08 August 2006

Back in America

I am officially back in the United States once again. I have been home about 5 days now, and I haven’t slowed down one bit. I left Beijing at 10pm local time Wednesday evening (10am east coast time), landed in L.A. at roughly 7pm Wednesday evening (10pm east coast time), and then took the redeye into Atlanta, landing at 5.07am Thursday morning. That was a long day! As soon as I got home, I had to start unpacking. I unpacked everything, did five loads of laundry, and had a stream of visitors stopping in to see me. I did all of that because I had to spend Friday packing everything back into my car to move to my new apartment in Atlanta on Saturday morning. I’ve now unpacked most everything there and am leaving for Wyoming in a few days. My boyfriend has to drive his car cross-country to have it back in Atlanta for school, so I am going to help him out with that. We’re turning it into a mini-road trip with stops at (potentially) Devil’s Tower, Independence Rock, Mount Rushmore, and Chicago, along with experiencing the Sturgis Rally, one of the largest motorcycle rallies in America. As soon as I get back, I am busy with sorority recruitment, and then school starts again for the fall term!

My life is so busy here now that I haven’t even had time to realize that I am not in Asia any more. I tried exceptionally hard to not be jet-lagged (and succeeded for the most part), so even my body doesn’t exactly know what is going on. I have been able to come up with some things that I do (and don’t) miss about Asia now that I have a bit of free time, though. Most of this list refers to being in China because we spent the second half of the program there.

What I miss about Asia:
  • Good cheap shopping

  • Hand-made noodles

  • Easily traveling to different countries

  • Ancient temples

  • Being a tomb-raiding Power Ranger in Cambodia

  • Riding a bicycle around campus

  • Shanghai in general

What I don’t miss about Asia:
  • Not understanding anything anyone says

  • Having cab drivers laugh at us while taking advantage of us (driving us the long way)

  • Only having one cuisine available

  • Not being able to drink the tap water

  • The severe amount of pollution and smog

  • Not having any exercise facilities

  • Wearing the same two weeks’ worth of clothes all summer
  • Censored internet access
That’s about all I can think of right now. Once I really get settled in here again and have time to realize that I am no longer traveling around the world, I think I will come up with many more things that I do and don’t miss. Right now all I can think about is what I have to do each day!

01 August 2006

Chinese acrobat pictures (and some other randoms)

The following are the Chinese acrobat pictures. The last acrobat picture was part of the finale, and it was what we were most looking forward to seeing. That's about 15 Chinese on one bike!

This one is from the Lama Temple. This temple was once a place where a count-who-would-be-emperor lived, and when he became emperor and moved into the Forbidden City the temple was turned into a lamastery, or the place where the Dalai Lama would live, worship, and study while traveling.

This is an example of a traditional hutong. Hutongs are how Beijing used to be; narrow streets lined with low gray buildings. Traditionally, the streets are lined with the gates and walls, behind which are courtyards and finally the houses. There's not many of them left.

These are the girls in my group for the 3103 (Logistics) project. Susan (in the black; her Chinese name is Shenshen) had the best english, so what would happen would be Susan and I would talk, and then she would talk to the other two girls, and then Susan would come back to me with their ideas and we would talk, etc. It was an interesting way to do a project!

23 July 2006

Temple of Heaven Pictures

When you enter through the east gate (as we did) you begin by walking down a tree-lined pathway to the inner temples. It's like another world as soon as you walk inside.

Me and Kristen right before walking into the inner temple area. An Asian man in a cowboy hat escorting a Panamanian took this picture.

I'm not entirely sure what this building was used for, but it now houses a convenience store that sells cold drinks and popsicles to hot tourists.

This is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. You can tell it is a prayer hall by the circular design on top of the square base (although you can't tell it is a square base from this picture). You've probably seen this building before on Chinese tourist literature.

This is a closer view of the Hall so you can see how it is decorated. The inside is roped off, so you have to fight all of the other tourists for a good spot to take pictures of the interior.

These are two pictures of the park surrounding the temples. It looks like nothing else I have seen in Beijing. I have heard that there are some other parks in the city, so perhaps I will look for them next weekend.

Forbidden City Pictures

There is a river running around the Forbidden City as well as through the southern portion of it. You have to cross bridges to get into the city as well as between the southern gate and the rest of the city. Often the bridges come in sets of five for the five pillars of Confuscianism (I think).

The Forbidden City is like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in that it is eternally undergoing restoration. There is a team of workers who, by the time they make the full circle around the city, have to start back at the beginning because it's time for another restoration. While they work on the temples, they cover them with this semi-transparent board, and they also print a vague picture of what the temple looks like on the outside so you can kind of tell what should be there. I was reminded of the first time I saw the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: it was under construction and so was covered in some sort of board, but the board had a picture of the gate printed on it with the gate columns covered in soccer socks!

A picture of some of the thousands of tourists there the same day. I have never seen so many umbrellas in one place in my life, although they really are everyone in Beijing. Pale skin is prized in China, so many people walk around with umbrellas all the time to keep the sun away from their skin.

Most of the temples are built in this style. The building in the corner has a double roof, which means it was very important.

This is Kristen and me on the other side of the temples shown in the previous picture. We had a hard time finding someone who could understand that we wanted our picture taken with a certain temple in the background. It took several tries before we got the picture that we wanted!

This pathway is still blocked off to tourists. It was only allowed to be walked on by the royal emperor.

The emperor would walk down that pathway from this temple to the next one for important ceremonies.

You can see here the large amount of open space, and this was one of the smaller sections. There were much bigger squares of empty space in front of the more important temples.

These next pictures are from the Imperial Gardens in the north end of the Forbidden City. The buildings are much closer together, and there is no empty space; there are trees (like the one above) and rocks and flowers. It was beautiful.

I am not entirely sure what this building was used for, but the inside was an ornate open space with a tiered circular ceiling. The Chinese believed that Heaven was round, so many of the prayer rooms and buildings are circular on a square base (square for Earth).

This is just a cool statue in the gardens.

Weekends in Beijing

It’s been about two weeks since my last post, and it has been the most relaxing two weeks of the entire trip.  After our weekend in Shanghai, we had to present our projects and take our final for 3104 (Supply Chain Modeling: Warehousing and Manufacturing), but then the class was over.  That class was incredibly time consuming and difficult, so we were all happy to be done.  Now, we’re taking 3103 (Supply Chain Modeling: Logistics), and while the material is still challenging, none of us feel as stressed out.  We have more time to relax and enjoy being in Beijing.  Because we had 3104 first, many people really did not like Beijing or living in China, but now that we have a change to breathe and enjoy it, a lot of people are much happier.

The weekend after the final, I decided to stay in Beijing.  I was still sick (because I hadn’t had time to slow down and heal), so I didn’t feel up to traveling.  Almost everyone else went to Shanghai, but the people who had gone to Shanghai the weekend before stayed in Beijing with me.  We slept in every morning (although I still woke up by 9.30 thanks to the bright sun), didn’t rush around, and didn’t make plans ahead of time.  We discovered some good restaurants and enjoyed having different kinds of cuisine, not just Asian food or fast food for every meal.  We did a lot of shopping, and most of us got our entire list of gifts out of the way.  I also got the chance to see the new Superman movie in an international movie theater (it was in English).  I have now seen movies in the USA, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and China!  Now, if I was in the USA, this would probably be an incredibly boring weekend, but after everything I have been doing and how sick I was, the weekend was perfect.  I even woke up on Monday morning without being sick!

The whole next week was just about as relaxing.  Our class wasn’t too stressful, so we got to explore more of Beijing in the evenings.  We had a big celebration on Tuesday.  Lane and Molin had both had birthdays on the previous Saturday (22 and 20, respectively), and Tuesday was Kevin’s 21st birthday, so we combined them all into one and had a big party on Tuesday night.  Almost the entire group (I think only about 3 students didn’t come, and even professor Sokol came with us) went to Steak and Eggs, a ‘North American Diner’ we had discovered in the embassy district.  This restaurant is owned by a Canadian who, through a bizarre set of circumstances involving SARS and travel restrictions, found himself living in Beijing without good cheap American food.  All of the meals are very cheap, and even the drinks are only 15RMB (less than US$2).  Kevin loved the food, and drinks that cheap are perfect for a 21st birthday, so we spent a lot of time there.  We also ordered three custom-made cakes (chocolate, strawberry, and coconut) for each of the birthday kids.  After dinner, some of us continued the party in the bar district and spent some time bar-hopping.  Needless to say, Lane was the only birthday kid who made it to class on time.  Molin made it to the afternoon class, and Kevin was in bed all day.  He came back to class the next day to take the exam!

Now, we’re on to this weekend.  I am still in Beijing (I don’t have more outside-of-Beijing travel plans for China) and really enjoying it.  Beijing is so big that it takes a long time to explore all of the districts.  There were only five of us who stayed here for the weekend, so we didn’t have to deal with a lot of people wanting to do different things.  On Thursday evening we explored the restaurants near the university and ended up at another hotpot restaurant.  We liked this one better because we each got our own pot of boiling water (so we didn’t have to chase our meat around and get caught up in other people’s chopsticks), and we also ordered dumplings and vegetables, not just raw meat.  The dumplings were the most complicated to cook.  You had to get the timing just right so that they were in long enough to cook, but if they were in too long the pasta would get too soft and fall apart, dumping all of the fillings into your pot of water.  They were also very slippery, making it difficult to remove them from the pot with chopsticks.  

Friday we got up earlier than we had the last weekend, went back to Steak and Eggs for brunch (we like how cheap it is for such good food!), and then wandered over to the Silk Market to finish up our shopping.  Kristen had to buy a suitcase and pick up the clothes she had had made (a suit and four button-ups) as well as do her second fitting for her silk dress.  I had a cashmere coat made as well as two button-ups because Kristen’s fit so well.  The Silk Market doesn’t just have clothes and silks, so we also got a lot of things on our lists taken care of.  That night we ended up back at Mexican food for dinner.  It’s nothing like the Mexican that we get back in the states (especially in Dalton!), but it’s fairly good for Mexican food in China.

On Saturday, Kristen and I had had enough shopping and wanted to do more cultural and sightseeing things around town.  She won’t be here next weekend, our last weekend in Beijing, so she wanted to make sure she saw these things.  We ended up being on our own because the other people wanted to sleep all day, but we had a good day on our own.  It was one of the most gorgeous days we have had in Beijing so far.  No clouds, no smog, bright sun, good breeze, etc.  We started with going through the Forbidden City.  The Chinese authorities refer to it as the ‘Palace Museum,’ but it is known as the Forbidden City because no commoner was allowed inside for over 500 years.  It was really cool.  We began at the north gate and walked through to the south gate.  When we first walked in, we were reminded of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.  The architecture was really ornate, and the gardens were very oriental (obviously).  After we made it through the gardens, however, the buildings and temples were built much farther apart, and there were large expanses of empty space.  For example, a raised bridge would connect two temples, and the edge of the square would be lined with other buildings with porches, but everything in the middle was open space.  After we left the Forbidden City and were facing Tiananmen Square once more, we realized that it wasn’t unexpected to encounter such large expanses of open space in China (as Tiananmen Square is the largest open square in the world).

After the Forbidden City, we walked back over to Wangfujing to eat lunch and do a little bit of shopping before going to the Temple of Heaven Park.  We weren’t very hungry, so we ducked into a KFC to grab a quick bite, but it was so busy that we couldn’t find any place to sit down!  This was the largest KFC I have ever been to, and at 2pm it was so crowded that two people couldn’t find a place to sit.  It was crazy!  After lunch, we walked over to the biggest bookstore in Beijing so Kristen could buy new books for the plane home, and I bought a National Geographic with a cover story about panda bears.  They are so cute!  I am going to miss panda bears when I return to the USA.  And watermelon with every meal.  Watermelon is very popular in China in the summer.  Almost every restaurant serves it as dessert after your meal, and all of the student cafeterias sell slices of watermelon at meals.  It’s delicious!

After leaving the bookstore, Kristen and I caught the sketchiest cab ever to the Temple of Heaven Park.  It seemed like a registered cab because it looked like other cabs and had a sign and a meter, but it was definitely an illegal one.  Unfortunately for us, we didn’t notice that the meter was three times as high as it should be until we got almost all the way to the Temple of Heaven, and the taxi driver wouldn’t let us go without paying the full amount.  That was very unfortunate for us, and we were not happy with taxis for awhile.  We were OK, though, after getting in the park because it was so beautiful.  This park is a lot like Central Park in NYC in that you can completely forget that you are in the middle of a big city.  It was hectares and hectares of trees and grass and greenery.  I would not have believed Beijing capable of producing something so green in the middle of the city if I hadn’t been here myself.  The park is huge, so we didn’t see all of the alters, but we did see the crowning glory of it all, the alter that is pictured on all of the postcards, and that is all we really wanted to see anyways.  We enjoyed wandering around the park, especially because there were groups of Chinese choral groups and musicians practicing around the gardens.  It was very relaxing.

The pearl market is right next to this park, so after leaving we walked back over to pick up a few more things before meeting the boys for dinner.  We went back to Annie’s, a good Italian place we had been with Professor Zhou after our 3104 final.  Everyone had food they enjoyed, and I had the best arrabbiata sauce I have had in China.  We had good food and good wine and then came back to the university to watch some of our new DVDs.  What a good day!

Now, it is Sunday.  It rained this morning and is still very overcast, so our plans for going to the Summer Palace are shot.  We are all taking care of things around here, like catching up on emails and schoolwork, before potentially going to a Chinese acrobatics show tonight.  Apparently they have 15 Chinese riding one bicycle, so it should be interesting.  I’ll let you know.

14 July 2006

Shanghai

Last weekend eight of us traveled to Shanghai.  Georgia Tech has a summer program in Shanghai, and we arranged our accommodations to be in the same building as the other Techies.  We all had some friends on the trip, and it was exciting to see them in such a foreign setting.

Rather than fly to Shanghai from Beijing, we took an overnight train.  We were advised by everyone who had ever been to China to spend the extra yuan to get the ‘soft sleeper,’ (first class) and it is such a good thing that we did.  There were four beds per compartment, perfect for our numbers.  The beds were a lot more comfortable than what we are used to in our dorms, and they even brought around a small meal like on an airplane.  We played cards for a long time before climbing into bed, but we also stayed awake a long time just talking to each other.  With our rough class, we hadn’t had much time to relax, so it was nice just to hang out and lay around.

We arrived in Shanghai at roughly 7am Friday morning and set about finding our hotel.  Carlanna went on the Shanghai program last summer, so she knew her way around pretty well.  We got to the hotel with no major incidents.  We had trouble checking in because it was so early in the morning (our rooms weren’t ready), but we finally got one of the three, so we all piled in to begin the shower process.  We split up, some people going to breakfast and some staying behind to shower, and by the time everyone was done, the rest of our rooms were ready.  Everyone got settled in, and then we headed out to explore our second Chinese town.

Shanghai is known as the New York City of China.  It is a wealthy city with a lot of business, and it is known for its shopping and nightlife.  There aren’t too many sightseeing activities in Shanghai; you go to Shanghai to shop, eat, and drink!  And boy, can you shop, eat, and drink!  We started off our afternoon with lunch at a kebab shop, just like the kind I used to eat in New Zealand, before wandering around all of Carlanna’s old shopping haunts.  She was amazed at how different everything was over just the span of one year.  Restaurants had been knocked down; malls had been built, etc.  We were lucky we found as much of what she saw last year as we did!  We had a successful afternoon shopping, especially after we hit the DVD/movie stores.  Some people went fairly crazy with the US$1 DVDs, but we all got a couple.  We tested most of them before purchasing to make sure we were getting a good quality, but Lane didn’t test any of hers and ended up with some funny DVDs.  Her Da Vinci Code was all in Chinese, and the English subtitles were so bad that we went ahead and watched the whole movie just to laugh at them!

After shopping, we came back to the hotel to crash for awhile before heading back out to search for dinner.  Most of us took naps or enjoyed the new DVDs.  After feeling rested, we wandered back out to find some good food.  Carlanna had an idea of where she wanted to go, but then the restaurants had been torn down, so we were on our own.  We walked past a place that was really full, which usually means it is really good, so we got a table in the back.  It was traditional Chinese food, and as we didn’t understand most of what was on the menu, we had the manager help pick the best dishes and wished for the best.  Turns out the manager knew what she was doing!  It was one of the best Chinese food meals I have had in China.  We had fish, pork, chicken, and beef; noodles and rice; and we ended up drinking them out of cold beer!  It was a really good meal.  Because we were a large group of Americans, we also had our own personal wait staff.  There were at least two waiters at all times standing near our table, and the manager was always there if we needed her.

After dinner, we headed out to the bars.  We hadn’t been able to go out to bars in Beijing because we had had so much work, so we were really looking forward to kicking back this weekend.  We arranged to meet some of the Shanghai techies at one of the bars, and off we went.  When we all finally made it to the same bar (there was some trouble with the cab drivers), we realized that the special wasn’t for that night, making it twice as expensive, so we began searching around for a new bar.  We settled on Cloud 9, the über-swanky bar at the top of the Hyatt overlooking the water.  It took awhile to communicate with a cab driver where we wanted to go, but we all finally made it and settled in to enjoy our drinks.  It was an overcast night, so we couldn’t see the famous Shanghai skyline, but we still managed to enjoy the bar.  We met some people from Wales, Ireland, and England and invited them to join us, and it was nice to have new faces in the group.  I was also excited because I got to talk about how amazing New Zealand rugby is with someone who really knew about it!

The next day was devoted to more eating and shopping.  We began the day with an amazing brunch at a world-renowned restaurant.  I had granola with yogurt and fruit as well as French toast and bacon (real bacon).  It was the best breakfast I have had so far in China.  Aside from its good food choices, Shanghai is also known for its amazing fake markets, and I went to Shanghai with the goal of coming home with good Prada (one of my favorites).  A very sad thing happened, though: a few weeks before, the Chinese government had shut down the famous fake market in Shanghai.  People came from all over China to see this market, and it is in practically every guidebook.  No more fake market in Shanghai!  We managed to survive thanks to Ting’s (friend of mine who was in Shanghai) amazing shopping skills, but it was a whole lot harder.  I also didn’t get the chance to track down seawater pearls like I had intended, but I have since settled for freshwater in Beijing.

One thing I have failed to mention is that I was terribly sick throughout this entire weekend.  Zhou’s class had really run me down, and because I was already tired my malaria medicine really hit me hard last week.  I got the full force of the side effects after taking the medicine, and throughout the weekend I had all the symptoms of a sinus infection.  It is a credit to Shanghai’s awesomeness that I found it to be as fabulous as I did even in the rain and being as sick as I was.  I was so sick, in fact, that I couldn’t stay in Shanghai as long as I intended.  I was planning on staying through Sunday night, taking the overnight train home, and going straight to class Monday morning, but I think my body would have gone on strike if I had pushed it that hard.  I ended up taking the train home on Saturday night with Lane and Patrick instead.  We had a random Chinese girl in our car and spent awhile practicing our Chinese with her, but we were all so exhausted that we had climbed in bed by 9.30pm.  I spent the whole next day in bed.  I lay down all day, watching newly acquired movies and seasons of the Gilmore Girls.  I got up once for dinner when Lane encouraged me to go to Subway.  It was exactly what my body needed.  I am still a little sick, but I have my strength back and am no where near as sick as I was then!

04 July 2006

Great Wall pictures

There are many, many quotes from travelers who marvel at how the Great Wall of China snakes through the mountains, and they are all completely understandable. You think you understand, but you can't really grasp the idea until you are actually looking at it follow the curves of the mountainside. From what I understand, the area to the left of the wall is China proper and to the right (perhaps in the distance) is Inner Mongolia (the Autonomous Region of Mongolia, if you ask the Chinese).

As I said in my previous post, this section of the wall has a river running through it. At the lowest point, there is a bridge going over the water connecting the two sections of the wall. If you look closely enough, towards the left you can see the dam on the water.

One part of one of the climbs from one of the watchtowers to the next. We did this a lot. This one doesn't have steps right here, it's more of a slope, but you can see how stairs would be trecherous.

The ladies who were following us around got very nervous when we climbed up on the wall, but don't worry. There was a sort of ledge a couple of meters down behind us.

There was no ledge below me here, however. This is nearing the very top of the section we could climb. I believe we were around Watchtower 7 or so, and there are 12 in total.

This was taken on the opposite corner of the same platform as the picture before. We borrowed the hats from two of the guys in our group.

I took this picture from as far up as we could go. These are watchtowers 13-16. You can see how it is crumbling so much that it makes sense not to allow simple tourists to go climbing on it.

Marianna, me, and Lane. Don't worry, we didn't really jump!

This is the whole group who climbed up Simatai that day (plus Karinna, she got cut off on the right side). Woot woot!

Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall

Last Friday morning we had an organized ‘field trip’ to Tiananmen Square as part of our history class (from Singapore). The only thing that we did officially as a group was to file through Mao’s Mausoleum. When he died in 1976, his body was embalmed and placed on display in his newly-built mausoleum. It is smack dab in the middle of Tiananmen Square, the largest paved open space in the world. It was incredible how many people are always there to file past his body. We weren’t allowed to bring in any bags, cameras, etc, so Professor Zhou and our graduate assistant Chien-Hung stayed outside to hold everything. We were fairly shoved into double-file lines to snake our way across the square before entering the mausoleum. On the way in you can jump out of line to purchase a rose to place on Mao’s shrine directly inside the entrance (his shrine, not his body; two different things). His body is under glass in the back room. The line splits into two, one to go down each side and the file out the back door.

After the mausoleum, the group split up to do our separate activities. Tiananmen Square has a lot of famous buildings around it, such as the Forbidden City, the Great Hall of the People, and the Monument to the People’s Heroes, so most of us took a stroll across the square before heading off in our different directions. I ended up going shopping with Marianna and Chao (a Tsinghua student in our class) for knick-knacks and more chopsticks before getting lunch. We had an amazing lunch. Everyone says that if you come to Beijing, you have to have peking duck, and they are correct. We went to a restaurant that is famous for their duck, the Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant. This was by far the nicest place I have been in Asia. We arrived right after noon, and we were the first customers in the restaurant. Everyone jumped to attention as soon as we walked in. We were ushered to a table right in the middle of the restaurant and then six different waiters swarmed us, trying to pull out our chairs, place napkins across our laps, and set up our utensils. We ordered a roast (peking) duck, which came with soup, sauce, onions and other seasonings, and ‘pancakes,’ as well as duck-filled spring rolls. They brought the duck to our table and carved it in front of us! The way to eat duck in Beijing is to hold your pancake (made of a thin bread, like the kind used in dumplings) flat in your hand, spread several pieces of duck and onions inside, fold it up into a square, and dip it in the sauce. We invented new ways of making the pancakes, and it was delicious. What a good meal!

After lunch, we wandered back to Tiananmen Square to go to the National Museum. They had many different exhibits, everything from Chinese culture to art to Incan artifacts. In the same complex is a museum of the Chinese Communist Party and Museum of the Chinese Revolution. My guidebook says that they were closed from 1966 to 1978 ‘so that history could be revived in light of recent events.’ Apparently that still happens today!

By the time we were done with the museum, we didn’t have time to do either the Forbidden City or the Temple of Heaven, both of which should take about half a day, so we ended up just coming back to Tsinghua. It was almost 6.30 by the time we got home, so we went right to dinner. We relaxed that night because we had a big day the next day.

Earlier in the week we had made arrangements for our entire group plus some of the NUS and Tsinghua students to venture out to see the Great Wall of China. After asking our friends who had done this program before and our professor, we decided to make the long drive (roughly four hours) out to the Simatai section. There are several sections of the Great Wall around Beijing, but the ones closer to the city are more touristed and artificial (so we hear). I am very happy that we made the long drive out to Simatai because we saw almost no tourists (as compared to the wall-to-wall tourists that supposedly visit the closer sections in the summer months).

Simatai was built during the Ming dynasty. We were able to climb to 12 of the 16 watchtowers; the remaining four are crumbling so terribly that tourists are not allowed to attempt them without special permission. Some of the staircases (and I use the term ‘staircases’ very loosely) between watchtowers are at 70 degree inclines; thankfully, so were the staircases we climbed in Cambodia, so we’d had practice! The views were absolutely spectacular. We were in the middle of no where with the most brilliant day we’ve had the entire time we’ve been in China. There was just a smattering of clouds and a light breeze, which, considering the strong sun and the fact that we’re climbing 70 degree staircases, felt very good at the top. There is a river running along the mountains ending in a dam, and the rolling mountains meeting the water was so gorgeous that it reminded me of New Zealand. I’ve been told that the air was thinner at the top, but I didn’t notice it as it was the cleanest air I have experienced since being in China.

One of the craziest parts of the Great Wall is the amount of hawkers who follow you around. I don’t know if it is like this on the other sections, but I was amused by it at Simatai. It works like this: a lady will attach herself to your side, fanning you the whole way up the wall, helping you up and down precarious ledges, taking group and single pictures for you, and generally being a companion until you get to the top, at which point she wants you to buy everything that she has. They’re really very nice, and I had fun joking around with a lady who attached herself to my group. I bought a fan from her for twice what I should have paid for it, but I told her I knew that I was overpaying and it was only because I had so much fun with her climbing up the wall. (By overpay twice as much, I mean I paid 20 yuan instead of 10 yuan. That’s US$2.5 instead of US$1.25.) We had a large group walking up the wall, so she was one of several ladies walking with us, and as a group they were just as amused with us as we were with them! We tended to take crazy pictures, and in between watchtowers they helped to teach us more Chinese. It was a good situation and a great day.

Oh, one other thing about the wall. Because this section is so precarious, there is a cable car that runs up and down for those who want to avoid broken ankles and such. Most of our group took the cable car on the way down, but several of us had other plans. On the way up, we had passed a flying fox (zip line) that crossed the water down to the other side. We couldn’t not do the zip line, so we walked back down the wall (it only took about 10 minutes) and found the entrance. It wasn’t much more than the cable car (only about 5 yuan),and after the flying fox we got to ride in a boat down the river to the carpark (at which point we bargained with more hawkers for more drinks and souvenirs). We had already all purchased popsicles at the top of the Wall, but after our strenuous day we all needed more drinks.

Even though we were all exhausted after that day, we found the energy to take showers and go out to the International Beer Garden to watch the England v Portugal game. There were a lot more foreigners than I expected, and there was an especial majority of English fans. There were so many people that we had to split into shifts to get dinner in order to save our chairs and tables! We at the at budget Italian restaurant that is very close to campus that evening. We’re all beginning to get a little tired of ‘real’ Asian food, even the die hard Asian food fanatics, so every once in awhile some Western cuisine is necessary.

The next day was filled with schoolwork and shopping along with a nicer dinner. We are heading to Shanghai this weekend and plan to do some major shopping for fake purses and real pearls, but in order to make a good comparison we needed to first discover what Beijing had to offer. So, we headed to the official pearl market that also has floors of electronics, clothes, shoes, toys, fake jewelry, and purses. We had done a lot of research to make sure we didn’t get scammed buying pearls, so we knew the reputable places to look in this market. Not too many people purchased anything as this was just an investigation (purchasing will come after the trip to Shanghai), but we didn’t come away empty handed! All of us bought at least one purse, and Carlanna even picked up a fake iPod Nano. This is definitely a market we will be returning to. We’re learning to be hard bargainers, and while some of us are better than others, we’re all pretty good at sticking to what we want to pay. When Marianna was bargaining for her purse and the lady wouldn’t drop her price, we walked away. We made it halfway down the aisle (and these are LONG aisles) with the lady desperately calling prices after us before she dropped down to the one that we wanted. When Marianna went back to retrieve her purchase, the lady said something to the effect of, ‘You not American! You not American! You Pakistani the way you bargain!’ It was pretty funny.

After the market we met up with the Shanghai people. Georgia Tech runs two summer programs in China, the one that I am on and one that only goes to Shanghai. Several of the Shanghai students were in Beijing this weekend, so we took a taxi to their hotel to have dinner with them. It was nice seeing people from back home (as well as new people) again. We couldn’t stay out with them because we have so much schoolwork to do. It’s really piling on right now. For this class, which is 2.5 weeks long (Mon-Thurs, Mon-Thurs, and a final on Wed) we have two midterms, several homeworks, three projects (two of which have papers, one of which has a presentation), and a final. We’ve already made it through one Mon-Thurs, one Monday, and one midterm, which means we have many more to go with not much time left. We have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday day (because we are leaving Thursday night for Shanghai), Monday, and Tuesday to complete the three projects (two papers, one presentation), one midterm, homeworks, and the final. Wish us luck not collapsing!

30 June 2006

Yuanming Yuan and Living in Beijing pictures

My lovely dorm room. Don't be fooled by the appearance of the bed; it's actually rock hard. It's a wooden plank with a sheet and a comforter. The only thing I have slept on that is harder is the concrete floors in Alaskan churches. There is a decent sized TV in the lower left hand corner just out of sight. My bathroom (see below) is basically right behind my bed; the door is across from the sink in the entrance.

This is my bathroom. It's not as good as at NUS because the shower is pretty much part of the toilet and there is a sink and mirror in the shower, but it's still a private bathroom, so I am not complaining. We also have a real toilet, thankfully (see below).

We have real toilets in our dorms, but every other toilet in China looks like this. I took this picture at NUS, so imagine it dirtier and without the nice trash can and toilet paper. Fun.

The dark blue bike with the dark yellow lock is mine. I really like it, especially the bell. Cross your fingers that it doesn't break or get stolen any time soon!

This is our hotpot dinner. You can see how we're using our chopsticks to drop in the raw beef (and have plates of raw meat surrounding us). We used the same chopsticks to eat, so we dipped them in the boiling water to sanitize them. So good!

This is the ruins of the main palace at Yuanming Yuan. It used to be a grand palace, the main residence and entertaining hall. It took a lot of manpower to destroy it so completely!

One part of Yuanming Yuan that has been restored is the maze. We all found our way through the maze to the middle, but not without a wrong turn or two!

Average Beijing Week

On Monday evening, I finally ventured into Beijing to explore a little.  I hadn’t left the campus yet except to buy my bicycle, so it was time to do some exploration.  Tsinghua University is outside the main part of the city, so it takes some planning to get there.  Just about everyone went as a group on the subway system (with Molin as our guide) for dinner.  We split up once we got into the city center with some people eating at KFC, some eating street food (think roadside stalls), and the rest of us going to a hotpot restaurant.  Hotpot restaurants are a lot like fondue.  You order plates of raw meat (for us, lamb, chicken, and beef) and then drop them in the vat of boiling water flavored with onions, chives, and other seasonings.  After they’re cooked, you fish out the meat, dip it in the peanut sauce, and eat it.  Keep in mind that we’re using chopsticks the whole time, so not only are we trying not to splash hot water on ourselves but we’re also attempting to maneuver the food around with slippery plastic sticks.  It was difficult at first, especially fishing out the cooked meat, but we all got the hang of it in the end.  We had our own private room because we had 9 people (although, as we always end up with private rooms, I think they like separating out the Americans at some places).

The next evening we had dinner and dancing plans with our professor.  The whole class, including the Tsinghua and National University of Singapore students, went out to dinner at a restaurant on campus.  It was traditional style Chinese food complete with pig ear meat as an appetizer.  When we walked in, Professor Zhou told us not to sit with friends, to sit with new students.  I ended up at a table with three Tsinghua students, one NUS student, and two other Americans.  We talked about everything under the sun, everything from dating habits to the GRE (which they are all taking in the fall) to handgun laws in the United States.  

After dinner, when we were just sitting around, we decided to play a game.  I don’t know if you have heard of Big Booty in the USA, so here is a brief description:
One person is the ‘Big Booty,’ and everyone else is assigned a number in order.  Everyone claps in rhythm and chants, calling out other numbers when you number is called.  Big Booty always begins the game.  A typical game could be: ‘Big Booty, Number 1’ ‘Number 1 Number 2’ ‘Number 2 Number 5’ ‘Number 5 Big Booty’ and so on.
Because we are in China, we modified the game to be ‘Big Buddha.’  It was challenging playing with the Tsinghua and NUS students because it was their second language, so after a while we switched it up to make it challenging for the Americans.  We started playing in Chinese!  It was really difficult to start with because I didn’t know any of the numbers, but now I really know how to count to 7 in Chinese (because we had 7 people playing).

After dinner, we headed over to the dancing.  There was a courtyard with music playing that apparently hosts dancers every evening.  It was mostly older people doing ‘real’ dances such as the tango and waltz.  The music was incredibly varied.  I heard everything from waltz to traditional Chinese to a disco version of the Titanic song.  We all got out there and danced, pulling on our knowledge of the box step and swing dancing, and Scott even attracted a small crowd with his break dancing.  It was a fun way to spend the evening.

Tonight we went out for dinner again.  There is an Italian place called Tafi near the main gate of the university that has been highly recommended by past program participants, so we decided to test it tonight.  They were right; it was delicious.  We were celebrating our first exam being over.  Many of us wanted to have a fun night out, but everyone was so tired after studying like mad for two days straight that we could only handle dinner.  We are taking ISYE 3104: Introduction to Manufacturing and Warehousing right now, and it is intense.  It’s a quantitative class, meaning that it involves a lot of outside study to get your head wrapped around all of the concepts and formulas.  We spend so much time in class that it is hard to find the right balance between study and exploration (on a study abroad), but I think we’re doing OK now.

One more quick update: I am doing a lot better with food.  I found several food cafeterias on campus with much better food than the first one I found, and I have discovered several dishes that I really like at each place.  I also am getting better at ordering food in Chinese, so I am not as surprised any more.  We’re also exploring ‘real’ restaurants more now, so that helps as well.  It’s a little troublesome trying to find out if packaged foods have milk or not, but I am doing my best!

26 June 2006

First Impressions of Beijing

I have successfully arrived in Beijing, China.  I will be studying here at Tsinghua University (the top engineering school in China) until August 2nd.  All of China is in the same time zone as Singapore, so none of us have to deal with any jetlag.  We arrived on Friday evening after a day of traveling, and classes begin today.

Living in Beijing is like nothing else.  Everywhere we have been so far, while English may not have been the primary language, we have at least been able to get by without knowing the local language.  That’s not possible in China.  Everything is in Chinese, and pretty much no one (except the highly educated) speaks English.  The worst part is that everything is written in Chinese characters.  When you travel to a country like Germany or France, you may not understand the language, but it is close enough to English that you can usually figure it out.  You can’t do that with Chinese characters.  You either know them or you don’t; there is no guessing.  Also, when you learn French or German phrases (‘Is that chicken / pork / beef?  Where is the toilet?’), it is fairly easy to remember them as they use our same alphabet and sounds.  Learning Chinese phrases is very difficult.  First, they use different sounds than European-based languages.  Second, Chinese is a tonal language, a concept that we don’t have in English.  Each syllable can be pronounced with one of four tones: first (flat), second (up), third (up and down), and fourth (down).  A syllable can mean four different things with each of the tones.  For example, ‘ma’ under each of the four tones means mother, hemp, horse, and to abuse or scold respectively.  Also, when you add it to the end of a sentence, it turns the sentence into a question.  This is hard for us because we can’t hear the tones very easily or speak them correctly, leading to some real confusion!

The lack of language skills is an especial hindrance when we’re trying to eat.  Because the menus are in Chinese characters, we won’t know what is actually being served.  We have to ask for noodles and a meat and vegetables and hope that’s what we get.  It’s a little easier in a fast food chain where we have a good idea of what they serve, but it is harder in some of the student cafeterias where you can’t see what they serve.  You never quite know what you’re going to get.  Also, I am lactose intolerant, which means I have to find some way of asking for no milk or cheese.  Last night we ate at Qing Qing, a fake McDonalds, and I have learned how to ask for no white sauce on my chicken sandwiches, so I asked for it without white sauce.  However, then the lady asked me if I wanted the lettuce also (which I didn’t understand) and then tried to communicate the fact that she didn’t think she could give me a sandwich with no white sauce as they were pre-made (which I didn’t understand).  I could kind of figure this out from hand gestures, but I would have been lost without Carlanna (who spent last summer in Shanghai and has had two semesters of Chinese language).  She managed to convey that if I had the white sauce, it would make my stomach ‘not good’ and so the lady made a special sandwich.  So, even when you know what to ask for, the lack of language skills makes continuing the conversation very tricky.  Also, when I want to buy crackers or cereal or something from the store, the ingredients are all in Chinese characters, so I can never really tell if they include milk or not.  I know the character for milk, but there are so many things that I can’t have (condensed milk, buttermilk, milk powder, etc) that I can’t learn all of the combinations in five weeks.  Wish me luck!

Aside from the language, the next hardest thing for us to deal with is the environment.  Beijing must be the most polluted city on earth.  It is so polluted that is seems that the city is continually under a thick cloud of fog, except that oftentimes the fog is yellow.  And it’s smog.  You can’t see the sky during the day.  You get a few hours of relatively clear weather in the morning, but by mid-afternoon it’s getting heavier and by dinnertime you don’t want to be outside at all.  It has been raining every evening here, so the nights are a bit clearer, but it’s still really hard on our respiratory systems.  We are all having coughing fits.  Also, when you’re not breathing in smog, you’re breathing in dust.  China industrialized very quickly and left its environment behind.  Consequently, there are no trees to hold down the dust and sand in the desert, and it’s encroaching on Beijing rapidly.  Dust storms are worst in April, and I read somewhere that in the worst one dust reached Taiwan!  Whenever we come in from being out all day, we have to scrape the dust off of our skin.  It’s very, very dirty.

Tsinghua University is an incredibly large campus, so we all had to buy bicycles to get around.  Imagine all of us Americans, most of us who haven’t been on bikes in a long time, trying to bike around the streets of Beijing!  We have only been on the streets about twice now, and no one has been hit, but we’ve had a couple of close calls.  China drives on the right side of the road, like America, so that does make it a bit easier to ride around.  During the day, however, there are so many people on bikes around campus that they are the hardest to avoid.  We joked today (the first weekday we’ve been riding on campus) that it was like being in a really large, really unorganized bicycle race.  It’s a lot of fun, though.  We’re getting better at maneuvering through the crowds, so perhaps we’ll be professionals at the end of the summer.  I had forgotten how much fun it is to ride bikes.  Too bad there’re too many hills at Georgia Tech, not enough bike paths to get to classes, and no way could I ride a bike on the Atlanta streets.

Aside from class, tours around campus, and buying bikes, the only other thing we have done in Beijing is visit Yuanming Yuan, the Old Summer Palace.  It was built during the 12th century but destroyed by the British and French troops during the Second Opium War.  A lot of the treasures and pieces of the palace keep showing up even today in auction houses.

Next Friday we have a city tour planned, and we may head to the Great Wall on Saturday.  It’s all up in the air now!