Just Kidding

I got a call from my program director at 10 this morning being like, Where do you want to pick up your ticket for Dalian from the travel agent man? And I was like, Uhhh what? Dude never called me back yesterday so I assumed he couldn't find any tickets.

Anyway, thus ensued a crazy game of talking to the courier about where to pick up my ticket. The director told me to go to the campus's back gate, but he was not there, so I called and asked, "Ni zai hou menkou haishi xian menkou?" Of course he was at the front gate. So I walk all the way over there and go up to the wrong guy who tells me he's waiting for a Ribenren. Oops. The courier calls me again, and after much confusion I walk out the gate and he goes, "Wang you wang you wang you." Fortunately that was one of the vocab words from this week. So I turn right and see a guy on his phone just sitting on his motorbike (which he had explained, but I didn't realize until then. Motouche!) Why couldn't he have gotten up and found me, the only flumoxed white girl wandering around with 300 kuai in her hand for a train ticket? Well whatever. Got the ticket and in a couple hours I'm off to brave the Beijing train station and the overnight sleeper. Tomorrow I'll be kicking up sand by the haibian, if that makes sense.

No posts till next week then, sorry! Have a good weekend :)

Things I've had to adjust to since being here

1. You cannot put toilet paper in the toilets. It must go in a trashcan beside the toilet, otherwise the toilet gets clogged. (Also some toilets you can't even do No. 2 (er hao) in.)

2. Pedestrians have no right of way. In fact, it pretty much sucks being a pedestrian. Hopefully I am getting a bike this weekend.

3. Bug spray is essential.

4. A good day means being able to see the mountains out the window.

5. All fruit must be peeled and sliced. Don't bite into it or you risk eating something you probably don't want to.

6. You can't drink the water. You don't want to anyway, because it smells funny. So I've been buying lots and lots of bottles of water, tea, juice, dengdeng. Contributing to the over abundance of plastic refuse problem, I am.

7. On the other hand, none of the shops will give you a plastic bag unless you ask for it and pay like 2 mao. Which is... less than 5 US cents, probably, but still I always forget to bring a bag to the grocery store and end up shoving everything in my purse. Awkward.

I'm sure there are other things. I'm already missing cereal and milk for breakfast, for example, but I'm not about to break down and buy me some corn flakes and soy milk yet. Yet. Oh and lastly, my plans for this weekend were disrupted when I went to the train station to buy a ticket to see Cheng in Dalian but they had none left :( Mai wan le! And it's too late to hitch a ride with some of the other kids to Mongolia, so I'll just be kicking it around Beijing this weekend. Things could be worse.

Golden arches in the Middle Kingdom

SUOYI I've eaten the McDonald's here. I'm half ashamed to admit it, but really, it had to be done. Anyway today was a pengyou's birthday, and he chose to have us eat there, so we did. Actually I was quite pleased with myself, since I did all the ordering in Chinese. Ready: "Wo yao er hao." He asked me, "big or small?" I said, "Xiao. Hai you, bingqiling" and I pointed to the fruit sundae thing. So that's what I got! A cheeseburger with a small drink and fries, and a vanilla sundae with some strange peach gelatin topping. Only, the cheeseburger had cucumbers and a strange spicy sauce on it. A little strange, but edible. The fries tasted the same.
(Also, on the cab ride there, I asked the cab driver, "Ni chiguo Maidanlao de fan ma?" And he had, so I asked, "Ni juede zenmeyang?" And he answered with some adjective I didn't know and can't remember. He probably said it tasted like shit. Anyway that was the end of our convo because I didn't know where to go from there. Sigh.)

Now, my Maidanlao meal cost almost 30 kuai. That's pretty expensive, especially considering last night a group of 9 of us went out to eat, ordered several dishes, ate our full, and the total bill was 98 kuai. So we paid less than 2 US dollars each for all that good food. Just strange, is all I'm saying. Oh but then I had a screwdriver at an Americanized bar (read: expensive-er, and classy-ish) and it was 10 kuai. Nice. Try getting a screwdriver for a dollar fifty in NYC. Not happening.

Not much else to say. Cheng is in Dalian being sick since I passed on my germs to him. I'm hopefully getting a bike this weekend so I don't have to be lame and walk to class everyday. Oh, and so I can go on bike rides to the park and stuff. Also I'm debating whether or not to join some other students and visit Mongolia this weekend. Hm we'll see. Sounds cool, but I want to do some research on it first, so here I go.

The first weekend

Even though I couldn’t go out to Sanlitun this weekend and get my drink on (this has yet to happen here) I definitely had an amazing two days before classes start. On Saturday I got to sleep in (hurray!) so I felt a little rejuvenated from the previous day’s jaunting around the city. Cheng came over to campus and even though it was slightly rainy out, we went on an excursion to the 798 art district. It turned out to be all the way on the other side of the city, but it was awesome and I would love to go back sometime, since we only got to explore about half of the area.

It’s kinda the same idea as Chelsea, with open galleries you can just wander into and look at contemporary art. But the cool thing is that the neighborhood is actually a bunch of old factories and low buildings, so the spaces where the artwork is hung makes the art even more intense. Now, the area used to be for the avante garde, but of course once people caught on to the fact that this neighborhood was quite hip, gentrification began. As a result, most artists can’t afford to live there anymore, but it still seemed like an impressive place to have work shown. The strange part was this random Nike building where you can go in, exchange you ID card for an iPod touch, and have a guided tour through the history of Nike shoes. It was actually really cool, and the second floor of the building had all the gear Nike made for the Chinese Olympic team, along with explanations as to why it was so special. Then at the end when Cheng returned the iPod, he got a free Nike propaganda book, complete with blank pages for him to sketch his own shoe designs. I think he was in love.

We quickly ate some noodles when we got back to campus, and then departed to see the Beijing acrobats at the Heaven and Earth Theater. Now, I’ve already seen Cirque du Soleil’s version of Chinese acrobatics, and was very very impressed. But this show was really cool too. There were cute little boys doing jump rope, cute girls throwing around Chinese yoyos, an androgynous man wearing hot pants juggling, and much more. Crazy fun times. I heard lots of “oh my god, no they’re not going to…” and “what, how is this happening” around me, so I’m guessing the other people on my program were suitably impressed. Awed, even.

Since I had to get up at 7.30 this morning I again opted out on any bar shenanigans for the night. I actually woke up feeling much better, though I still have a cough and sound like Janis Joplin (no karaoke-ing for me till my voice goes back to normal!). The I looked outside and WO DE TIAN LE! I could see the mountains in the distance! And… blue skies! The rain yesterday did the most wonderful thing and gave us the most beautiful day anyone could ask for. Zero humidity and cool breezes… could it get any better? Oh yes, because the reason I got up so early was that we were going on an excursion outside the city to a village in the mountains called Cuandixia, an outpost town to Xi’an that has been preserved since the Ming Dynasty.

The bus ride took like 2 hours but it was worth it. We got there and immediately climbed a mountain. I am not kidding. We pa’d a shan at 11 and I would have eaten a better breakfast had I know how rigorous it would be. Oh, and I also would have worn tennis shoes and shorts instead of flip flops and a skirt. But all they said was we were visiting a village! Anyway, footwear woes aside, climbing that mountain was worth it. We got a spectacular view of the entire village and surrounding countryside (read: mountains). It made me realize how terribly out of shape I am, but hey, at least I made it to the top. And down again! Going down was worse, since it was so steep.

After all that work we were duly rewarded with a tremendous meal cooked by a local townsman (a friend of our program director) and his wife. They made us so much food! Like, they would not stop bring out dishes. My favorites were: cucumber with apricot seeds, potatoes and green peppers with beef, and scallion pancakes. All the food was from the village, and apparently three chickens died that morning in our honor. Well, it was delicious. And then the host gave us a history of the village; he is the 15^th generation of the Han family who settled the village after the Ming dynasty fell. His grandson is 17^th generation. Can you even imagine?? And at one point, this village housed the dynasty’s gold treasure, in a hole underground in the guy’s house. What?? Crazy talk! But it’s true, and that’s why China is amazing.

After lunch we were free to explore on our own for a couple hours. The director took a group over some more mountains to view an abandoned town nearby, but my footwear forced me to stay in the village. Which was fine by me. A small group of us found our way to a terrace restaurant overlooking the town and sat there for a while, drinking pijiu and laotiar-ing with the owner. Between one other 300 level guy and myself, we had a cool conversation with him about Korean people riding scooters, his favorite movie Snakes on a plane (me: you mean… she zai feiji? Him: dui! (and he mimes a snake biting a guy’s head)) and the village itself. A Canadian woman joined us at one point and she was cool too. She had just published a book about Beijing and wanted to revise it later to add a description of this village. Later, one of the RA’s on our program came over and she really helped translate; she even translated the restaurant’s Chinese name into English so more tourists could find out about it. Go ahead, Google Cuandixia and see what you find. I was there! It was feichang piaoliang!

Whelp, tomorrow class officially starts. Although for this week we only have Chinese class, and it doesn’t start till 2. Nice. But it’s four hours long. Not so nice. I read over my 300 level hw and it seems pretty easy actually… so I might have to move up a level. We’ll see. My reading is good but speaking and listening not so much. I’m getting by though. I figured out Snakes on a Plane and Koreans riding motorbikes!

They love me so much,

these Beijing mosquitoes do. I have several bites on my body, including on smack in the middle of my forehead and one on my nose. Sound familiar, Cynthia? It's like mosquito deja vu. Except not cool in any way.

Anyway, today we had a presentation in the morning by our affiliate travel agent man. He was cool except he only spoke Chinese. And he showed us lots of slides of lots of places I want to go. Like, basically everywhere in China. And some cool places in Beijing too, of course. They definitely encourage us to take trips on the weekends here, since it's fairly easy to take an overnight train on Friday night to somewhere in within the northern half of China and still make it back to class on Monday after a fun filled weekend. Some places I'd like to visit if given the chance: Lhasa, Harbin, Guilin, and Fuzhou (as long as Cheng can come with me). Now I'm noticing that these are not the easiest places to get to, but oh well. I will make something happen.

This afternoon was the fun part. (Not really). Cheng joined us for a scavenger hunt around Beijing... only I somehow neglected to tell him the hunt was Amazing Race style. In a group of five we had to navigate our way to different landmarks around Beijing (7 in all) within 3 hours and make it back in time for dinner. The group to reach the most landmarks won. Well, we got to four, after taking a ridiculously long time to find out first spot at Houhai. I ended up retracing my trip from yesterday. From there we went to Beihai park, where I somehow got ripped off an paid 20 yuan for the entrance fee. But it was a pretty park. I'd go back if the fee was less.

Our next stop was the top of the hill at Jingshanyuan, the park behind the Forbidden City where an emperor hanged himself as his dynasty ended. From there we took a bus to Tiananmen Square to pick up our last clue that we had time for, outside of Mao's tomb. The clue was something about a Silk Road and a market to the east of the Square the sold lots of fake name brand items. We ended up at Wangfujin because the cab driver thought that was where we needed to be... oh well. So we only ended up getting 4 spots finished and another team beat us by one spot. At least now I know how to get to those places, and feel pretty confident navigating that central area of the city. I'd like to go back when I'm less rushed and take more pictures, but actually right now I'd rather visit some other neighborhoods in the city.

I had the option of going with my group to Sanlitun tonight for some jiuba fun, but declined since I'm still not feeling well. We have nothing planned for tomorrow morning (amazingly) so I'm going to get some rest and hope that whatever sickness I have no will leave me alone. I think not racing around the city during the day will also alleviate some of my ills. Oh, and as a side note, although Beijing is not being so nice to me right now, I think Cheng is doing very well. Beijing looks good on him! He speaks easily with the natives, has no fears about eating the street food, and has random moments of nostalgia and memories from his childhood come back. Zhen ke'ai. Ok, xianzai wo yao shuijiao! Ming tian jian!

Technical Difficulties Fixed! Commence Posting!

Well kids, the unfortunate truth is that Maarten Troost was not lying when he complained about how horrible the air pollution is here. Nor was he exaggerating. It’s bad. On top of it being bad, I had a sore throat bothering me off and on before I left, and of course now it is back in full force. I used to like going outside or opening my window for some fresh air (even in NY!) but now I am cowering in my dorm room in fear of breathing any more outside fumes.

The throat condition was no doubt exacerbated by the amount of walking outside I have already done today. We started out the morning with a voluntary excursion across the city to the Houhai district to check out some hutongs. Getting there first involved catching a bus, then getting off and walking a few blocks to the subway. I must say I was quite impressed with both modes of transportation. Clean, on time, and efficient. Not terribly crowded either. We bought a card that allows us to swipe on the buses (at a discount rate) and subways so we won’t have to buy tickets everytime. It’s kinda like the Oyster card for London, so of course I love it. How fangbian. Also the bus is so cheap! Only .40 kuai!

Going to Houhai during the day was nice, because it wasn’t so crowded and crazy like it gets at night. The area was really nice, with a big lake where people were boating, fishing, and swimming (the last one at their own risk). Too bad the smog had to diminish the splendor! OK I should stop complaining and probably accept this condition as a fact of life here. (Though that doesn’t make it any more tolerable!). Anyway we stopped in this one shop selling lots of stuff from Tibet, and the staff was really funny and nice and wanted to take lots of pictures with us crazy waiguoren. I tried helping some girls bargain for things but I don’t think I did much for them. However I’m a little more prepared for when I go out shopping on my own, since I had a bit of fun helping them. Too bad they were overwhelmed by the salesmanship… which really wasn’t that bad, in my opinion. I’ve dealt with much pushier people, even in America.

Then in the afternoon we had this scavenger hunt activity where we paired up with someone and had to go find a random landmark they had assigned to us. We weren’t allowed to ask any native English speakers for help, or to take a taxi. Lucky for us, there are tons of Olympic volunteers on our campus, so I asked them (in Chinese!) to help us and they kindly wrote directions for the bus (in Chinese!). We made it there and back (our was a French supermarket chain called JiaYueFu that’s basically like Walmart on crack) and a nice student helped us find the campus again on the bus ride home. Beijing people are nice when your lost! But I still have a long way to go in completely understanding directions. Mostly it’s a lot of me pointing, asking Nei biar? And I nod a lot, even though I don’t understand. But I try! And I think if I had to get somewhere on my own I would be ok… provided I had a map and a piece of paper so people could write things down for me.A successful (if wearying) excursion.

Thunderstorms

Day 2 in Beijing except that it feels much longer. There was more random orientation lectures today and those in between running around the city trying to find the basic necessities (money, cell phone, towels and shampoo in that order) I am now exhausted at 10 AM again. It’s kind of annoying that they have all these things planned for us when I just really need time to get out in the neighborhood, buy some things, and take in my surroundings. On the other hand, it’s been nice getting to know the staff and teachers; everyone has been really friendly and there’s a good deal of individual attention, since our program is so small.

We had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant and the academic coordinator outlined our trips for the semester. Apparently we are taking a long weekend in Shanghai very soon… in a couple weeks, I think. Then for our long trip at the end of October, we are spending a week in Nanjing and then a week in rural Yenan (I think that’s the name… not quite sure. Definitely not Yunnan though). I’m very excited for these excursions! And just plain excited for classes in general, though they seem like a lot of work. We also have to do an outside research project that we will present in a symposium at the end of the semester. So yes, classes seem like a fun challenge, but no I’m not quite ready for them to start yet. I need to get oriented to my surroundings first!

One cool thing that happened today: on my way to get my cell phone, one of the RA’s volunteered to take me to the store since it was too hard to explain how to get there. So he showed up with a bike and was like, “We have a ride.” My job was to sit on the back of the bike on this metal bar thing, keep my balance, and hang on for dear life. In that order. I managed not to fall but I have no idea how Chinese people can do that with such ease. I’ve seen people sitting on the back holding umbrellas and such. They must have abs of steel, is what I’m thinking. And short legs probably helps too. But the bike made the trip much shorter and dodging traffic really wasn’t as terrifying as I expected. Beijingers are no doubt used to the crazy mix of cars/bikes/mopeds/pedestrians/buses and there’s an odd synergy in traffic flow that follows the seemingly chaotic combination. (Though I can’t imagine how much worse things will be at the end of September, when the cars come back on the roads in full force.)

I’m meeting up with Cheng tomorrow evening, finally! It seems like so long ago that we parted at the airport but it was… yesterday. I’ve clearly been kept busy, but I wonder what he’s been up to? Also, I’m really glad I didn’t go out to a bar tonight with some of the kids—it’s pouring buckets outside now, with thunder and everything. Knowing my luck, my brand new cell phone would’ve been ruined.

Word of the day: qianming 签名 TO SIGN ONE’S NAME (as in, on the traveler’s checks that the Bank of China won’t let me cash unless my mom is here. Sigh.)