Yantai, China: July 18, 2008

Had a test today. I think it went very well. I’m never the first one to walk out of a test, most especially not a Chinese test so it was a rare and unlikely to happen again pleasant feeling.

In fact, it almost compensates for the fact that I have bed bugs. This morning I woke up and had little bites on my left arm. But only in one spot; a bit strange. Two other classmates have had a minor issue with it not so long ago, so I guess it’s my turn. It doesn’t freak me out at all even, though I used to think it would if it ever happened. I’m actually just a little insulted that they would bite me. Insulted! I would have expected maybe some horrification or disgust, but no. Just insulted. I told the women about it downstairs and I wish I knew what they told me. I’m pretty sure they said they’d change out the mattress and sheets later today. No big deal. Quite honestly, if I had to choose, I’d much rather have the bed bugs than the mosquitoes since their bites don’t hurt or itch and they don’t transmit any diseases (the only bloodsucker that can say that aside from vampires. But I guess if you turned into a monster when something bit you that could qualify as disease…).

Gamble JUST knocked a fly unconscious with her pillow. Literally as I’m typing. Not killed, knocked unconscious. Last night a giant, biggest housefly/horse fly I’ve ever seen fly in through our window as I was disposing of the body of a mosquito. It’s been flying up in the ceiling ever since and decided to land on her bed. She grabbed her pillow and wacked it twice, which only made it stumble around onto one of my sandals. Then we threw him out the window too. Maybe he’ll drown. Cause you know, it’s raining again.

Yantai, China: July 16, 2008

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here one month and only have another 3 weeks to go. Time has really flown by, but in one of the good ways.

I’ve adjusted more to the food than I thought, or at least the eating practices. I like eating with wooden chopsticks more than forks or spoons now and if we have to eat at a place that gives us plastic chopsticks or worse, metal ones, the looks of distain are never ending. Environmental friendliness is a good thing, and I know Asia’s bamboo forests take a heavy hit with all the disposable wooden chopsticks manufactured from them, but plastic is just too hard to eat with. It hardly picks up the food and metal ones are even worse. I have secured my own 3 pairs of wooden chopsticks so I don’t have to use forks all the time when I go home.

Hot tea is served at every meal instead of any sort of water (or any cold beverage. The Chinese are really adamant about not eating cold stuff with food-it makes you sick) I think my soda addicted classmates have gotten used to the warm Pepsi by now. It bothers me no longer though. We went to a Korean restaurant for lunch yesterday and they served chilled water with the meal. I couldn’t drink it. Then I realized that I made my own tea in a thermos when I ate instant noodles in the room. Now I have to find a cheap but sturdy teapot so I can continue to drink proper loose leaf tea. The idea of tea bags has become abhorrent to me. Thank you China for ruining my ability to drink liquids like a normal American, haha.

I love my Korean friends, but I’m afraid I just don’t like their food. Maybe if I wasn’t fretting over the fact I can’t drink anything but tea at meals or eat with metal chopsticks (seriously hard to do, and all Korean restaurants seem to use metal chopsticks…) it’d be easier to like. But who knows…I’ll just have to go to Korea and find out the right way. It’s probably Chinesified Korean food I’ve been eating anyhoo.

Usually when I keep journals I mention a topic more often than others because it makes a big impression on me. This has almost always been food. And while I can say that the food is definitely a new experience (and I can now almost read a Chinese menu-something I’m rather proud of) Yantai has shown me the power of rain and what happens when a campus isn’t designed to drain. The walkways are all vaguely like trenches and when it rains, it rains really hard (and can do it all day long), so that the sidewalks can have ankle deep water covering them. It’s no wonder the mosquitoes are more numerous than ants.

That last statement is actually a lie; I’ve seen a lot of ants here lately. I think they must have sprayed for bugs because there are a lot of large bug (cicada, grasshopper, beetles) corpses that just kinda dropped off the trees and the ants are carrying away their carcasses. I’d look at them longer but other people stare at me even more when I’m looking at dead bugs than when I’m just walking back to the dorm.

There are also HUGE spiders here. No exaggeration we found one in a web that was about the size of a ping pong ball both in depth and diameter. I tried to take a picture of it but the size of it isn’t really captured appropriately. We’d see these giant webs that looked like they’d been vacated only to realize days later that the spiders just come out at night. There is also some version of silk tunnel spiders in all the bushes. They build a little canopy of silk in their part of the bush and live there. I counted about 20 on a single small bush one day. It’s all rather fascinating. Once, when I was walking back with my teacher he asked me if I like spiders, since I was looking at a bunch of them again. I said yes and he said Chinese people like them too cause they taste good. -_-;

Yantai, China: July 14, 2008

Since nothing interesting happened today, I feel like writing some quotes of today.

Yantai’s Beach: “…the water is okay to swim in because people in our program went in and did not get sick last summer…”

-From the program’s handout, pg. 27

“Your head looks funny.”

-Professor Huang talking about the top of one of my characters

“Where are you from? You’re pretty.”

-Guy getting me my bubble tea at dinner. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to tell my Chinese was any good because then I would have definitely have known he was lying.

Yantai, China: July 12, 2008

Today was interesting and vaguely stressful…but first, the weekdays!

Gamble and I figured out what to do about the mosquitoes. We grabbed our shoes (I grabbed her sandals and she had her slippers-why would I want dead bug guts on my shoes?) and went on a room raid. The first time we seriously killed about 20 mosquitoes without any exaggeration at all. It took us a while to do since they would fly up and sit on the ceiling and we’d have to try to get them down. There’s also a bunch of footprints on our walls and bathroom door. I can only imagine what the cleaning ladies think we were doing. Now it’s more manageable with us only having to kill about five a night.

Thursday night we had to study for our big Friday test, which we did like good dutiful students. We had an odd study break though in our room. Gamble’s friend had told her a few minutes earlier over IM that he found “stately knees” attractive and sexy. We wanted to know what a stately knee was and if we had them, so we took my camera and shot about 37 pictures of our knees at various angles and with various props. I have to admit that was one of the strangest study breaks I think I’ll ever had. If you haven’t ever really considered your knees before, let me tell you-they’re an ugly necessity of our body. They just never look good in pictures. EVER. But apparently we had stately knees.

Yesterday we went out to a bar, then a dance club. Most bars basically consist of plastic tables under a cheap umbrella, but the dance club was pretty fun again. I didn’t dance much since I just wanted to watch. Chinese clubs overall are pretty dull compared to the European and American scene. Clubs close at like 1am or 1:30. Strange.

Today I slept in and didn’t do much until about 5:30pm when Gamble, Natalie (another classmate), and I went to go do a practical interview for teaching 6 and 7 year olds English. We didn’t know that it basically involved teaching the class right then and there. I was first, which was terrible since we didn’t know how old they’d be, how much English they already knew or anything. So I winged it and started with the Alphabet, colors, shapes, and numbers. Didn’t do too badly but since I had no idea what else I was supposed to do it was kinda eh ah. Gamble got it and we found out she’ll be teaching them everyday for an hour. Makes me a little glad I didn’t get it. I liked teaching it, but I’d definitely need a little more practice and I also think I’d like doing it at a higher level, maybe high school. It didn’t help that there was the judge guy in the background, I was clueless, and all their parents were there too. What a scene to have seen. I fully appreciate anyone who teaches well much more right now. And parent day should be abolished in schools altogether.

The kids were really cute because they did know some of the stuff already and some were really enthusiastic to show off their skills. We also had them learn the “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” song and let them come to the front of the classroom and perform. It was like a mini recital. Very cute.

I also ate some squid on a stick today (not too good, but not bad either) and played badminton with some Korean students. I’m really bad, and not in a good way.

In the upcoming days I’ll be studying and studying. Useful, if not always exciting.

Yantai, China: July 6th, 2008

It can rain here in Yantai. I mean, downpour for hours. I got caught in the rain Friday after our test and got soaked through the bone. The first time that happened earlier in the week I got a little sniffle/cold that lasted a day or two. Luckily this time no such thing occurred.

Today is a bright and sunny day so I decided I’d go to the beach and work on my tan. It really is a pleasant beach contrary to what people have tried to tell us. I also met a recent Yantai graduate and his friend and conversed with him for a while. They wanted to take a picture with me, so I did. Funny really, haven’t had that many people come up to me and ask to take a picture with me before. It’s kinda like being a mini celebrity.

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day in the room either sleeping or reading. For dinner we went to the University restaurant and made dumplings. I’ve made them before so mine didn’t look quite as sorry as some of the other kids, but you could tell some people were really into cooking (since theirs ended up looking like what it was supposed to look like instead of blobs). We also had a giant cake because it’s Adam’s birthday today. He’s 21 and planning on writing his essay. There really is no fun in turning 21 overseas.

For the Forth of July we went to one of the two bars downtown called Babyface. It was different and once you got used to the pulsing music and darkness/flashing lights, it was a lot of fun. We danced a whole bunch and made a few new friends. There was another group of foreigners there and as we were leaving we were talking to one of the guys who happened to be British. He said that they were from all over (America, England, Russia, Finland) studying Kungfu. One girl wacked him with a glow stick when he said he was from England (the poor guy was so confused) and then proceeded to lecture us on how we shouldn’t flirt with “national enemies who taxed us without representation” on our day of Independence. We then proceeded to sing the National Anthem as we walked back to the dorm. It was amusing to say the least.

The most irritating thing about Yantai would be the multitude of mosquitoes in our room at night. We can kill four each night and still miss two or three. Everyone is has tons of bits; they like my arms for some reason. I’m not sure how they get in since our window screen is always closed.

My apartment in Beijing didn’t have any mosquitoes nor a roommate. Now I have both. I like my roommate a lot. Her name is Gamble (and that’s her legal name) and she’s one of those adventure types who’s been all over Cambodia, Indonesia, and China. Probably some other places I’m forgetting. We get along quite well with the biggest difference between us being our sleeping schedules, but it doesn’t bother us. I easily sleep through her up through the entire night, and she sleeps through me being up around 7am in the mornings. But otherwise we have fun together.

Not much else to report currently, other than I’ve begun to dream in Chinese about half the time. It’s weird and vaguely frustrating since I know the Chinese isn’t always right and I’ll try to fix it in my head while I’m dreaming. Very bizarre and awkward to do.

Yantai, China: July 2, 2008

In addition to the 6 hours of regular class we have during the day, there were three additional classes we could sign up for-calligraphy (Monday), pronunciation (Tuesday), and culture (Wednesday). I of course signed up for all three. I’ve only had the pronunciation and culture class since Monday was orientation and I’m going to guess of the three, I’ll like pronunciation the least. At least it’ll be helpful (hopefully).

Our first culture class dealt with food and I found several things worth mentioning. First, China is a big place and the different areas have different food preferences. For instance, rice is the staple in the south (the dividing line between north and south is Shanghai) while in the north its noodles. Northerners eat porridge; Southerners eat soup. This isn’t to say both things can’t be found in both places, only that certain places put more effort into different types of dishes. The Western parts of China like to eat sour dishes while the Eastern parts eat more sweet dishes (the southern island of Hainan makes for a good East West divider).

Chinese also think eating certain things is strange, but we’re told in Canton anything goes. It’s in Canton that you see the markets with skinned rats, snake pens, dog, and cat meat. Boiled pinkies (newborn rats and mice) are considered a delicacy and are eaten whole. There are also the equivalent of dog meat fondu places there. Our professors think a lot of the stuff eaten in Canton is just weird (like cat meat) and told us that 2004 SARS outbreak was partially because people in Canton were eating really strange and not entirely healthy creatures. But who knows.

Offal, which I believe is the internal organs of some creature, is considered good for the eyes and supposedly boosts intelligence so parents feed their kids lots of it. We couldn’t figure out what the teacher was calling it in English for a while and during the spelling game we asked her if she meant “awful”. We think offal might as well be spelled awful.

Literal translations of food can be funny too. For instance, “long xia” translates to dragon shrimp. We call it lobster. “Tianji” equals field chicken, also known as frog. And “jiweijiu” becomes roster tail alcohol or a cocktail (think Bloody Mary). Fun right?

Back in America, when we pose for pictures we say “cheese”. Chinese say “qiezi” (eggplant). Why do we say cheese again? It seems like a silly thing to say…

We also briefly touched on the health care system in China since it was in one of our lessons. Waiting rooms are ticket line style. If you’ve bought meat at a grocery store, it’s like that. Maybe also like waiting at the DMV. You’re given a ticket number and wait for a doctor to see you. According to our professors, it costs about 5-7 kuai to see the doctor. That’s 0.71-1 dollar. You then have to buy whatever medicine they recommend, but I can’t image it’s that expensive either. Let’s all look at our insurance co-pay and groan for a moment in comparison.

Tomorrow’s the Forth of July. Funny how out of context things like holidays lose all meaning. We might try to celebrate and buy some fireworks or something else, but we’ll see. If we can’t find fireworks, I’ll be convinced it’s cause they use them all during the week of the Chinese New Year. I’m told it sounds like World War III the night of and small to medium battles each night for a week before.

Yantai, China: June 30th, 2008

Cheap seafood, beer, and drunk Chinese friends make for a fun night. The Chinese can’t seem to hold their liquor, though beer is awful stuff. How do men and women drink it after college? That is all.

Yantai, China: June 29, 2008

Yantai! I like it so much better than Beijing (this stated after only one day of observation so my opinion my change). The train actually took something closer to 14 hours, but I managed to keep a normal sleeping schedule and woke up around 8. Of course, I woke up to a train conductor asking me for my ticket. My Chinese after immediately waking up seems to be nonexistent, but then again, I lack English skills at that point in my day as well. At least I could find my ticket to give her. One of the boys had to hunt for a long while before he found it.

We got on a bus and drove onto the school campus where we dropped off our stuff at the international hotel/dorm we’re staying in and then went and had breakfast. Breakfast is the worst meal of the day in terms of things that I like to eat and China is no different. Bleh food all around. Thank goodness for lunch and dinner. If only breakfast could be something more dinner.

The place we were eating at was hosting a wedding after party and were putting up decorations and goodie bags. They were also doing a sound check on the stereo system was hilarious since they guy just went, “Wei? Wei?” for a solid 7 minutes.

Breakfasting having been finished we returned to the dorm where we unpacked and/or took showers. I did both, though taking a shower was very unpleasant. In hindsight I feel stupid since my roommate found out how it works (not that she could figure it out. She went down to the front desk and had them show her). The knobs are not entirely the same here and so I couldn’t get it to something other than scalding hot or ice cold. I ended up taking an ice cold shower-I hear they’re good for your health. I’d rather be sick.

That bathroom shower is also a little weird in that it’s the entire bathroom. It’s called a wet shower and has a drain in the corner so you grab the hose and bath anywhere you like.

However, I must thank some higher power for the Western style toilet in our bathroom. We never did figure out the sense of a swatting toilet in a moving train. (And you know how kids always imagine that when you go to the bathroom in a plane it just goes to the ground? Apparently, Chinese trains really do that)

I’m definitely getting a less than sanitary sense from this country. In a bunch of ways. Nothing that really makes me shudder but yeah…anyway.

Took a nap and then joined some other students in a foray to the beach. It really is only about a five minute walk from our dorm. It’s not the nicest beach I’ve ever been to, but it’s also not the worst. The others complained about a smell, but I didn’t really notice anything. I think I’m a little used to beaches smelling like sea and stinky fish (as they called it). The sand was a little greenish, but I believe that was due to the fact the tide was out. I’m not going to ask questions. But like I said, not the worst and not nearly as bad as people we leading us to believe.

After the beach we waited a little while then went to dinner. We were starving because we’d napped through lunch. Seven of us went out the West gate and down a row of shops (soon to become a favorite stopping place of mine). It had a bunch of little places to eat and outside sea food vendors. Like skewered whole squid. I think I’ll try some tomorrow. There’s also this roasted bread with sweet spread on one side and salty on the other. We had some for dinner and I ate mine, and two other classmate’s who didn’t want theirs. Then I went and bought another one later this evening. It’s like heaven…bread on two wooden skewer sticks.

Dinner was at this little sketchy looking restaurant that served phenomenal food. It was also really cheap. We got several things of tea, bread, 7 dishes, and some beer for 83 kuai (11 kuai a person or a dollar and a half). And it was GOOD food. I mean, really excellent food. We’d really like to order some of it again, but we don’t know any of the names. Other than clams. I’m going to eat a boat load of clams in this city.

There was also a bakery next door where some of us bought desserts of various kinds. I’m waiting to go back for the tiramisu cake slice.

We came back and hung around for a while. Spent some time on the lobby’s computers. There’s no internet available in our rooms until after July 1^st so we have to use the three public computers in the lobby. And they’re in Korean. There’s a huge Korean population here in Yantai, both as immigrant restaurant workers and students. It’s only about an hour flight and however many hours by boat from here to Korea so people come.

We played cards in the lobby with some of them. We were playing Egyptian Rat Rummy (a fun game complete with physical violence. Just kidding-there’s only card slapping) and two guys came down to use the computers and began to talk with us a little. We asked them if they’d like to play and they did, along with a girl friend of theirs. One guy got really into it and was pretty funny to listen to. Trying to explain a semi-complicated card game in a language that’s not native to you to people to who it’s not native either can be complicated. Luckily, someone along the line invented hand gestures, the solver of all ills.

I also found out that women really exist with the high pitched voices you hear in some anime cartoons and movies. I was pretty well floored to hear the pitch of one girl using a computer next to me while she was talking to a friend. I’d figure it’d be painful to talk that high.

Later I went out with another group of people to the Yantai night market, something really interesting. Basically a market where people sell a lot of the same stuff, complete with fruit, cigarettes, fried stuff on sticks, Chinese burritos, and socks. Once you got into the alley ways where more complicated food is cooked, I couldn’t decide whether to look down to avoid all the “stuff” on the ground, or to not look and pretend I didn’t know it was there. As I said, some aspects of China strike me as a little unsanitary.

Came back, watched them play a little more cards and then I tried to figure out why the DVDs I bought weren’t playing in my computer. They were about 90 cents but I want them to work, darn it! The other bootlegged copies I bought worked. Why isn’t it easy to get illegal things to work properly?!

People stare at us a lot. And say “Hello”. I guess they don’t see a lot of foreigners. One thing I didn’t see at all today was any other non-Chinese or Korean person. Not a single blond/natural red/light brown colored hair style to be found. In Beijing there were a few foreigners around, but here there seems to be none. Least it’ll be easy to find the group if I ever lose track of them. “Hey, have you seen any white people around lately?” should work nicely. All the tourists/foreign students seem to be Caucasian. I think I saw one black guy in all of Beijing. I can only imagine what they’d think of us if we went to some remote rural village.

The final match of Euro Cup soccer is on tonight. I wanted to watch it but it’s too hard to find a working TV. Hopefully Spain loses to Germany. I’m spiteful because they beat Russia out of the finals. Despite not knowing the language, customs, history, holidays, or government system, I think I’d make a pretty patriotic Russian on occasion. Though I suppose I could say that about Trinidad, Canada, China, India, Australia, and being a Tiger Woods fan. No, I’m not a huge lover of soccer, though I think it’s an interesting sport when there are people who can play it well (aka, not football-loving Americans). I just find the cute players and the ability to kick a guy on purpose and make it look like an accident a great combination.

Tomorrow is our Yantai University orientation and then back to the grind! Or whatever the idiom is in Chinese…maybe back on the dragon?

Someplace between Beijing and Yantai: June 28, 2008

This is going to be a long long entry A) because I’ve a lot of ground to cover and B) I have 13 hours to kill.

Currently I’m riding on an overnight train to Yantai and it’s about a 13 hour trip-just as long as my flight from New York to Beijing! But I’ll write more on that a little later.

Last Sunday Tao and I went to go meet his family at his dad’s apartment and then go out to lunch. I’m pretty sure I convinced them that I’d either make a great Chinese wife or am a complete idiot, mostly because I managed to only say hello and good bye despite having taken two years of Chinese. Slightly embarrassing. Though, I can say I understood most of what they were saying, whether about me or not. They think I’m very tall and were surprised at my ability to use chopsticks so thoroughly (I think I’ll buy a couple of pairs so I can keep using them when I return to the states. They’re entertaining and soothing to eat with, as well as slightly-more-than-occasionally frustrating). They also discovered that I won’t eat pork, the reason I gave being religious reasons-which is true- and now I wonder if they might think I’m either Jewish or Muslim. Maybe more the latter since Tao and I had dinner with one of his Aunts that night at a Xinjiang restaurant-the area with a population of Chinese Muslims (guaranteed no pork for dinner…).

That afternoon was a day at an indoor market, which is a lot of fun. I’m better at bargaining, though still make a few mistakes. I meant to tell one woman I’d pay 20 yuan for a carving and managed to say 20,000. We laughed a bit at that.

My gift shopping accomplished for my trip, I can now focus the rest of my money on buying food. I’ve decided that if I’ve renounced vegetarianism for these 2 months, I might as well do it completely (aside from pork) and enjoy myself. Beef is a newfound wonder, though I’m more interested in trying the stuff that’s a little more out there. Like donkey, rabbit, or BBQ squid. However, it might take a while to get to the sea slugs and chickens/ducks/geese with their heads and skin still on…

Tao and I also went to Tiantan on Sunday, a large Buddhist temple for that used to be used for praying for a bountiful harvest. It was a big place with a lot of grass and trees. It doubled as a park and there were people doing Tai Chi, some ribbon waving thing, and classical style music practice. There were some guys with s(z)itars, flutes, and other things I didn’t quite recognize practicing together in one of the corner squares. It was pretty cool. Buildings were impressive as always and there are some pictures of it.

I have to imagine that the Beijing area makes a lot of money off these historic monuments and areas. You have to pay to get onto the grounds and then pay something in addition to enter each main attraction. Still, buy American and European standards, its chicken scratch and I don’t feel bad about shelling out 20 or 30 yuan to see things (maybe 2 or 3 US dollars).

I have another observation and after discussing it with some students, we’re still confused on how things work. Babies don’t wear diapers here. I thought the first few toddlers I saw with large open holes in their pants/shorts were anomalies but apparently, it’s not. We haven’t figure out what exactly is the Chinese system for smaller toddlers but one of the students say the older babies just run away from their parents and do their business. You’d think it’d be unsanitary for an entire city to have un-diapered babies…I will ask one of our professors at some point and see if they can’t enlighten us a little.

Monday night I ate dinner with Tao and his dad at a hot pot place. Hot pot is basically the Chinese equivalent of Fondue. You drop vegetables, meat, and other things into boiling water and wait for it to cook. It’s fun to do with friends, though it can be almost like a James Bond mission to find the piece of something you’re looking for and then manage to pick it up. Beijing is big on hot pot during the winter and sheep is the meat of choice to eat in it. I had some…wasn’t too bad.

We each got to pile a plate of things to put in the hot pot and since I don’t know what most things are, I try to go with what looks familiar/good. Some things are innocuous enough-leafy greens and stuff. Looks can be deceiving however. For instance, I found some tofu and what looked like brown tofu. I figured, “Oh, they must use a different sort of bean curd, I’ll try this.” Turns out it wasn’t. It was actually congealed pig’s blood, cut into cubs that look a lot like tofu. Of course, I’m informed of this after I eat it. It’s almost useless to ask what things are so my questions on food have been more streamlined; “Is it meat? What kind? Does it taste good?”. I should have employed this method in this case, but it looked familiar. Note to self: don’t make assumptions…

Classes are going well I think. I’m learning stuff and practicing my ability to say things. My listening ability is much much better than my speaking ability. Probably because it gets used more often. We also get a little bit of fun trivia on Thursday since we officially ended class a little early. Mostly how the Simplified Character system isn’t really what people think it is or how it came to be. Apparently, the CCP at the time told everyone they designed/had it designed to make it easier for the common man to read and write, which might be true, but most of the simplified characters were taken from the Japanese. The Japanese borrowed the characters many many years prior and made them simpler, then the Chinese took them back. Lol. And out of about 60,000 character combinations, only 1500 were simplified. So, not what most people not-in-the-know think.

We also learned a few jokes. I heard and (hopefully) can say them in Chinese but roughly they would be,

“Why is the sea salty? Because fish swim and get sweaty in it.”

“Which mouse has two legs? Micky Mouse. Which duck has two legs? All of them.”

Friday we had a test, which didn’t go screamingly awful in my opinion, and then took a trip to the Summer Palace. It was really foggy/smoggy that day so the pictures of the scenery didn’t really come out that well, but meh. That was also the first time the air really got to me. If you get to watch the videos I’ve been taking, that particular part has me coughing a lung or two out. One of the other guys calls his long bouts of coughing “An Ode to Beijing”. It was a long day of walking. So much walking in this country. I’m probably losing weight.

The Summer Palace was built by Empress Dowager for her own personal summer play place using funds that were supposed to be used to upgrade the royal navy. Needless to say, she was less than the most popular ruler. However, today, it makes an impressive tourist destination.

Today I met the other students at the Hotel for check out and got on a bus that took us to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (called the Palace Museum here on all tourist maps). Tiananmen Square was pretty uninteresting actually. A large space. The coolest part about it was that I was where I’d watched a documentary on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident in my FSEM and History class. There was the monument to the student revolutionaries of the various revolutions China has had. I saw the Chinese building of Congress and Mao’s tomb. We didn’t go see him since we didn’t have time and honestly, I don’t want to. Who wants to see an entombed dead guy who created havoc for decades? Granted, he did a bunch of good things for China too, but was a classic case of megalomania. We did see that famous portrait of Mao hanging about the entrance to Tiananmen. He wasn’t all that attractive either.

[Update: The body might be a wax model because they messed up the real one trying to embalm it. Yay, even better…]

The Forbidden City was pretty cool. I think I found the building Disney based the scene in the movie Mulan where she runs up the stairs on Khan to meet and greet the Emperor. If I didn’t, I’m just going to pretend it is. It’s a little strange to see the flaring dragon and lion studded roofs and in the same horizon, see sky scrapers and cranes.

I got an answer to my questions about the stone lions that guard the entrances to some buildings. The one on the left is usually a female and under her right front paw is her baby. I always thought it looked like the big was crushing the smaller one to death, but apparently she’s playing with the cub. The one on the right is the male and he’s got a ball under his left front paw. My professor didn’t know why that was. Something about play again probably.

At the F.C there were giant iron cauldrons places everywhere. One of our professors told us that these were used to collect rainwater in case of a fire. If a fire were to break out, men with little buckets would draw water out of these much bigger iron buckets. Seems inefficient and not very effective… which might be why so many buildings had to be rebuilt after fires. Burning incense for the ancestors and invaders have a tendency to cause fires.

Speaking of rain, apparently the everyday rain we’ve been having in Beijing is man made. They’re shooting chemicals into the sky that condense water and create rain. Seems really sketchy to me…but they’ve already got enough crude in the sky, why not a little bit more? ….

We had lunch after the F.C at a little place where there was kitten and it was CUTE!!! It was like a Mountain coon cat or something. So fuzzy and friendly. Lunch saw the serving of a fish with it’s head and skin still on. I figure this is actually normal in most parts of the world, but I honestly have no idea how to eat it. And it every piece of fish here has tons of bones in it. Yick and choke!

Speaking again of food and not making assumptions, I bought my first ice cream in China while at the F.C. It was a green bar and so I assumed it was apple. No. It was actually green pea. While it tasted alright, the idea of eating sweetened and mushed frozen peas turned me off. I mean, green pea?!? (apparently, dried peas are also a favored snack)

After lunch we headed toward the train station to hop on a train that would take us from Beijing to Yantai in about 13 hours. Of course, when we got off the bus and had to walk four blocks it was just beginning to rain. It was also one of the most crowded places I’ve walked through (the winner of that miserable contest would be the Museum of Natural History’s Hope Diamond exhibit). It didn’t help that I also had to pull my luggage along behind/beside me. There’s also the unpleasant habit of funneling people through one person wide spaces. It just doesn’t work when there’s hundreds/thousands of people trying to get through a door and the entrance is narrowed single-file 10 yards ahead of it. Mass public transportation in China is something I would go through a lot of effort to avoid. Anyone who knows me would understand the significance of that statement (I’m lazy).

The actual train was a bit of a shock too. I prefer that sort of shock to that of the train station mess though. It was a sleeper car and there were six beds in a 5ft wide 7 ft long 13 foot tall alcove. Basically, stacking people on people in a very small space. Hopefully some of the pictures the others took will find their way to me and I can share them at a later date. It was a quaint and homey place. By quaint and homey I mean cramped and no privacy. However, it was fun. We were allowed to speak English while we were on the train so some other students joined the people in my cubby for cards and story sharing. We tried to have a women sitting in the hall (which was very very narrow) take a picture of us but there were complications. After a while, she took a picture of us on her camera and promised to email it to one of us. Then she just took random pictures of it. It was a little odd, but we had figured out (and she also confirmed) that she really liked taking pictures and was an amateur photographer (she’d have to be to go through nearly 10 minutes of tries for a single picture).

And so ends my first stay in Beijing. I have to say there were pleasant and enjoyable parts to the city and living there, but I’m not terribly fond of it. It’s too big for this village-living college student. I also like looking at the sky and whether it’s blocked by smog or fog doesn’t make a big difference in my book. I like the big blue over me. Perhaps my next place of residence will be somewhere like Hamilton…only in Montana.

Beijing, China: June 21, 2008

Where to start, where to start…today was an exciting day for two reasons. The first was that I got to see blue sky and the sun for the first time in almost a week. I was actually shocked. What’s funny is that there are just as many umbrellas out when it’s sunny as when it’s raining. It’s like these people go without real sunlight for so long that they can’t stand being in it for a day.

The other reason why today was exciting was our trip to the Great Wall (changcheng-literally, long wall). We went to go see the part in Hauirdu (I think) which is said to have some of the best preserved sites. This particular section was built during the early Ming dynasty (1368-1466 A.D).

When I try to tell you it was a straight uphill climb to get to the wall, I mean it. You probably wouldn’t believe me unless you’ve done mountaineering of any sort or have been there yourself. It’s build right along the mountain ridge so you have to go up the face of mountain to get there. They sure didn’t make it easy; we were huffing and puffing like old asthmatic people in the high temperature and humidity (and I’m not that far out of shape!). Still, it was worth it.

It was just like what I’d imagined really. Minus the mobile stands selling hugely overpriced water and drinks under an umbrella. There was a story when I was younger that I loved having read to me. It was called The Seven Chinese Brothers. My parents hated reading it to me since it was fairly long as children books go, but seven identical Chinese brothers with special abilities get in trouble with the Emperor because they secretly helped the laborers building the Great Wall. He was afraid of their power (though he thought it was only one super-powered brother) and tried to execute him/them. Ect., ect., they escape and thwart his evil plans. It’s a great book and you should get it for your kids.

The point of that long tangent was the pictures in the book were exactly like what it really looked like. Real life was better than water color though. There’s a bunch photos so eventually I’ll put them somewhere viewable. It’s very impressive. The mountains in the background are not like any I’m used to. I’ve seen and been to the Colorado’s Rocky mountains, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and Kaui’s mountains. If I had to compare the mountains in this part of China to anything, I’d say they were most like the cliffs of Kaui-mountains that look like their covered in lush green moss.

There was a gondola that you could ride up and/or down for 35 yuan (about 8 dollars), which we took on the way down. It was a little humbling/aggravating that it took us about 25 minutes to walk straight up and 2 to glide down.

We made some friends with a group of students/young people from Guandong (Canton) while we were up on one section. They really wanted to take a picture with us so we obliged…and it turned into something like taking pictures from 5 different cameras (at least two of them belong to us so I guess I can’t complain). Still, they were fun. People seem to make us into mini celebrities here. I can’t imagine what Yantai will be like since they get far fewer tourists than Beijing does.

The G.W was about an hour drive away from Beida. We took a van(ish) vehicle. Once we got out of the city we went through a bunch of agricultural land and that was pretty interesting. They do indeed still wear those pointed straw hats. There was also several rural small towns we passed through. I would wave to people sitting at their road side fruit stands to see if they would wave back. One woman was very enthusiastic, heh.

I liked the rural town areas much better than Beijing. Sure there might only be one paved road and houses were vaguely more like huts, but it seems like a much more calm way to live. I don’t think I’d mind living in places like that.

I understand now why dogs enjoy sticking their heads out of car windows. I too employed such this way of better seeing the surrounding area while we were riding by (flapping ears would have made it even more fun). This might have been way several Chinese who I waved to seemed entertained. Who wants to look at stuff through an opaque window? I did, however, pull my head in whenever a large truck was oncoming or we went through trees. I wanted to keep it; I might still find some uses for it.

A brief word on Chinese driving. If you were to judge the road conditions according to what Americans think are normal, Chinese roads would rank a, “Dear God, we’re going to [beeeep] die!!!! Ahhh!!!” Turn signals seem nonexistent and I’m not sure if drivers even look before they change lanes. They enjoy their horns too. People honk when someone merges into them, when they pass a bike or another car, or just because…any situation seems to call for the horn. But none of them seem at all phased by anything so I guess that’s normal. It might even be normal for most of the world and we Americans are the weird ones.

There were tons and tons of fruit stands on the side of the road once we got far enough into some different counties. Probably because they had fruit orchards everywhere. One was similar to the two apple picking areas I’ve seen-you go in and pick things right off the tree/vines. Most of the fruit looks mostly familiar but there is a melon or two that definitely look a little strange.

There was something else a little bit odd I found on the roads in the rural parts. They dry grain on the road. You can only drive on one side of the road because they use parts of the other side to dry this stuff. I tried to ask the driver what it was since everyone was sleeping but he could only tell me the Chinese name and that they eat it, which didn’t really help me understand what it was, though I think its grain. It looked like some sort of yellowish grain or millet. They’d be there, walking in their grain patch, raking. Both sides of the road were used for this stuff, though there always seemed to be just enough space for the car to manage if two had to share one side.

My final observation for today. Street vendors are like vultures. There was a row of many small stalls before the ticket booth and entrance to the G.W. Walking through there was like being Princess Jasmine going through the bazaar for her first time. “Lady, Lady! Buy a T-shirt? Good souvenir.” or “You look yah? Very cheap.” They would descend on you if you even glanced in the direction of their wares and with good reason. They all sold the same stuff so they had to be loud and pushy to get your attention. If you moved in their direction at all they would drop whatever they were doing to get you to buy something. Some even tried to stand in your way of leaving. People with a weaker constitution can easily be overwhelmed.

I found it all very entertaining. For my first purchase I paid a little too much, but I got better at the bargaining game as time went on. I couldn’t help but wonder how many foreign tourists come in and are the Chinese equivalent of a gringo-paying the first price they name. Probably too many judging by from how high they start the game. I can’t wait to do it again. And spending money? That’s just an added benefit.

Beijing, China: June 20, 2008

Today we had an oral test. It didn’t go too badly I think. They had me read some characters, sentences, and then basically talk about what I did and didn’t eat in the past two days. After that I walked around the NE section of Beida again and took some pictures. Sadly, the past two days have been very smoggy so the pictures really don’t show off the area was well as they could. There’s a giant tower that used to be a water tower but now is just one of the decorative defining features of the campus.

In the afternoon we went to yonghegong, otherwise known as the biggest Dalai lamasery ever. One of the Qing emperors had it built so the Dalai Lama could have some place to live and pray when he came to pay homage…I mean, enlighten the emperor.

We took a cab to the subway and then navigated the subway to the south side of the city (Beida is located in the NorthWest). I hate subways. American subways, Chinese subways…all of them. At least in the NYC subways people stand aside so passengers can get off before they try to board. I also think that we went at a rush hour, which tends to make things a little more hectic for a first impression.

We spent a couple of hours at the lamasery looking around. The setup was fairly repetitive. Basically think four or so buildings in a rectangle and you pass through one of the horizontal sides to get into another rectangle. Stacked rectangles. In front of nearly every building was a place to burn incense (which can be bought at the row of a hundred hole-in-the-wall stores that sell literally the same thing) and kowtao (kneel and bow).

You’re supposed to burn the incense in at least a bundle of three and I would assume if you wanted to burn more, multiples of three. Reason being (I think) is that the incense is being burned for the Buddha statues inside the buildings and the standard idea is three Buddhas. One represents the past, another the present, and the last one the future (they were placed left to right and each had a different hand position-don’t know the significance, if there is any).

Inside the buildings were the Buddhas, along with other statues/carvings. Some only had one Buddha, some had three. You could offer incense and money to them. People would also put/through money at the stone lions, turtles, and fountains. By far the most impressive Buddha to me was the giant one. It was about two stories tall and made entirely out of a single sandlewood tree. It must have been a gianormous tree from the size and shape of this statue. Apparently, the tree originally grew in Nepal and they brought it to Beijing for the Dalai Lama. They put it up and then built the Temple around the statue.

If I may brag a little about Colgate…we have a program/workshop/something like that called World Leaders. Basically, there’s a committee that tries to bring in influential people once a year. My first year there it was the guy who wrote Freakanomics (I think it was mostly attended by Econ majors and minors, which means about over half the school…) and this year it was the currently Dalai Lama. That was rather awesome. The big lecture on happiness was par for the course but I was allowed to go to a smaller lecture where our religious leaders and student club leaders posed questions to him which he answered. That was much better. So I got to see where his many-times-over predecessor(s) vacationed.

After the lamasery, we tried to go to a dumpling place for dinner. We took another taxi, which was fun since we were joking with the driver and talking about dumplings. I can only assume my Chinese has improved since I got here because I could follow and reply to most of what he was saying when I paid attention. Yay!

Of course, when we got there, the restaurant was closed for renovations and we ended up walking to a noodle place. It wasn’t my favorite place to eat, though that possibly could have been since we ordered a lot of meat. Not that I’m set against eating meat. There’s this one beef dish I had a few days ago that was fabulous. Some sort of stewed dish.

For the duration of this trip I can’t call myself a vegetarian, though some would say I shouldn’t ever call myself that…however, the food is definitely worth trying, even the meat. Strangely, the thought of eating donkey (which we almost ordered tonight) isn’t nearly as nauseating as eating beef or pork (that latter of which I refuse to eat). And I have never had such good vegetables in my life. I’m going to attribute it to the MSG.

I should mention one dish that we did get that I’ll probably never ever see in the States. Boiled silk worm pupae. I even ate one. My father convinced me eat a giant shrimp head in Denver so I figured this couldn’t be too much different. It was actually pretty good, sorta like a cream-filled crunchy (not that I ate more than one and want to eat another ever again). Nick and Natalie were very set against eating one but we eventually wore them down and they had one too. Now we think nothing is too far off the radar to try at least one piece. We’re told snake and frog are very good.

Beijing kinda smells. And not in a particularly pleasant way. Sometimes it’s car exhaust and other times I can’t tell. I’m not the only one who notices though, since we tried to ask one of our professors while we were headed to the subway, but she didn’t know either. Perhaps I’ll find out before I leave this summer. Maybe I don’t want to know…

Beijing, China: June 19, 2008

I saw a bug after class today. It was a magnificent bug with far too many stripped legs and it walked in a wavy fashion. If you’ve seen Planet Earth- the cave episode- it looked just like that one bug in the opening credits (I think it’s in the opening credits). I think I bothered one of the other girls though. She didn’t seem to appreciate me wanting to see it run some more. It’s not my fault it decided to hide in her bag.

NOTE: I checked, and it looked exactly like the bug (a cave centipede) in Planet Earth, only smaller. About 6 minutes into the episode is the moving rendition.