A Semester in Beijing

A Final Post from Beijing

2006-12-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

When I started the blog, I told myself that I would be vigilant and post nearly everyday. However, as many of you have noticed, that has not happened. Late in this semester the work load increased heavily and the exciting trips to exotic locals and tourists spots in Beijing all but disappeared. But, I am back for one last post.

I’ll start with the few exciting events that I failed to mention in my hiatus from the blog. The first trip to mention is a weekend in Xi’an. The program in charge of my classes organized this trip, so all of the students and their roommates came along. The transportation to Xi’an consisted of a 12 hour overnight train ride, which was insane because our car was filled with college students. We arrived in Xi’an on Saturday morning, and then started a city wide scavenger hunt. We had to follow directions and find certain things in the city in order to receive our envelope with further directions. It was a pretty fun and exciting way to see the city. The next morning we headed to see the famous terracotta soldiers of Xi’an. However, when we arrived, our program leader told us that we had four hours to see the soldiers. I think two hours would have sufficed. So, most of the day was spent wondering around the giant airplane hangers full of soldier statues. It was really interesting, but after 10 minutes, they all looked the same. Overall, the trip was very fun, and it was definitely a bonding experience for all of the students and their roommates.

The next event occurred two days ago, and that of course, was our graduation from the Chinese program here at CNU! We were required to dress formally and meet downstairs. A bus brought us to the Marriot hotel (the same hotel that we went to for our orientation dinner after arriving in Beijing) for a huge lunch. Then all of the class levels were required to perform a skit. My teacher had chosen Sakhi and I to be in charge of our class’s skit. As a class, we decided to say what we were going to miss about Beijing, and what we were excited to do when they returned home (in Chinese of course). All the skits were pretty funny, and the ceremony ended with the distribution of diplomas and hundreds of group photos.

Over the last two days, people have started heading home or heading to other destinations to travel. So, the mood around the dorm has been a little bit sad. However, most of the students will be traveling on the same flight as me, which stops over in Tokyo for a night, which should be a fun experience if I can get into the city. Currently, I am watching my roommate pack up all of his belongs, and preparing to go on a final shopping trip to blow the remainder of my Yuan. I am really going to miss living in Beijing, but I am also ready to get home to see all of the people that I love (and the food that I love too). Thank you all for reading my blog, and I hope I haven’t bored anyone to tears along the way.

Here is my travel info for the next two days:

Dec. 18:
Leave CNU at 5:00 AM to head to airport
Leave Beijing at 8:25 AM to Tokyo/Narita
Arrive Tokyo/Narita at 12:40 PM
Hopefully take a train into Tokyo
Dec. 19:
Leave Tokyo/Narita for New York 12:00 noon (12 AM est)
Arrive New York at 10:30 AM est
Leave New York for New Orleans at 2:45 PM
Arrive New Orleans at 5:05 PM
Mom picking me up at the Airport, followed by one hour ride home.

As always, there are plenty of pictures online. The most recent are from graduation. I will see all of you soon - Scott

Not so fragrant hills...

2006-11-11T01:51:00.000-08:00

Today I headed with a small group to an area called Fragrance Hills. This area is extremely popular in the Fall because of its red and yellow foliage and mountain views. Apparently we chose some sort of Chinese holiday to view the Fragrance Hills. I thought I was at Mardi Gras or something--there were throngs of people all over the roads leading up to the park, and there were even more people within the park. We decided to take a chairlift to the top of the mountain, and we found out that we made the right decision. The ride on the chairlift took around 15 minutes, and it became very clear that the walk up would have left all of us completely exhausted. On the way up, Kyle and I were waved at and had "Hello!" yelled at us by the chairs passing us going the other way.
The Chinese love speaking English. Well, they love to say "Hello!" and "How are you?" but then realize that they have exhausted their English vocabulary and only smile if you press the conversation.
I noticed something a little disconcerting on the ride up to the top of the mountain. I couldn't see any red or yellow leaves, at all. When I arrived at the top of the mountain, I figured out why. There were vendors selling red leaves in plastic bags. Apparently all the vendors go to all the trees with red leaves and knock them off, so that they can sell them. China also loves to sell things--everything.
When we arrived at the top of the mountain, we were once again met with swarms of people. There were so many people that it was hard to really appreciate the view from the top of the mountain, and the haze didn't help either. After snapping a view photos and pushing my way through the thousands of Chinese tourists, it was time for the decent to the bottom of the mountain. Short on cash, we had to hoof it back down. The trip down was long and at times dangerous. Apparently the Chinese also love to make stairs out of the most slippery stones that they can find. Finally arriving safely at the bottom, we discovered that with the thousands of other people trying to leave the park at the same time, that taking the bus back to school was completely out of the picture. The only other option left was to take a cab. We pooled all of our money together, and found that we only had about 20 Yuan. Definitely not enough to get us back to campus. So, I made the executive decision to take a cab and just not tell the cab driver that we didn't have enough money.
The cab driver understood all the directions that I gave him, but when I tried to make small talk, he didn't understand anything. When we got closer to campus, we called Muh and asked him to come down and spot us some money. Thankfully he made it down soon after we arrived, so everything worked out perfectly.
I have new pictures up from today on web shots, so check them out.

Long time no see!

2006-11-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

I'm going to first apologize for not updating much sooner, however several factors have prevented me from updating my little blog. First, I have been incredibly busy lately. This week, after coming back from my fall break, my Chinese class began learning two chapters a week instead of just one like we had been. So, it goes without saying that Chinese now takes up the majority of my life. Also, this website has been down for almost the entire week. Apparently they were updating the site so that it worked with all web browsers? Anyway, I will try to catch you up as best as I can, but I will not give my vacation in Shanghai the attention it really deserves, because it has been over a week and I don't remember all the small details. Without further ado, here I go:

Fall Break:
My fall break began on a Friday afternoon. After a final dinner in Beijing, consisting of Jiaozi and fried rice, Muh and I quickly packed our things and headed out the bus. Ten steps before arriving at the bus station Muh stopped me and said, "I don't have my uncle's phone number. Do you think we should go back to get it?" My immediate response was in the negative, because we were already running late and I was carrying a really heavy bag. This decision would later come back to haunt us. So after a very rushed and absurdly cramped bus and subway ride, we arrived at the train station just in time to sit down in our seats as the train began to pull away from the station.
Surprisingly, I had very little trouble falling asleep on the train and got a decent nights rest in my seat, which was definitely a good thing. When we arrived in Shanghai, we were supposed to meet Muh's uncle (who lives in Shanghai and also in California) at the train station. Unfortunately, we were given a decision: to exit to the south or the north. I think I recommended the north. Obviously I chose incorrectly. Muh's uncle was no where in sight, and to add injury to insult, it was beginning to rain. After waiting for about an hour, Muh and I decided to walk to the south exit to see if we could find his uncle, but we had no luck. I soon discovered that we did not have Muh's uncle's name (real Chinese name), address, or PHONE NUMBER. Soooooo we were pretty much high and dry. Muh made phone calls to everyone in China that he could think of, and eventually got the phone number of an emergency contact that his uncle had given him in Beijing. We were so happy when he actually picked up and was able to give us Muh's uncle's phone number. He had been waiting for us for close to three hours at the other exit, and we had been wondering around for just as long. Long story short, it was a long day, but we finally made it back to Muh's uncle's apartment, where Muh's parents were also waiting for us.
Shanghai was a really beautiful city and the architecture was amazing! The Muh's took incredible care of me, and I had several family dinners that involved way too much food and way too much alcohol for the patriarchs of the family. I had tons of seafood, which was a great change of pace from all the food of Beijing. I even ate some live shrimp, which was interesting to say the least. They put the live shrimp into a bowl of wine, so that they are incredibly inebriated when they arrive at the table, so they never really moved around (though one did right before Muh was going to bite down). Most of our time in Shanghai was spent was spent celebrating with the Muh family, which was amazing, and the other portion of our time was spent shopping around Shanghai. The markets were really beautiful in Shanghai, and offered a huge selection of Chinese merchandise.
However, the entire week was not spent in Shanghai. We also made a few side trips to some cities near by. Our first trip was to Hangzhou, which is thought to be one of the most beautiful cities in China by some. It was a really fun tour, and the west lake was incredibly beautiful. However, our entire tour was in Chinese, so Muh had to translate for me quite often. Our other excursion was with Muh's parents on a two day trip to Nanjing. Nanjing was the capital of China until it was moved to Beijing, and so has a great deal of political history. Our first day of touring was around Nanjing, and only consisted of various political sites and a few tourist traps. The weather also wasn't very good, which put a damper on the day as well. The second day consisted of a trip to another city, which was about an hour from Nanjing by bus. The city had three very famous Buddhist temples, one of which was on an island. The weather was horrible again, but still incredibly interesting and beautiful! I'm sorry I didn't go into much detail about these trips, but swing by my picture site to check out all of my pictures!

This Weekend:
This weekend was particularly exciting. My Friday was very uneventful consisting of a huge Chinese test, and a very long nap. However, Saturday was amazing! Someone found an indoor skiing facility outside of Beijing and organized a day trip. If you know me, you probably know that I love skiing, but have not been for a really long time, so needless to say, I was very excited. My university's tennis coach and two Chinese roommates drove our group out the indoor facility, which was about an hour away from school. The whole day, including transportation, food, ski rentals (or snowboard), boots rentals, ski clothes rentals, and lift ticket for the entire day costs only $24 USD. The facility consisted of a bunny slope and also an advanced slope. I was really surprised at how nice the snow was, and even more surprised at how quickly I remembered how to ski. After only two runs on the bunny slope, I headed to the top of the advanced slope and was set for the rest of the day! I had a great time, and I would love to go back again sometime before I leave! It still is one of my favorite activities of all time!

Sunday was another really eventful day. Despite the fact that I was sick all day, and still am, with a mild cold, I managed to have a good time. Myself and a small group headed out to see the temple of heaven, which is relatively close to Tiananmen Square. Unfortunately, I was not aware of how cold it was outside, and the 30mph wind did not help to keep me warm either. The majority of the day was spent outdoors, and was freezing, but the sky was clearer than I have ever seen it in Beijing (I suppose all of the smog was blown out of the city). The temple of Heaven was incredible, but unfortunately, because of the freezing weather it was a rather quick run through the temple, so my knowledge is very limited on exactly what the contents of the temple are at this point. The one place that stood out in my mind was a spot called the echo wall. This area is enclosed in a nearly perfectly circular wall and a round pagoda stands in the middle. If someone speaks in a normal voice next to the wall on a certain section of the wall, and someone listens for them across the area, up to around 80 yards away, the first person’s speech can be heard perfectly. It was really amazing!
After freezing our tails off in the Temple of Heaven, we headed to get some MEXICAN FOOD! One of our classmates had told us that there was a Mexican restaurant close to a certain subway stop. So after another hour long walk to the subway, which left us all nearly frozen, we rode for two stops for a nice confusing 30 minute walk around the subway area looking for the restaurant. However, it was well worth the wait. The name of the restaurant was Pete's TexMex and was populated by lots of Americans looking for a break from Chinese cuisine. I had a delicious enchilada dish and a margarita. It really hit the spot.
Needless to say, I am completely exhausted and not very prepared for my next week of classes, so I will leave you here and recommend that you head over to my picture site to check everything out. The Shanghai pictures are listed under Shanghai, the Ski pictures are under Beijing at the very end, and the Temple of Heaven pictures are under Temple of Heaven. Sorry again for the lack of updates!

Midterms over. Time for some Shanghai.

2006-10-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

My midterms are finally all behind me. This semester's midterms consisted of one 21st century exam, one Ancient Chinese Philosophy exam, one Ancient Chinese Philosophy paper (comparing Mozi and Emerson....ugh), one Chinese written exam, and finally one oral exam this morning. Needless to say, it was a long stressful week, but it's over and my trip to Shanghai begins in about three hours with a bus ride to the train station. Our train leaves at 7:35 pm and is supposed to last for roughly 12 hours. Unfortunately, Muh and I will be sitting rather than lying for the entire night. The Z line, which is the quickest train to Shanghai from Beijing, had no more hard sleeper cabins available, and all of the soft sleepers were a bit pricey. Either way, I think it will be a fun night. Once in Shanghai, Muh's uncle, who lives in Shanghai, will pick us up at the train station and bring us back to his home. On either Saturday or Sunday, Muh's parents, who are visiting China for some sort of college reunion, will also arrive in Shanghai. So, it should be a fun week with the Muh family. It will definitely be nice to have free rooms and Muh's family's knowledge of Shanghai (and Chinese). I'm positive that it will end up being a really great experience. At this point I really have no clue what we will be doing in Shanghai, but its a big city surrounded by beautiful landscape, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find something to do. I may or may not have reliable internet at Muh's uncle's home. Either way, I will try to post on here at least once and send out some emails while in Shanghai (maybe a postcard too, if you're lucky). I should be back by Sunday the 28th just in time to start classes again on Monday. So check my picture site then for some pictures.
Sorry I haven’t had a chance to update for a while, but its been a boring/difficult week in Beijing. I hope everyone is having a great fall.

First Annual 饺子比赛

2006-10-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the big competition. The Jaozi eating competition, or as it is locally known the 饺子比赛. The competition was inspired by the CET students' love for the tastiness that is jiaozi. Mike and Ian took the idea for the competition and ran with it. The plan was developed a few weeks ago, and had been bouncing around ever since. Finally, ground rules were set up and a date was set. The ground rules were as follows: The time period given for eating was 1 hour. The competition was about quantity and not speed. Secondly, everyone must use a meat filled jiaozi. The vegetable kind are too wimpy. Finally, no trips to the bathroom (unless you really have to go, then it is supervised as to prevent the offloading of consumed jiaozi).
The names were taken down for those of us wanting to participate in the competition a week prior. Zack, Muh, Dan, Ian, Mike, Kyle, and myself would be competing. Yesterday, Mike approached all of the competitors and asked for our desired type of jiaozi. Myself along with two of the other competitors chose pork jiaozi with chives.
Finally, at 7pm this evening all of the contestants and the audience met down stairs to head to the jiaozi restaurant. The audience for the competition was huge! Today we also had our weekly Chinese lunch table, where students must speak Chinese the entire time. We also sit with our teachers and teachers from all of the other levels of Chinese. So, word had spread to everyone throughout lunch of the competition. Two teachers (one was my grammar and drill class teacher) and around 25 students from a variety of the Chinese programs including one from England were in attendance.
We took a quick round of pictures and started our walk over to the restaurant. When we arrived, tables had already been pulled together for us outside of the restaurant and the first of many trays of jiaozi had already been placed on the table. Earlier in the morning Mike had placed an order at the restaurant for seven ins of jiaozi (roughly 50 jiaozi per jin). As we settled down for the competition, all of the contestants received their individual jins. So, began the contest. The first half hour was fairly uneventful. People were taking bets and fans were cheering for their favorite competitor. About 30 minutes into the competition, Kyle called quits and left the competition. At this point I had consumed roughly 27 jiaozi and was not feeling too hot. All of the other competitors stood up to stretch their bellies. This decision was the death of me. Minutes after standing up, I was hit with the pressure of 27 jiaozi and had the pleasure of decorating the street in front of the restaurant. However, the competition continued minus two competitors. As the end of the hour approached, Zack, Mike, and Muh were easily in the lead. 78, 61, and 54 jiaozi had already been eaten respectively. By the end of the night (we extended the time limit), Zack had eaten 90 jiaozi (good God.), Mike had eaten 70 jiaozi, and Muh had eaten a still impressive 61 jiaozi. The most impressive part of Zack's victory was that he had already officially won after consuming somewhere in the 80 range. However, he had set a goal of 90, and so kept eating after the competition was over. When he finally did reach 90, everyone was incredibly impressed, and he was incredibly sick. All in all, it was a great night, and it's always a nice bonus to throw up in front of your teacher. Check out the picture site for some action shots from tonight.

Summer Palace and Karaoke: Good Saturday.

2006-10-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

As I stated in my last post, there was talk of going to a gorge somewhere near Beijing. I had heard that it was beautiful and that there would be bungee jumping. Unfortunately, the group who was heading out the gorge failed to wake anyone up before they left. So, a few of us decided to get together and head out to see the Summer Palace instead. After about 30 minutes of planning, Muh and I had devised a rather lengthy and complex route involving both buses and the subway to reach the Summer Palace. The palace and its massive lake are in the very northwest of the city and would be a very substantial walk of about 9 miles. So with this plan in mind we rounded up the group and headed out for some lunch. Thankfully, we bumped into one of the Chinese roommates who told us that we could just take one bus all the way to the entrance of the palace. Muh and I were kind of sad that our glorious plan would no longer be needed. After a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant, we set out on a rather lengthy bus ride. When we got onto the bus, we had to struggle for breathing room and plow our way into the middle of the bus. After about two stops, the entire bus had emptied out and we were all able to get seats. Thirty minutes later we had arrived at the entrance to the Summer Palace and purchased our half-price tickets (thank you student discount). I was amazed as soon as we entered the grounds of the palace. There was a huge lake stretched out in front of me leading to the base of a small mountain range (maybe large hills is a better description, but it doesn't sound as cool). The lake was filled with boats: paddleboats, tour boats shaped like dragons, and a speedboat or two. It was so surprising, in the middle of this huge city, there is a lush lake environment surrounded by walls and mountains.
Across the lake there were several large landmarks that we all wanted to go see. One was a giant temple about a fourth of the way around the lake, which turned out to be the Hall of Dispelling Clouds. The other was a large cylindrical tower completely across the lake from the entrance of the palace.
I should clarify at this point that I am not really sure exactly where the "palace" of the Summer Palace actually resides. There is apparently another part of the Summer Palace that can be entered for a much higher fee, and I think that the palace is there. So when I refer to entering the Summer Palace, I really mean entering the grounds of the giant lake near the Summer Palace, which is surrounded by various temples and buildings.
So, we made our way around the edge of the lake until we reached the Hall of Dispelling Clouds and climbed our way to the top. The view was amazing. Not only could we see the entire lake, but we could also see most of Beijing. But as always, there were way too many people to get a really good view, so Muh and I decided to climb over a railing into a restricted part of the balcony surrounding the hall. While doing this, Chinese people were saying "Waiguo ren!" (foreigners) and staring at us with concerned looks, but everyday on the street I hear people saying “waiguo!” when I walk by, so it no longer bothers me. I got some good pictures and we headed back to the beaten path to continue our tour. Our next stop was the marble boat of the Summer Palace. One of the queens who summered in the palace apparently commissioned the building of a giant marble boat. For obvious reasons, the boat did not float at all and once in the water sunk like a rock....a large boat-shaped marble rock. Thankfully, it only sunk a few meters in the shallows of the lake and 90% of the boat is still above water, so the Chinese can make a nice profit offering people, for a minimal fee, the opportunity to visit the idiotic boat. However, at this juncture, we discovered that the large cylinder tower across the lake was actually much too far and not actually a part of the palace grounds. Exhausted, we headed to the entrance and caught our bus back to campus.
I arrived at my dorm room with one thing in mind, a nap. My roommate and his girlfriend had other plans however. They wanted to talk to me in English and ask about my photos. So, I let them. In actuality, I ended up speaking more Chinese than English, so it worked out well.

Finally dinner time rolled around, and it seemed that everyone, including my roommate and his girlfriend, were hungry for some pizza. Here in Beijing, there is a local chain called Big Pizza, which at this point in our evening, sounded delicious. It turns out its 39 Yuan for an all-you-can-eat buffet, AND the buffet included unlimited beer. Why don't we have this in America!?!?! We actually closed the place down. There were nine of us, and all of us were thoroughly taking advantage of the unlimited beer. At 9:30 we were politely asked to leave. My roommate and his girlfriend, being that they're Chinese, decided that karaoke would be a good next step in our evening.
So, we all wandered over to the KTV near our dorm. From the outside, the KTV looks like a small one room restaurant, and that is what I expected, a room with a stage and people singing their hearts out. However, when we entered, I thought we had walked into a five star hotel. The entranceway lead into a marble staircase, which lead down into a luxury lobby attended by multiple employees. We were told that it was 100 Yuan an hour to have a room. We couldn't pass this up. We were lead down a marble hallway with doors every 20 feet or so. Through the windows of the doors, we could see Chinese business men and families drinking, smoking, and singing. We finally got to our room and were let inside. The place was incredible! There was a huge red leather sofa, a giant television, three separate monitors and a small stage. Needless to say, we had a great time. My roommate, apparently a seasoned veteran, started us off with a nice slow Chinese song. Then it was time for songs in English, which lead to hilarity and embarrassment. Everyone was singing into the two microphones and singing badly. I can't lie; I have a tremendously horrible singing voice. After two hours of belting both English and Chinese songs, we all decided to call it a night. I do not have any pictures from karaoke, but a few people including my roommate took a few, so I will see if I can get my hands on some. I do have tons of pictures from the Summer Palace though, so head over and have a gander.

The underground city of Beijing.

2006-10-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

For the first time in several weeks, my weekend has not been filled with field trips. So, as a group we decided to go somewhere that sounded interesting. Somehow, someone discovered that there is an underground city in Beijing, which Mao had built in order to prepare for atomic war and to provide an evacuation route for the leaders of China to the mountains surrounding Beijing. With only this information in mind, I was told to meet outside of the dorm at 12:15 pm. When I arrived downstairs, after yet another Chinese test, I was surprised to see a large group of about twenty ready to head out to see the underground city. Apparently, less than two years ago, access was restricted to the underground city and any citizens who wished to access the city had to register with the government in order to preserve national security. With this information on all of our minds, the city sounded very mysterious, and so our journey began. We took a bus over to the subway station (1 Yuan), and then took the subway (3 Yuan) from there (after switching to a different line) to a stop just south of Tiananmen Square. With no real knowledge of where this underground city was, we headed out with only the name of a street as our guide. Thankfully, we had a Chinese roommate with us, who was able to ask anyone--and he nearly asked everyone--about the whereabouts of the underground city. No one seemed to know. Discouraged, we sat down at a street corner and waited for the Chinese roommate to find out more information. While waiting, an elderly Chinese woman approached our group and began asking Sulhye (who is Korean) weather I was an American. She was very excited to find out that I was indeed, and then she went about her business.
After a short wait, we figured out the right direction to head in and set out. After reaching the edge of a hutong, we spotted a man carrying a sign that read "Beijing Underground City." We jumped at the opportunity, and asked him if he could tell us the location of the city. Unfortunately, he was a rickshaw driver and was only interested in us paying him to bring us to the entrance of the city. But, we had been told that the underground city was not far, so we trudged on, and so did the rickshaw driver.....right behind us. He followed us for about 10 minutes offering us a ride but never providing us with information about the location of the city. After asking half the population of Beijing, we weaved our way through multiple hutongs. We arrived at a certain alleyway that was patrolled by a husband and wife team of street vendors, who offered everything from Mao hats to Rolexes. Distracted by their intense sales techniques, we briskly headed on. Thankfully, one of the vendors screamed out "Under greand chity!?" as we walked away. We discovered that he was in fact correct, and that there was a sign that we had all failed to see marked in English. So we thanked the man (and I thought him how to properly say under ground city in English) and headed into the small hallway behind the sign. The room was fitted with camo wallpaper and the staff were wearing camo uniforms, though they obviously were not in the military. So, we paid the 10 Yuan entrance fee, and headed down a dank stairwell into the underground city.
After hearing about the underground city for the last couple of days, I was pretty unimpressed by the tour. The tour consisted of walking through dank tunnels for about 15 minutes. It was possibly the most bizarre tour I have ever taken. Our guide explained that the city could hold up to 30,000 people (though in English she said 300,000) and that all of the tunnels, if combined, were longer than the Great Wall. Then, all of a sudden we went up a stairwell and were in a silk mill. The guide gave us a few minutes to look at the merchandise, and then it was time to move on. I have now officially become immune to the commercialization of Beijing. There is a silk store in the underground city of Beijing; there were no other signs of life. The tour ended abruptly, and we were asked to leave through the same way that we had entered. Overall, it was a let down, but I had a good time and as they say, I guess that's all that matters. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera with me. Even more unfortunately, photography was not allowed in the underground city, so it wouldn't have mattered either way. Hopefully I have some more photographs up this weekend. There is talk of a trip to a gorge somewhere nearby tomorrow, so who knows. Check back soon.

Daoism, Vomit, and Goats. Oh my?

2006-09-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend began as all weekends do here in China, with a nice long morning of Chinese tests. Much like the exam from two weeks ago, our teacher, feeling quite generous, decided to throw some extra stuff on the exam. What do I mean by extra? Well, extra in this sense would be information that we have never reviewed or been told about. Anyway, after being thoroughly discouraged by the written portion of my exam, I trudged through and ended up doing fairly well on the oral portion of the exam. With my week of work behind me, the weekend began. After a nice lunch, it was time for my first fieldtrip of the weekend, a trip to a Taoist temple in Beijing. After only about a half hour ride, we arrived at the temple and were set loose to explore. Unlike the Buddhist temple that I visited last week, this temple was fairly deserted and was all spiffed up for the Chinese Independence holiday. Since the weather was incredibly nice (meaning no haze), I decided to set off on my own to explore the temple. It was a really relaxing experience. I’ve gotten really used to constantly having tons of people surrounding me at all times, and it was def nice to be alone, especially in a temple on a beautiful day. The temple itself was very similar to all of the other temples that I had already been to, but the shrines themselves were fairly different. Each shrine, within each of the various buildings, had a single statue of a god or several (up to 60 I believe) statues of gods which could be prayed to for various reasons. As I wondered around, I never really saw anyone praying, until the end of the fieldtrip. I wondered into one of the shrines, which contained the “god of long life,” who was piously being prayed to by a young man. I think Muh prayed to the god of wealth too, but I don't know if that actually counts. Anyway, the fieldtrip was very relaxing and the temple was gorgeous. I think this was my favorite temple (short of the Forbidden City of course), but that opinion could be based on the holiday decorations and the incredible weather.

My Friday night ended with a tasty dinner and some beer at the dorm. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of having a little bajiu (China’s response to cheap vodka; It has a nice cheese after taste), before heading out on the city. It was a poor decision. I called my evening early and took a cab ride back with Dan to catch some sleep before my next fieldtrip.

This morning began nice and early at 8am. Thankfully, my roommate went home for the holidays, so I wasn’t awakened 30 minutes early. Still quite asleep, I stumbled down to the bus and found a seat with a window. I popped on my iPod and tried to catch some more sleep. To add injury to insult, I was awakened to find that I was somewhat motion sick, something that hasn’t happened for about five years. Thankfully (sarcastic), we then entered the hill slalom section of our climb into the village. With the bus swaying and my stomach moving closer and closer to my mouth, I mumbled to Muh “Tell them to stop the bus….” After mass chaos arose from the prospect of my vomit spewing across the bus, I was handed several plastic bags just in time to spew in a controlled manner. Needless to say, I was excited to be on firm ground when we arrived at the base of the village. Still not feeling 100% our tour guides informed us that we had a 20 minute hike ahead of us to the top of the village. The weather was amazing, the air was pollution free, and the scenery was breathtaking, so I quickly recovered from my morning. At the top, we were split into groups of six and assigned a guide who would bring us to a home of one of the local families. My group headed to the home of an older woman (Tai Tai, similar to Mrs. in the US) who had a daughter and a granddaughter living with her. The Tai Tai offered us some fresh pears, which the village is apparently known for. I did actually eat mine (my parents and Sarah would be proud), though it tasted like paper to be honest. Then we had the privilege of watching the Tai Tai hand make jiaozi (dumplings) and many many other dishes. We were even allowed to help make some jiaozi, which sounded amazing to me. I miss cooking. When our table was filled with literally 15 dishes, we began to chow down. Needless to say, our group came no where near eating all of the tasty food. Our meal was not free though, our next task was to go with the Tai Tai to work in her field. Thankfully, our Tai Tai’s field was growing a cycle crop of the bean variety, so we simply had to rip the plants out of the earth. I was impressed; our group quickly cleared the entire field. The must love tourist there. We paid and then did manual labor.

The rest of our day was spent visiting with other groups and watching the various farm animals, which consisted of two angry geese, several angry dogs, a few stray donkeys, several packs of very vocal sheep, and a pin of imprisoned goats. When we finally loaded back on to the bus, I was more than happy to catch up on my sleep. Once again, my day of excitement ended with an incredibly long bus ride through the traffic of Beijing. At one point, we stopped dead in traffic for about 15 minutes. Everyone began getting out of their cars and talking with each other. Sadly, our tour guides wouldn't let us out, but we still managed to yell at nearby persons from the bus. I think we were all getting a little loopy. Anywho, head over and check out all the new pictures, there are a lot of them.

Finally, The Great Wall.

2006-09-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I finally got to get to the Great Wall! Getting to see the Great Wall was one of the few "must sees" for my trip. I really want to see everything and anything, but I knew that I had to make it to the Great Wall, or this trip would be a failure (not really). The day began early at 8:10 am when I was awakened by my roommate, who was stirring around the room like a child on Christmas morning. He actually said "wake up" in English, followed by some unrecognizable phrase relating to the Great Wall. So, I reluctantly rolled out of bed and got dressed to head out to the bus downstairs. Amazingly, my ankle was not bothering me for the first time in about two weeks. My roommate and I sat awkwardly in the room for about 15 minutes, because, surprise, we had gotten up too early. After making it downstairs, we climbed aboard one of the two awaiting buses and began our journey to the Wall. I had a large amount of homework to do, so I began reading for Philosophy. Deep into my reading of Mencius, my roommate, begins reading over my shoulder and asking for the definitions of various lengthy words. So, the remainder of the bus ride was spent explaining words like "benevolent." It was interesting to say the least. After about two hours of the lightning round of Define-a-Word, we finally arrived at the Great Wall. Unfortunately, there was even more haze at the wall than there was in Beijing. Still incredibly excited, I followed the large group of CET students and Chinese roommates in a caravan through the tourist-laden village below the Wall towards the trailhead. As we began scaling the thousands of stairs between us and the Wall, I shit you not, we all of a sudden come across a giant metal chute cutting through the forest. It turns out that it’s a toboggan ride that goes down from the top of the Wall back down to the parking lot below. That's right, there's a Great Wall ride....at the Great Wall (only 40 Yuan too). Exhausted from climbing stairs for 30 minutes straight, we finally reached the Wall and took a few more stairs up to the top. The view from the top was incredible, but the haze was thick. I would really love to go back sometime before I leave China, just to see the views there without haze. Despite this minor hindrance, the Wall was incredible. I've heard again and again about the size and length of the wall, but seeing it in person is completely different. I was in awe of the Chinese people's ability to build such a monstrous piece of architecture. I was more than happy to follow the Wall for over an hour, and would have been even happier to follow it for about five more, but we had a deadline for returning to the bus. So, we reluctantly turned around and headed for the bus. As you may have guessed, we couldn't possibly pass up riding the toboggan down. I'm not going to lie; it was the best 40 Yuan I have ever spent. It was a blast. The little cars were equipped with a handbrake, which the owners encouraged you to use liberally. The CET leader of our trip, Ben, told us that when his father came, his ride on the toboggan ended with him flying off of the track into the woods. With this in mind, I tried to go as fast as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the track is lined with people (at all the dangerous turns) yelling at riders in English to "Slow down!" At the bottom of the ride, our group found some snack food and loaded back on the bus to head back to campus. The ride back was much longer than the ride up. The traffic in Beijing is atrocious. I did manage to fall asleep (along with everyone on the bus, minus the driver of course), and I managed not to drool on myself, which is quite a feat for me in my history of sleeping in vehicles. So, that's how my journey to the Great Wall ended, with a drool-free nap back to campus. All joking aside, it was amazing, and I can't wait to get back on a day without haze. There are tons of pictures up online, so go check them out!

Busy eating Chuan'r

2006-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. Up until recently, nothing too exciting has really happened. Class has kept me really busy, but I think I’m starting to get into a groove with studying, which is good because I was pretty overwhelmed the first couple of weeks of class. I think I've been hitting my homesickness low lately. It's normally really hard for me to get homesick, but China is so far away from home and its tough to communicate with everyone from the states. I really miss my parents, Sarah, all my friends from BR and Wake and just being in the states in general. I've had Chinese food pretty much every meal since I've been here and I'm still not even close to being sick of it, but I feel like I need a little variety soon. Me and a few others went to KFC the other day, but it wasn't really satisfying. The chicken was tiny and the mashed potatoes were in a container the size of shot glass. Needless to say, it was also much more expensive than Chinese food. Despite that experience, I'm still craving some McDonalds. Anyway, enough with my whining.
Yesterday, my 21st Century Beijing class had a fieldtrip to a hutong near the Forbidden City. For those of you who don't know, a hutong is just a very narrow street that runs through the traditional housing found in Beijing. Unfortunately, because of the upcoming Olympic games China has begun tearing down certain hutong neighborhoods in order to build modern buildings. But recently, China has realized the historical significance of these neighborhoods, and has begun restoring certain ones. That’s my history lesson for today. So, we arrived in a parking lot near the hutong neighborhood, which happened to be right between a huge bell and drum tower. Our tour guide arrived shortly there after and told us that we were going to be going up into the drum tower. I was really excited, but then I saw the stairwell that went up to the top. It was the steepest set of stairs I have ever seen and they were slanted. After climbing the Mt. Everest of staircases, we were greeted with the thunder of four giant drums being played, it was really cool. Then the view from the top of the tour was amazing, but as always there was tons of smog. I could actually see the Forbidden City and a lake near by, which is a really rare sight in Beijing. After we got our fill of sight seeing, we went back downstairs and loaded into a caravan of rickshaws. It was really funny. I kind of felt bad though, because it seems kind of demeaning to have a guy pull you on a bike. But all the drivers were really funny and it was cool to be driven through the alleyways of the hutongs. We eventually stopped and took a tour of one of the quadrangle homes in the hutong neighborhood. The owner was really nice and told us all about his home and living in the hutongs, it was pretty interesting. Him, his wife and his daughter all share two small rooms. After the visit, we headed back to the dorm, which took about an hour and a half because of the incredible traffic in Beijing.
Getting back to the title of this post, Chuan'r is just some sort of meat stuck on a wooden stick. I normally eat the lamb variety, but I have seen many others. I've seen seahorse, scorpions, bread, beef, pork, chicken, chicken hearts (which I tried, tasted like beef), and squid. China has a ton of interesting food. I'll try to keep everyone updated on the crazy food that I eat. Our CET group is heading to the Great Wall tomorrow, so I'll have some more cool stories and tons of new pictures too. Check out the pictures from yesterday on my picture sight, there are some pretty cool ones!

Fieldtrip to Lama and Confucian temples.

2006-09-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Friday here in Beijing. As always on Friday, my day begin with a nice long Chinese test, followed by more preparation and an oral test. I think I did pretty well, but it was a pretty stressful morning. Thankfully, afterwards I went with a group and ate a tremendous amount of food and got back to campus just in time to leave on my philosophy class fieldtrip. As the bus was already full, it was difficult to find a seat. Also, Professor An allowed CET students who were not enrolled in his classes to attend the field trip as well (though they had to pay their own way), so it was a crowded bus. I ended sitting at the front of the bus with Professor An, which was actually very interesting. He asked about what I wanted to do after college and I told him my plans of continuing my Chinese education. He seemed very excited by this prospect, and began telling me tales of his troubles with establishing a Chinese program at Clemson. Apparently at this point, the Chinese program at Clemson is only behind the French and Spanish programs, which says a lot for the shift in language priority in the US.
Professor An is originally from Beijing, and I took advantage to ask him some questions about the city. A few of the other students and myself are interested in going hiking somewhere in the mountains near Beijing, and Professor An seemed very happy to tell us about prime hiking opportunities and even offered to organize a trip for us. Very exciting.
When we finally arrived at the Lama temple (Tibetan Buddhism), I was surprised to find a parking lot full of tour buses. The temple was overrun with tourists and gift shops which seem inappropriate for a temple, but at this point I'm never surprised to see an overwhelming number of people everywhere. The temple was very beautiful and had even recently been repaired and newly painted in certain areas. It was nice to have Professor An with us, as he could explain anything that we had questions about. My only qualm with the Lama temple (other than the crowd) was the ridiculous use of incense. Sometimes, I literally could not keep my eyes open because of the smoke. People were praying and lighting incense in every corner of the temple.
We next headed to the Confucian temple, which was right across the street. I thought that was incredibly interesting, and was even more impressed when I was told that China has never had a war waged because of Religion other than one rebellion. Even the scholars from both temples would share information with each other and visit each other regularly. Unfortunately, the entire Confucian temple was under construction, so there wasn't too much to see. There was one large archway and a few statues that weren't obscured by scaffolding. There were some interesting parts of the temple compound though. Apparently, in the distant past, the temple also served as a university for the brightest students in China. Also, there was a bridge in the temple that was covered in these little red, wooden tablets. Professor An explained that students come here and right down their concerns for their education and hang them on the bridge in the temple in the hopes that Confucius will aid them in their studies. There was even one from an American girl that said "I hope I do well in 7th grade." Overall, it was really interesting and I would love to go back if the construction is finished before I leave.
There's a new album at my Webshots site called "Temple Field Trip." Check it out for all the pictures from yesterday.

Chinese Voodoo?

2006-09-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last night was Thursday night, which means that everyone is studying for the end of the week exam for their respective Chinese language classes. My night was going as planned, full of lots of studying and what not. Then I heard a ruckus going on outside my door, so I decided to go check out the commotion. There was a large group of CET students studying together outside of my door. I resisted the temptation to go hang out for quite a while, but when the noise had all but disappeared, I went out into the hall and found only a few CET students left. I started studying for a while, and then Dan's (my neighbor) roommate came by and offered to bring me some medicine for my leg. First of all, my roommate and Muh's roommate both already gave me bottles of the same medicine. But, Dan's roommate could not be swayed in his devotion to healing my leg.
Ten minutes later, my roommate showed up and helped me with my studying. Soon there after, Dan's roommate arrived with his magic leg potion. So, still very eager, Dan's roommate (Bai is his name by the way) proceeded to open the ruby bottle. The stuff smelled exactly like those candy hearts that you get on Valentine's Day. I soon had a lathering of Valentine candy juice on my ankle and an eager Bai rubbing my ankle vigorously. In the middle of this experiment in healing, Bai realized that my roommate had a small bottle of bai jiu (rice alcohol, the worst tasting substance on earth) on his desk. The obvious next step was to pour some into the cap of the bai jiu bottle and light it on fire. I'm not going to say that it didn't look cool, because frankly, it did, but the whole time I thought that this was yet another healing technique. I wasn't too excited to have flaming alcohol thrown onto my injured ankle. Thankfully, it was just for atmosphere. Anyway, just thought that I would share my strange evening with everyone. If anyone needs Chinese leg healing solution stuff, I have four bottles. Also, I finally got a picture of my roommate, or I should say Muh took the picture. Anyway, the picture is on my Webshots page in the Beijing album. Enjoy!

Interesting 24 hours.

2006-09-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

Today, instead of having Chinese class, our teacher told us that we would have language practice. However, this means real life application. Our class was split into four groups, and we were told to meet at a certain restaurant, so that we could use our newly learned, food related vocabulary. Seeing as I am currently very slow at walking, our group decided to take a taxi. Needless to say, we were the first group to arrive. We met the teacher upstairs, and were set to our team tasks, which included asking for chopsticks, more bowls, more cups, more tea cups, and finally ordering a dish. We were informed that CET would be paying for this lunch, and to practice thoroughly, we were all to order one dish using Chinese. Well, there were 15 people at the table, so we ended up with an incredible amount of food. We had eggplant dishes, chicken dishes, fish dishes, xiao bai dishes, soup, Beijing duck, spare ribs, and a few pork dishes. I've never seen so much food at once. Our teacher also encouraged us to order beer, which was pretty exciting by American standards. On a side note, I have had incredibly horrible stomach pains all morning, and I really didn't think that I would be able to leave my room, much less go out to a restaurant. Thankfully, I rallied my strength and was able to eat way too much food, for about the third meal in a row. So to recap, I have a cold, I have a bum ankle, and I have a hefty stomach ache. China is trying to kill me. On the bright side, all the Chinese roommates have been very helpful. When they found out that I had hurt my ankle, they were quick to offer help and advice. Apparently in China, it's impossible to find ice, but my roommate and Muh's roommate both brought me the Chinese equivalent of Icy-Hot. Also, my roommate brought me a walking stick....though I'm not really too up on using it. All in all, I was very surprised at how helpful and patient all of the roommates have been so far. I hope I can return the favor one day.

Last night, there was a group activity called the "Name Chop," where all of the students and their roommates were invited to carve their Chinese names onto a small rock stamp. Traditionally, this is how documents were signed in China. The man who was in charge of teaching us to both use calligraphy brushes and carve our stones was what I would describe as new age. He told us to balance our Qi and breathe deeply. Even some of the Chinese roommates were snickering at him. By the end of the event, I had painted a large character, that I believe means peace, painted my Chinese name next to it, and also stamped the painting in red ink with my newly carved stamp. There is a new picture up on the new picture site of both my artistic endeavor and of all the food that I ate for lunch today. I hope you enjoy!

Bad start to a week.

2006-09-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

It's a monday afternoon, and I'm done with classes. What do I decide to do? I decide to go play some basketball with Muh on the court downstairs. This was a poor decision for multiple reasons: (1) I am incredibly horrible at basketball. (2) I am currently battling a mild cold (3) I ended up rolling my right ankle pretty badly. As these reasons swirl through my head, I sit with my leg propped up on my suitcase and work on homework while waiting for Chinese food to be delivered to me....in China. However, I have been a little productive today. I changed my picture hosting site to webshots, which loads much more quickly. Though, I don't know if the pictures are quite as large. Anyway, let me know what you think of the new picture site. Here's a link: Webshots. I will also put it up under my links section under the name New Pictures.

The Weekend Excitement.

2006-09-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

Last night was a very long evening out on the town in Beijing. Everyone got back from seeing the acrobats at about 9:30pm, which was amazing apparently. Oh well, lesson learned. So, a huge group of us headed out to the front of the school to catch cabs out to a bar called NanJie, which we had been told was a very good local bar. Unfortunately, the cabbie didn't know exactly where the bar was so he dropped us off on a side of the Worker’s Stadium, which is a really huge soccer stadium. So after about thirty phone calls and literally an hour and a half of wondering around, we finally arrived at the bar. It turns out, it’s a bar full of everyone but Chinese people. There were loads and loads of European people, who really enjoyed getting in fights. Right before we left, I helped break up a fight between these drunken Eastern European guys who were about the size of my leg. Also there were a good amount of Americans at the bar. Our group talked to a group of three American guys who were teaching in China and all had plans to go back to the states to study more. I had some pretty interesting shots, one of which was called a Taiwanese Duck Fart. It was pretty good, not the best sounding name though. As it turns out, we didn't get back to the dorm until about 4:00 AM. The best part though, is that my 21^st century Beijing class had a 9:50 AM field trip the next morning to a museum.

Feeling quite wonderful (and by wonderful I mean horrible) I woke around 8:00 AM and wondered down to the bus. The bus ride was about 30 minutes, and we ended up at a museum right by Tiananmen. The theme of the museum was the modernization of Beijing. The museum had a huge floor model of the entire city of Beijing. It was incredible. I felt like Godzilla. The model included all of the new Olympic buildings, which all look incredible. I’d really love to come back in 2008 to see some of the Olympic Games; the city will be incredibly beautiful by then.

As everyone was starving, after the museum, we decided to head to a near by McDonalds. Oh sweet American food!!!! We all had a hamburger and some fries and they were everything that I dreamed they could be. Since we were by Tiananmen again, we all decided that we would go into the Forbidden City. It was a great decision. That place was amazing. We had to pay a 60 Yuan entrance Fee, but it was well worth it. The Forbidden City was a palace for the rulers of China throughout the ages, and is the definition of excess. The place is the size of some towns. Our group walked straight through the compound to the backside. We did very little stopping, and it ended up taking about three hours to go all the way through. It would take days to explore the entire palace! I took plenty of good pictures, but my camera ran out of batteries, so I didn't get everything that I wanted. But Muh’s camera was still working, so hopefully I’ll get some pictures from him. As we were heading back to the front of the Forbidden City to catch the subway back to the dorm, Dan and I noticed a very tall American walking through the City. It was freakin Sebastian Bach (lead singer of Skid Row, an very popular 80s band), you probably know him by sight if you don't recognize the name. It was so surreal. He is playing a show this Sunday in Beijing and was out to see the sights. Dan and I seized the opportunity to get our picture with him. Check out my picture site, there will be a lot of new ones up soon! It really made my week. That’s all the excitement of my weekend thus far. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will involve plenty of sleep!

Whew.

2006-09-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

It's Friday afternoon in Beijing. The first week of classes here at CNU are finally over. That was one of the longest academic weeks I've ever been a part of. I think I can safely say that it was a successful one though. This morning was the first weekly test in my Chinese class. The test consisted of a written portion that tested our memory of new vocabulary and also tested our memory of newly learned sentence structure. The second part of the test consisted of an oral examination. Everyone in the class was assigned a 7 minute period throughout the morning to come into the class room and hand in a written paragraph written about the lessons of the week, and then to begin speaking using the new vocabulary and sentence structures for 5 minutes straight. Needless to say, I made it to about 3 minutes and then got the deer in the headlights look. Thankfully, my teacher began asking me questions in Chinese using the sentence structures that I hadn't used yet, and I was actually able to answer her questions. But overall, I think that I did pretty well. We also had a daily quiz every day this week, which covered about 30 new characters a night and 6 new sentence structures. Studying for those normally takes up all of my evenings all week. Unfortunately, I also have two other classes. So, up to this point, those classes have received very little attention, but don't worry, I'll get into the swing of things soon.
On a lighter note, after everyone had finished their tests, a big group of us foreigners headed down to our favorite little alley that sells scallion pancakes and other baked goodies and had a tasty lunch. It was a really beautiful Friday afternoon, so I took a few pictures. We could actually see the large hills behind the city, which you can see in one of the pictures that I posted today. We then wondered around for a little while, and then the consensus was that a nap was in order. Muh woke me up at about 5:30. Tonight, across town there are acrobats performing, and there was a sign up sheet in the laundry room—a sheet that I failed to sign. So, I'm here all by myself until later this evening. Then hopefully I'll be heading out for a night on the town in Beijing, which promises to be very interesting! I'll definitely update you all on the night scene in Beijing sometime this weekend. Until then, Zai Jian.

Class is in session.

2006-09-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

This Sunday was the beginning of what is going to be a very difficult academic semester. My first classes did not start until Monday, but we had an Academic meeting on Sunday, to hear a little from all the teachers and receive syllabi and our textbooks. Also, the teachers took this opportunity to assign homework. Yes, we hadn't even started classes and we were assigned homework.
Later that afternoon was the opening banquet! All the CET students loaded into a charter bus outside of school and headed for the Marriot Hotel, which was about at 10 minute ride from CNU. The Marriott is apparently a hotbed for American activity. Within the lobby was a Subway (oh the memories from WFU) and a Baskin Robins. Also outside of the Marriot was a "Big Burger," which I hope to get back to after I get tired of eating Chinese food everyday. Don't get me wrong, the food here is amazing (except for the fish...), but I had kung pao chicken at my last 3 meals (people ordering for me), and that gets kind of tiring. I've been hearing that some people get sick after going back to the US because of all the dairy that is used in our food--some sort of lactose intolerance (or so I was told). But anyway, the Marriot was incredible. Everything was marble or shinny. The banquet was very delicious and had all kinds of food and more importantly, the wait staff was amazing. In China there were no real restaurants about 30 years ago, so the whole incredibly-horrible-service phase is still in high gear. If you like yelling at waitresses across the room for extra bowls of rice, then this is your kind of place.
The evening took a big turn for the worst when I got back from the banquet. It was homework time. So, before class had even started, I ended up doing six and a half hours of homework, all of it just for my Chinese language class. This is going to be a LONG semester. Despite the overwhelming amount of homework, I really like my professors. My Chinese professor is a young Chinese woman who speaks very little English, but is very good at conveying her points with hand gestures. My 21st century Beijing Professor is the faculty advisor for our trip. She's from Guilford College (Greensboro), and is about as exciting as a bag of rocks in a room filled with bags of rocks. She is very knowledgeable though. My Philosophy professor is amazing. He's originally from Beijing, but has taught at Clemson for about 8 years I believe. He uses a lot of humor in his discussions and is incredibly intelligent. Here's a quote from when he was explaining the criteria for writing a paper: "If you write, 'because the Bible says so,' then I give you an F. I hate that. Or if you say, 'Confucius is full of bullshit,' I also give you an F."
I hope that I can make it through this semester without going nuts from all the work, but if not, at least I'll be a crazy person who can speak Chinese. Wish me luck. PS I'm going to try to work on the postcards today. I haven’t really had much time to write them yet, but I haven’t forgotten. Zai Jian.

A very long Friday

2006-09-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

On Friday afternoon, several of the other CET students and I set out to have some lunch. When we finished our tasty bowls of beef noodles, we decided to continue walking through the city. Before long, we found ourselves deep in the city. We wound our way through a few narrow allies and eventually found ourselves at the banks of a river. We followed the river taking plenty of pictures until we reached a bridge. Upon crossing the bridge, we were once again lucky enough to stumble upon an interesting part of Beijing. Apparently, there is some sort of fertility park in Beijing, which is filled with sculptures relating to birth and life. The park also contained a playground, except the playground was full of gymnastic training equipment. I did not see a single child, but some old creepy guy did come to the playground and hang upside down from the monkey bars. Apparently that’s cool in China. Yes, I do have a picture of him doing this, just check out the flikr site.
After laughing at the old man for a while, we noticed that there were people actually swimming and lathering up in the river, which may not sound very weird, but this river was a dark green tint that reminded me of the slime from Double Dare. I wouldn't have put my pinky toe in, much less bathe in there. We continued our journey home and eventually came across three boys who gladly let us take their picture (which is also on the flikr site). One of them was carrying a folding chair and the others were eating handfuls of some sort of fruit. It was really bizarre.
When we finally reached another bridge while attempting to return to campus, Muh and I spotted the roof of some sort of ancient Chinese building. We all decided to check it out, and set off to find the entrance. Along the way, I was solicited to buy a cell phone from a random guy on the sidewalk who followed me for about five minutes offering a price of 700 Yuan (roughly $90). It was good Chinese practice, but he was creepy and I didn't need a cell phone, so we parted ways at the entrance to our mystery building. It turned out to be some sort of Chinese art museum. We did not actually go inside, but the architecture and details of the outside of the building were amazing.
We made it back to campus just in time for roommates to begin arriving. It turns out we had been walking for about five hours straight, which is not the best idea before meeting roommates. However, when I returned I was still without my roommate, which was sort of discouraging. So, I headed to dinner with all of the other CET students who had not received their roommates. Upon returning from a tasty dinner (except for the fish dish, which seemed to be some sort of barracuda?) I found my new Chinese roommate and his girlfriend watching TV in my room. So began the awkwardness that is now my life. My Chinese is not good, and his English is not too hot either. So, there is a lot of blank stares and awkward silences. However, they both seemed to be very nice and patient with my lack of Chinese knowledge. His name is "gao ray" and I totally forgot his girlfriend’s name, but our evening ended with a walk over to her dorm and then a long walk back to our own dorm with more exciting awkwardness. But, I think I will learn a lot with the language barrier between us, so I am going to try to take advantage of the opportunity as much as possible.

Apologies and a night in the bar district.

2006-08-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

I would like to first apologize if my previous post was a horrible example of the English language. I was working between scheduled events quickly, and I was incredibly jetlagged. But, I hope it was entertaining none-the-less.
Last night, begin with a tasty meal in a local restaurant. Muh, Jamie, Ashley, and I wondered into the neon-clad restaurant to find three of the other students from the program leaving the restaurant, all three of whom do not speak any Chinese except for John (from wake) though I wouldn't say that he's fluent....Apparently, they tried to point at items on the menu, which they believed to be chicken. When it arrived, the came to the conclusion that they had either just ordered an eggplant dish or a testicle dish. So, with this tidbit of information, we entered the restaurant and scanned the menu trying to avoid anything resembling chicken or testicles. Muh ordered for us, asking for a lamb dish and four plates of noodles with vegetables. Both of these dishes were very tasty and testicle free.
We returned to the dorm and we decided that it would be a good idea to go to the bar district. So, Muh, Jeremy, Noah, john, and I found a pair of taxis outside of the gates of campus and started our journey--a journey that would last 30 minutes. Thank God for the exchange rate. Our taxi only ended up costing $5 USD. Muh, Noah, and I arrived at the bar district and quickly decided that we would never find john and Jeremy who had taken a seperate taxi and began cautiously moving down the strip of bars. This is where I saw a struggling job market in action. Every single bar had three men outside who would approach us and begin yelling "discount!" and "lady bar!" and "deal!" and vigorously point at their establishments. Needless to say, this became very annoying very quickly. When we finally decided on a bar, more out of the use of its bathroom than anything, Muh ordered us three local beers (Tiger), which ended up costing the same as our entire five plate meal at the restaurant which also included 5 huge bottles of beer. So, we quickly decided that the bar district was a one-time journey. After stopping at one more bar, jetlag began to take over and we all decided to head back. This time, Noah and I took a taxi by ourselves back to the hotel. We were given a card with directions in Chinese by CET to get us back to the dorm. I proudly presented the card to our taxi driver, who nodded and handed my card back. On the ride back, Noah, who speaks no Chinese, fell asleep and rolled around the backseat as the taxi swerved across lanes. The taxi driver finally pulled over, except when he did, it was not the dorm. In fact, I had no idea where we were. Panic set in, and i began yelling "bu dui!!" in rapid succession, which means "not correct!" To which he responded, "DUI!!!" meaning this is correct. Somehow with this argument I convinced him to drive a bit further. I then began recognizing the streets and was able to point my way back to the dorm. Man I really need to learn how to speak Chinese. So, for any of you planning a trip to Beijing, I don't recommend the bar district unless you love to burn through your money and be harassed by bar pushers.

Finally in Beijing

2006-08-31T02:28:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since my last post, but I will try to sum up the most important and interesting pats of what have happened so far. The first leg of my journey began with my flight to NYC, which was a delightful flight. Jetblue had directTV screens on the head rests of every seat, so I watched live TV for the entire flight. The two woman sitting next to me, who apparently were martini slurping socialites, knew my aunt, which was rather odd. When I finally did arrived at JFK, I was disappointed at the condition of the airport. For my entire life, I had been led to believe that JFK was a world-class airport. Frankly, I would take the NOLA airport over the Jetblue terminal in JFK any day. After passing through my crumbling surroundings into the bowels of JFK, I arrived the Jetblue luggage carousel, and to my great delight found my first bag on the conveyer belt. To my great horror, my second bag never appeared. Myself and a flock of angry New Orleanians headed to the Jetblue Luggage Assistance area. The five employees seemed scared, to say the least, at the site of the angry mob approaching. After half of us had filled out missing luggage forms, we were told that our luggage was in fact now coming to carousel 4. Apparently the luggage guys were just too lazy to finish unloading all of our bags? I arrived at my hotel in Jamaica, NY one hour and 30 minutes later than I expected and found that I had missed the entire orientation. However, I was informed that I didn't miss much. After a dinner of pizza at 6:30 with all of my new traveling companions, a trip was taken to purchase some adult beverages. I really thought I was going to be shot multiple times on my walk with Muh to the local convenient store. I give Jamaica, NY two thumbs down. So with beverages in hand, the night ended watching a disappointing football game.
The next morning started with breakfast in the lobby and a bus ride to the airport. Despite my comments about the Jetblue terminal of JFK, the international terminal of JFK was incredibly nice, and our plane actually left on time. Seeing as the flight was 13 hours, this was definitely a good thing. My time was spent watching movies, reading an entire novel, 2 magazines, listening to music, eating 2 meals (asian chicken noodle thing and penne pasta with red sauce), eating multiple snacks, and being scared quite thoroughly. As I stared at the interactive map of our flight, the pilot announced that we had a medical emergency on the plane, and that a doctor was needed at the front of the plane. "Great, now we get to land in Alaska to get this dieing person off our plane," I thought. Thankfully, whoever was in need either passed away or recovered, because we made no such stop. We then arrived in Tokyo, where the Wake Forest kids all stretched their legs and I got my first meal in Asia, a bowl of noodles with tempura shrimp. Once again, our flight to Beijing left on time. Once in the air 100% of the CET students had fallen asleep including myself. I awoke to a puddle of drool on my t-shirt (don't worry, it was mine) just in time to enjoy my third plane meal of the day, which was noodles, some sort of beef and some really weird Japanese stuff.
Upon arrival in Beijing, we all trudged through customs and retrieved our bags without incident. We were then led out of the international terminal into the waiting area for arriving passengers, where we were confronted with easily 2000 Chinese people waiting to pick up someone. Ben, the American who is in charge of organizing the CET CNU program waved us over and split up our group. One group was going on to a city 14 hours to the north by train. The rest of us were handed information packets, which contained room keys and lots of other useful information. We then waited for about 40 minutes until our two buses arrived, one for our luggage and one for the people. The people bus was a large white beast, which jumped over bumps in the highway like a frog on speed and nearly ran over half of the smaller motorists in its path. Needless to say, we arrived at Capital Normal University safely. The next step was getting up the elevator to our rooms, which were all either on the 4th or 5th floor. My room, on the 4th floor has a nice view of the basketball courts, tennis courts, soccer fields, track, and numorous high-rises outside of the international campus. After settling in for a few minutes, Muh and I headed upstairs to meet the fifth Wake Forest student in Beijing, John, who had come a few weeks earlier to stay in Shanghai with his friend's family. After about an hour of chatting about our different journeys, it was time for some sleep. After finally falling asleep, I awoke at 6:30 in the morning to take a shower and head down to have some breakfast with the rest of the group. The breakfast was odd to say the least. It consisted of the following: boiled peanuts, a processed meat, boiled eggs, a bread filled with pork (very tastey), and rice pouridge. At the end of the meal, one last piece of processed meat remained on the lazy suzanne device. So, I took advantage of the situation and grabbed the last piece with my chopsticks. At this point everyone was quietly wondering what to do next, and so everyone was watching me pick up my spam treat. So, of course I managed to drop it into my lap before it ever reached my mouth. That's always a good way to impress people. We then headed upstairs to a classroom where we were oriented further and given yet another form of identification by the university. Then came the fun part of the day, the tour of the surrounding city. The weather was amazingly sunny and clear. It did get pretty warm on our walk, but the end of the journey ended at the Bank of China, which made it all worth while. I finally had money! We returned to campus just in time to enjoy a free lunch at the cafeteria, which was a shared meal, like our breakfast, on a lazy suzanne. The food was amazing, we had chicken, pork, vegetable and tofu dishes. All were incredible. I then had just enough time to purchase my internet service for the dorm and set it up. Then came the horrible part of the day, the placement test. I got demolished. Oh well. Then it was time for some Wu Mart action. What is Wu Mart you may ask. It's basically a mini walmart that has anything that you could need.That's been my adventure so far. We are on our own for dinner tonight, so hopefully I'll be having even more tastey food this evening and some chinese beer. I'll try to upload some pictures, but the internet is really slow here, so it may take a while....sorry.

Pre-Departure Update

2006-08-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

As you can see from the picture to the left, I actually did recieve my passport and visa: It's actually happening. I depart for New York at 10:55am tomorrow morning to meet up with my orientation group. By early afternoon on Tuesday, I will be in the sky towards Tokyo. I can't help but be surprised at just how calm I am right now. I realize that I am leaving very shortly to a place across the globe that will be completely different than anything I've ever experienced. The only problem is this information hasn't set in at all. I'm still a little nervous about what to expect, but I don't think I'm really going to grasp exactly what is going on until I'm sitting on the plane to Tokyo. If you're interested in tracking the progress of my flight, I've provided a detailed schedule below: E = eastern time zone, C = china time, J = Japan time.

Leave New York:
E-1:30pm Tuesday
C-1:30am Wednesday
Arrive Tokyo:
E-3:20am Wednesday
J-4:20pm Wednesday
C-3:20pm Wednesday
Leave Tokyo:
E-5:10am Wednesday
C-5:10pm Wednesday
Arrive Beijing:
E-8:55am Wednesday
C-8:55pm Wednesday

Here's my packing list, just in case any one wants to know what I'm bringing to keep myself clothed and occupied in China:
Computer and accessories, books and magazines, ipod and accessories, electric razor and charger, digital camera and charger, webcam, painkillers, prescription medication, cold medication, journals, towel, rain jacket, tennis shoes, sandals, shower sandals, dress shoes, sunglasses, a large supply of soap, shampoo, toilet paper, toothpaste, and proactiv, tshirts, 2 undershirts, 2 long sleeve tshirts, 2 pairs of cargo shorts, 1 pair of blue jeans, khaki pants, navy pants, warm jacket, week of underwear, week of socks, 2 pairs of winter socks, one warm hat, one pair of gloves, 2 polo shirts, 1 button down shirt, sweatshirt, sweatpants, hiking pants, athletic shorts, bathing suit, long underwear bottoms, belt, tie, and of course, the trusty WFU hat.

I'll be online as soon as possible after landing in Beijing and recovering from jet lag. I'll be sending out postcards asap. Wish me luck, I know I'll need it.

Eeeeeek...

2006-08-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

13 days.....and I will physically be in China. Yet, I still don't have my VISA. Yes, we were told that our visas may not arrive until 7 days before our trip, but this whole trip kinda rides on me having a visa. What's the alternative, you may ask. Well, I guess I could work my way up the corporate ladder at Honeybaked Ham for a semester, earning a degree in glazing (very intensive program). Thankfully, I still have faith in CET despite the fact that the head organizer of our trip recently jumped ship to pursue a masters degree, leaving behind his "colleague" to lead us on our academic journey. None-the-less, the countdown has begun in earnest. All that stands in my way is a little more work and a shopping spree. Unfortunately, this spree is for toiletry items, which will last for my entire semester. Apparently some essential toiletries are difficult to find in China, especially deodorant (I hope this is not a strong indicator of my future roommate's hygiene). Speaking of my roommate, if anyone has any good ideas for gifts to bring to my roommate, please let me know. I don't want to seem rude within the first hour of our meeting.

I can't help but feel nervous as the trip approaches. Everyday I begin to feel a little more overwhelmed by the prospect of my trip. I don't exactly know what to expect. I am going to be the MINORITY. I will be a blonde haired, 6'0" freak (ok 5'11") among a darker, tinier nation. Furthermore, I CAN NOT speak Chinese (despite two years of education). Yes, I know basic phrases, sentence structure, ect., but if I were dropped in China I would barely be able to find a meal much less a restroom. On top of that, I would really like to have a career involving the Chinese language. This is a huge opportunity that I really can't afford to botch at this point. So, wish me luck. I'll post once more the night before my flight to NYC. Then I promise the posts won't be so boring.

Thanks for reading and/or ignoring my rants, both are appreciated.

Longest flight ever.

2006-07-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

My trip to China is a mere month away. The question that seems to always come up is, "When are you leaving?". Followed closely by qustions about the details of my flight. So here I am to clear these concerns up. I fly to New York City on August 28. I leave New Orleans at 10:55 am (central time) and arrive at JFK at 2:45 pm (eastern time). The program that is in charge of our travel plans and accomidations in China, CET, asked for all of the students from the five schools involved in the Beijing trip (UNC, UNCC, Guilford, Davidson, Lenoir-Rhyne, and of course WFU) to arrive in New York by 12 noon on the the 28th. Obviously, my flight arrives at 2:45 which is a tid bit late. But after speaking with an employee at CET I was told that orientation really did not begin until 3:00 pm. So, hopefully I can make it to our hotel (I still don't know which one yet) without missing too much of the Orientation. On the other hand, I feel like the orientation in New York, much like the orientation at Wake, will be completely useless. We watched a video at Wake during our orientation that explained that culture is different in other countries. Wow, thanks for the enlightenment. Anyway, sorry for getting off the subject. So, continuing with the flight schedule; We leave JFK airport the next day, the 29th, at 1:30 pm to head to Tokyo, Japan, on a flight that is incredibly too long. We arrive the next day at 4:20 pm (local time). Don't ask me to calculate flight time and time change ect. because frankly I'm lazy and horrible at math. We have a layover until 6:10 pm in the Tokyo Airport, at which point our flight to Beijing begins. We arrive by 9:00 pm in Beijing, where I will either immediately need lots of sleep or alcohol. So there is my flight informatoin. If anyone is interested, I will be flying Japan Airlines, which sounds like a very nice airline (with unlimited snacks and bottled water). That's all I have to offer on that subject so far.

By the way, I changed my picture hosting site (not that I had posted any pictures so far anyway) to the following: Flickr account. There is also a link on the right side of this blog to the link as well.

Goals and what not.

2006-07-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, while thinking (which yes, I do sometimes), I came to the conclusion that "Hey, I'm going to

China

soon and that's an incredible opportunity." With this obvious revelation, I have decided to use my newly constructed/cheesy blog to help me take advantage of this opportunity. How is this possible? Well I'm not really sure, but here it goes. I am going to create and post my goals for the trip, here, for everyone to see. In doing this, hopefully I will be more conscious of my goals AND everyone who reads this will hopefully gently remind me of my goals or scream at me when necessary to stay on track. Thus:

A. Speak Chinese as much as humanly possible while abroad.
-This is my only chance that I know of to really learn Chinese first hand....so yea.
2. Explore the culture of Beijing and any other community of China that I am able to reach.
- I've been very lucky to travel as much as I have in my lifetime, but none of the places that I have been to will be anywhere as different as China. So hopefully I can learn more about myself and others and blah blah blah.
C. Travel in China every chance that I get.
-This doesn't just apply to trips to other cities and to the Great Wall, I want to see EVERYTHING. If someone is going into town to buy dog food, I want to travel with them just to be exposed to everything that I can.
D. Stay in contact with my Family, beautiful girlfriend, and friends.
-Cause lets face it, I'm going to be across the globe, it will be nice to talk to the people that I love, and I think they'll miss me too (hopefully at least a little).

Anywho, those are my goals so far. Feel free to recommend other goals to me. I probably forgot something very important and obvious (which I do quite a bit). Finally, I know that all of you would like to send me care packages filled with awesome stuff....I'm not really sure what, but then again I don't have much of an imagination. So, I'll post the mailing labels that CET sent me below. At least send a card or something (money optional), and you may end up with something from the China.

Chinese version:

中国人民共和国
100089 北京市
海淀区
西三环北路83 号
首都师范大学
国际文化学院
Scott Mannear

Translation:

CET Program
College of International Education
Capital Normal University
83 Xi San Huan Bei Road
Hai Dian District
Beijing 100089
PRC

That's it for now, peace.

New stuff

2006-07-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

So, it's a month and twenty days until I head to Beijing. I don't have too many updates to offer, but a few things have happened since last time. CET, the program in charge of SASASAAS, which is the program at Wake, which is in charge of travel to Asia and Africa (which are two of the A's in that crazy acronym), sent us a 22 page pamphlet to read through about what to expect in China. It basically reminded us that, surprise, culture is different in China. I did find out for sure that I will have wireless internet in the dorm, though I may have to pay for it.....but its cheap. So it will be no problem to stay connected with all my family and friends back home. Also, we were required to pick classes yet again, I'm not really sure why though, but it looks like I'm going to be taking 17 hours. 11 of those are going to be Chinese and the other 6 should be "21st century Beijing" and "Ancient Chinese Philosophy." I was kinda looking forward to doing as little as possible academically.....oh well, it never stops with Wake. On the bright side, I also found out that the school in Beijing will offer extra curricular classes in Chinese cooking, so that should be awesome! Anyway, I'll post again when it gets closer to the trip.

Updates for the trip

2006-04-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

I went to a travel abraod meeting last week and figured out some interesting news. There are four other students traveling to Beijing from Wake. Muh, Jamie, and John, who are all in my Chinese class, are going and also Ashley. The meeting was pretty useless, but we did sign up for the classes that we wanted to take while in Beijing. The selection was pretty slim, but here are my choices:
1. 200 level Chinese Language (I think this is actually several classes)
2. 20th Century Beijing
3. Philosophy of Ancient China (it will get rid of my requirement. yes!)
Backup 1. Buddhism
Backup 2. Sino-Japanese Relations

Also, when I finally get to China I will be posting pictures online. Probably here: http://www.picturetrail.com/sparkees3

First Post

2006-04-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hello, just set up my Blog. I know, my trip to China isn't for a while, but I'm at work, and I'm bored. I won't be updating too much before the trip begins, but check back for details about flights, classes, ect........