Dongbei ("The Northeast"), Part Two: Beijing

We were only in Xi'an for 1.5 days, so it was nice to "settle" somewhere for a bit before we all headed our separate ways. On the second day we took a hop-skip-and-a-jump plane ride to Beijing, and stayed there for 4.5 days. It was cool to get to know the city from a different and no-parents (for the first part, anyway) perspective. We did a lot of the touristy things that I'd already done again, but with a city like Beijing (similar to Xi'an), those things are so cool that you generally don't care about doing them more than once. In the end, the only thing I skipped was the Forbidden City/Temple of Heaven, because that place is freaking huge and I didn't feel like walking around in the 39 C heat (that's like... 110 F or something ridiculous) for 3 hours.

One of our first stops was, of course, the Great Wall. It wasn't my first time there, but we went to a different section of it this time, less touristy and differently shaped. (The section I went to with my parents in 2003 was all stairs, this one was some stairs and some curvy parts.) The coolest part of it was the toboggan track they put in along the side. John and I took the cable car up together, then he went off to do his crazy super-fast thing while I took my time exploring the towers and resting from the crazy heat, then tobogganed down the mountain at the end. When I got off, some Russian woman came storming up and started yelling at me, presumably because I was going too slow (one could control the speed of the toboggans.) I just looked at her and said, "I don't understand you." In retrospect, I should have started yelling back at her in Chinese-- that would have thrown her off but good.

The Great Wall




We also went to Tiananmen Square (really huge and expansive, as usual) and the Summer Palace, where Empress Cixi, the craziest and most ruthless ruler in possibly all of Chinese history, used to take her vacations. There's a big lake there where Cixi had an enormous marble boat made (it doesn't run, just sits in the water and weighs a huge amount) along with a really pretty vacation house and the world's longest hallway along the lake (so she'd never have to put her face in the sun.) Now the place is a complete tourist attraction, swarming with tour groups, people hawking Olympics 2008 t-shirts, and tacky stands where you can dress up in Imperial Garb (John took the bait, of course.) But it was a lovely place to be on a sweltering Beijing day.

The longest hallway in the world


John, channeling his inner Imperial Pimp


The Summer Palace as seen from the water, where we rented a paddle boat for an hour


When we weren't doing the history student thing, there was plenty of other Beijing things to do. We braved the famous Beijing traffic to eat at Lush, a favorite Western restaurant/bar of the several SIT kids who studied in Beijing Fall semester; explored the Beijing subway system (So clean! So precise!); went to the Silk Market (where they sell way more than silk, everything from jade to fake Fendi to scarves) to buy souvenirs and hone our bargaining skills. At the Silk Market, we made friends with a pearl seller who gave us all free water and discounts--Mike bought a necklace "for his future girlfriend." I thought that was both pretty smart and hilarious. I proved to be a terrible bargainer because I get guilty, but John made a reputation as a bargaining genius, saving something like Y2000 on a knockoff purse for his mom. There was also lots to do at the hotel, which was the nicest we stayed at all semester. We thought about going swimming until we found out it was a whopping Y60 to use to pool. But we did end up bowling in the basement twice-- the place had a real mini alley, I felt like I was back in Maine. The only indication of my location was the Chinese characters on the "high score" placards.

One night, the program took us out to a famous teahouse where pretty much all the political leaders that come to China go to experience Chinese culture. The evening features traditional tea snacks, tea (of course), and entertainment such as jugglers (one guy balanced a huge clay vat on his head), acrobats, Beijing Opera, traditional music, and shadow puppets. The shadow puppets were my favorite, the men doing them made all sorts of different faces with their hands and the faces lipsynced along to the unlikely musical choice of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!. Oh Chinese culture...

Doing some ca-razy stuff with a teapot at the famous Beijing Laoshe teahouse


After a few days in Beijing, my parents arrived, fresh from their cruise on the Yangtze River. It was wonderful to see them and catch up, and they hit if off almost disturbingly well with my friends, especially John. They took Tania, Sophie, Mike, and John out to dinner one night, and then the same group plus Kailey out to lunch the next day. They made an excellent impression-- everyone thought they were super cool. They came with us to Panjiayuan, too, one of my favorite places in Beijing-- an amazing antique market full of hustle and bustle, cluttered stands filled with wrought-iron carved Tibetan Buddha daggers, calligraphy, Miao minority embroidery. We didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked, but I can always come back another time-- here's hoping.

On the last night the whole program got dressed up and went out to A Fan Ti, a Uighur theme restaurant in Beijing. Uighurs are a Chinese minority that live in Xinjiang, China (incidentally where we were heading the next day. It was a good cultural preview.) The meal included traditional Uighur pita bread, "chuanr" (basically shish kebabs), specially made vegetables, and pomegranate juice. It also featured a show, with women doing a traditional dance with bowls balanced on their heads, traditional Uighur music, and belly dancing. SIT students got special attention throughout the whole thing, mostly because we were the only white people there (I think.) Kailey got to dance on stage with a male belly dancer; Chris got picked out for another stunt; and (craziest of all) John, through a contest and a series of unexpected turns, ended up with a snake around his neck and a scantily clad woman belly-dancing her way around him while the whole crowd screamed. The night ended, rather appropriately, with the MCs encouraging the crowd to get on the tables and dance (a Uighur tradition.) I wish I could say that I didn't have the image of John dancing on the table with my mom and dad forever etched into my brain.

That night, everyone went out to a bar district called San Li Tunr. Tania, Mike, Sophie, John, and I went, too, but as soon as we get there we were kind of turned off by the whole thing-- basically drunk Westerners as far as the eye could see. "I didn't transfer away from UC Boulder for nothing," Tania said, and so we went to a nearby coffeeshop for fancy dessert and then went back to the hotel to do the same thing we had every night in Beijing-- hang out, be really silly, give and recieve massages, and listen to music. It was an appropriate ending to an amazing program-- a mundane but lovely night spent with friends. At 4:30 AM Tania and Sophie said goodbye and headed to the airport, and later that day John had a protracted goodbye with my parents. There may have been tears involved. And then it was the three of us, off to unknown parts, intrepid explorers always.

Nextime: Kashgar, the China you (and I) never knew about

Dongbei ("The Northeast") part I: Xi'an

Following the 3.5 weeks I spent in Lanping, Liuku, and their environs, I hightailed it back to Kunming for a week of unwinding/marathon paper writing/eating lots of Western breakfast food (one of my favorite coffee shops, Salvadore's, sells a dynamite "American Breakfast" that actually tastes American for Y20, about $3.) Some of the guys in the program went to Tibet for the last week of ISP, which cost them a huge amount of money. I was really jealous of them (still am), but then they had to pull several consecutive all-nighters to get their papers done, not something I would have been keen to do. In the end, as suggested by the fake birth announcement I posted awhile ago, my paper (which was about the stories Nujiang people tell, the attitudes they have about those stories, and the factors that affect those attitudes) was a massive 36 pages long--the longest thing I've ever written. And I gotta say, it's pretty good. I got my grades back last week, in America, and apparently my teacher agrees (sly grin.) Well, where else but in your own travel blog can you indulge in blatant back-pattage/horn-tootage? So I say: good on me.
Moving on.

Anyway, besides writing we also indulged in DVD watching, scooter riding, and club/bar hopping(the only time I really went out in Kunming, it was actually a lot of fun, the clubs in Kunming are sort of hilariously garish with backup dancers and Karaoke and way to much in the way of lightshows. There was also, inexplicably, a clown walking around one of them.) We had a series of days where people gave 20-minute powerpoint presentations about their topics, which were alternately interesting and kill-me-now boring. Could have been planned better (do you really need to cram 7 hours of presentation into one day? Seems unneccessary...) On the last night, Justin had a huge 21st birthday party for him and two other of our tripmates at this cafe/bar called Halfway House, and everyone drank and schmoozed and danced and listened to terrible rap (Justin had brought this terrible white expat rapper to perform at his party, basically just for the entertainment value.) It was a good way to rap up our Kunming time...

...Because the next day we got up at 4:30 AM to take a 2.5 hour plane to Xi'an, almost smack in the middle of the country, south of Beijing by about an 11 hour train ride. Xi'an was the geographical center of China for a long time, when China was on a smaller scale, and it's been continuously inhabited for something like 11,000 years. It's a huge city, with a very different feel than Kunming, and much more polluted, very "Eastern China," but we saw some pretty sweet things there. The first afternoon, John, Tania, Sophie, Mike and I indulged in some MacDonald's (I had a small fry and it was AMAZING) and then explored the Muslim quarter, which is very atmospheric. We bought several presents in the souk (marketplace) and sampled some local cuisine, including a kind of nougat with raisins and nuts inside and a weird fried sweet thing rolled in sugar and nuts.

The market in the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an


The Xi'an Drum Tower, right outside the Muslim Quarter


After several hours of exploring we were hot and tired, so we went to Starbucks (hooray!) I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks generally, I like to frequent little local-owned places. But just walking into the lovely, airconditioned building was like walking into a little piece of America. Every Starbucks ever is decorated the same way, bless them. And so we spent a few hours drinking coolattas, fooling around, and enjoying ourselves.

Tania and Sophie at Starbucks, a little bit of America in the middle of Xi'an


Spotted just outside of Starbucks: Oh my God! It's Xue, in Xi'an! But wait, Xue is in the US this summer! It's Xue's evil twin!


The five of us started spending a lot of time together on this last trip. We explored, got meals, got bubble tea, watched movies, played stupid games (one of them involving sips of bizarre pineapple beer in a twist on a "Mulan" drinking game.) As we were walking back to our hotel from one jaunt out, I stopped at a magazine stand to buy some water. The man who helped me actually spoke the best, most fluent, and most accentless English I have encountered in a Chinese person here. He told us to call him "Mr. Johnston" and then pondered "that last name's possibly Scandanavian descent." We nodded mutely and I wondered when the last time was that I used the word "Scandanavian." He told us he's been studying English on his own for more than 20 years and practicing with the foreigners that come to his stand. I guess it goes to show that you never know where you'll find a scholar.

The next morning we got up impossibly early to drive to see the Terracotta Warriors. I'd been to see them once already with my parents, but they were worth going again, especially when someone else was paying my entry fee. The Terracotta Warriors are part of the 4-square-mile tomb of the first Emperor of the United China (as opposed to before, when the Dynasties just ruled little bits). He had a full-size to-scale army made for him out of clay, to ensure his continued rule in the afterlife. Every face of every archer, every horseman is different. They all have individually detailed hair. They were even painted, although you can't see the colors now. And that's just the part that's been dug up-- apparently a sizeable part of the Emperor's tomb has yet to be unearthed, including what sonar has identified as the Emperor's coffin resting in a pool of mercury (you heard me.) Pretty intense stuff.

The Teracotta Soldiers




Next time: Beijing adventures, SIT says goodbye

Pong!

Will wonders never cease? It's only 8:21 and I'm almost done with my homework. We didn't have class or an activity until 6 PM, requiring a rushed dinner followed by desperate homework completion, character memorizing, and a late bedtime. Today, we were supposed to have a lecture from an Assistant Professor who teaches here at Yunnan Normal University (they call it "Shi Da" for short) he got about 20 minutes into his prepared two-hour power point presentation, but Lu Laoshi kept asking him to hurry up a little bit or skip over parts we had already learned. Then all of a sudden he lost his temper; yelled, in a torrent of Chinese, that he didn't feel like talking, we could do it ourselves, and he wasn't happy; and walked out, slamming the door behind him. This is a very un-Chinese display of temper, and we all didn't really know what to say. But it meant that once we watched the half-hour movie afterwards (a cool trippy/artsy memoir-documentary by a Beijing artist who was at the Tiananmen Square massacres) we were free to go and it wasn't even dinner time!

I don't mean to sound bitter, I'm learning a huge amount here, even if it can get exhausting. As mentioned in a previous entry, we have Chinese lessons from 8-12 every morning with a half hour break for Taiji (you probably know it pronounced as "tie chee".) After a lunch break we have a lecture on some topic or we go somewhere and have a lecture there (recently we went to a Kunming mosque. The Hui minority is Chinese people who practice Islam. It was really really interesting, seeing and hearing all the Arabic mixed with Chinese.) We've also been watching a lot of movies about Chinese history, and I'm starting to get how modern history shaped up the way it did, exactly what the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward were and why they were so horrible, and what part China has played in all the stuff I already knew about (WW I and II, the Korean War, etc.)

After we're done with all that and maybe some side trips-- we walked to the Minority Students University last week and met a bunch of students there, I made some new friends-- we have to find a place to eat dinner and then dive into homework (grammar, character memorization, reading comprehension... since we're only studying intensively for 5 weeks, they're working us hard.) And by the time we're finished, it's time to go to bed to get up at 7 AM again. But I have found time to do some cool things on the side, and the wonderful thing about this program is that they work in a lot of cool stuff in for us. For instance, today, instead of staying in the classroom the A, B, D, and E classes went to this huge food market right across from the gate to campus. I had no idea it was there-- I've walked past the tattered entrance at least 5 or 6 times, but there's a long pathway that leads to the market, and I never would have guessed that down that graying sidewalk were teeming stalls selling everything from live rabbits to pre-skinned pig trotters, from laundry hangers to chili peppers that are probably illegal to eat in the US. Our teachers came with, and Ashley and I taught them the English phrase "sensory overload"-- because it truly was. Too much to see, smell, hear, touch everywhere. I didn't bring my camera, but I'm definitely planning to go back.

We also went to the Western Hills on our day off from classes last Wednesday (a merciful break.) I'd already been with my parents in high school, which was wonderful because my stomach was acting up and I wasn't feeling up to climbing a mountain. Instead, I took the slow, stately cable car (I just code switched! More about that in a minute) and enjoyed a magnificent view of metropolitan Kunming and Lake Dian, which is freaking huge and stretched out pretty much as far as the eye could see. While on the cable car I saw what I swear was the world's cutest dog. He (I've decided it was a he) was sitting calmly next to his owner with his paws on the hand rail just like a person. So. Cute.

I've also had some adventures on my own. My tripmate John and I went to play Majiang (mahjong) with our expat friend Kevin (the Thai who lived in Oregon-- and to answer your question, Kitty, he has an Oregon sweatshirt). We were, of course, the only Westerners in the place, which was filled with old men and women and a few young people smoking and drinking tea. The most complicated part involves an intricate ritual of dealing the tiles, which still eluded me when we left. Otherwise the are similar to gin rummy with some strange twists thrown in. I even won a round! My favorite part is yelling "Pong!" when you can steal tiles from your opponent. Also, John and I were fascinated by an automated majiang table that will shuffle and redeal your tiles for you on its own.

I also ventured into the University Canting (cafeteria) last week. It was a complete madhouse, with gobs of Chinese people rushing everywhere. My confusion must have showed on my face, because a nice Chinese graduate student appeared at my side, asking, "Can I help to you?" He introduced himself as Jacky, an M.B.A. candidate and we spent the rest of the lunch talking, after he helped me get my food. I got sick over the weekend, but Jacky, Diana, and I had lunch yesterday as well at a restuarant near campus. We talked a lot about cultural differences (Jacky refused to believe that the drinking age in the US is 21) and taught each other some new words. It was quite fun until my la duzi started acting up again.

I've been making lots of Chinese friends, actually, which has been nice. The program set up a "language partner" program for us, which is really just "a huge pool of Chinese people who are curious about you and can speak English at least a little." We had a meet and greet on Ashley's birthday (there was cake) and after a flurry of cell phone number exchanges we've been on a number of outings. Diana, Tania, and I had dinner with a number of our new friends one evening, and they were extremely helpful and friendly, very interested to hear about American culture, telling us about what they learned of US History and their favorite cartoon characters (Winnie the Pooh, usually.) On Saturday Tania and John went with two Chinese girls to Green Lake Park, but I was, alas sick. Too bad: I missed John creating a scene trying to go in one of those plastic bubbles you can walk on water in. I think they're probably illegal in the US but they're huge here. Tania told me that all sorts of people were crowding around to see the wai guo ren (Foreigner) make a fool of himself. John does that a lot-- he bought this crazy pair of pajamas and has been wearing them around. He also has a bright pink iPod stocked with Disney songs. He goes to Tulane and was in New Orleands when the hurricane hit. He is also a National Merit Scholar. Strange kid. But nice: he's been lending me his computer to watch movies on while I've been sick. DVDs here are insanely cheap, and it's just a matter of time before I give in a buy my lot. Tania came home with 15 great movies for Y90 (less than $11), and I've been making my way through "Before Sunrise," "Love Actually," "My Neighbor Totorro," "Little Miss Sunshine," and "Almost Famous" ever since.

One more notable thing is the Chinese we speak as a group. I've been noticing that more and more we speak Chinglish together, which is really interesting. Conversations are peppered with questions like "Does anyone mei you kuai zi?" (does anyone not have chopsticks?) or "My pigu hurts" (my butt hurts.) This afternoon I was trying to conjugate the verb to drink unsuccessfully (my English is in fast decline) and Tania suggested "drink le"-- the "le" being the way one indicates past tense in Chinese. My Chinese is improving similarly-- I've now code switched twice during my time here. ("Code switching" happens when your brain reaches for a word in one language and comes up with the word in another. In my case, the words wore "impression" and "cable car"-- just two minutes ago.) I'm considering this a good sign. Also-- I ate a meal tonight and it didn't go right through me! Hurrah! Good signs everywhere.

Settling in (for now)

Classes have begun, affording to us at least a shadow of a routine. We study Chinese for 3.5 hours every morning-- from 8-12, with a half hour break at 10. During the first period we focus on Yufa (grammar structures) and shengci (vocabulary.) During the second period we focus on kouyu (spoken Chinese.) Lisa was in my class for the first day, but she was in Beijing last semester studying and found the subject matter too easy. Today, Sophie moved up from the level below me to try out something harder, but was struggling a bit. I could very well end up with my own class, which would be intense. I was placed in level D, out of A-F, which was a nice ego boost given how many of the people above me have lived in China for some amount of time-- actually, now that I think about it, it's all of them. I've been enjoying kouyu the most, because we have to speak for five minutes every day in front of the class about something, and I've discovered that I can discuss more sophisticated topics and ideas than I thought. Yesterday I was able to explain the smoggy mountain concept from my Argus article. Today I talked about approaching Chinese strangers at Salvadore's last night (I had to ask Chinese people about their opinions on something for homework, they were actually quite nice about it and we ended up exchanging phone numbers.)

During the break between classes, the program has found a Taiji master to teach us, and we go out and make fools of ourselves in the bright blue morning. We learn the slow,fluid movements as well as some more martial-arts flavored routines on a plaza in the middle of campus where University students are free to come gawk and laugh (and they do.) It's only been a few days, but we're already getting better, and the Taiji is a great way to relax between classes. Makes my knees hurt a little, although that could also be the walking up 6 flights of stairs 3 times a day (elevators are a rarity here.)

In the afternoons we do something cultural or education-related. Yesterday we walked to the Minority People's University and met English major students there. One of them is from a village near Xishuangbanna where three different minorities live--I can't help but think how interesting it might be to study how they interact and live together. Today we watched a fairly interminable movie all about modern Chinese history, called "The Mao Years." It was fairly interesting, I learned a lot about the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward that I didn't know before, but the movie was so long and I've been getting little sleep, and I ended up napping against my will.

Tomorrow we get a reprieve from classes-- we will visit the Western Hills of Kunming (a place I have actually already been) and hear a lecture about Buddhism, then get to explore the Daoist temples hewn into the rock. We won't get a reprieve like this every week, though: this newly established routine will last for another three weeks before our five-day "Yunnan Exploration Project" (where we choose a place to go in a small group and are responsible for getting there, finding places to stay, eating, and then writing a paper about it. We can go wherever we want and the program will pay for everything except airfare. How psyched am I???) After the project, we will continue with classes during a two-week homestay. The routine seems like it might get a little suffocating, but it's only 5 weeks, and nothing, at least in my experience, can stay boring in China.