Anyang

Wow havent blogged in a while.

But I don't feel like much has happened. I kinda fell into a schedule of school, gym and xiaochi. I guess the biggest thing we've done recently was a trip to Anyang.

Anyang is south of Beijing, about 5 hours by slow train. We had tickets for seats on the train, but the other 60% of the passengers had to stand up for the full 5 hours. One lady decided not to stand but to fall asleep under our chairs.

We passed the usual sprawl of Beijing, farms, factories, hotels, more farms, more factories and eventually got to Anyang. It was dark when we arrived but from the look of the city it felt like we hadn't left Beijing. Our hotel was literally right next to the train station. At first a blessing because of the short walk but then at night while sleeping we heard train horns all night long. I thought it was fortuitous that we were so close to the station but I soon found out Anyang was, geographically, a pretty small city. But it does have over a million people living there. After the sweaty uncomfortable and boring train ride we headed to KFC, our western refuge.

The next day we went to see some oracle bone museum. Anyang is famous because they found some turtle shells with really old Chinese characters. Anyang is said to be the cradle of Chinese writing. This museum was more like a historic park. It had tons of exhibits of stuff they dug up. Not exciting....but interesting. Later we got to "dig" at an "archeological site". It was more like we helped a few laborers dig some dirt at a site that might contain some historically important material but in a few months will be the underground parking lot of an apartment complex. That night, Nash discovered an arcade with that tiny basketball game. He spent a lot of money trying to break the (in my opinion) unbreakable record on the game. Anyangs taxi drivers, infact all type of drivers, honked at everything. I think their cars were powered by their honking. They would honk at you even if you were standing on the sidewalk. Driving in Anyang was unbelievable chaotic, and the honking didn't seem to help. As i was falling asleep I tried to count the time between honks. I never got past 4 seconds....

The next day we went out of town to a mountain or hill of some sort. I didn't really understand why this place was famous. It was just a large hill that people climbed up. The view wasn't spectacular, but the climb was fun. We had to squeeze through tiny gaps in the rock and cross this huuuuuge bridge. Halfway up we had a picnic with supplies we brought with us. I was puzzled because there were tons of people climbing up this mountain but no one passing us on the way down. Is there another way down this mountain? Yes, there was.  Slide. A huge slide. The most painful slide I've ever been down. We wore protective clothing that seemed to only protect your clothes, not your body. It was steep and the corners were sharp. My hips were destroyed...

That afternoon we ate duck. Oh man, did we eat duck. Nash, Bo and I took down two whole ducks. And I do mean whole. They deep fry the entire duck and chop it up and put it in a bag for you. I found the head, complete with beak. This fried duck was the best duck I've ever had. Disgustingly bad for you though.

They journey back to Beijing was much more pleasant. We took a high speed train home which reduced the trip to about 3 hours. This train was the nicest train I've ever been on. It felt like a plane without wings. But much, much more leg room. Something I forgot to mention. Anyang was disgusting. It was so polluted. I think it was surrounded by coal power plants. I thought Beijing was bad, but Anyang definitely raised the bar. Or lowered it....whatever.

Yes, Anyang was a pretty uncomfortable place. Returning to Beijing was lovely. I can't imagine how returning to the US will be.

Yunnan - Zhongdian

After a 2 hour bus drive that I slept through we arrived at Zhongdian, which the Chinese government renamed Shangrila to promote tourism. There's really no such place as James Hilton's Shangrila...well there is now. It's a small unimpressive city in the foothills of Tibet. We ate lunch with our new guide Jiaxi. He's a big guy in Zhongdian. Both figuratively and literally. He's a big guy with an equally big dog, a Tibetan Mastiff. You probably haven't run into too many Tibetan Mastiffs. They're really rare. I heard this dog cost as much as a luxury sports car....

But Jiaxi...He runs a hotel, a restaurant, does some government work and works with an NGO. On top of that he drives the school bus that takes the children of Napa village to and from school in Zhongdian every week. He's a pretty cool guy. I heard he worked in south China during the Vietnam war building a road to supply the Viet Cong. He was only 13 at the time...

After lunch we headed to Napa. I should mention at this point that there was snow everywhere. Another group of students was doing the same trip we were but in reverse. They flew directly from Kunming to Zhongdian and stayed at Napa first. Their flight was delayed a day because of all the snow. It had snowed a foot before they got there and another foot or so during their stay. We weren't looking forward to all the snow, especially after the coldness of Haerbin and  relative pleasantness of Kunming. 

Before we got to Napa we made a stop by a Buddhist temple. I should say monastery. It was more of a monastery. It was a village built on a hill beside a lake. At the top of the hill sat a massive temple - full of monks. We didn't waste anytime. We walked straight up to the temple to have a look around. From the balcony we saw a little island with a small dome on it. We asked what it was for. They don't bury people in Buddhist culture but they do leave them, dismembered, in  small domes on little lake islands for birds to eat.....

To be honest I'm getting a little jaded when it comes to Buddhist temples. I've seen a lot of them so far. They're usually really pretty but oftentimes if you've seen one, you've seen them all. This one had a distinct difference. Monks. Lots of them. They all wore their traditional maroon garb and Nike sneakers. They all had brand new sneakers. Fashionable shoe wearing monks. And cell phones. I would see monks, young and old, take a break from meditation or chanting to text a friend. It all seemed a little...hokey. I might go as far as to say a racket. They depend on tourists and pilgrims to survive. Ordinarily this is fine, nothing wrong with living off tourism but there was nothing special about this place. It was just some guys hanging out in maroon in a candlelit room. I think we all know my stance on religion but this one is particularly silly. No one agrees about anything in it, and no one can really explain the mechanisms of it....or why I should give them money for incense or some beads.

Plugh....At least I bought a sweet "painting" of tiger leaping gorge outside the temple. Oh, I gave into the tourist in me. I bought those colorful Tibetan  prayer flags.

The bus drove us out of town a few minutes and literally dropped us on the side of the road. The only road to Napa was too snowy. We would have to walk down a muddy, snowy track to get to Napa. We were told it was a 10 minute or 3km walk. One of those amounts is was clearly wrong. We were hoping it was the 3km. But no, it really was 3 km. Nobody, except me, had proper snow shoes. I packed them just in case, not really thinking I'd need them. It was the best decision I have made in China. Everybody else had to put plastic bags over their shoes. We only walked for 10 minutes before Jiaxi came barreling down the road in his suitably big SUV, fully equipped with a snorkel and extra gas tank at the back. How far are we going? There wasn't enough room for all of us in the car so a 6 of us sat on the top. I've never ridden an elephant but I bet it was like our ride into Napa. The road was already in poor condition and the snow made it worse. We, or at least I, held on for dear life as we tumbled along the makeshift road, in a constant state of fishtailing. At one point the road became a bridge. At first the road hugged Napa Lake but eventually it left the safety of land and wondered out into the lake. To our left and right there was water, only 4 feet from the wheels. Freezing cold, semi frozen lake water. And we were inside and on top a vehicle barely being controlled by the driver. 

Napa was going to be interesting......

Yunnan - Tiger Leaping Gorge

After a spot of lunch next to a river at the bottom of a steep valley we started our hike up through Tiger Leaping Gorge. TGL gets it's name from an old legend of some hunters chasing a tiger through the valley and it hopped across the gorge using a large rock in the center of the river as a stepping stone. I'm pretty sure there haven't been tigers in this region for a very long time.

We started by walking up a path led by our tour guide Jonathan. Immediately we saw large Lord of the Rings-esque mountains, snowcapped and looming. We feared we'd have to cross these mountains which are basically the foothills of the Himalayas. Luckily our plan was to just walk past them, in their shadow. The first day we walked past terraced farms and goats for about 2 hours. It wasn't too tough of a walk. There were a few steep rocky sections that I think the less physically fit among us had trouble with but I was quite comfortable. We eventually reached the Naxi Family Guest house. A beautiful, apparently brand new timber lodge at the foot hills of the gorge. Our view was fantastic. Not a bad place to spend an evening. We ate the usual meal of vague but delicious vegetables, vague but tasty meat and bland broth and leaves which I neither like nor understand. It's basically hot water, with a few spinach leaves, eight to nine noodles and sometimes an egg. There was one standout dish. Bitter Gourd. If you ever have the opportunity to eat Bitter Gourd, don't. It's awful. It's like eating earwax flavored celery. After dinner we put on a few extra layers of clothes, sat around bowls of smoldering coals and learned to play Majiang or Mahjong. It's not as complicated as it looks and a good way to pass time. We were all given a bowl of sunflower seeds which we ate furiously. Why? I don't know, they were neither filling nor tasty but when you're up in the Chinese mountains playing majiang by starlight you just don't say no to anything. Except Bitter Gourd.

After another night on top of an electric blanket we rose to head out to the main part of TLG. A few people had come down with a stomach illness since Shaxi. Aseem had to stay behind and meet us at the next hotel. The first hour of climbing was much more difficult than the previous day. We had been warned. The itinerary did warn of 18 switchbacks of hell. I think there were more like 30 but it was all uphill, direction didn't matter. Me and a few others were getting tired of the walk for ten minutes rest for five routine so we just went on without everyone else. It was hard to get lost on this path. After the hardest part of the climb the trees opened up exposing a great view of the gorge. This was the gorge of gorges. I've never seen such a dramatic changed in altitude. It was like standing on the end of the earth, and the other end had wrapped all the way around but couldn't quite reach. The weather too was odd. It would be sunny, then hail, then rain, then gail force winds, then sun again.

I think this scenic outlook was the highest point in our day. We descended to another guest house to eat lunch. We met some Brits and Argentinians here, they said they were headed where we were heading in a few hours. There was one odd thing about this guest house. In the corner two people practiced Kung Fu. Like real Kung Fu. Morpheus vs Neo, Mr Miyagi, Jackie Chan - Kung Fu. And one of them was a white guy. He was obviously the apprentice.

The rest of the hike was pretty much flat. We just hugged the side of the mountain the whole way. Literally hugged in some parts as we were basically walking a long a cliff. This made me think. How did all these guesthouses get up this high? Answer: Horses. Horses carried every single one of the objects used to build these massive guest houses. Incredible. Soon we came to a huge waterfall cutting it's way across out path, we had no choice but to walk through it. This is apparently where a lot of people die in Tiger Leaping Gorge. Sweet, Jonathan, thanks...

Shortly after the waterfall we descended down to our next hotel, Chateau de Woody. A name I'll never understand. We were served a post hike green tea and ...walnut platter? To open the walnuts we were given rocks....out of the flower garden in the courtyard.  This hotel had another great view. I think Troost stayed here in this hotel because he describes the exact view. Looking out the hotel all you see is a Mordor-esque wall of rock.

We went upstairs after showering and resting for dinner. We had another post dinner game night of majiang, poker and craps. We called it a day. Quite a day. It was about 6 hours of hiking, some of which was pretty tough. In my opinion Troost is a pansy. It wasn't that hard of a hike.

The next day, before heading to Zhongdian/ Napa we drove down the namesake rock of Tiger Leaping Gorge. It's a big rock. In the middle of a big river. Not that exciting to be honest. Maybe it was early, or maybe it was the 50 flights of stairs we had to climb down and then back up to see it. I could have done without seeing it close up. I had already seen it from the glorious top of the gorge.

Onto Zhongdian!

Video of Shaxi Hiking

Yunnan - Shaxi

We left Dali in the afternoon by small charter bus. Our muslim bus driver was a maniac. There was no vehicle too big or too small he couldn't pass at hair raising speed. I think I slept most of the way. It was apparently a 3 hour bus ride but I don't remember it being that painful.

We arrived in Shaxi in the early evening just before the sun went down. Driving into Shaxi was, up until that point, the most beautiful natural scenery I had seen in China. Shaxi is surrounded by green and yellow fields, right at the bottom of a large valley. It's a town of about 20,000 people. It's remote but not tiny. Driving in, I was worried about our hotel situation, as a lot of the buildings were very.....made of mud. Some local people helped us with our bags and walked us to the hotel. They lead us down some very "interesting" alleys to get there. After dodging the livestock, sewage and children running around, we made it to the hotel which completely defied my expectations. This hidden gem of a guest house was amazing. Every wall was decorated with ornate carvings. It was a villa style building. Rooms dotted around the surrounding wall with an open  atrium in the center. They had two computers with internet access, a flat screen tv with a wide selection of DVDs. Most importantly the beds had electric heaters in them. This proved VERY comfortable at night.

We ate a delicious meal shortly after getting settled in our rooms.It was a standard chinese meal - vegetables, toufu, meat....and chicken nuggets? Hmmm. I forgot how much I like chicken nuggets.

At night we learned and practiced a song that we were expected to sing and dance to the next night in front of the people of the town. Nobody was really interested in learning it despite the teacher's efforts. We decided to just watch Ratatouille. It's cute, but I think Pixar has lost it's touch. It's too cartoony now.

Like I said, the night was cold, but the bed was warm. We woke up early the next day to walk around town and hike around the mountains.  Our first stop was an old temple in the center of town, then onto the market. It was all hustle and bustle. People selling rice....people buying ric. There was just about everything you could think of at this market. Every form of chicken, duck and goose. Pig legs strewn about on tables. The usual.

For lunch we drove, through stomach turning winding roads, to a buddhist temple in the mountains. I'd estimate we climbed about 20 floors worth of stairs to get to it. Which wasn't that much compared the the following days. Being a buddhist temple they didn't serve meat. Which was alright because 1) I'm always dubious of the meat in China 2) this was the best vegetarian food I've ever had. One dish is particularly memorable. It was some sort of cheese or curd. It was a white paste, the consistency of the goat cheese at Uchi (Ariel know's what I'm talking about) covered in hot chili peppers. But the paste was the saltiest thing I've ever had. It was saltier than pure salt, yet delicious.

After lunch we saved the peanuts and cashews from the meal and fed the local monkeys. Monkeys are picky. We were giving them shelled peanuts but they insisted on removing that papery thin layer on the outside of the actual nut. It was actually really cool to see. They would roll the nut in their hands removing the shell. Monkeys move their hands exactly like humans. It's freaky.

We hiked around the mountains some more, stopping at various temples along the way, one of which was the "Temple to the Femal Reproductive Organ". Naturally it was in a cave.

On the ride back to Shaxi we told each other riddles, all in Chinese. It was fun to see people edit the riddles so they could explain them. In the evening we had another delicious meal (this time the chicken nuggets were cold) and went out to the town square to watch the locals do various singing/dancing acts. They would perform something for us, then we'd retaliate with some song or dance we knew. We performed our awkward chinese song and dance we'd learned the night before first. Everybody just looked at us with a expressionless face.  It was a poor opening move. Later we moved onto just singing English songs, Sublime's What I Got, Jingle Bells, The Lion Sleeps Tonight and the  coup de grace Bohemian Rhapsody.

After being shamed by 10 year old girls singing and performing better than us we retired to our hotel for another cosy sleep. 

We got up early again and prepared to depart for Tiger Leaping Gorge. We were told to pack enough stuff for one night because we wouldn't see the bus or our big bags again for 2 days. After breakfast we hit the road. The first 20 minutes leaving Shaxi were horribly winding. I quickly became car sick and closed my eyes hoping to relieve the sickness. Eventually we hit straighter roads and I regained my strength. After about an hour of driving we hit a small town, who's name I never found out. Initially there was a little traffic trying to get through this town but eventually we came to a complete stand still. No one was moving. Every car was in complete gridlock. There was no sign that it was going to start moving so we all descended the bus and walked around the market. It seemed that the market was the cause of all this traffic. It was a saturday, market day, so everyone had converged on this tiny road. And because it is China people parked their cars/carts/construction equipment with no regard for other people trying to get through. The police if they had cared/existed wouldn't have been able to get through to tell people to move. It was chaos. It was an illustration of everything I dislike about China.

After about 2 hours we eventually got moving again, but because we were all wandering around outside the bus just left without some people for fear that if he didn't start moving he wouldn't be able to move again. We drove out of town a little bit and everyone who was missing just had to walk to catch up. It made sense.

On to Tiger Leaping Gorge!!

Yunnan - Beijing to Dali

All the LI kids got on a bus to head to the airport at 6am. I did my packing 20 minutes before we left. I didn't need that much, just a few changes of clothes, the odd book and some power cables. I only have my backpack and huge duffel bag, so I brought both.

The flight was pretty scary. There was a lot of turbulence in the air - that I didn't mind. It was hair raising when we came in for landing. We would drop seemingly hundreds of feet at a time. Everyone clapped and cheered when we we finally on the ground. I had to agree, I was happy to be on solid ground.

Kunming's weather was beautiful. 80 degrees with a slight wind. Perfect compared to Beijing. Kunming is pretty for China. I'm afraid a lot of Kunmings income comes from tourism, but I hear a new international highway is being built. Kunming is expected to be a household name in the U.S. in a few years. A1, the group I was in, had a train to catch at 10pm. All the other groups got to spend a night in kunming before departing for their destinations. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and left on foot to explore the city for a few hours. It's nice to walk around with a vague goal in mind. Ours was the large central park. We walked through some streets buying last minute necessities like sunglasses, bottle openers and Snickers (a real life saver). We eventually made it to the park. As I expected it was teeming with people. C'mon. A verdant park, on Saturday, perfect weather...in China.

After just wasting time walking around and eating at a xiaochi, we eventually returned to the hotel and then onto the train station. Like my previous train station experience, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people there. After boarding the train everyone just wanted to sleep. We had fun and partied on the Harbin train, but we were all tired from traveling. For some reason they were playing a certain Chinese love song on loop from 10pm to about 11:30 or 12. It wasn't even a good song. The only line I can remember was in English "To kiss someone, to hold someone". Trains are my new favorite way to travel.

Dali (and the rest of this trip) is not like anywhere else in China. The skies are green and the people are not Han Chinese. 92% of Chinese people are of the Han ethnicity. Dali is primarily Bai. But they mostly still speak Mandarin, and can certainly understand Chinese characters. after arriving we went to breakfast with our new tour guide Jonathan from Kunming. Just as we were getting off the bus at the inn where we were eating Jonathan introduced the bus driver. Jonathan told us two things about him. His name and the fact he was a Muslim. I'm not sure why he mentioned his religion. Was it a warning? A funny quirk? I'm not sure, but if he had never told me I would have never known. 

The breakfast was the best breakfast I've had in China. This was because it was as western as it gets. Scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, orange juice and crappy coffee. I had to use the bathroom but like a lot of things in China this was an adventure. First, I forgot toilet paper. Chinese bathrooms often don't have toilet paper. BYOTP. After I got someone to bring me some, I went to flush. Uh oh....no water? But there's water in the toilet. Where did it come from? My rudimentary plumbing knowledge directed me to the cistern. Phewf. The ball that floats up stopping the flow of water was just stuck.  My toilet problems for this trip were only beginning.

After breakfast some of us went on a bike ride with Jonathan. At the bike rental shop we were told to pick out, from a selection of crappy mountain bikes, a bike that looked like it might fit us. As I was adjusting my saddle for my potential ride everyone just took off. I quickly jumped on my bike to catch them. I should point out that I was wearing my TOMS. Worst traveling shoes ever. They're basically slippers. My shoes were in the bus. After riding for about a minute I noticed my right foot hurt a lot more than the left one. They both hurt because the shoes were paper thin, but the right one just didn't feel ...right. I looked down to see half a pedal. Not even half. It was just a pole where the pedal should be. This sucked. Oh well. This wasn't my first rodeo. I've ridden a severely broken bike for much longer.

We rode through town, which isn't very big, through some fields, past some pagodas and down to Erhai lake. It's a pretty large lake, like Tahoe. It's what keeps Dali so humid and pleasant. We tried to walk out on a pier but we were told it would cost us. We didn't feel like paying so we walked away. As we were riding away a guy came up to us and offered to take us out on a fishing boat for a minimal charge. We haggled is down to 15 kuai per person. I'm glad we took the offer because it was a good story.

This fisherman was the most unique fisherman I have ever seen in my broad study of fishermen. We thought we were going to go on a large, diesel-powered, net-towing, fishing boat and taste the life of a seaman. But no. 8 of us piled into a glorified  rickety canoe. As we were waiting to depart the fisherman was getting birds out of what looked like upside down laundry baskets. He and his friend were tying reeds tightly around these birds (called yuying, fish-eagles). He threw 5 or 6 into the boat with us and pushed off. He rowed a few hundred feet from the dock and pushed the birds into the water. They swam around for a bit occasionally diving to get fish. I then realized why the birds had string/reeds around their necks. The birds couldn't swallow the fish. The fisherman would call the birds back to the boat when they had a fish and then empty their throat by force. It was actually a very successful way of fishing, albeit a disgusting and mean way.

After our brief foray into the world of bird fishing we cycled back to central Dali which is a web of touristy stores and hippie paraphernalia. Dali is full of dreadlocked white people. It's a big hippie town.  Occasionally we would have old women in traditional clothes come up to us and offer us marijuana...repeatedly. They really had no fear. 

For lunch we felt like eating hamburgers. We made our way up an alley with a little river running down the middle and sat down at an outside table. I flipped to the hamburger section and picked out what I thought sounded delicious -  and egg and cheese hamburger. After 20 minutes I was served my egg and cheese sandwich. It was just bread,cucumber, cheese and a fried egg. Bummer.

Shortly after we departed Dali by bus. On to Shaxi!

Yunnan Itinerary

This is the itinerary verbatim:

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2/25 - Early morning flight to Kunming, Overnight train to Dali

2/26 - Free morning in Dali, 12pm drive to Shaxi Ancient Town in Jianchuan

2/27 - Morning Bai Culture talk, afternoon hike 8km to Shibao Mountain Complex

2/28  - Early morning depart from Shaxi, 10pm* start hike - 18 switchback of hell 15km hike

2/29 - 15 km hike to Lower Gorge overnight at Chateau de Woody's

3/1 - Drive to Zhongdian (3hrs); afternoon at Songzanlin Monastery; evening enter Napa Village

3/2 - Napa Day 1 

3/3 - Napa Day 2

3/4 - Napa Day 3

3/5 - Napa Day 4

3/6 Morning flight to Kunming; Free Day in Kunming; late night flight to Beijing

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So from what I can tell from this itinerary and word of mouth, this is going to be an intense week and a half. Lot's of hiking, talking to locals and getting lost. Things I like.

There are 4 Yunnan groups. I think they split everyone up to make the groups easier to herd. Going anywhere in a big group sucks. I'm glad there is only 13 or so students on our trip. Also I really like the people in my group. It's not that I don't like the other people...it's just that I am pretty close with the people on my trip. There are two upper lever and two lower level groups. I'm not ashamed to say I'm in the lower level. A1 and A2 are the "northen", mountainous trips and B1 and B2 are the southern, tropical trips. A1 and A2 have the same itinerary but in opposite orders. I'm on A1. I don't know much about the B's.

Click picture for a bigger one.

2/20-22/09

After class on friday we took a trip to a culture/traditional crafts exhibition. Why? I don't know. Well at the time it made sense, but in retrospect it wasn't very informative. All the language kids took a charter bus all the way across town, fighting midday traffic the whole time. I'm not sure if this building was always used for these sorts of events or what but it looked like a really old wealthy chinese mansion. We saw a huge line for tickets, which I was very impressed with. As I've probably mentioned before, my biggest beef with China is the Chinese refusal to line up. I haven't really ever seen a line. They're more like formations. Formations toward a common goal. I've been reading Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost. It's amazing how much it has mirrored my experience in China. Maybe I'll blog about that book. I highly recommend that book. Go get it. He too has a similar disdain for the Chinese line forming abilities. As I think i mentioned in the Harbin post, they don't really do lines in traffic either. Driving at high speeds on highways is no problem in China. When you get to stop and go traffic you run into problems. Luckily you're never moving at high speed and the taxi drivers have an extra appendage know as their car. I rarely feel scared for my own safety in Chinese taxis. In traffic there is never a gap between cars. As soon as a gap is made it is immediately filled with a taxi, bus, bike, pedestrian or some combination of those four. I was wondering the other day if this is a more efficient way to move through traffic. I mean, there is absolutely no gaps in traffic so how could you be moving any faster. But then I realized that there's so much traffic  because vehicles are constantly changing lanes. This really slows stuff down. Drivers seem to think even if there's a gap in a clearly slower lane, it's better to jump in that gap. Oh well. I think this video adequately represents China.

Ok. So where were we. Oh yes, the huge line. It was about 200m long but moving very quickly. It was a slow walking pace. Ironically, halfway through the line we, IES students, got to cut the line and walk right in. 

There were so many people in this tiny museum. You would have thought we were at a outdoor market. We were supposed to have a tour guide, but I along with everyone else got split up and proceeded to wander around understanding nothing for an hour and a half. We walked past little booths of men and women doing their particular ancient art craft. There were painters, sculptors, instrument makers, umbrella makers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, tea connoisseurs, furniture builders and everything in between. Every sign was in Chinese so I didn't really learn anything beyond what I could see. Our teachers told us that there would be a few questions on the next test about what we learned at this museum. The only question I see myself answering correctly would be How many people were at this museum? - An uncountable amount.

Every stall was unbelievably crowded with Chinese people pushing to get a glimpse of each craft. The first time I saw a crowded stall, I too tried to push past and see what everyone was trying to see. It was just a guy painting some characters on some paper. Why was everybody pushing to see this? Indeed why do they always rush to get everywhere. China has a real knack for doing the complete opposite of the West. This is rarely a bad thing in my opinion. It's just different, and it's something you have to get used to. Times when a westerner would rush, the Chinese like to be very slow. Conversely times when we would be calm and slow, the Chinese shout and rush about. No one ever seems to be in a hurry when riding their bike. Most people rarely ride faster than a brisk walk. Waiters and waitresses hurry you and shove a menu in your face before you've taken off your coat, but as soon as you've ordered you don't see service again until you shout FUWUYUAN!!! across the restaurant. I've never understood people's hurry to board airplanes as soon as their flight is announced. The last thing I want to do before a cross country flight is spend an extra five minutes in the plane. If you thought some westerners hurry on board, come to China. Unless you've been to Pamplona I doubt you've seen people move with such fervor.

Yes. Quite a museum experience. I saw how a loom worked. I've never really understood them until I saw someone working one. Somethings you just have to see.

I've discovered a much better/faster/bigger way to imbed photos.

What else has happened.

Wow. Last night we went to a club and saw Paul Van Dyk. I've never really been a trance kinda guy. But this was super fun. We had dinner at our little xiaochi. I think the women know me by now, I think i have at least one meal there everyday. We've begun to talk more. I think I've begun to break the ice with regard to talking to strangers in Chinese. In the gym changing room two other guys were talking about me in Chinese. I startled them by saying I can understand a little, and confirmed their assumption that I was American. On the bus to GT Banana (Paul van Dyk show) I started up a conversation with a man I later found out was from Harbin. It's much easier talking about stuff you know - like Harbin. 

As I said the show was awesome .We had our own booth. The dance floor was on some sort of hydraulics. I couldn't tell if it was just moving in response to everyone jumping, or it actually moved independently. Either way it was a weird/really cool feeling. Naturally half way through the set a caged woman descended from the ceiling. A bar/club just doesn't feel right in China if there isn't some sort of half naked  elevated dancing woman somewhere. It was the most crowded place I've ever been. Everyone was so sweaty from dancing. If i had tried to traverse the dancefloor with dry clothes on I would have  exited wet. It was disgusting, but at the same time so much fun. Sporadically they would spray cold white air, either to cool us down or just because it looked cool. I think it was compressed CO2. It was kinda hard to breathe when that hit.

Yeah. It has been a fun weekend. Next week we depart for Yunnan. I'll post about that laterrr.

Happy Trace?

2/16-17/09

On Monday we were introduced to our fudao, our personal tutor. Each IES student was paired up with a Chinese student who we must meet with 4 times a week for an hour. We were told to go to the Activity Room on the 4th floor after class. It was a cramped experience. Usually the activity room just barely seats every IES student, but today we had every IES student plus an equal number of tutors. The tutors were about a 95% women and 5% men. A teacher would call out our name and then another would call out our corresponding tutor. We both got up met in the front of the room, then left together to exchange phone numbers and discuss when we wanted to meet. I happened to get one of the few male tutors, which I was hoping for as all my other teachers are female, so I was hoping to get used to a male voice speaking Chinese. He's named Zou Jia Qiu. He's a nice guy. He rarely speaks English, which I think is helpful. It's clear that he can speak English, he just doesn't. It took about 5 minutes to convey that he wanted to meet downstairs the same day at 2 with my homework. 

Every little thing takes a while to explain and confirm for me in Chinese. By the end of every discussion I'm never 100% sure they said what I think they said. Context is very important to my understanding of spoken Chinese. If I'm in class, and I know what the teacher should be talking about I can pick out key words and retroactively piece them together to figure out the meaning. Chinese grammar is not like English, and word order is often reversed. For example, to say "after I studied last night I went to bed" you would say the equivalent of "I last night studied after went to bed".  And that's a pretty simple concept to get used to. If i don't have context, like if a waitress or cab driver just starts talking to me, I'm initially very lost until I can sink a linguistic anchor into what they're saying by understanding one sentence or even one word. Chinese, while it's writing system is the most complex system ever devised, is a very simple spoken language. By that I mean some sentences or thoughts can be expressing in only a few syllables. This can be very useful, or very difficult to understand if you don't know their meaning, as the anchor can't be sunk into as many words.

So we met later in the afternoon, looked over my homework and reading for the night. I read over the words and he would help me with pronunciation. When I would ask a question he would explain it with a combination of very fast spoken chinese and cocktail napkin-esque diagrams. A phrase I've become very good at saying is "Please say again" and "I do/don't understand". We've met three times this week and I think my Chinese is progressing.

Last night a few of us went to an American pizza place called The Kro's Nest. It's actually some of the best pizza I've ever had. The Chinese don't really do cheese. I heard one time Asian cultures don't like the idea of spoiled milk protein, or whatever cheese is. I find that very hard to believe. There are some very disturbing dietary/hygienic habits here so I can't imagine cheese would turn anyone's stomach. (AND they like yogurt).

But you know who loves cheese? This guy. I had wanted some pizza for a while and I certainly got my fill. There are a surprising and statistically unlikely amount of Jewish people among the IES students.  My point was that some of them are Kosher, which basically means vegetarian here in China. We got a half spinach and mushroom, half "Mighty Meat" pizza. I was a little unsure of how the rules of Kosher eating dealt with half and half pizza. It seemed that there was certainly meat and dairy on the same plate, moreover melting together in the same delicious pizza. Mark assured me that God would make an exception. Phewf.

We all went out to Wudaokou to ....watch the Grammies? They were projecting the coverage of the show on a large screen in a ex-pat bar above a bookstore called Lush. Was anyone else angry about Coldplay and their Sgt. Peppers outfits? Beside the super bowl, which doesn't really count as it was in my first few days here, watching the Grammies was my first American entertainment experience in China. It was so lame. Everything about that show was just so...lame. I don't really care about the Grammies in the first place, but it was borderline painful to watch this year. Everyone seemed to think the same thing. It was just so very unimportant.

The cab ride home was fun. I sat in the front seat to explain where we wanted to go and actually had a little conversation with the cab driver. It was simple and I often had to ask the meaning of words but practice is practice. It was the first time beside talking with teachers, that I felt competent and understood by the driver.

snow

Haerbin - 哈尔滨

Just when I thought China couldn't get any more bizarre, interesting, exciting, inexpensive or frustrating I took a trip to Harbin. When I heard about an ice festival happening up north in Harbin I asked myself "Ice? I've seen ice before. How exciting could an entire festival devoted to it be?"  But I've very quickly learned that in China, and probably any semester abroad, you miss out on a lot by saying "No". This trip has been a lesson in the ways of saying "Hell yes." I paid for the trip at the last minute - 1075元  for a train ticket to Harbin, a plane ticket back, a night in a hotel and taxi to and from the hotel. That's only $168. I think it was a great deal.

I guess it's suitable to start from the beginning of the trip on Friday night. I packed a few crucial items in my one backpack. Change of underwear and socks, long johns, a sweatshirt, Ritz crackers etc. At the last minute I decided to throw my headlamp in there. It turned out to be very helpful. We were split into taxi groups. Nash, Lauren, Sheffin and I hailed a cab and headed to the train station we were told to go to - Beijing Bei Zhan. Half way through the cab ride we get a call from Max, the student in charge of the logistics, saying that we were going to the wrong station. Apparently they named two train stations almost the same thing. There's Beijing Bei Zhan and Beijing Zhan, meaning Beijing North Station and Beijing Station respectively. So after a very confusing conversation with the cab driver that to an untrained ear like mine just sounded like " beijing zhan beijing bei bei bei zhan beijing beijing zhan beijing bei zhan beijing" Somehow we managed to figure it all out just as we were passing a subway stop. We got out and jumped on line 2. This took us directly to Beijing Zhan. After all the discussion and confusing it appeared that we took the fastest way possible by accident. We were the first taxi group to the station. It was incredible.

Equally incredible was the immense number of people in the train station. We waited inside a restaurant because we were hungry and wanted to sit down. This restaurant solved both problems. We boarded our train without incident. To be honest, the cheapness of the tickets confirmed my suspicion that this train ride would be the worst traveling experience of my life. Not so. This was the best train ride/journey ever. There were six people to a "room". A room was just two walls near each other with six beds hung on the walls. No doors. It was very communal. But very pleasant. I can't do a side by side comparison to my bed in my dorm but I would argue the train bed was more comfortable. It was certainly more cosy. You could tell the other passengers hated us. Who would want to spend a 10 hour overnight train ride with 30 American college students? The train hand (? the guy who check tickets...we just used the generic fuwuyuan) insisted on climbing all over us and our bags to simply close the window curtains as we started to depart. He was very insistent on doing it himself when it would have been clearly easy, even with our language barrier, to ask us to do it ourselves. Leaving Beijing t night was a little disappointing. I kind of wanted to see the sprawl of factories and housing. Oh well.

We played electronic Catch Phrase, the game where you have to describe something without using the words. We got pretty rowdy naturally, but eventually hit the hay. The train was a little chilly but we had HUGE blankets. The movement of the train was actually very soothing so I fell asleep quickly. At one point I could feel us slowing down in the night, presumably to go safely through a station. In the morning we looked out the window to fields of snowy fields, crumbling buildings, piles of coal and chimney stacks. This is the communist experience I've been looking for. Once I found it, I had had enough. I see now why people have thrown off the ideals of communism in search of financial success in any form possible. We were definitely between Eastern Russia and North Korea. If the sprawling snowy decay outside hadn't tipped me off, the thick ice forming around the window on the inside confirmed my other suspicion that Harbin would be cold. Very cold.

We collected our belongings and jumped off the train. Leaving any large building or event with Chinese people is an experience. Lining up is not really..done. You just walk forward as far as you can, in any direction until you get where you need to go. You'd think young people would be the most eager and fit to be "rude" but no. The old people are much more willing to give you an elbow in the ribs to get that subway ticket before you. This mindset they take to the road. Beijing taxis hadn't been too bad so far. I've heard horror stories of scary cab rides, but I experienced my first 3 heart attacks in Harbin. No one seems to have right of way. If you can get to where you need to be on the road before the next person, do it. If your side of the road is full there's a perfectly empty on coming traffic lane right next to you, use it! I can see why foreigners are not allowed to drive here.

We lived. We got to our hotel, which again far surpassed my expectations. While it didn't have  the biggest rooms, it had a bed, a shower and a toilet. All I needed. I'm not certain but I think every piece of furniture came from an Ikea liquidation sale.

It felt like noon but it was only 8:30. We split up to find breakfast. I wasn't particularly hungry for some reason, so Molly and I decided to explore this old Russian orthodox church we passed on the way to the hotel. Harbin has a large Russian influence. A lot of people (particularly Jews fleeing WW2) emigrated early in the 20th century. This church was no a museum. It was filled with old pictures of Harbin and stereotypical Christian accoutrement. The paintings and decor in this church were to a real western Church as Outback Steakhouse is to Australia. They had the right idea but I don't think Di Vinci's last super is kept in a Harbin museum.

Outside were some people playing this cool game. It was like a cross between tennis and lacrosse. They tossed this soft rubber ball to each other with rackets also made of rubber. It was a fluid motion so as to keep the ball attached to the racket. It was a high school physics problem in action. Maybe I'll post the video later when my internet is running faster.

We hung around the hotel until we departed for the tiger park. Let's just say this place and PETA would not be friends. It had started to snow as we got to the park - Harbin is really cold btw. We all got on a caged bus and drove though a big fiber glass tiger mouth, Jurassic Park style. We all pitched in and bought five chickens and two goats to feed, live, to the cats. I was under the impression there for a few big cats. This place had to have had maybe 50 tigers and half as many lions. In addition a few jaguars, white lions and leopards. Tigers are huge. They would walk past our bus and I was genuinely a little scared. Nothing in China has filled me with confidence that it would work and the cages on this bus were by no means an exception. We drove around from section to section, Jurassic Park style. Another little SUV covered in cages would follow us around sporadically throwing livestock to the cats. I would have expected a complex animal dispersing safety mechanism to ensure the people in the car were as safe as possible. It turns out there was one person driving the car who would just open his door and toss out a chicken or goat. The chickens made a valiant effort. The would give the tigers a little chase, but the goats had no idea what to do. They basically laid down and got eaten. Big time. It was actually interesting to see the difference between tigers and lions and how they feast. The lions shared their meat whereas the tigers caught their food and ran off with it to enjoy in solitude. My hands got so cold trying to film all this as snow blew in through the window. We took the bus back to the wood floored high speed internet capable hotel after we were done feeding our primal urges of bloodlust.

A few of us ate at a mall food court. They had this weird system I have yet to see in Beijing but saw twice in Harbin. To buy food at this court you have to buy a card, put money on it, spend the money then return the card for your money back. I don't understand the middle man. Perhaps it's so the money only goes through one person.  As always the food was delicious, stir-fried and noodley.

After dinner we left for the Ice Festival. Yes it requires capital letters. This was The Ice Festival. I have no idea how to describe this. Imagine, if you know it, Zilker Park covered in snow with a dozen or so castles, yes castles, made out of ice. Immense buildings made entirely of ice and a little bit of steel for safety. Then imagine all this ice with neon lights in it.  Then imagine sleigh rides, arctic foxes, camels, ice slides, frozen port-a-potties and hot cocoa. All in one place. It looked like a level from Mario Galaxy, or some other insane Asian fantasy game. My favorite thing were the ice slides. It was the little kid in me. OH. On one side of the park in front of a castle, weird asian/polka techno was playing. As we always do when we go somewhere we started dancing and all these Chinese people joined in with us. We roamed this dreamworld until our noses started to harden on the inside. Yeah, it was so cold our nose-liquid(??) was freezing.

After a quick recovery at the hotel we left for a club/bar. We got the name from the hotel lobby staff. Babi Jiuba. Sounds fun, right? When we got their we read the English name below the characters. Club Barbie. To be honest it was the "coolest" club we've been to. This weird fat guy came on stage and started singing and dancing and getting undressed. Nash and Bo decided to leave without jackets to get some chuanr. We didn't know, so when we left we couldn't find them and had to take their jackets with us. They had a very cold taxi ride home.

In the morning/mid afternoon we went to another ice festival - this one doesn't deserve capital letters. It was Disney themed (sweet?) This one did have a much bigger slide and ferris wheel. There was a section of ice sculptures. Apparently it was an international competition because each sculpture had plaque with a team name and country. The Chinese ones were impressive, even more so were the Russian entries. But the U.S. one sucked. It wasn't even a sculpture. It was some freeform blobs. I had no idea what it was supposed to be. The Thai team was by far the most impressive. Do they even have ice in Thailand?! Come on America. Step it up. I have a sneaking suspicion it was intentionally bad. To make America look bad. Who knows.

After a bowl of what was essentially chicken noodle soup we headed back for the hotel and eventually the airport. The plane ride was fantastic. It was a really empty flight so we all had two seats to ourselves. Movies, in English, on demand on screens behind the seats. AND it was Air China. I flew Air China from San Francisco and it sucked. They redeemed themselves.

One of the students, Max, with the help of a few IES people here, arranged this whole trip for us. It was the most impressive impromptu assumption of responsibility I've seen from someone my age. Props to him. And props to you if you read all of that.

I'll post pictures and/or video later.

2/11-12/09

Today was a day off from class. Sorta. We didn't have language class in the morning so a bunch of us went to find the silk market. Traveling in big groups sucks. Everything moves exponentially slower with every person added to our groups. If you want to get something done here do it by yourself or with one other person. Because we had such a big group we knew we weren't going to get back to Beiwai in time for afternoon class so Zach, a student from last semester took us to a closer cheap clothes market - a lot of people needed warm clothes for Harbin.

We went to a 5 story mall closer to the center of town. It wasn't like the other mall i went to and it's nothing like an American mall. There are little cubicles selling almost the exact same thing in each. The same knock-off brand shirts, jeans and shoes. I'm not really sure how these places make that much money all selling the same thing. I heard families often own multiple stands or are in co-ops with other stand

s. I didn't really need anything so i just wandered around without everyone else. I got into an accidental haggling with a lady selling be a button down shirt. I just wanted to know my size, so she measured me. I said I didn't want the shirt, or any shirt, but she took this as lower the price. I got this price down to 30 kuai, about 5 bucks. Pretty neat for not even trying.

We were a little bored and hungry so we wandered down to a Korean restaurant. In the same building was a Dairy Queen (wtttffff?!?!) I've already mentioned this, but this dairy queen only sold milkshakes, ice cream, coffee and hot dogs. What? No chicken fried steak burgers?! What's wrong with this country....

That night after coming back from the gym everybody had eaten so I went out to the xiaochi to get some quick noodles. Upon entering I saw three of the RA's, who had just ordered, and sat down with them. They were in the middle of a discussion about cannibalism and the ethics of eating people in emergency situations - great pre-meal chit chat.  They kept referencing the Donner party and getting lost in the mountains. I couldn't help but think about our upcoming trips to Harbin (where right now it's -16

 C) and Yunnan, a Tibet-like province which brushes the Himalayas. Was this discussion friendly banter or prudent planning?

Nothing worth mentioning happened the next day. Class in the morning, studying in the afternoon.

NO it rained that day. It was cloudy all day but I didn't think it would rain. But it did. First rain in a very long time, I hear.

Alright. So right now it's Friday afternoon. We had our first kaoshi, test, today. It wasn't too bad. I have my first calligraphy class this afternoon. I hear the teacher used to ride a Harley Davidson around Beijing in the 80's and can trace his lineage back to the last emperor of China. 

After class we're leaving for Harbin. The plan is to take an overnight train - 10 hours. We'll hang out in Harbin and visit the ice festival there. There's some sort of tiger and lion park there too. We've heard, but not confirmed, t

hat we'll have the ability to buy some sort of small livestock and feed it to the big cats there...alive. I, for one, am excited. Some people are disgusted. I'm not really sure why. We humans kill thousands of cows, goats and sheep per day anyway. And lions and tigers kill animals in the wild all the time too. I think it will be an interesting biological lesson. Oh well. We fly back Sunday night so we can get to class in the morning.

Here's a nice lil' map.

So yeah this will be my last post until we get back.

再见

2/9-10/09

This post will be a mix of two days. 

So you might have seen the video I posted of the fireworks. What an odd experience that was. The last day of spring festival was really big. Once the sun went down people started lighting fireworks and didn't stop until the early morning. The whole city was just exploding in fireworks. A bunch of us took the subway down to tiananmen to see if anything was going on.

The subways here are really nice. Very very modern. The cars feel like they're floating on air. I haven't been on a subway/train since England but from what i can remember their trains were very shaky and jolty. These subways are so smooth. They also have this really bizarre, totally redundant advertising space. When the train is speeding through the tunnel on the wall outside is a screen that appears to be moving with the train. I'm still trying to figure out just how this technology worked. Some people thought it was just one long LED screen and the picture just keeps up with the train, but others thought it was just a bunch of permanent images that you speed past giving the illusion of motion, like a really high tech zoetrope. It was cool however they did it.

So the stop we tried to get off at was closed that night so we had to get off early and walk to Tiananmen. There were crowds of people, more than usual, just milling about not doing anything in particular. We thought we were walking to some festival or show but we weren't. Like everyone else we were just milling about the streets watching kids throw firecrackers and waiters outside restaurants launching roman candles. It was a little disappointing but at the same time an unforgettable experience. We didn't understand how it was safe to be launching millions of pounds of fireworks in the heart of a city in a country that just declared a drought emergency. We found out the next morning it wasn't safe at all. 

This is the Mandarin Oriental Hotel burning down..... we didn't see it. It's on the east side of the city, and we're on the west. And you couldn't see half a mile through the smoke that night..

We stopped in at KFC on the way back to the subway. KFC here is weird. Infact, all western fastfood chains here are nothing like their American counterparts. I didn't eat any, but the fried chicken was all dark dark crappy(er) meat. And they have more sandwiches. And weird crab balls. Today we found a Dairy Queen. It only sold milkshakes and hot dogs. I don't really understand why they don't serve it the same way as the U.S..I'm sure they've spent millions of dollars on marketing this stuff to China but....is this really the best they came up with. To be fair, I've never seen a bigger or more busy KFC. So something's working. 

OOK

Yesterday. Again pretty normal. Class in the morning. Free in the afternoon. Actually today was really boring. By which I mean i have nothing really to talk about. OH 

Wednesdays we don't have class in the morning, so we all went out to Wudaokou. It's a pretty western bar area. Everybody wanted to eat at different places so Nash, Dan and I found this little hole in the wall restaurant. It, like most things, was strange. Everything on the menu was deep fried. Deep fried (insert meat here) was all you could get. And every picture on the menu was the exact same thing. Literally. They copy and pasted the same picture 20 times.... my pork loin was great. It came with a bowl of miso soup and some rice. Nash's chicken sucked. He wishes he had had mine....

After that we went to some bars, ate some chuanr and called it a night. 

chuanr (pronounced chwar) = meat on a stick. It's typically sold out of windows or street vendors . This particular chuanr was cooked over a coal filled steel I-beam on a street corner. We think Bo got sick from eating it.

That's about all I have for today

Fireworks!!!

I'll explain this tomorrow but this is some footage of some fireworks being launched in an alley. It was really scary. We all turned back...

2/8/09

Last day of with the ability to speak English in the dorms. Ouch. I woke up pretty late. Late here is 11 am. I boiled some frozen jiaozi (dumplings) for lunch. Played some pingpangqiu (ping pong) with Nash. It was a fairly uneventful day.

Oh I went to the gym on campus. We have yet to receive our student cards so I didn't buy the discounted membership yet. It's a pretty nice gym. It had dumbells and that's all I was looking for. I ran on the treadmill and found some spinning bikes upstairs. They're really small though. My knees sometimes hit the handle bar. I'm excited to go back to be honest. Working out can be nice. And it doesn't require a lot of language skills.

For dinner a bunch of us went to a xiaochi, a small little diner. I think it was the best meal I've had here so far. Most of the food is great, but this was awesome. It might have been because I was hungry from working out....but who cares. It still tasted good. The eggplant in this country could turn me into a vegetarian. It's so so so so good. F tofu. Eggplant is where it's at. So yeah we had an eggplant dish, a sliced beef dish and the westerner special, sweet and sour pork. Top it off with a coke and a bowl of rice....Delish...

I had to learn 64 words of vocab tonight. It was tough -  really tough.  I hear it gets easier. Hopefully. Tomorrow is our first day of language pledge. I have no idea how it's goin

g to work...

Oh...this is my bed. Laugh all you want. I did.

2/7/09

Oops. Skipped a day. No worries. It was uneventful. Class in the morning and an afternoon stroll to the mall. Speaking of malls. You'd never guess this was a country defined as a communist/socialist republic. Nobody does anything but try to make a sale. I was picturing shelf after empty shelf in the grocery stores with only one kind of breakfast cereal for sale. Beijing is about as western a city as I can imagine existing in Asia. Walking back we were crossing the highway on a pedestrian bridge, a place where people like to set up shop and sell you socks, gloves, clothes hangers and little knick knacks like that. One man on this bridge was selling rugs. Not ordinary rugs, however. These were dog skin rugs - I spied the unmistakeable coat of a golden retriever.

2/7/09

So after a late friday night we all woke up at 8 o'clock to tour Tiananmen and The Forbidden City with our visiting scholar Jeremiah Jenne. We took a charter bus down to Tiananmen like the true tourists we are. We w

alked around through the legation quarter - an old area of land (next to the main sewage canal) given to foreign government

s by the Qing r

ulers to set up embassies. The architecture is odd mix of old German, French, British and everyone in between. Jeremiah described it as a little Epcot.

We made our way to the City Planning Center, which doesn't sound too interesting

 on paper. But this place was nuts. On one floor there was a model of the entire downtown Beijing area. It was massive, and as far as anyone could tell it had every building and every tree.

Tiananmen Sqaure is huge. Supposedly it's the 

largest open public area in the world. When asked what he wanted his people's s

quare to look like Mao answered something like "Like Red Sqaure...only much much bigger"

Not only is it big, but crowded. Thousands of people just milling about in front of Mao's mausoleum (or Mao-soleum) and the People's Congress. We talked to man, an English teacher from Hunan province, who had never spoken English with an American. He was so goddamn friendly. We could tell he was so happy to be using the English that he had probably spent years learning and teaching. It was one of the most (if not THE most) moving experiences of the trip so far. I wish we could have stayed longer to talk, but our group had to keep moving. Jeremiah gathered us together to tell the story of Tiananmen Square. We had to huddle together, speak quitely and in code about the events that occurred there as there are undercover "enforcers" always walking around, listening in on conversations at Tiananmen. We saw the hotel where the press corps was located at the time, intending to cover the arrival of Gorbachev. I'd like to say more about Tiananmen but I want to be able to continue to blog. I'll let you do the research. 

At the north end of Tiananmen stands the entrance (complete with a massive portrait of Mao Zedong) to the Forbidden City, so named because only Imperial family, guests, concubines and servants were allowed to enter the 999.5 roomed complex. It has 999.5 rooms because heaven has 1000 rooms in Chinese culture. This forbidden city, is the closest thing to heaven on earth....supposedly.

You enter the Forbidden City much like a cow being herded. Hundreds of people must enter the front gate every minute. It's really hard to imagine how many people visit this place. It's even harder to imagine what you see when you get in there. Palace after palace built on a north-south axis so that if you opened the front and back door to each one you could see straight through them. Utterly amazing. 

We just wondered through the city being told little tidbits of information by Jeremiah for a few hours. At the back is a park where we saw the tree from which the last emperor hanged himself. FYI....

It was a pretty crazy tour. If we're facebook friends you can check out more, bigger photos there.

I came home and napped for a while. I was awoken by people talking outside. Everybody was getting ready to go to an acrobat show. I made up my mind and in ten minutes i was showered and changed and ready to go out. I'm so glad I hurried because this was the most amazing show I've ever seen. The first act was a bunch of guys jumping on a see saw and launching a fellow acrobat onto different objects balanced on top of a long pole supported by another acrobats head. The next was a contortionist who bent her spine 180 degrees. Her butt was touching her head. Various other extremely difficult and dangerous stunts followed, all of which I never thought possible. It seemed every act had been planned out as follows: 

"Ok, guys I think we can pull this off. I'll do something that requires years of training and incredible strength. There will be absolutely no room for error so obviously we don't need safety precautions like nets or mats. We'll start off doing something seemingly impossible and just keep making it more complicated and difficult. Then we'll start juggling. Blindfolded. Good talk, see you out there..."

My favorite act was the 10 women riding one bike...

I wish I had photos, maybe another student has some. I'll try to post some.

It was a crazy, crazy day. It's China, that's how it goes.

2/05/09

Today was the first day of class. Somewhat tough. I've been waking up early since I've been here. I can't tell if it's jet lag, my uncomfortable bed (which I've become used to), or other people waking up early too. The dorm is really loud. The doors don't really form a seal with the door frame. I'll come back to my room and think I didn't shut my door. No, it's just light coming through the shoddy construction. A lot of stuff in China was built with the phrase "good enough" very much in mind. Everything works, but it looks pretty crappy.

The previous night I had memorized a new set of characters we were given a few days ago. I woke up, brushed my teeth etc and took a look at the words again. I thought all my classes would be upstairs on the fourth floor but my main class is in a building next door. IES, the program I'm in, has a building on the BeiWai campus all to itself. The first 3 floors are housing and the 4th is administrative and classrooms. IES, supposedly has it's own jurisdiction in the building. I hear things like political discussion/dissent are allowed as it's all foreigners. Perhaps I'll know more about that later...

I dressed lightly as it was only a short stroll to the bailou, the white building. All my language classes are entirely in Chinese. Everything from grammar and vocabulary explanations to homework assignments are in Chinese. It's sometimes tough...really tough. It'll be even harder next week when we can't speak English in class.

After the hour of main class with our zhongwen ke mama, chinese class mommy, we split off into smaller classes with a younger teacher. This class was a little easier, as it just went over in more detail and slower the topics we covered in the previous hour.

After class we ate some jiaozi, and came back to the dorms.

I went for a walk on my own this afternoon. I discovered a long line of restaurants - useful to know about. I walked into one which I quickly found out was a very western. Pizza, chicken wings, burgers etc. I saw my favorite example of Chingrish at this restaurant so far. Chingrish/Chinglish is usually the english translation of Chinese on signs, restaurants or labels. Right under Apple Juice and above Pineapple Juice was the ever enticing Love Juice.

Right now I don't have a Chinese roommate, but I will. The Chinese students are on the equivalent of Christmas break, chunjie. Chinese new year, it seems, is more of a celebration of the coming of spring, chuntian. During this holiday the Chinese are given free reign to use a seemingly unlimited amount of explosives to light up the sky. Literally...LITERALLY, no exaggeration here, I hear a firework every 30 seconds. I have been told a week or so ago it was like the fourth of july for 72 hours straight. Kids and adults alike love firecrackers. The other day I saw an electronics store clerk take a smoke break, light a pack of 1000 crackers and throw them onto the sidewalk where the people walking barely noticed. It sometimes sounds like a warzone. The big yanhua sound like mortar shells and the bianpao could easily be mistaken for machine gun fire. 

WOOO. That's all I have for now.

Word of the day:

洗澡 － xizao  － to shower

some pictures...

2/4/09

Today was worst day so far. But that's still a good day. We had another "Mystery Beijing" tour. We were split into groups of 3 and 4 and given clues. These clues led us to places in Beijing where we would receive new clues. Once we got to the first location by wheeled transportation we were no longer allowed to use wheels - just walking. It was dubbed the Ama-jing Race. (The winning team would win free transportation cards)

It would have been an ama-jing tour...but my group was terrible. The first clue told us to go to the first chinese president's wife's house located on the "Back Sea". I translated Back Sea - Houhai - and suggested we make our way to Houhai. But after we asked a bunch of chinese people on the street about our clue they told us to go to Zhongshan Park, located next to Tiananmen Square. Turns out Zhongshan park is where Zhongshan lived - not his wife. So at this point we are standing in front of Mao's portrait staring at Tiananmen which is about 6 miles away from where we need to be. Awful. We are told to take the #5 bus and get off at a certain stop. So we do. But after a quick study of the bus route at the stop where we got off, it appears we could have taken that same bus all the way to Soong Ching Ling's house. Terrible. For some reason a group of Hong Kongers try to help us by telling us to walk the rest of the way. I voted to wait for the next #5....but we decided to walk the second half (WTF!?>?!1)

 The walk there wasn't too bad. It was a chilly ramble through some old hutongs - from what I can decipher from their descriptions, are sprawling neighborhoods of connected buildings. They're super old and super quaint. They're becoming an endangered species in Beijing - knocked down and cleared for large apartment buildings. Like west campus.

An hour and a half later and with my mouth burning from a chili doused bag of jiaozi we arrived at her house. It was right on the shores of Houhai....like I suggested....We basically gave up after finding the first checkpoint. The race would have been over in an hour and we knew we were in dead last. After chatting with some ice swimmers - guys who had found a large hole in the ice of Houhai and jumped in to celebrate the coming of spring - we just took a taxi back to Bei Wai. Awful, awful day of wandering and getting lost.

I'm not bitter. I'm just mad we didn't get to tour around the Sea district like a lot of the other kids.

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2/3/09

I rolled out of bed to go to our first meeting upstairs at 9:00. 

Oh, I've never explained anything  about our classes or what's on the agenda. So far we've just been doing orientation stuff. Starting thursday we will have class. 8-12 we have language class and then some afternoons we have elective-y classes. I'm taking sociology and marketing. Our language pledge starts monday. In the IES building, which contains the dorms and class rooms, we have to always speak chinese....that could be hard. In a few weeks we're going to Yunnan province. It's kinda like Tibet...but not political Tibet.

We had a cultural simulation course, where we were split into two groups ...mehhh it's complicated and boring to explain so nevermind.

After that we were paired off and given a piece of paper with characters on it. We were told to go to that place and get proof we had gone there. We were given 香山公园。I immediately recognized it from class at UT. Fragrance Hill Park. Turns out it's beyond the 5th ring road. Me and my partners walked out of campus, hopped on a bus which took us to the Summer Palace. We asked a few people, including a grizzly rickshaw driver where the 331 bus stopped. Do not under estimate the power of a pointing finger. It's basically how I navigate around Beijing. Eventually we made it to our next bus after buying some egg sandwiches at a stall near the bus station. One stall next to it was serving what I assume were unhatched chicken fetuses on a stick...heads still attached. It was pretty stomach turning. We made it to Xiangshan and took some pictures proving we had accomplished our mission. After a short climb up the hill we arrived at a little scenic overlook. I should mention that scenic in Beijing is a loosely defined word. It would have been scenic if we could have seen the city through the pollution..

...speaking of the pollution.. It's not THAT bad. No, it's terrible. But I don't notice it when I'm inside. My breathing has been fine and my eyes aren't irritated. Nobody else has complained of pollution related allergies yet. The odd thing is the sky. It's never sunny. But it's never cloudy. Shadows don't really exist outside. There's just...haze. You can see the sun because you can probably look directly at it. It's also very dry. Beijing is basically in a sub-arctic desert. There's very little grass and the trees don't have leaves. But that might be a winter thing. Ai laoshi said it hasn't rained in 5 months.

We had been passing rows and rows of street vendors selling roasted chestnuts and sweet potatoes all day. We were hungry so on the way back we finally gave in. I bought a sweet potato to munch on and my cohort, Nash, bought a bag of chestnuts. Mine was 1 kuai (20 cents) and his was 5 kuai (90ish cents). Mine was delicious and his was terrible. We then understood why there we so many chestnuts for sale. Nobody likes them.

word of the day

public bus - 公共汽车 gonggong qiche

2/2/09

Today I was woken by the sounds of Steelers/Cardinals fans watching  Japanese coverage of the Superbowl. Because I wasn't too interested in the game and I had been sleeping on a slab for two nights I decided to walk to the shangdian to pick up a pillow and mattress pad. In retrospect I should have written down the characters/pinyin for these two words.

I marched over to the one way shangdian we visited the other day and made my way downstairs (it's a two story supermarket). An attendant asked me if i needed help finding something (I assume) to which I mimed myself sleeping. She directed me to the bedding section. She chose for me a pillow stuffed with what I can only describe as beans. Hard beans. I politely suggested the softer fluff filled pillow right next to it. She was very focused on the price difference. The bean pillow was 145 kuai and the actual pillow was 168 kuai - a difference of $3. I splurged. With the pillow under my belt I waved my hand behind my back to indicate mattress pad. She showed me a packaged soft ......thing. I just assumed it was a mattress pad so i bought it. It wasn't. It was a duvet..with flowers and the word LOVE all over it. My bed is the ugliest, girliest bed in BeiWai. I just used my standard issue duvet as a mattress pad and adopted my LOVE blanket. It works for now..

The rest of the day was filled with administrative meetings - rules and regulations, safety stuff etc.

In the evening a few of us walked around in search of a temple nearby. We hiked along the 3rd ring road highway stopping  the temple on the banks of a frozen canal. It was closed so we walked around a little more. Further down the road we saw a doorway to a flight of stairs. I'm not sure why we decided to walk down. A more fluent member of our party asked the guard..

...wait. Guards are everywhere in Beijing. Not just guards, but walls. I know China is famous for the great wall... but they love all kinds of walls here. Every building is in it's own little gated compound with at least 2 soviet looking guards at every entrance. But it's not like the gaurds even do anything. You can always just walk right by them. And they always look so cold. AND i don't understand why they need so many walls and fences. The crime rate is so low. anyway....

We asked the guard what was downstairs - he said a flower shop. A dark underground flower shop? Ok...sure. In actuality it was a ballet studio/furniture store/tea shop/flower store with no discernable boundaries between businesses. We were invited to drink a cup of tea with the tea officianado/cleark. After a thorough washing he poured us the tiniest cups of tea. Perhaps a quarter of a shot glass. I think it was one of those really-high-quality-things-have-to-be-enjoyed-in-tiny-amounts things. He seemed extremely particular.

We walked around some more passing a mile long mural devoted to the Olympics. It was an odd mix of paintings. Each 10m long section was painted apparently by someone different. Michaelangelos and kindergarteners.

That's about all for today...

2/1/09

6:30

My concrete mattress worked surprisingly well. Softness, it seems, is a material quality the Chinese have failed to achieve. My pillow, blanket and mattress are about 90% sand, 5% steel, 5% cotton. No big deal. I was so tired from travellimg I slept like a rock – a rock that wakes up every two hours. We’re supposed to be down in the lobby at 8 but I woke up early to watch tv, shower, and figure out how to connect to the internet – no luck with the internets…The communal bathrooms have a summer camp quality to them. They get the job done while making you want to spend as little time as possible showering.

 

3:01

We took a “tour” of the BeiWai campus at 8:30 this morning. We simply walked around in the cold for about an hour until we got to a stereotypical looking Chinese neighborhood. We were told to order either baozi or zhaozi. From what I could tell jiaozi was a boiled dumpling and baozi was a semi-fried one. Great breakfast food. It was cheap too. 80 cents for 8 dumpligs. They were served in a plastic bag and eaten with chopsticks. I have had two meals here and used disposable chopsticks twice. It’s mindblowing how many chopsticks this country must make/use.

 

After some warm food in our bellies we went onto a shangdian, or grocery store. Shopping in China is very odd so far. Guards, dressed in full Soviet style uniform prevent you from going backward through the maze-like store. I tried to return to the ATM at the front to get cash but was halted by the guard and told to walk through the whole store to return. After my ATM debacle I bought a note pad at the beginning of the store. I tried to proceed to the laundry detergent but a clerk stopped me and made me pay at her counter for the notebook. So I was walking around with one paid for notebook for the rest of the shopping experience. I picked up some laundry detergent, toilet paper and snacks and paid for all of them at the end of the store…except for my notebook..which I had already paid for. I don’t know why they do it like that. Hopefully I’ll find out why. We ate lunch at a restaurant. Ordinarily I’d call it a Chinese restaurant…but they’re all kinda Chinese restaurants here.

 

We had a few seminar-like things this afternoon lead by Jeremiah Jeffe and Rob Blinn, a visiting scholar or Beijing and an American doctor. We found out Mao had built an underground city beneath Beijing in the hopes it would save the city during a nuclear war.

 

The IES staff got us pizza and we had ourselves a little “mixer”. Forced socializing is not my forte, but I survived. I thought everyone was getting a long really well (making small talk, finding stuff out about eachother) without having mixers. We had been walking around and exploring together so much that we basically knew everyone’s names and where they came from already.

 

Alright, back to sleep on my table/bed. I think I’ll go get better bedding tomorrow.

 

Word of the day: ????? Let me get back to you….

1/31/09

What a day.

 

After about 24 hours of travel I am finally in Beijing. What a weird place. It’s a strange mix of high tech LED displays and run down east European housing. Where should I start? I guess where I left off last entry.

 

My plane arrived at gate 96 as I was munching down on my $8.68 Whopper and fries at the Burger King in the airport. I hurried over to board but they were still preparing the plane, refueling, re-fooding, loading cargo etc. A strange liquid started pouring out of the bottom of the plane where a tube was inserted. No one seemed to notice this for about 5 minutes after a rather large puddle had accumulated below. I could only assume (hope) it was water. After boarding I noticed only 3 screens in front of me, which meant no choice of in flight movies, and perhaps no choice of language to watch, said movies. I dozed in and out of sleep the whole 11.5 hour journey. I had three seats to myself so sleeping was quite comfortable. Occasionally I would wake to food or drink being served. The second meal was a choice of either rice or noodles. The steward asked in thick a thick Chinese accent “Rice or noodles”. I was about to respond to him in Chinese but I realized I didn’t know the word for noodles, so I chose rice. I didn’t particularly care which one I received, I just wanted to use some Chinese before landing.

 

Beijing airport looks just like any major airport; it reminded me of Heathrow airport…before you get to the hellhole that is Heathrow baggage claim. The whole airport seemed shiny and new (later I found out it basically was). There was all the usual suspects: Coach, Burberry, Starbucks, KFC.(wtf?).

 

On line for customs the guy behind me asked if I went to school in Austin – he read my tag. I turned around to the 6 foot something black guy I had seen waiting in my terminal all day. It turns out he played basketball for UT, a Nigerian team, a Korean team and at one point Utah Jazz. He now plays for some team in China. He had a broken arm but was under contract so he had to return to China. As he was telling me this story on our way to baggage claim, it reminded me of a book my dad gave me about a guy who plays college basketball and bums around on foreign teams and the NBA. I told Gabe, my first friend in China, about the book and he said “Oh yeah, that’s my boy. Paul Shirley. Good guy. I just spoke to him the other day…”

 

How….weird…is…that….

 

I got here at night, but I can already sense how polluted it is. The streetlights make some roads look like Victorian London. If I hadn’t heard the stories, or lungs I might have thought it was just fog. Driving is an adventure to say the least. Our driver was pretty conservative, but some taxis haul around like it’s Mario Kart. I want to save this sort of discussion for later entries, when I have a more detailed picture of driving etiquette or lack thereof.

 

OK. I’m tired. Everyone is really friendly, Chinese and American students alike. We’ll see what happens…

 

Word of the day

Seat belt – anquandai - 安全带

Departure 1/30/09

So I’m sitting in the San Fransisco airport. It’s 1:12pm and I’ve been here since 8:45am local time. My flight is supposed to take off sometime slightly before 2:00pm . I’ve been up for 10 hours so far and I haven’t even left the U.S.

 

Things I’ve learned so far:

1)    I know no practical Chinese.

2)    When in doubt, do what others do.

3)    Dyson make the best hand dryers ever.

 

This wing of the airport is (no surprise) the Asian International section. All announcements are either in Japanese, Chinese, or English  (in descending order of frequency). This is going to be really tough. Signs have still all been in English, so I easily found my gate. Plus it was written on my ticket.

 

The lady behind the desk made an announcement, in Chinese, a few minutes ago and slowly people started making their way to the desk to talk to her. I followed. I pretended to listen to her  as if I understood a single word she said. It was just to let me know our flight had been delayed 2 hours. Sweet….

 

The hand dryers in the bathrooms are by far the most fun and effective hand dryers I have ever used. I think they’re called Dyson Air Blades…or something equally sexy sounding. You basically put your hands down into the machine and then slowly lift them out. It blows a really thin stream of air across your hand, effectively squeegee-ing your hands. If this machine was paired with the hand washers at Rudy’s BBQ you’d have the ultimate hand sanitizing experience.

 

That’s how exciting this airport is…..

 

My favorite Chinese word of the day:

Hamburger – Hanbaobao - 汉堡包