure, there are fewer people around, not just because of those who left / fled the country when this whole thing began, but, there also seems to be a bit of a pall or a doubt cast across those who remained… and murmurings of others leaving.
I wrote out my reasons for staying, arguing that, in reality, I had nowhere else to be and nowhere else to really live other than here in Beijing.
But I did talk to one guy in the elevator and asked him if he was working and he responded, “We haven’t been paid since March. I’m looking to go to Chengdu or somewhere.” I’m not sure what opportunities Chengdu offers that Beijing doesn’t, aside from a cheaper cost of living, but he’s not the only one I’ve heard leaving Beijing, if not China. Overall, our ranks have been thinned.
It’s not just that people are gone, it’s that the people who are talking about coming back don’t make sense. Why would they come back to China if they could find work where they are? Unless companies aren’t hiring in their homelands? If someone were to stay in China they wouldn’t be able to find other employment given the visa restrictions. But, who’s to say that a contract signed with a company in China is valid overseas? Could they even be enforced during a time like this?
I can say that I no longer really tell people to come to China. It’s not a bad country, but it’s certainly been in the news quite a bit and that itself gets tiring. Every news article or social media post is pointing the finger at somebody or something, blaming Trump or China or asking us to be angry about some new social movement. It’s gotten to the point that social media is more just angry venting rather than communicating.
Instead of talking about things we’d like to buy or places we’d like to see, I hear more talk about how savings are being depleted. Some people have applied for different jobs but then are told the rate will reduced until things get back to normal. I know my own travel plans in an effort to practice my spoken Chinese have been put on hold, not just because of money, but because we’re not travelling at all at the moment.
There will be no summer vacations and it looks like annual leave might be paid out instead of taken. Things can change, that’s for sure, October 1st is China’s National Day and, since they’ve already had Spring Festival interrupted as a result of this, they’re not likely to want their National Day break interrupted as well.
As it stands, we’re half way through the Year of the Ray, a cycle in the Chinese zodiac that always seems to bring some sort of disaster. A simple timeline is:
- 2020 – Coronavirus;
- 2008 – massive Sichuan earthquake and some sort of snow disaster in Hunan;
- 1996 – Lijiang earthquake (in Yunnan province), 7.0 on the Richter scale, (there was also the Asian financial crisis in 1997, but that didn’t started until the summer time period, after the Year of the Rat had ended);
- 1960 – nationwide famine
Those are the bigs ones, anyway. How much of this can be attributed to the stars aligning and the zodiac holding some sort of sway over human life, who knows? But they seem to be amplified in these years.
How long things take to recover is another question. Even the financial folks I followed went from saying “there will be no “V” recovery in the stock market” to “I have no idea why”.
For me, personally, this has felt a lot like 2017 wherein I found myself unemployed or at least not working very much, hence the reason I was sort of mentally prepared for this work stoppage.
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But with work starting I do have to look back at the year that has been so far and wonder what I’ve accomplished. I did write a “Mid-Year Review” article a few weeks back within which I discussed a few of the things I’ve been able to get done. But here’s the quick run down:
- learned the fundamentals of Japanese
- started learning Python programming
- published 60-some blogs posts (a lot dealing with COVID-19)
- lost 4 kg or so
- started cycling everywhere
- started running a few times a week
- uploaded my photos from my trip to Taiwan (and have yet to upload since then)
- finished two or three courses on futurelearn.com
- started a podcast!
- learned a lot about how to use Logic Pro X
- continued with my Chinese studies, including studying with two different Chinese teachers (using two different textbooks)
- started a long-thought-about music project
- researched where else I could travel / work and started to back up my teaching materials online
- and… started roasting my own coffee!
And there are a few other things that I managed to accomplish as well. Out of all of these things, however, I am very proud to have started a podcast not just because “everyone else is doing it”, but because it’s been a conduit through which I’m able to start picking away at learning audio post-production, one of my weak points in my multi-media work flow.
I also read a few books, but I seem to be picking through quite a few of them, often going through Amazon’s website and reading the previews in an effort to not accumulate much more stuff. Some of the books I went through include:
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Can’t Hurt Me
- Wish Lanterns
- Trump: The Art of the Deal
- Racing Weight Cookbook
- Babel No More
- The Great Depression
- The Easy Way to Stop Drinking
- Genius Foods
- The Genius Life
- Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger
- The Personal MBA
- Mastering the Trade
- Museum of Abandoned Secrets
Honestly, I can’t remember if I read some of those within the last six months or if I read them at some point last year. Things have sort of blurred together but I do know I’ve read most of those books listed above. That’s in addition to the other newspapers and online articles I read on a daily basis.
I generally don’t watch much TV but I have been making my way through The Sopranos, Friends, Why Women Kill, Space Force, Family Guy, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and maybe another one.
That being said, I’m trying to tamper my consumption of social media news as I’ve a lot of it to be click bait, toxic, useless drivel. It’s quite possible that many of my own tweets fit into those categories for someone else.
But here’s to looking forward to the next six months. Hopefully things get better for everybody and that any vaccine they create doesn’t make us crazy nor make it mandatory to take.
And, as they say here in China when trying to ward off evil, pei pei pei, 呸呸呸, which is similar to the Western “knock on wood”.
Hope you are all well and keeping busy and productive.