As many of you know, we moved into a Beijing hutong– a traditional single-story home in a traditional maze of houses that makes up a close-knit community. Anyways, its been a bumpy and rewarding ride. I recently painted the interior of the hutong, spending a bit of my own cash to fix up the place. Here are some before and after pictures, which I know everyone loves.

The Office:

Before

Middle

After

The Living Room:

Before

After (same view)

Bedroom:

Before

After

Anyways, life in a hutong has been a bit of a rewarding challenge:

The upside:

• Culturally relevant
• Close to Beijing’s unique culture
• Large and relatively affordable

The downside:

• Vacant and dismissive landlord
• Shoddy construction, ongoing problems
• Expensive utilities

Many of the reasons we decided to live in a hutong include the upsides listed above, but more importantly, the hutong homes in Beijing are so unique and beautiful that they really inspire a sense of living in another time. You can walk through the hutong alleyways at night, when the streets are void of sweet potato salesmen, street sweepers and thousands of meandering elderly folks, and it feels like you have time warped back a generation. Thats the number one reason we live in a hutong, the sense of time lapse and the feeling of being 100% in Beijing, and nowhere else.

There are over 300 million Americans. Less than 30% of them have passports. That means Americans are not traveling abroad. And 50% of those who do leave the USA are traveling to either Canada or Mexico. So, why is it that Americans are not traveling overseas in larger numbers?

Realistically, money and time are the two biggest factors in our estimation as to why Americans don’t travel abroad. Airfare is costly and flying is a hassle. Meanwhile, Americans on average get around two weeks of vacation a year– not enough to get abroad, get over jet-lag and start enjoying another country. In reality, many of those vacation days are used here and there for extensions on Thanksgiving, for family birthdays or other small events, and that results in, usually, less than two weeks in one chunk for travel. Its not surprising that Asia or the Middle East seems out of reach to Americans who have around 7 days to travel, explore and return. That doesn’t sound like a vacation, it sounds like a gauntlet.

In contrast, the average worker in Europe gets around a month of vacation. By law, all countries in the European Union must allow all workers four weeks of paid vacation at a minimum. Even part-time workers who have worked more than 13 weeks are entitled to their month of paid vacation. This isn’t accrued, its a right. And that doesn’t count public holidays, which are paid days. Americans get 13 days, on average, though some companies have adopted even stricter vacation plans for entry-level employees, like the company Mike worked for in Minnesota. They told him his two weeks of vacation were “To ambitious for an entry level employee.” To which Mike said “audios!” (Chart above shows average PAID vacation days by country)

Meanwhile, workers in the USA have longer daily hours, on average, then their European counterparts. This is interesting because the average salary (even taking into account cost of living) is lower in the USA on average. For example, countries in Europe have a standard 40 hour work week and depending on the country there are laws in place to put a cap on how many hours of overtime per week and year an employee can log, according to the Federation of European Employees. And although the 8 hour day wasn’t always in place, it wasn’t until 1937 that the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law and the 8 hour work day (44 per week) in America became accepted as a baseline for a new standard. (Chart above shows average work week by country and gender).

Granted, there are social implications to these differences in Europe and the US. For example, Europeans are taxed at a much higher rate and companies have to sell products at higher prices to follow labor laws. However, the work-life balance in Europe does seem to be more balanced than in the USA, where success is more important that enjoyment to many. Still, the differences are drastic, and many health related problems in America are stress related, possibly stemming from overwork and lack of holiday time.

Along an entirely different chain of thought, perhaps one reason for the shortage of Americans traveling is fear. American movies constantly have foreigners as the ‘bad guys’ and a general lack of knowledge about other countries and their cultures in the US may lead many to think it isn’t safe anywhere abroad. When the media constantly cover problems abroad in uniquely terrifying language, its no wonder people think the entire world is dangerous. Meanwhile, Americans don’t speak a second language, and this limits their capacity to travel abroad with confidence. Luckily, English is the language of travel, but to many places (Africa and Asia) even English won’t suffice. The American education system should require students to learn a second language fluently by the time they graduate from High School. What language they learn should be their choice, naturally, but it holds people back from traveling, working abroad or even understanding a second worldview when they are limited to one language. Ideas are only as solid as the language in which they are expressed, so learning a whole new language is like learning a second culture, a second way of viewing the world. Americans (myself included) miss out on this when they don’t learn a second language as a child.

CNN Travel recently did a story on the surprisingly low number of Americans who travel abroad. We were excited to see they quoted several of our fellow international travel bloggers, folks like Nomadic Matt and Everything Everywhere.

US citizens can learn how to apply for a US passport.

In 2008 we lived in Shanghai and had the amazing opportunity to stay in the city over the Spring Festival (the Chinese lunar New Year). Since so many migrant workers and others had fled the city for the holiday (which is akin to Thanksgiving where everyone goes to their home state for the festivities) we thought nothing big would happen. It was freezing, it was deserted, and we didn’t expect much.

In the end, nearly ever remaining resident in the city came outside at midnight to blow something up. There were fireworks covering every inch of the sky! Old ladies wheeled themselves outside in their wheelchairs to light off fireworks and then, giggling, rolled back inside. You could buy fireworks at the 7/11, you could buy them from old ladies with carts full, they were everywhere. At midnight on the first day of the new year, the city erupted and it seemed to linger in a state of haze and loud bangs for several days.

Now its the start of the Spring Festival 2011 and we are in Beijing. It is the year of the rabbit, and thus a fortuitous year for many. The festivities were to start on midnight of the 2nd of February, 2011. We had the same concerns as we did in Shanghai several years ago as we watched nearly every shop around our hutong home put up shutters and hang signs saying “will return on the 7th.” The city was growing empty, like the set of a zombie movie. The once busy streets were now barren save for a few random cars and the poor bus drivers, whose massive slug-like machines trolled the streets in vain for people.

It was hard to find fireworks in Beijing, at least compared to Shanghai where they were everywhere. Now there were well maintained booths with knowledgeable sales staff. Prices were printed on the fireworks and fire extinguishers lined the sidewalks behind the stalls. Something massive had changed since the haphazard array in 2008. We bought a bag full of random fireworks and, when the second of February arrived, we strolled down deserted streets with a lighter in one hand and a bag of fun in the other.

We wandered for a while, a small group of us with our bags of fun, before settling on Hou Hai Lake as our destination of choice. We set off a few simple fireworks with limited competition. The police watched but didn’t say anything, just leaning on their police cars watching the fireworks against the dark sky. At midnight, the story changed entirely. The city erupted in a magnanimous and otherworldly explosion that shook water out of the lake like nudging a cup of coffee too hard. Fireworks exploded from every corner of vision, and the booms were so close together that it was essential one giant BOOM for half an hour. We set off our remaining fireworks and walked around the lake, dodging fountains of fire, escalating rockets and other projectiles at high speeds. We saw a few small fires break out as piles of debris started to reach ankle level.

Around 1:00am we headed towards home on foot. Walking down the main street we passed a restaurant that must have had a very handsome year because they had a pile of debris that reached up to the doorway. The staff were pulling out huge boxes and stringing them together. For half an hour we watched with half a hundred others as they lit box after box of fireworks. These boxes cost around one hundred USD each and contain about 30-45 individual pipes and fireworks that, in the USA, would be large enough for a city-wide display. They went through about 20 boxes while we were there, and then they draped strings of smaller fireworks over ropes strung between trees and lit them simultaneously, creating so many flashes it felt like we were inside a video game.

This year I was prepared. In 2008 I had only my point and shoot. This time I didn’t bother with the camera at all but brought out the big guns- the video camera. I walked around and, by 2:00am, I had almost 45 minutes of fireworks shows on tape, including fireworks bouncing off cars, hitting apartment complexes and ricocheting off extremely old and valuable cultural structures.The video here is not mine, which I haven’t uploaded yet, but are a prime example of what we experienced.

The fireworks and shows will go from the 2nd of February at midnight until the middle of February, and as I type this, the explosions have not diminished by much.

Folks are talking about the environment in a new way. Global warming, greenhouses gasses, Co2 emissions, and our dependency on a depleting oil supply, dependency on mass produced and imported foods. While there aren’t many people out there who think how we treat the world we live in is acceptable, there are very few willing to do anything meaningful about it. Buying carbon credits to offset your usage may be the world’s dumbest idea. So, if you’ve decided to abandon your cubicle and you are looking for a meaningful way to escape from society for a while, why not consider a year in a commune? America has many independent, organic and otherwise less harmful communities where you can exchange your labor for food and lodging. Simply put, you get to escape the cubicle but also society as you know it, and decrease your damage to the planet in a drastic way.

For starters, check out Natural Communities Magazine, where you’ll find articles on natural living, health and general well being as well as environmental protection and appreciation. “As more and more people are seeking natural health, Natural Communities will be an indispensable personal resource for people on the path to a healthy, natural lifestyle, bringing positive solutions to life’s challenges.” Based in the Mid-west, this magazine is a good place to start thinking about joining a commune or at least living a healthier lifestyle.

GrowFood is an organization that connects farmers with people who want to learn about organic and sustainable farming. Their mission is to “help grow a community of 50 million new small-scale organic farmers. That’s how many it will take to break America’s dependency on factory food.” Dependency on mass produced and imported foods has caused sicknesses to increase because people are not utilizing the foods and medicines grown naturally in their area. Meanwhile, mass produced stuff is never of high quality. GrowFood can teach you all about the problems in this area and even offers the hands on chance to learn a better way.

The WWOOF, which is the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a group dedicated to offering people around the world the opportunity to learn.  “In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.” This is great because the average person probably can’t identify some of the plants, herbs and vegetables they eat on a daily basis in their natural habitat. If an emergency ever occurred, would you be able to find food, grow food, or raise your own meat? Less dramatically, a self sufficient farm is a great way to ensure you always have food available, and reconnect with nature.

The Fellowship of Intentional Community, although somewhat of a cult-like name, is simply “an inclusive term for ecovillages, co-housing communities, residential land trusts, communes student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives,  intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.” You’ll find information on whats available out there in terms of places to escape from society and reconnect with community and nature. An organized directory offers the exact information you need to get started.

Should you abandon the cube, abandon society and move to a commune? I can’t answer that for you, but I do think spending some time learning about natural living, or a healthier way to look at the world is useful. Even a day trip to a commune to see another concept of community and environmentalism would be an eye-opener. While Al Gore cries about global warming, he lives in a mansion and drives a car, uses air-con, flushes toilet paper and so on. Why not try a method of actually returning to nature rather than buying your way out of a guilty conscience?

Lofted Organic Home, by Doornob Designs (image)