Well...

It's over.

When it's all said and done I did things I never thought I could, would, and yes, sometimes even should do. I realize that all of this was an important experience. But when people ask me those annoying questions like "OMG, was it TOTALLY amazing?!?!" I really just don't know how to respond. In some ways, I recognize what an important thing it is to go to a far away place, look at the culture and examine how you yourself react to it and adapt to it. However, the I am still not entirely used to some of the changes I've seen within myself and in how I look at myself and the world--and I'm not entirely sure I like it either. I guess only time will tell how the lessons I've learned in China will manifest themselves in my life here.

Home

I'm home....

I'll post some reflections later.

Saying our goodbyes to IES

I'm still around.

Although I haven't been hearing clamoring for more posts I suspect that you might want to know what I've been up to. It's hard t keep updating with so many final projects and stuff going on. Plus its in the back of everyone's mind that we're all leaving China soon so (sub)consciously we're trying to cram all the experiences we can into this last few weeks (well...less than a week).

I'm not harmed by the earthquake at all, so nobody has to worry about that.

My trips in sum:

Shanghai--more modern and fast paced compared to Beijing. Tall buildings. Scary cabbies. I wasn't really there long enough to get any big impressions of the place.

Qingdao-- probably should have done more here. Home of Qingdao Beer. I found some water so my spirit was happy.

Here's Pics:

奥运会

The Olympics.

People keep asking me how my everyday life is effected by the up and coming Olympics and I'll tell you...it penetrates every aspect of my life. Everything from the diet coke I drink everyday, to yogurt to people's clothing (yes I saw a girl with jeans with the Olympic rings sewn on the butt) is littered with Olympic paraphernalia. You can barely walk a block without seeing a sign that says “同一个世界，同一个梦想“ (One world, One dream) and sometimes I think that if Beijing could name itself after the Olympics it would. It's not so much 'exciting' as I would say, fascinating, that a city (hell, an entire country) with over 3000 years of cultural history would place all of its energies into a modern event.


This is 'traditional' Chinese paper cutting. Normally you would see things like zodiac animals or good luck symbols. These however, are paper cuttings of the Olympic mascots, little pandas. If you find a street with peddlers its almost guaranteed there will be at least 5 seeling keychains, stuffed animals or t-shirts with these pandas on it.



This is a more clear picture of the mascots. Their names are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, YingYing, and Nini--which together essentially mean "Beijing Welcomes You" I like the green one! Also worth noting are the Cube and the Birds Nest--two newly built sports centers that I've heard many a taxi driver refer to as "nan kan" (ugly)

Perhaps more interesting however are the preparations that aren't overtly Olympic but somehow you know they're related to the Olympics. For instance there's construction going on all overt the place. You Minnesotans might be familiar with the saying that Minnesota has two seasons Winter and Construction...but this is a little different because as far as I can tell most of the construction is for aesthetic reasons not functional. I've seen a lot of facade restorations and painting going on. Also, Beijing, notoriously known for its um...creative... English spellings and translations is changing the signs at all of the primary touristy sights to be more correct. Food prices are going up , visa availability is going down, subways are being built, not to mention our Chinese lessons can always be SOMEHOW tied to the Olympics (that or Gaigekaifang yi hou). Somehow you know that its latent in every business decision...the buzz among the masses ...it's just everywhere.

I don't know... all of this sort of reminds me of parent's weekend at UPS. The grounds workers cut the grass all extra nice, and the sub serves all the good food. Beijing preparing for the Olympics is a lot the same way--it might not be an exact reflection of the way things really are.

This post wasn't as cool as I wanted it to be.

I'm alive!

I'm alive. Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm trying to cram as man experiences into this last month that I can. Last weekend I went to Shanghai. Tonight I'm headed to Qingdao (like the beer...Tsingdao). I will be more detailed upon my return, but I thought I should write to say I haven't forgotten you all!

这个不是八达岭

I went to the Great Wall at Jian Kou yesterday, one of the most dangerous parts of the Great Wall because it is in such disrepair. Even though at times it indeed was very dangerous the scenery was beautiful and not overrun with tourists. So here are some obligatory pics.

The sign greeting us when we got to the wall. Greeeeaattt....


We had to climb this!

Doin the tourist thing...

So this week I visited the Forbidden City（古宫）/Tian'anmen Sqaure （天安门）as well as The Temple of Heaven (天坛）。 Here's a tip: if you're a student always bring your student ID and ask for 学生票 (xueshengpiao=shweh shung peyow) because they never write it in english, however if you ask for one it can be as much as 30-40 kuai cheaper, which can buy you some pretty high-class meals in China, or 30-40 bowls of rice. I guess in the back of my mind I know my time here is quickly winding down so I'm trying to 赶快体验中国的文化 (quickly experience Chinese culture) before I go home for the summer. I'm going to the Great Wall tomorrow (Saturday) and next weekend I'm going to Shanghai.

In other news, in my philosophy class two times now we have asked Chinese students to come to our class and debate with us on philosophical issues. In doing this I have noticed a few things:

1. There is a fundamental difference in how Americans view their government and how the Chinese view there government. In my opinion, Americans think that the government exists to serve the people and is a product of their people whereas the Chinese view their government as an entity separate from the common people and highly trust their actions. Most people would probably simply cite each country's governmental structure to account for this difference-- a simple matter of democracy versus communism. While this is definitely true, I think a lot of the difference has to do with our respective world views. In Confucianism, people believe in preserving harmony and ameliorating the connections between people, often this is achieved by trusting each section of society to perform their role and not meddling in their business--trusting that people who are specified for certain roles will perform them well. In western thought, I feel like we spend a lot of time worrying about the rights of individuals--believing that if we as people pay attention to these rights that this will lead to harmony. This is why American's are constantly questioning their government, because they don't believe that their particular human rights are being considered. During our debates, the Chinese students couldn't understand why we didn't trust that our government was doing a good job or why we felt that we had the right to offer our opinions on the issues in Tibet-- and the answer is because we worry much more about certain people, or groups of people, making sure that they are being considered as opposed to paying attention to the whole. Some American students couldn't understand why the Chinese students weren't more angry about their media being censored and upset about the Chinese government's actions in Tibet-- this ISN'T because "oh, poor Chinese students they don't know any better, their government has brainwashed them" (which is how I feel a lot of Americans think)-- but simply that they think that preserving the harmony of the entire society is helped by knowing your place. They think that they are students, the government is the government, and the two don't have anything to do with each other.

2. Perhaps this is a false sense of myself, but during these debates I always feel like I'm playing the mediator. Maybe this is because I am the physical manifestation of East and West, but I also think that maybe I'm not quite as culturally-centric (is that a word? darn Chinese language pledge!) as most Americans, and I can more easily bend the way that I think to mesh with that of another culture, or at least understand, or empathize . I'll have to remember this talent later on....

Anyway, here's some pics of my adventures. Tim that Olympic post is coming soon I PROMISE!

Pingyao... and stuff

Hey folks...
Sorry for the lack of updatage... and Tim I'm sorry about not putting up an Olympic post yet, I am still collecting photographic evidence of all the Olympic paraphernalia.
Anywho, last weekend details...they even bore me... But we saw a lot of old buildings, bought a lot of stuff (including a monkey king thought that it would be relaxing and it wa the IES program had a long weekend (similar to our trip to Yunnan but much shorter) in which I went to Pingyao. Pingyao is in the Shanxi province (near the capital Taiyuan) and is a UN recognized Heritage Site. This pretty much means that its a really well preserved old preserved city in China that had a lot of influence on China's history and stuff. As far as I could tell, it was probably at one point a financial hubub of China (it has the First Bank in China, apparently) but now its just a bunch of souped up old buildings and touristy stuff. Is, but also boring sometimes with nothing to do but shop and sometimes I wished I had gone somewhere else instead. I don't want to bore you with the Chinese opera mask), saw a vinegar and a coal factory, were mobbed by Chinese children in Taiyuan because they thought we (and by we I mean Topher, because he looks like Harry Potter) were celebrities and asked for our autographs, and did a performance of a court scene where I played the judge's assistant (I only had two lines....dumb) in front of a bunch of Chinese tourists...cuute.

Anywho, to update on my life I've changed my major. I am now officially no longer an Economics major, but a Foreign Language and International Affairs major with a concentration in Economics--the language being Chinese of course. I am hoping that this decision will work out for me and I've not done anything too crazy.
Friday I went to the doctor about my serious cough that has been going on for about two weeks now and was basically told that there's nothing wrong with me except I probably got sick and the pollution here in Beijing made the sickness stay around. He gave me cough medicine with codeine to help me sleep and sent me on my 'merry' way. Luckily, by the hospital there is a pretty awesome DVD store where most of the DVDs are about 10 kuai (1.50 USD) and work really awesomely. I perused there for awhile and then came back to campus only to find ANOTHER DVD guy on the street selling them for 5 kuai....oh China.
Yesterday I went to the zoo, which was more sad then cute. The only animal that seemed to be contented was the Panda, not surprising for the national animal of China...but still, the elephants getting less room then one tiny panda? Come on!
In terms of other goings on around China, lately there has been a lot of attempts by the Chinese police to get illegal foreigners out for the Olympics to make it a 'safe' enviornment. This basically means that they will check randomly to make sure that you are carrying your passport and visa at all times and if you aren't they will take you to the police station. This means that the Chinese police skulk around places where foreigners like to hang out (ie all the places that I like to go) and just question random people. Also apparently there's been like drug trafficking or something going on in Sanlitunr so last weekend or something they took a dozen or so foreigners to the police station for not having proper ID. I personally have never been asked to present any form of ID but sometimes I feel like its only a matter of time.

haven't posted photos in awhile

So here you go!

First we got us in Bar Blu, which is a club in SanLiTunr, we go here for dancing because they play popular songs. Sometimes though, they play weird selections such as 'In the Mood' (that typical swing dancing piece) and old classic rock stuff that isn't great to dance to.
The next pic is also from SanLiTunr at a bar called NanJie, where you get this tray of 12 shots for 100kuai-- its the cheapest drinking in SanLiTunr so use with caution. NanJie has also very delicious shutiao (FRENCH FRIES!) which make an excellent addition to your drink of choice.
The third pic is us at an actually delicious sushi restaurant in Wudaokou. After our terrible experience at the first Sushi place we decided to spend a little more money and it was totally worth it!
The fourth pic is from our  Beijing kaoya ( peking duck) extravaganza...mmmm delicious.
The fifth pic is just an example of the kinds of creepos that hang out in Chinese clubs...sad thing is like two ofthose creepos are IES people from my program, haha! Much love Scott and Sean! This is from the club Propoganda in Wudaokou. I really like this club because they play hip hop (not techno) and it reminds me of Central HS school dances, except more crowded and not really any African-Americans.

Yeah...nothing too interesting, just thought the blog could use a little excitement.

Mao Zhu Xi bu pa la!

The title of this blog is pronounced mao joo she boo pah la. It means 'Chairman Mao is not afraid of spicy.’ It's from a skit that somebody performed recently...I thought it was funny but I guess you kind of had to be there...Again, I really apologize if this entry is incoherent in any way...

First I'll start out with the more "What I've Been Up to Lately" entries. Recently, I have decided that things around here have gotten a little too 'routine.' So every week I'm going to try to do two Beijing cultural experiences per week. This week on Wednesday I went to 798, which is sort of an indie, up and coming art district. I don't really have pictures because they are all art galleries and stuff, but it was really interesting to see what Beijing considers controversial art--not much different from the states to tell you the truth. It's refreshing to know that even though the Chinese government censors a lot of things (more on this later) that you can still go places and see where peoples ideas and things are being allowed, even if they are all segregated from everything else all in one place. Yesterday, my cultural experience was going out to get Peking duck, which although expensive by Chinese standards, was actually not bad at all if you converted it back to USD, and was pretty darn delicious.

This week in Chinese class we watched the movie Huo Zhe (To Live) which in my mind was sort of like the Chinese Forrest Gump in that it followed one person’s journey through many events in one country’s history. In the case of Huo Zhe, it follows Fu Gui through the 40s – 70s, during the time of China’s Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution. This movie sort of brings me to my next topic. In the movie we saw just how much individuals suffered during this time…all because one group of people thought what they were doing was best for the country—they sort of…subordinated the rights of their individual people in order to progress to the point that the government thought that the country should be. In short, they were stupid, and very very wrong and in the end it ripped their country apart. No matter how economically advanced the country became or is now, they will always have that as a black mark on their history…

I guess my point is—how come we can’t learn anything from history…

I know probably a lot of you are wondering about my thoughts on the recent Tibetan riots, and I guess the reason I’ve been avoiding talking about it is the fact that 1) I hate giving my opinions on things to have them discussed to death and 2) I probably know a lot less then you all do because China censors all news. This doesn't mean that the are entirely pretending it's not happening, but simply swaying things in the direction as to make them look in the right.

To get this out of the way, I am not personally affected in terms of my safety or anything because of the riots but I do know that some students in the Contemporary Issues program are having to change the itinerary for their trip to Yunnan because the Napa village (which one group of Language Intensives visited during OUR trip to Yunnan) is made up of Tibetans and is too close to Tibet to be safe for the students.

In any case, it’s really hard for me to separate myself from this country because it is both my heritage and my current location…and so when people talk about how ‘rotten’ China it stings…even though I know I’m not the Chinese government not even close. Kind of how when you hear about the things the Americans do in Iraq, it makes you ashamed to be an American (unless you have no heart), when I hear about this stuff, it kind of makes me ashamed to be Chinese.

Back to my point, we have to look at history and see that even if China considers Tibet PART of China, it is not ok to continue violating their human rights in order to MAKE them conform. At the same time I don’t know that it’s a very effective way to make people listen to you plight by violating their rights in return, simply perpetuating the cycle of violence. I guess my point is, in the future when all of this is (hopefully) just something that is intellectual discussed, rather that a pertinent reality, I don’t think that Tibetans or Chinese or anyone will ever look back at this point and time and say, that’s when everything was solved because of violence and riots and revolution. No matter what point either country’s are at, nobody’s ever gonna say that’s when they did everything right. 

Just my two cents…

Rooomieeees

So what is the first thing you think of when you think about Asian people in the United States. For me, I thought of that super-genius kid, who always did the homework on time and got 100’s on the exams. This is not really the case with the IES Chinese Roomies. They stay in the rooms pretty much all day playing computer games, the boys particularly like World of Warcraft. Although they have classes (DEFINITELY not as many as we do, by the way) they skip them fairly often and hardly ever study for them. They even are in awe of how much us Americans study. ME! Study too much?!!? What?!?!

I think there are a couple reasons for this disparity. First of all there is the problem in China of Xiao Huangdi (sheeyow hwahng dee=little emperors, aka spoiled brats). Because of China’s one child policy, many families have only one child. When families are particularly wealthy, this situation, in turn, leads to an exceedingly spoiled child. Essentially, all of the IES Chinese roomies are Xiao Huang Di, whose parents bought their way into BeiWai. In addition to wasting their parents’ money by just sitting around their dorm room playing video games and watching TV, they go out shopping all the time and by stupid shit that they don’t even need. In terms of wealth, I would say that the roomies are probably about as wealthy as I am in China—despite the falling value of the USD, this makes them pretty wealthy.

This leads me to my next reason why there’s a disparity between the Chinese people that I see in America and the IES Chinese Roomies. In America, we only see the Chinese people who had to work extra hard in order to come to America to either study or work and their offspring. Perhaps this work ethic is somewhat genetic, or at the very least encouraged by the overseas Chinese in America, which is why all of the ones you see seem “nuli.” I can tell my English is going dowwwwwwn hill, I’m sorry if any of this is incoherent, thinking in Chinese all day can take a toll.

That said, however, my roomie is very nice. Serena (Zhang LingXue) always offers me food and is very nice and polite and quiet. I don’t know what else to say….

So loyal fans, would you like the more frequent “this is what I did today” type entries, or the less frequent, more thought out(ish) ones? Let me know, I aim to please.

Zhu an! 

I am finally Chinese

So here's the story.

On Saturday night my friends and I had planned to go out to all you could eat Sushi for 65 kuai.
We get there and are a bit skeptical but after awhile get pretty excited when they say it is most definitely all you can eat for 65 kuai. We order a bunch of food and get excited. After a bit of waiting we receive like maybe 5-6 dishes (for 9 people and this is a Japanese place so the portions are sickeningly small) and then nothing comes for a REALLY long time (maybe over an hour). We send Scott and Joyce to ask where our food was. They say that the food we asked for was hard to make (ummm sticking a piece of cucumber in some rice and wrapping it in seaweed is hard?) and that she would tell the cooks to be faster. Maybe 10 minutes later she brings out 1-3 impossibly small orders of sushi and a disgusting box of rice and 'eel' (which was probably more like fish--sick) and we are getting pissed. We  ask for some rice and they're like you have to wait 20 minutes for rice. We begrudgingly say 'fine' and then proceed to wait 35 minutes and get nothing at all except for one frozen plate of salmon. By this time three of our compatriots had left us (paying far too much 310 kuai between them) The rest of us decided that the pitiful meal that we had gotten in the last three hours was not worth the 65 per person so we decided to just leave the 310 kuai that the others had left and not pay anything else, except to the people who had already left.

We leave the restaurant and start walking down the street and one of the fuwuyuan starts running after us...telling us that the money we had payed was not enough (btw, from here on out all of the verbal exchanges are in Chinese). We tired to walk to school but they kept following us and we didn't want them to know where we lived so we called Steve the RA who told us to stay put while he came to help us. Meanwhile, about 2 more Fuwuyuan and 2 cooks came out and are telling us to pay money. I am fed up and start yelling at them (in CHINESE)...

Examples:
FWY(Fuwuyuan): You didn't pay enough!
Me: We paid what we that was enough. Your food wasn't worth eating! We waited two hours and you didn't give us anything!

FWY: It's Saturday, we have a lot of customers!
Me: Monday, Tuesday, Friday--it doesn't matter! You still have to give us food! We're not paying you!

coolest. thing. ever. Eventually Steve and Dan came to save us and told the rest of us to go while they handled it. We started to leave and one of the fuwuyuan started walking after us...but we were faster and walked in the opposite direction from school and lost her. We ended up going to a bakery and buying them cookies to say thanks. Apparently everything was resolved through calm talking...but that's not very exciting now is it?

In other news:
-I named my roomie Serena
-My laoshi said that last week I was nuli (new-lee=hard working)
-I've started meeting with my tutor 4 hours a week. She doesn't help me so much as the time blocked out forces me to do my homework earlier in the day then I normally would. And its just another chance to hear/speak Chinese.
-Friday and Saturday I did some pretty sweet bargaining.

Mom's sent me a bunch of topics she'd like to hear more about on the blog. If any of you would like to do the same feel free...I'll do my best to accommodate.

wuuuuraaannnn

Ok.

As some of you may know Beijing is a rapidly developing economy....

...this comes with a consequence however, and that is...

Wuran (woo-rahn=pollution)

First let me explain the 'Pollution Scale':

"The center classifies air quality in China's urban areas into five levels: level I or excellent (pollution reading: not exceeding 50), level II or fairly good (pollution reading: 51 to 100), level III or slightly polluted (pollution reading: 101 to 200), level IV or poor (pollution reading: 201 to 300), and level V or hazardous (pollution reading: over 301)."

Two days ago, the pollution reading in Beijing was 'VI'-- ABOVE THE FREAKING SCALE!!! Literally you could SEE the pollution in front of you. The government advised Beijing's population to not go outside...hooray. I think that I'm getting a cold from all the pollution, my throat is constantly scratchy and sore--at the beginning of the program Ai Lao Shi told us that living in Beijing is equivalent to smoking over a pack a day of cigarettes...I guess I know what he means now.

Today the reading is down to a meager III (I guess the wind blew some of it away) but my cold is still sticking around.

ohhh Beijing. 

Yunnan Pics 2

Yunnan Pics!

My Yunnan Trip!!

Greetings to all.

So my trip to Yunnan was so memorable while it happened that I thought that I wouldn’t forget anything and would be able to describe each day in detail even upon my return. Well of course I was wrong and some of the things I did on the trip are probably lost forever, even to me…but I’ll do my best and if I think of funny anecdotes ever then I’ll for sure tell them. I’m gonna try to divide this up into sections so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming to read all at once.

Kunming:
On 2/22 (so I guess that’s two weeks ago today) I had my first test.  I did fairly well judging by the scores I got back today despite the fact that after I took it I had to pack in a flurry (ish) and get ready for my trip. Armed with my (fake) Victorinox (sp?) Swiss Tote around 4:00 I boarded the bus which took us to the Beijing airport where we got on a plane to take us to Kunming, a city in the center of the Yunnan province about 4 hours plane ride away from Beijing. The plane ride wasn’t eventful I don’t think and we arrived in Kunming and started the trip off right by going out drinking…and almost got followed into the hotel by some creepy Chinese man but Justin warded him off by telling the front desk that he was most definitely NOT our pengyou.

In the morning we had a couple of lectures. One thing I’ve noticed about the Chinese lecturing style is that it does not mesh with the western ideals of what makes an interesting presentation. All language barriers aside, the Chinese tend to believe that memorizing a bunch of dates and numbers and being able to recite them verbatim makes an interesting an engaging presentation. When asked to provide personal insight or opinions they either wonder why that is of interest to you or are too uncomfortable answer. It’s just a cultural difference, but to be honest it makes it really hard to stay awake during Chinese lectures. In any case, we took the day to walk around Kunming and see the sites which included this really pretty park where lots of people were singing and dancing and playing music. I watched this fan dance for awhile and recognized the song, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is now. We walked around and then came back so we could get on the overnight train to Dali.

Overnight Train:
This wasn’t too awful then I again I refused to use any of the facilities or really even do anything except for sit on my bed. These cars are pretty small and my particular room had six beds (and people) in it. Tip: make sure you get the bottom bed because it has the most head room and is also the easiest to navigate late at night without having to step on other peoples beds. Essentially, I wanted to make sure I slept so I took the Percocet given to me for my knee pain and passed out. I woke up in time to see some pretty scenery and gather my stuff and we were in Dali!

Dali:
Dali is to the west of Kunming and is home to the Bai minority. We ended up staying in Yang Ren Jie (yahng run jyeh=foreigners street) so a lot of what was around was geared toward tourists. Dali is also part of what is called the ‘Golden Triangle’ so drugs are pretty common but also shady and underground. A couple of times innocent looking old ladies would come up to us and ask if we wanted Ganja or Hashish. I did not partake.

The first day our tour guide brought us into a Bai village where we watched Bai cheese making, tie dying, and watched a dance performance and drank the first of our numerous cups of tea. The cheese making was coolish but mostly people liked watching the cute puppy that was living in the house where the cheese was being made. Also, Persephone and I had made a pact early on to NOT get la duzi (la doozuh=ummm ‘sour stomach’—this is a euphemism…I bet you can guess) so I didn’t really taste the cheese but the texture was pretty hard and definitely didn’t taste like anything I’d ever had before. I really liked the tie dye place. We got to watch them stir these big vats of indigo and saw how they hand sew these designs into the fabric so that when it’s dyed it comes out looking really cool. Unfortunately, lots of places sell fake Bai tie dye, and no matter how much he explained I could never really figure out how to tell the difference. We also got to try some indigo tea which was supposedly good for throats and was pretty tasty too. At the dance performance we watched some ‘traditional’ Bai dancing while drinking three kinds of tea, one of which I think had some Bai cheese inside it. I put ‘traditional’ in quotes because this place was clearly geared toward tourists so I’m not really sure to what extent the dances were authentic. It was ok (CAAM and 3C are better) and at the end they asked the audience to join and nobody did except for three of our guys.

The next day was our infamous 80-Mile bike ride around Er Hai (are-hai=ear lake…cuz the lake looks like an ear). So those of you who know me know that my bike skills are limited to non-existent and to put it plainly I don’t know how to ride a bike, let alone break, turn, swerve, etc etc. Needless to say this activity was very ‘special.’ First of all this bike ride was probably closer to 80 km instead of 80miles…probably like 110-120 miles. Second of all this is was not some cake ride on a paved road around a pretty lake, we had to go up hill, down hill, over rocks and through mud and through villages with animals and people…a pretty hard bike ride even for someone who actually rides bikes.
Instead of being able to enjoy the scenery I had to concentrate on the road in front of me, making sure it stayed as far away from my FACE as possible.

Being optimists, IES provided us with only one car that followed us. In this car, which was only slightly bigger than a VW bug, was packed 2 bikes and a driver…so only room for one person and one more bike. Fairly early on, Corey biked down a huge hill and ran into some rocks and injured himself, so he got to sit in the car all day putting behind the slowest biker (not always me!) Around 50-60 miles in I was getting really tired and my knee was literally killing me and I didn’t have enough strength in my legs to pedal fast enough to keep the bike upright. Josie, one of the laoshis, called our tourguide who sent back a rickety autorickshaw to come pick me up and take me to the nearest town where I could get on a bus—the rickshaw was almost scarier than the biking. A couple kids met me in the town and decided that they wouldn’t be able to make it back either and took the bus with me back to town…we made it back to the bike rental place just before the first group arrived, exhausted and sore. I am proud that I made it that far. The next day was a free day in Dali where I just explored and bought stuff.

Simao:
The next morning we got on a plane to Simao which is in the south of Yunnan. Simao is essentially the tea capital of Yunnan (apart from Pu’er which is the home of Pu’er tea, which apparently cures everything and makes you lose weight and whatever whatever). Over our two day stay, we went to two tea plantations and drank a lot of tea. When we got tired of tea we went to the Nescafe plant and drank coffee. At night we went to the store and drank beers—there was a lot of hydration.

Jinghong:
This was  the city where we probably spent the most time…which is weird because thinking back I didn’t really do all that much while I was there. The first day we toured Manting Palace park. It was pretty fun. There were a few animals in a sorry-looking zoo that we decided to feed and also a walk-in cage full of PEACOCKS! For three kuai you could walk around with a bowl and feed the peacocks. Another thing in southern Yunnan— peacocks are seemingly as common as pigeons only actually respected…although perhaps they like to keep them all together when the tourists come. This park also had really funny English translations of signs and a raft that you could rent and go around the lake. While in the park we met with a Hinayana Buddhist monk who was neat but had a really soothing voice so I might have fallen asleep a little while he was talking. He talked about Buddhism for awhile and blessed some bracelets and gave them to us.

The second day in Jinhong we hiked through the jungle to try and find a waterfall. The paths were really narrow and my bag was a little too big and so by the time we actually got to the waterfall my knee was killing me and I couldn’t manage to climb the rocks to the actual waterfall…looked fun though. We then visited a village that was home to a bunch of villagers who had been displaced by the damming of the Mekong river. I had expected this to be one of those ‘eye-opening’ experiences where you realize the costs of economic progress on the common person but it really wasn’t. Most of the people we talked to weren’t very unhappy with the new situation even though they lived farther from the rubber factory where they worked and had to walk to get there—most of them had houses that were bigger than mine at home and nicer TVs too! We talked to them and most  were pretty happy…That night we went to xiao kao (BBQ) and cleared them out of all their pork and almost all their beer. This became our ‘place’ and when we came back to Jinghong a few days later on the way back to Beijing we stopped here a again. 

River Rafting:
To get to our next destination we used motorized rafts. Most of us had pictured ourselves leisurly floating down the river in the sunshine, getting sunburns and splashing eachother. WRONG. When we woke up it was overcast and almost raining and COLD. We got into our raft and after a few false starts we were off. Our boat, which we named “Mad-Dog’s Ship of Pain” (after John, who’s nickname is Mad Dog) was stupid enough to try to play pirates with one of the other rafts. Not surprisingly before we even got to the first check point like half an hour later we were pretty wet and shivering. At the first check point they fed us pineapple and bai jiu (to warm us up) and some people played volleyball on the beach. Before long we were back in the rafts expecting to have a long day of rafting down the Mekong. We were wrong though because after 20 more minutes we started pulling into shore because we were there…ooops. Unlucky Mad-Dog’s Ship of Pain was the last to come in so we got ambushed by the other two rafts and were positively soaking and had to change our clothes before we were allowed to sit on the bus. But we were happy because we were in the tropical paradise of Ganlanba.

Ganlanba:
That same day we found ourselves in Ganlanba. We stayed in yet another touristy place, which as far as I could tell was a village solely devoted to housing tourists and showing them the Dai lifestyle. Whatever though. After settling in for a bit and having a traditional Dai lunch we headed out to the Water Splashing Festival (Po Shui Jie- Poah Shway Jyeeh) Unfortunately some people were deterred from their water splashing for a bit while we watched a dancing show…the guys liked the skimpy outfits… I liked the peacock dancing, but again, I think CAAM is better. I think in this place you HAVE to find some way to contribute to the economy through tourism and if you’re a thin, pretty girl they probably just make you dance even if you aren’t a very good dancer. After the dancing show they herded us into the square for water splashing! Although in this ‘village’ they have Water Splashing Festival everyday (for the tourists, of course) the real water splashing festival is in April and essentially you take bowls of water and splash each other, pretty self-explanatory. They provided us with ‘traditional’ water-splashing outfits and there was a moment of flashback to CAAM days where Teng lao shi would try to get me to fit into tiny clothes from China but surprisingly I didn’t have trouble fitting into what they gave me at all…whew! We had a little parade, including the announcer saying “Everyone come look at the foreigners!” and then we splashed eachother for a good few minutes. I was the only one with a water-proof camera and took a bunch of shots so we didn’t have to pay for the stupid ones that they took of us. We came back dried off and had dinner and explored the town for a bit…finding drunk Chinese guys carrying a dead cow’s head (apparently a wedding present?) and telling us to go with them to a party…I didn’t but other people did—apparently everyone was already passed out.  

The next day we were supposed to have ‘a day in the life’ type deal. We went to the field to help harvest pumpkins, which to me actually looked more like squash. Most of the boys pulled weeds… another smaller group of us went to a different part of the plantation to actually pick the pumpkins…I stood in the truck while people threw pumpkins at me and I piled them up. In the afternoon we met with another monk who taught us how to meditate and those soothing voices were so damn soporific I almost fell asleep. That night we bough more beers and somehow found our way in the dark with only cellphones and one flashlight, through jungle and the huge pumpkin farm to the shore of the Mekong where we drank and talked and were merry.

The next morning we drove back to Jinghong where we had a soccer game with some local Chinese dudes. I wore my flip-flops purposefully so I wouldn’t have to play. We lost but it was a good effort—sorta. That night we went to xiao kao and played drinking games with ourselves and the locals…drunk Chinese people are almost as funny as Americans…especially when they try to speak English.

The day after that we headed home…it wasn’t too eventful… but the next day I pulled an allnighter finishing my presentation and paper and today my IES roomie moved out and my Chinese roomie moved in! Her name is Zhang Ling Xue (jahng ling shweh-soul of the snow) and she is really nice. I'll try to post pics of her and my room later.

That’s my really brief description of my trip! If you want details about anything just ask me a specific question and I’ll answer it!

I'm back!

I'm back from Yunnan...tired...dirty and lot's of work to do...

I'll update when my projects are done.

I'm alive!

Bye!

I'm leaving for the Yunnan Province for 2 weeks! So I'll be pretty much unreachable during that time.

Wish me luck!

Maybe when I'm not so tired....

I'm really sorry for the lack of interesting/introspective entries lately... even though I only have three classes, they all keep me pretty busy and tired.

I think I'll follow suit with Clay and describe a typical day for me in Beijing...

I wake up at around 6:45am (I know...disgusting) and get ready for my Chinese class which begins at 8:00am. This entails getting dressed, prettified and doing some last minute studying of characters for our TingXie.
When class begins at 8 we hand in our homework and have our daily tingxie...this entails usually the teacher reading around some words from the day's lesson and us writing the characters, pinyin, and english meaning. There's also 2 non-aural sections which are usually English translations into Chinese characters and pinyin, and then pinyin into characters into english. Buh. I pretty much hate these things...

We then have class for about an hour in which we go over the sentence patterns that we are supposed to know for the lesson as well as the vocabulary. After this we break for 10 minutes where all of us usually congregate in the hall and complain about how tired we are and how boring/hard our TingXie was for the day. After our break we have class again for another hour where we drill the sentence patterns. After another 10 minute break we have class AGAIN where we usually go over some supplementary material that's more colloquial (kou yu=ko you) and then go over that. We then either have a 40 minute break or a 10 minute break after which we split into discussion sections of 3 and just sit around and talk. Some people use the 40 minute breaks for naps--I have yet to do this.

Then it's LUNCH. We usually go to 'Food Alley' and eat family style, we usually order like one less dish then there is people, plus rice of course! Remember, if you want your rice WITH your meal you have to tell them to bring it first...otherwise they will bring it last to like cleanse the palate or something, I'm not exactly sure. The dishes we seem to order most are Gong Bao Ji Ding (Kung Pao Chicken) and Qie Zi (chiyee-zuh= eggplant)--people laugh at Persephone and Cory and Me because we always get the same thing...oh well, I know what I like, man. If there's no time for family style dining we go to the Xiao Chi (sheyow-chr=little eating place) and get noodles or Gong Bao Ji Ding. We almost always go to  this little store in food alley and buy snacks and/or green tea and/or diet coke for the day...

After this sometimes I have Literature which is interesting or sometimes I have a break in which I say I will do homework but will almost always fall asleep hardcore...like I said it's pathetic but I really cannot function without a nap. If I don't have literature the rest of my day is free to study Chinese and have dinner with peeps.

If I DO have Lit after the class I have a break in which I will take a nap if I haven't before and study for my philosophy class which meets 6-7:30. I've only had once but is pretty interesting...I'm going to work to try and think in abstractions again, though...all of this straight-edged econ has ruined my mind.  After this people have gone to dinner already so I'm left to fend for myself--usually getting something quick so I can come back and study until about 12-1 when I pass out.

Work hard. Play hard. I don't know if these words have ever really applied to me but they do now... It's sort of like what we were talking about in Philosophy class today...yin and yang, everythig in balance and opposition. We cannot have something exist without its opposite--this is the Dao. You look at the Chinese language and its this way too... Have you eaten? (Ni chi fan, bu chi fan?= Have you eaten, or not eaten?) Questions are often asked in this way...two given opposite states. Perhaps this pervades the Chinese culture and work ethic as well...you work until you cannot work anymore, you play until you cannot play anymore and so on and so on-- a continuous changing of one state of being into another--it's opposite.

hmmm, maybe these philosophers were onto something.... 

One of those list entries you do when you're too lazy to write an actual entry.

Things done since last post:

- switching from film into philosophy, which is hard too, but at least its in english
- completed my first week of class
- found a hair straightener (paid too much for it, but I am vain)
- figured out how to use an ATM
- went to sanlitunr again...
- got frustrated with a waitress and literally threw money at her
- ate pretty delicious noodles
- actually felt smart(ish) in chinese class
- bought mickey mouse washcloths
- was not afriad
- was afraid

Today I might go to the silk market and bargain my way to a whole bunch of new stuffffff..

Lates. 

Booooooo (or should I say ?)

Wow today was very draining.

This morning our chinese class went really fast and was bu hao yisi (boo how E suh=embarassing). Every time I think about them teaching us Chinese I feel that its somewhat like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing how much sticks. Sometimes I feel like I am in front of a firing squad, but instead of bullets (or spaghetti) they just keep throwing Chinese characters, sentence patterns and grammar at me.

After class we went to a noodle place and it was so crowded that we had to sit with a random dude. I talked to him a bit (IN CHINESE!) and then most of the rest of them went to sociology class while I came back to the dorms to take a much needed nap. I have found that doing this whole ordeal is a lot like when I was in high school, when I was forced to wake up at an ungodly early hour and then had too take naps because I was continually sooooo tiiiirrreeeed. I tried to nap for only half an hour but I think my body needed more deep sleep so it kind of turned into more like an hour. I woke up in time for Literature, though.

We read 'A Madman's Diary' for today which was pretty interesting. The weird thing about taking an english class taught by a chinese person, however, is that some people's ideas sometimes get lost in translation, so some of the nuances of what people say are just breezed over. Still, its nice being eased into an english class when you haven't taken one since Freshman year of college. I had like 30 minute after class to study chinese and then I had film. This is where it gets painful.

This class was 3 hours all in Chinese about film, all our papers will be in Chinese and all our Presentations will be in Chinese... First of all, I can't sit and pay attention to ANYTHING for three hours, let alone not in my native language, so really, this class was brutal, and will continue to be so. We talked for like 3 hours about Film stuff like camera angles and techniques, or something I'm not really sure--essentially I felt really dumb. And the guy STILL went 15 minutes over until 9:15 PM!!! C'mon now! I have to study other things! I have to switch out of this class pronto...I will be talking to people tomorrow about that.

Because of this lonnngg class, I had no dinner so came back RAVENOUS and went to the convenience store to find some food (Diet Coke and Lays is dinner, I guess) and saw a guy puking on the street. cute.

Off to study.

I lied

Here's a pick of Abla, Persephone, Cory and Me on our sweet ice bikes at Hou Hai (stolen from Scott)

Sorry no pictures this time...

I haven't gone any interesting places the past couple days because of class. My Chinese class alone is around 50 characters per night that I have to memorize for our TingXie (ting-shyeh= dictation) so I have been studying pretty much non-stop only stopping for food and sleep (sometimes).

Every morning I have Chinese class at 8:00 am for 2.5 hours (with like two ten minute breaks) and then a smaller discussion class for about 40 minutes. Let me tell you, this is pretty much like torture. Don't they know that us American students can't function before 10 in the morning??? Just today, I set my alarm for 6:45 and didn't get up until 7:18... my body just does not want to move at that time of day. Furthermore, they cram sentence patterns and new vocabulary into your heads as fast as possible, I don't know how anyone could retain it without extensive review...and who has time for that when you're studying for the next day's lesson.

Today, I also had my first Contemporary Chinese Literature class, in which we will be studying Chinese Literature starting from the May 4th Literary Movement (1919) until today. I'm not entirely clear on the details of Chinese Literary History--he tried to explain it, but those of you who who know me know that I cannot stand history (or really any other academic subject for that matter). However, from my understanding, it was around this time of political and cultural revolution (really, when is China NOT going through political and cultural revolution?!?) that China began to write literature using the modern vernacular as opposed to the ancient languages only understood by the nobles. So I won't be reading any Tang poems or Oracle bones, which maybe will work in my favor...but maybe not. It might be interesting once we get to read some stuff. I don't have my film class until Thursday.

It's really weird switching between Chinese and English...there are definitely some people not heartily adhering to the language pledge so its really confusing when you're trying to think/speak in Chinese and there is English around you. Also, the differing levels of the students mean that you constantly have to express yourself at least three times before anyone can understand you. I am getting better at ordering food though...especially when the menus have pictures! Hen jiandan! (hun jyen-dahn=really easy)

每个天士新的天. 我还不知道我觉得怎么样.

oooooopppsss

So sorry I haven't updated for like 2 days (Jeez, Maggie you update what....like once a week? C'mon now. Maybe you should come online if you're so interested in my life :-P).This is late because I couldn't get my pictures to upload until today when Scott, who is apparently a magical computer whiz kid got it to work. Also, the lens on my camera cracked so the pictures have weird lighting effects on them.

The day before yesterday (Saturday) I had planned on going to TianAnMen but instead decided to go to the Summer Palace because I figured that getting to Tiananmen via public transportation would be pretty easy compared to the Summer Palace.

I'm not gonna lie, it was kinda boring, and kind of cold. The buildings were nice too look at, but I think I seriously saw like 10 rooms where the tour guide said the emperor  liked to watch the nature and drink tea... seriously man how many spots does the emperor need to do this? Plus it was freezing cold... I took some pretty pictures but after a couple of hours I was ready to go.

We came back to the dorm where I was mad exhausted and decided to take a nap...sleeping through dinner (oopsies). When I woke up people told me we were going to go to WangFuJin, which is this shopping district nearish the Forbidden City. We had been told stories of a night market, so I had thought maybe I could find something to eat there.

REALLY BAD CHOICE!!! This night market, although it had food, was definitely NOT the food I wanted to be eating. Essentially, this market was filled with many kinds of 'Chuanr' (Chwar=kabobs) But these Chuanr were not your regular run-of-the-mill chuanr these chuanr were really really weird...scorpion, lizard, deer, and I think it was some sort of pupa on a stick...ew! Plus everything was being served in the open air without the use of gloves...so not too sanitary. Ergo, I wasn't really feelin' it. Took some neat pictures and hailed a cab back to the dorms.

The next day I slept in lateish, and tried to do homework but then ended up going out to lunch and then ice skating at HouHai(hoe-hi=back sea, its like a little area in Beijing with a little lake/river dealie and has a lot of bars and stuff. Stupid me  I forgot my socks but luckily they had nifty ice BIKES! These were like a cross between a bike, ice skates, and a sled, where you pedaled across the ice...so fun! They even had little stands on the ice that were selling fruit and chuanr so you could ice skate and eat...although carrying a pointy stick while you're skating is probably not the smartest idea. So we did that for awhile and then got Starbucks where I got a Vanilla Latte for 33 kuai, tai gui!!! (tie gway=too expensive)

We came back to get our books for our courses and have official kick off dinner of our language pledge. I was literally so nervous about the pledge and about the upcoming school day that I could not eat. They assigned us to our teams: I'm on team Oceania, which is the green team...they taught us how to say Oceania but it is probably the hardest one to say so I definitely forgot how. I came back and studied my butt off until about 1:00 when I hit the hay...

Fei's Chinese Lesson Thing #1

This Character is Fu (Foo) and means luck or lucky. Around Chinese New Year lots of families and businesses put this character up on their doors. However, sometimes the character is turned upside down on the doors, like the second picture. At first when I saw this I was like ummmmmm...what? But then I was told it was a pun.

Fu by itself means lucky.
When you want to say something is upside down, or flipped you say it is "dao le"
"Dao le" however, can also mean arrived.

So when one says "Ni de fu dao le" (nee duh foo dao luh), "You're luck is upside down" it really means "You're luck has arrived!"

Oh those Chinese are punny, don't you think?

heyyyyyy macarena!!

So yesterday didn't have much stuff in it but each thing I did was very exciting (sort of)

I woke up early and putzed around a bit and then when Emily got up I asked her to take me to the hospital for my knees which was a good 40 minute- 1 hour bus ride away from Bei Wai... and this was with little-no traffic...god help me if I ever have an emergency. There was a lot of cool stuff to see along the way though, so I'll have to remember that bus route again-- I even saw something that said 'Costume Store', mom, but Chinese translations to english can be kind of inaccurate sometimes (example 'Fried Surfac' instead of noodles, or rice being simply translated as 'food')... so I don't know if it was really a costume store.

We had to go to the Emergency room section because I didn't have an appointment. I'm glad Emily was there because there was some mixup with the insurance that IES provides and she got it straitened out for me using her chinese. It was a very nice, clean hospital, comparable to hospitals in the united states and most everyone spoke english, but it was still nice to have Emily because if something was getting lost in translation she was there to help me out. They checked me out and did an ultrasound so make sure I didn't have blood clots in my legs, but pretty much just said that it was probably just inflammation and gave me more ibuprofen, telling me to take 4, 3 times a day and then some hydrocodone  for the pain (because I had told the doctor about me having to crawl up the stairs). They said if it doesn't get better by monday I'll go in to see the orthopedist...Emily and I had lunch at a XinJiang (sheen jyahng) restaurant which has this really good fried bread stuff...tasty stuff and then took the bus back to campus.

I got back around 3 and was pissed cuz I had missed the outing to KTV, which is the karaoke place and so I pretty much took a nap until 6:30 when a bunch of us had signed up to  go to an all you can eat/drink hot pot restaurant where good times ensued.

Mom and Dad, I am definitely taking you to this restaurant. It is all you can eat/drink (alcohol included) hot pot for 65 kuai (9.75 USD). I didn't know what hot pot was when I signed up, but essentially, they give you a pot of boiling hot water and then the restaurant is full of uncooked veggies, meats, seafood, and noodles (plus other cooked things to eat with your food) and then you put all your stuff in the pot to cook and then eat it! My favorite part was the make your own sauce, where they had a bunch of sauce ingredients and you mix them all together for a yummy concoction, i think mine was soy and chives or something.

In general, giving americans the opportunity to eat and drink all they can is kind of a bad idea in my opinion. We really lived up to our reputation as ugly americans. In all seriousness though, if you come to China and are not good at holding your liquor, beware of baijiu (bye-jeeyoh= white liquor). It is essentially Everclear, so like 100-120 proof alcohol. It can really mess you up so just be smart...some people sadly were not last night.

After the hot pot, some of us took cabs to SanLiTuanr (sahn-lee-twar= i don't know what it means) which is one of the pretty hopping bar districts around Beijing--don't worry I didn't drink anymore I know my limits. It brings a lot of foreign people, it seems to me that this is where all the expats and tourists go, so when all the Chinese people get back I'll have to figure out where they go. As a result, there were a lot of beggars here trying to get money from the foreigners. The beggars here are smart so they use cute little kids to  come up to people with big hearts like me to try to get money...it gets really really hard to turn them down but with so many around I would probably get swarmed if I tried to give some. There were also a few drunk Chinese people trying to practice their english..."hello", "how are you", "I'm going to kill you" simple stuff like that...We went to Shooters and some other places where they were playing pseudo-popular american tunes...including, yes, the macarena. We danced a bit and came back and were probably ripped off by the cabbie, but I guess it is karma for not giving money to the beggars...

Maybe I'm making friends? Possibly?

Leave me comments!

Picture Summary:
- Persephone and Scott having some sort of deep discussion, probably hashing out a scheme to steal some BaiJiu from the restaurant.
- Delicious Hot Pot goodies
- Me, Sean, and Persephone in the bathroom. It was Sean's host family that I stayed with on New Years.
- Like, I said all you and eat and drink is just not a good idea when americans are around.

Ooops

I think I just electrocuted myself....

...I'll take curly hair thanks....

laaaaa laaa LA

Today was unexpectedly long feeling....

I woke up at 8:30 for no reason at all and talked on the comp to family and friends for awhile until we decided to go out to the street fair which was  a bus ride and a few subway rides away. We took a bus to the subway stop where I bought a transit card, so now I can travel around on public transportation for less. Hooray. The bus and subway were shoulder to shoulder people which I'm told is actually pretty empty for a Chinese bus/subway...can't wait til all those 10 million people come back from their vacations...

We got to the fair, bought tickets and walked around....there was a lot to see and buy and eat but not too many interesting activities. There was a supposed 'freak show' but we were too skeptical to go inside. The festival itself very crowded and they were selling a lot of silly things including huge glasses with '2008' on them, funny colored wigs, mylar windmills, and about a million  types of weird schlack on a stick that you wave around in the air to be festive. We walked around for a really long time, took a lot of pictures and got REALLY cold. I have to say though, its really amazing to see all these Chinese people all in one place Scott bought a Chinese yo-yo and Matt bought a communist hat. I shenged my qian because I know fair goods are not good quality.

After the fair we took the subway to a restaurant that Michelle, a girl who's already been in Beijing for 9 months knew. The food was pretty good and there was a mini chinese dance performance during dinner! Neat! After we ate we took the bus back to campus where I literally had to crawl up the stairs because my legs wouldn't carry me anymore. Emily, my other RA, is probably going to take me to the hospital tomorrow, if nothing else so I can get a knee brace and some more drugs, pray that nothing is actually wrong with me everyone. Wish me luck.

Pictures
- FESTIVAL...this means red lanterns...everywhere
- Some of my floor: Persephone, Alba and Jingo...(thats the back of Michelle's head, she doesn't live with us though)
- A very festive fellow
- A view of how crowded this thing was
- CHINESE DANCING!!! (I feel this girl and I look sort of alike)