So, I am back in Beijing now. I did some journaling while traveling, since I knew that I wouldn't be able to update my blog. I tried just posting them on here, but the formatting and the sizes were all messed up, so I will just post them to my Photobucket site's China Album. However, I have not uploaded them yet. As I have written before, the internet at my dorm is pretty slow, so I will wait until I go to an internet cafe (probably this weekend, to Skype video chat with some friends) to upload them. I'll upadate the blog then.

About to head south

I am gonna be going South for my vacation soon. Contact will be sporadic and unreliable. I will leave Beijing on Sautrday morning via a 26 hour train ride, and arrive in Guilin on Sunday around noon. On Monday morning I plan to go to Yangshuo, and stay there for most of the week. On Friday I will probably go to Guizhou for a day or two, and then to Shantou/Guiyu. After that I hope to be in Xiamen for Christmas, and I haven't decided whether I will stay there for a few days or if I will go north to Huangzhou. Sorry that these names are meaningless to those of you unfamiliar with Chinese geography. I probably won't be updating the blog for a while, but I will take lots of pictures. Wish me luck!

A day out with the roomie

So, Ron and I (I finally learned his Chinese name! It's 张文强. It roughly means 'Strong and Cultured') were going to go to the Lu Xun (鲁迅) museum on Saturday, but it was a bit chilly, so we decided to postpone. I ended up going with a small group of CET students to volunteer at a migrant school. A group goes every Saturday, and I had been wanting to go for a while, but I always had something going on. Since this was my first change to go and check it out, I was a little behind several of the other student volunteers who had been going. I was participated in open play time, and I felt kind of useless for a good deal of the time, 'cause all the kids seemed to be doing their own thing. Myself and another CET volunteer eventually starting interacting with the kids, rolling hoola-hoops and having the kids try to kick soccer balls through them, playing jump rope, and the like. I still felt my I was pretty useless though. I really wish that I had brought my circus toys. I could have giving a juggling, or a diabolo demonstration. Maybe even taught some pre-juggling games or exercises (they kids were pretty young, and you know what they're like when you get a bunch of them in one place). I ended up sitting and watching Pinnochio for some of the time with a group of the kids. It was really cute. It has been such a long time since I have seen that, and it was really wonderful experience to see a little bit of it again. Anyway, after that Jamie and hit up Silk Street (the expensive foreigner clothing market on the East side of Beijing) because he had to find a red shirt that he could wear for a dance performance he has coming up. I wasn't planning on buying anything, but I had no plans for the afternoon, and it was an excuse to hang out with Jamie. Besides, it is always fun to play with the salespeople. I ended up buying a pair of athletic pants, because I have wanted something comfy and "loungable" to wear. I have a very small number of pants that are comfortable (and appropriate) to wear out and about, or even just to class or work. I don't want to 'waste' my public pants for a day if I am just gonna hang in the room and study all day. Of course, I have been saving lots of water (and some money ) by washing my clothes... well, not very often. ...Okay it's probably been a few weeks now.

Anyway, Jamie and I grabbed some grub on the way back, and then got ready for the night. We had arranged to go out salsa dancing, so after showering up and changing into something tighter that made me feel a bit hotter I met up with the other kids and we headed out. There is a group of about sic or eight students (four American, four Chinese) which I am a part of. We have been practicing a salsa routine for the past week or two in preparation for a performance on this Thursday, and we decided to put our new skills to use. I gotta say, there are a few things I like a lot about going out and dancing with Chinese students as opposed to with other Americans. First, we take public transit over, since they don't have the money to throw around that a lot of the American students do, and I want to save cash too, so that's cool. Secondly, I get to practice my Chinese skills, so it is a language improving experience as well as a night out. Also, they don't drink or smoke, so I do not feel left out by a group of people who are just pursuing booze, not are they really lustful (that word doesn't feel quite right, but I can't think of a better one), and just looking for a body to grind with, which also makes me feel more comfortable. Finally, since the Chinese kids are so timid and shy, I get to feel like a really wild guy; the life of the party! We spent a few hours at the salsa club before heading out, and I had several nice dances with the girls we came with. I am still not confident enough with my (very) limited salsa repertoire to casually dance with new people there, but can feel that I am getting better, which is nice.

When I got back to my room, Ron was still awake, which was pretty surprising since it was about 12:30 or so. He was partway through an episode of Friends, and I have been watching them with him lately (both as a way to relax in in the evening and as a way to spend time with my roomie), so I sat down and watched too. (Rachel just had her baby, and Joey just accidentally proposed to her. I like Ross a lot better though)

This morning, Ron and I decided that it was warm enough to hit up the Lu Xun museum, so we both spent the morning studying and doing homework (not enjoyable, but I am glad we did, otherwise I pry wouldn't have done it at all), grabbed lunch in the caf, then hopped the buses to a different part of town. We ended up wandering a little bit, since neither of us knew exactly where is was, but we enjoyed walking by the 老北京 (old Beijing) style architecture and the 胡同 (alleyways, but really coolly old-school looking). After asking half a dozen people we found the museum, and for a mere 5 kuai (maybe 80 cents US) spent the next hour or so meandering through Lu Xun's life and works. I'm not gonna go in depth on who he is, but know this: Lu Xun is China's most famous writer, and also a political activist, who was part of various anti-Qing groups at the end of the last dynasty, and played a role in the intellectual ferment that occurred around the time of the May 4th movement and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. An important guy both in terms of literature and the political movement of the early 20th Century. I ended up taking a lot of photos of Lu Xun quotes that were around. I couldn't read most of them, but I figure that when I have some time I can sit down on figure out what they say, simultaneously expanding my knowledge of Chinese, and learning to say a phrase that will really impress Chinese intellectuals. After we had seen all of the display on his life, we also got to take a quick peek at the house he lives in when he was working in Beijing. Kind of cool. There are some signs hanging from bushes and trees: "On such and such a date of 19-something Lu Xun planted this Orchid tree, or rosebush, or whatever". It's kind of cool that they are still around. It must be beautiful during summertime.

After that we wandered around through some hutongs (胡同, those alleys with old school stlye) and eventually grabbed a bus back to the east side of town. Back near the college, we went into a supermarket for a very special purchase... Underwear! I had heard that basically all the Beijingers wear long underwear, and having experiences the preliminaries of Beijing winter I can see (or feel, rather) why! I have never had long, or thermal, if you prefer, underwear before, but it is really comfy, and it definitely keeps me from freezing. I don't think I'll take it off until the flower start blooming in springtime. I also bought a scarf, but I have been wearing the entire time since I bought it. I think that wearing it inside gives me kind of a faux intellectual look (what, am I French?), but I am just cold and I think it is comfortable. I have a coat (got it yesterday morning), gloves, scarf, long underwear, and pants which were bought in China. I am starting to wish I could just trade in my old American bought clothes for new stuff here. I want to get more bought-in-China clothes, but I think I already have plenty of stuff to wear.

One thing I was saving until the end: while Ron and I were at the bus stop way between the the Lu Xun museum and home (we had to transfer once) waiting for the next bus half, a lady who was standing nearby fell forward. I didn't see her fall, but my head snapped in her direction as soon as I heard her hit the ground and her friend, or maybe husband, shout out and cradle her limp body. They way she fell, she must have gone completely limp. She didn't break her fall with her hand or anything, as someone would if they were shoved or if they tripped. The hit the pavement (that's right, the street) at full force with the front of her head. When I got a glance at her face over the man that was cradeling her limp body, her mouth, teeth, and cheek were covered in blood. God, I can almost taste blood just writing about it. Creepy. While he was holding her body, her limbs starting shaking, and I recognized it as a classic grand mal seizure (I am amazed I remember that from 8th, or maybe 9th grade health class, more than four years ago). There was nothing I could do to help, and my Chinese isn't good enough to have tried anyway. He sat cradling her for maybe 5 minutes, and then loaded her on his back and carried her away. She wasn't dead, but it sure wasn't the start of a great new day either. Later, while Ron and I were walking back from the supermarket he told me that people fake that a lot as an attempt to get money, but that sounds like a pretty strange scam told me. I suppose it would be easy enough to get fake blood in your mouth, but I think that girl hit the ground pretty hard. It made me think about a few things. The simpler and less thought-provoking thought is just a reminder of how fragile we are. When I walk around my head is about 5 feet off the ground. A human being and be killed or paralyzed from a fall of as little as 3 feet. Imagine falling and hitting your head on a cement sidewalk with nothing more than the weight of your falling body and gravity. That is enough right there to end a human life. Wow. Skin isn't a very tough substance, and bones break pretty easily. My second though is this: how unfair. First that she should be born with a condition that could cause serious injury, or at the very least great inconvenience, at any moment without warning. Then I expanded it a bit farther, as to hoe unfair it is that some people should be born into a situation when they can deal with negatives (via medication, social connection, or whatever solutions they have access to), while others are born into situations where food, health, love, or even warmth is scarce. The people who run the food stands outside my college are there every night until midnight or so, and it is below freezing while the sun is up. I hate to think how cold it is at 11:30 at night. They sell fruit, or meat kabobs, or little pancake-like things, for anywhere between 14 and 45 cents US. How unfair it is that their opportunities have been such that they are up working on freezing streets of Beijing, likely earning the equivalent of only a few hundred US dollars a year. While they do this, myself and my peers buy soft drinks, pay 30 kuai to get into a dance club for a few hours with some friends and music, pay money for clothes, food, books, movies, games, the more than $100 US that some kids spent to get a turkey a few weeks ago on Thanksgiving... is our need for these excessive frivolities things really so much greater than other people's need for their basic necessities that we can justify using it for us rather than for them? What would it mean for my life if I gave this question serious contemplation and lived by the answer I found? What does it mean about the people who don't think about it?

Dissapointment

So, in addition to having spent more than $1000 in the first month of my stay in Beijing, (and probably another $500 or more since then), within the past week I have lost both my cell phone and a winter coat I bought. I tried to find the phone with no success. I need a phone for work, for casual convenience, and I will definitely need a cell phone in a week's time when I leave Beijing for traveling. I bought another Phone, a sim card, and added minutes for 300 kuai.

I had bought the coat a few weeks ago in preparation for the frigidity of Beijing's winter. The first time I wore it, I took it off to relax while spending some time with friends in the lobby and I forgot to grab it afterward. I went to the housekeeping office, but they had not found my coat, nor a cell phone. I don't want to spend another 200 or 300 kuai on another winter coat, but I am worried that I will freeze in the Beijing winter if I don't.

In addition to these constant money worries, I am gonna be spending a significant amount on train tickets over the course of the next few weeks. I plan to go as cheap as I can on housing and food, but there isn't a way to cut down on travel costs more than the train (which, I have to admit, is pretty cheap in China).

I want to be able to buy souvenirs and gifts as well. It is strange to try and budget tight in China, because I can look at expensive things, translate it back into US currency, and think about how cheap it is. But then I also think of how many meals I could eat with that money. I don't want to spend a lot of money here, because I don't want to return to Kalamazoo for my senior year to find that I have very little money left over. I think I am gonna try and work more during ICRP and spring quarter in order to try and make up some of my losses.

China's Green Beat, Working Out, New Clothes

So, sweet stuff. On Saturday afternoon I went to meet with John for lunch. I wanted to learn about his project, China's Green Beat, and possibly see if there was any way I could help out. He explained his whole game plan to me: he has started with the videos, but plans to expand it into a web community, blog, articles, and eventual income through the selling of advertising space, all focused on drawing attention toward the growing environmental movement in China. The videos are on a bit of a pause at the moment, since one of his cohorts had gone to the U.S. for college, and the other was teaching in the rural parts of another province. Thinking about the kind of stuff he was doing, I had two ideas. First, once I start my internship at INBAR I can introduce the two organizations so that there can be a China's Green Beat video about the ways INBAR is using bamboo for cheap, sturdy housing, and maybe for their poverty alleviation, conservation and biodiversity projects as well. The specific subject matter will be up to John of course, but I could serve as the link to introduce the two groups. Also, at CET every now and then the Resident Director or a teacher organizes a speaker to come and give us a presentation or have a discussion. John came to Beijing on a whim after graduating from college in the U.S., and having never taken Chinese before, he took classes, job a job, and now (about two years later), has achieved competence in the spoken language. Not only having achieved competence in Chinese, but the stuff that he is doing is really cool too! So I am gonna talk to the Resident Director here and recommend him as a potential "come in with a talk and presentation" guy. I hear there is an environmental class next semester too, so that might fit perfectly for a 'guest lecturer.' That's not all I did this weekend though!

Sunday I headed out to a clothes market. I had spent half the morning looking at Antti Suniala's pictures and website, continuing my dream of being a performer. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that I needed some better clothes, so I went to the cheapest clothing market in Beijing (conveniently close to Capital Normal University) to look for suspenders and a hat. I found pretty much exactly what I was looking for, although I had to do a bit of asking and searching before I found suspenders. I am absolutely in love with my new clothes (maybe accessories is a better term) and I am proudly wearing them everywhere. Suspenders have an interesting feel, and I actually have a pair of blue jeans that it just a little too big around the waist. Since this pair of pants tends to slide down over time, my new suspenders are the perfect solution!

So, I worked out last night and it felt really good. I know I have definitely had a slump which I have moved in and out of over the past month or so, but even in the happy times it wasn't this kind of happiness. The best way I can find to describe it is the primal joy of using my body, and of feeling it work, knowing that it is being made stronger. Even when I get together with the juggling club (see photo of Fed, the Italian, being cool with clubs) or hang out and joke around with good friends, that is a different kind of happy. (I'm not saying that working out makes me more happy, it is just a different category of happiness) Back in the U.S. I had a very physically active lifestyle, with dance, martial arts, gymnastics and acrobatics, parkour, and just the general willingness to run and climb rather than walk and take an elevator. But I haven't kept that up in China. I live on the 10th floor, so I think that doing the stairs all the time is a bit much, not to mention it drenches my clothes in sweat and makes me 五 (that's 5 in Chinese!) minutes later to everything.

I spent the first month scouring the city for martial arts places, but mostly I ended up spending a lot of time and money with unsatisfactory results. (actually I think that is a primary reason why I don't feel I've connected to any of my classmates outside the kids I knew before coming here: I tried to make a life for myself in the city and failed while they formed friendships. Now I think it is a bit too late to start getting to know people who I will never see again after next week) Eventually I just gave up, and all the spare time that back in the states I would be doing gymnastics or aikido (or socializing) are spent here in Beijing sitting in my room, studying or reading. (I'm just glad I finally got some English-language books. Be thankful for what you got, friends and family in the U.S.! If it wasn't for BookMooch I'd be intellectually stranded here.) So my life here has been fairly sedentary, and although I still have fairly good figure and whatnot, effectiveness in what I am concerned with, not appearance. I got to thinking the other day: if I want to be a performer (which I do), and I want to go to the Beijing International Arts School （alternate page) this summer (which I am thinking about), I better get stronger and more flexible! It was kind of funny actually, last night when I was doing push-ups in my room (why pay two or three hundred 元 for a gym membership when I already have some open space in the middle of my dorm room?) my roomie walked in and said "你很厉害," which roughly means "You are really intense." It made me laugh, and I explained to him, in my broken Chinese, my desire to be a performer, my realization that fitness is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing (I taught him what that English expression meant too), and my decision to start using it.

I've also been reminded of the fun of physical play due to the construction outside our dorm. Just about every time I walk by and look up at it I think "damn, that would be fun to monkey around on." It is, however, too cold, too dangerous, and moderately populated by construction workers (most of whom are likely part of the floating population, but no legal housing or work permit for Beijing). Still, it would be a very 'spider man' kind of place to play. It is pretty typical of the buildings here to have to be renovated. Our dorm building is only a few years old, but it was thrown up so fast (probably with migrant labor) that it is falling apart already. The door stop in my bathroom actually came off yesterday. It is magnetized to the door so that the door will stay open when you set it open, so when I closed the door I heard this scraping sound. It's kind of like China's rapid modernization: It looks shiny, pretty and new, but the new layer of paint peels off pretty quick.

NGOs and Stars

So, on Friday after our Chinese test we had our weekly Chinese Table (every Friday CET treats us to lunch, the teachers choose some local restaurant to go to, and we only speak Chinese there). We actually ended up going to a local pizza/buffet restaurant called Big Pizza. It's logo looks suspiciously like that of Pizza Hut, (ya know that little red hat? Yeah...) which just makes me think about the lectures I've heard concerning all the copyright and piracy issues in China. While we were sitting there and munching down really strange flavors of pizza (fruit, chocolate and raspberry, shrimp) I got to chatting about plans for the rest of the day, and someone told me about a field trip that the political science class was going on to a grassroots NGO later that afternoon. I've been getting more interested in NGO stuff over the past several months, so I decided to tag along. When we got back to campus, I quick hopped on the van with all the poly sci kids, and we headed out. Honestly, the NGO was a bit of a bore. We got a little talk about how they encourage community discussion, and we heard a lot about the 'street committees' and 'building leaders,' but it didn't really capture my attention they way it could have.

This may seem like it is trailing on a bit, the big news is this: after the presentation and the Q&A session, people got to randomly chatting, and one of the guys that works at this place mentioned how Chinese college students sometimes organize their own 'NGO fairs.' A bunch of non-governmental organization in one place? With motivated college students? In China? I'm there. As it turns out, it was at Beijing Foreign Studies University, that night! Another student was also interested, so we arranged to meet a little before 7, and then catch a bus over there. I munched some dinner at the cafeteria, had a nice chat about NGOs, traveling, and the future with Zhang Qiang (another Kalamazoo student's roommate that happened to be there) and then met up with my classmate to go to the NGO fair. We got to the university easily enough, but it was a big place, and we had no idea where the NGO fair was. We asked the security guards at the gate, wandered around, asked some more people walking around, wandered some more, and finally got a hold of the person who was the organizer via a phone number we had gotten at the NGO that afternoon. We met her at the front gate, and she led us to the room where the event was. When I heard NGO fair I had pictured something like a job fair, or a college fair, or maybe my science fair in fourth grade when I made the fantastic invention of a PVC pipe. But no, this was basically a conference, so rather than wandering around and looking at displays the students were listening to speakers giving power point presentations. My Chinese is still pretty bad, so I am really glad that some of the speakers had pictures to go with their talks. I still hardly understood anything though.

After the speakers where all done, people randomly chatting, and my classmate and I located the only other foreigner in the room to ask about his presentation and his organization. We exchanged emails, and he said he would send us some info. While we were waiting for him, my classmate (Noor), encouraged me to go an chat to some cute Chinese girls that were at the event. I said I would think about it. Low and behold, while I was sitting there sending a text message to Zhang Qiang (more on that later) the one that I though was particularly cute walked over and stood at my side. I supposed that I had better say hi, so we chatting a little bit. She was a freshman there, and one of the people who organized the event. She had really good English, but I still tried to speak as much Chinese as I could. Eventually we had to clear out the room, so Noor and I bid our new acquaintances goodbye and left. On the way to the bus stop (which was just across the street) we ran into a mini-street market! Noor and I were more interested by the book salesmen than the clothes or food, and after taking a look, I have to admit that it was the best selection of English language books I had ever seen in Beijing. Most book stores have English language versions of a few classics (like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Dreams of Red Chambers), but this street vendor had all kind of stuff laid out on his blanket. I grabbed a copy of Freakonomics (for 15 kuai I might add, which means... 2 dollars and 19 cents. I REALLY like this exchange rate), since I had been looking for it for a while, and thought for sure that I would have to wait to get back the US before getting a chance to read it.

So, I'm not normally a "go out and party" kind of person, but a bunch of people were meeting at a specific bar in houhai (后海, a part of town just north of the forbidden city, a pretty big bar area) to hang, and I figured I would go and check it out. Zhang Qiang (who I mentioned before) was hanging out at our college's library, and she decided that she wanted to come too. We grabbed a taxi (the first I've taken in a long time) and headed to houhai, and spent about 20 minutes walking around trying to find the specific bar that my friends were at. I have to admit though, the lights reflected over the water was beautiful, so it was nice to have some time to enjoy the sight. When we finally found it the bar, the room my friends were in was pretty crowded already, and Zhang Qiang said that she would rather stroll around outside, browsing through shops and seeing the beautiful scenery. I would of felt pretty rude if I came all the way to houhai with her and then left her to wander around alone, so I opted to go and walk with her.

We stopped by a few shops, where Zhang Qiang eyes earrings and rings, and eventually bought a little container with pictures from Dream of Red Chambers, which is apparently a favorite story of hers. As we walked around some more, we ended up noticing how the sky was pretty clear that night, and we could see a decent number of stars. Looking up, I started to notice constellations. This study abroad time in China is my first time out of the U.S., and looking up at the sky to see the same constellations in Beijing that I could see from Minnesota when I was little is an amazing experience. I ended up pointing out Orion, and Virgo, and a few other constellations whose names I had forgotten. I told Zhang Qiang about how the ancient Greeks had so many stories about what the stars were, and she said that the Chinese had their own stories about the stars. She ended up telling me a love story about a spirit and a man that couldn't be together (apparently spirit beings can't live with humans? Something like that. Some of it was lost in translation). She also ended up telling me a story which sounded suspiciously like "The Little Mermaid," but she thoroughly denied that it was a Disney story.

It was getting pretty cold, (I was shivering pretty intensely, actually. A passerby might have thought I was having a seizure) so we decided to head back to Capital Normal. It was nearly midnight, so the buses were stopped, and there was no subway station nearby either. We grabbed another taxi, and I took the opportunity to be a gentleman and pay the whole fare rather than splitting it with her. All in all it was a really nice night. I got to have a mini-adventure with Noor trying to find a new place, chatting with Chinese college students after the NGO fair, finding Freakonomics, and taking a walk and chatting with Zhang Qiang.

However, no time to dwell in the past. This afternoon I am meeting a guy for lunch to talk about his project. He has been in Beijing for a few months longer than I have, but he already graduated from college, and he is making a series of environmentally themed video podcasts called China's Green Beat. I emailed him a while back to tell him that I thought his project was really cool, and to ask if I could help out in anyway. Although I've already got an internship/volunteer-ship set up for January, I plan to mention that I could take some video footage of Guiyu (e-waste capital of the world) while I am on my vacation in Southern China. It is something that I did research on last year, and something I pursue with a more serious effort in the future as well. More on my vacation plans next time. Until then, stay groovy Beijing.

Survey from a Chinese student

NOTE TO CET FOLKS: This entry is not the one intended for CET publication. The next one down, concerning WangFuJing street, is the one I wrote with the CET website in mind.

An interesting thing about going abroad: America is big, important, aggressive, imperialistic, and all-present enough that no matter where you go, people will know American politics, culture, and basically just know American life (even if it is a flawed or incomplete view of it). Traveling, you meet other cultures, and knowledge of them (China in my case) isn't a cultural norm for Americans, so everyone I meet knows something about me and where I am coming from. Not just history or popular music, but how people live. It doesn't work the other way around. I have studied Chinese history and politics and international issues and stuff, but what do I know about the average Chinese person's life. How can I know about social issues in China, the kind of issues that can't be learned from a book but can only be learned through experience? 不可能. (meaning: impossible) This knowledge imbalance with all the Chinese friends I meet and interact with is really interesting.

Another student's roommate just came in and interviewed me about Obama, American politics, and institutionalized racism in America. THAT WAS SOO COOOL! First, I felt a little silly knowing so little about the policies, views and stances of our future president, but I felt like I was explaining so much when we started talking about institutional racism and American politics. Just explaining the differences between 'the majority of the people' and 'the majority of those with political power,' explaining how large corporations (which are not subject to election, public oversight, or a limited term) can control the path of politics much more than individual Americans, leftover social structures from a time when racism was more widely accepted and how these structures negatively affect both blacks (see footnote) in America and the public perception of blacks in America, and the vast majority of media images of blacks being strong, dominant, aggressive, violent, male, uneducated, unintelligent role models, and the effect this has on black (and non-black) youth in America. There were a couple classes I took that had info that vaguely related to this (my Freshman seminar mostly), but also talks I have had with my sister, parents, and friends made me feel like I had a lot to say on this topic. I wish I had studied it more though, for there were so many times I wanted to keep going, but I was about to venture into speculation rather than fact (I must admit, a few times I did speak speculations with an authoritative air, 不好意思 {embarrassed})

Also talking about why Obama was elected was interesting. His questions were well aimed (he is an English major, so they were well-worded too!). He asked why Obama was elected president, and what are the requirements for being president, and for both of these answers I think I gave interesting questions. As for why, I eventually decided that it was mostly a situational thing, and the main factor was that Obama was a not-Bush, not-McCain, not-Republican. I think that Hilary would have won too if it was her vs McCain. I'm not say that Obama as an individual doesn't matter at all (although with all the Buddhist reading that I've been doing lately I could go on for a while about how he really ISN'T an individual), his education, (at least perceived, I sure hope it is genuine) integrity and sincerity, and desire for change did matter, but I think that any desire for change in a more liberal (read: Democratic, since the terms are practically synonymous now) direction would be widely appreciated and accepted. I decided that change was the major factor (no wonder he stressed that), since a large number of Americans seem to be fed up with Bush, Neo-Conservatism, Republicans, and America's recent aggressive foreign policy which ignores other countries. Any change in the opposite direction would be appreciated and (I believe) voted for.

We also talked about the requirements for being president. I think that age is the only official one, and I can't remember if it is 35, 40 or 45. I don't think it is 50... But I decided on a few other unofficial requirements as well: money, education, and alignment with one of the two major American political parties. If you don't have cash, you can't campaign, period. (isn't it ludicrously repetitive to both type the word 'period' and then to type a period[.]? Saying it out loud makes even less sense, since we don't vocalize most other punctuation, although I have been known to verbally say 'question mark' from time to time when I want to comically emphasize a question) Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are a good examples of this. They were well-educated, experienced (Gravel is the guy that made the pentagon papers public!), intelligent men, and their policies were of benefit of the American people. Both well-intentioned, but both lacking the funds (also read as: sponsorship) to be a serious competitor. Gravel tried to do the grassroots thing, but it didn't get to enough people. He even tried to convince people not to drink sodas and to donate the money to his campaign fund. I liked the guy, but at that point he was already lost. He was officially excluded from later television debated because he has failed to raise sufficient funds, and if you aren't in the TV debates (broadcast by the major new networks) you might as well not be running. Next up: education. I think that this one is pretty obvious, and bring to mind the fact that these factors are all interconnected (there's the Buddhism again!). If you haven't graduated from college, is anyone gonna vote for you? Even just an understanding of how campaigning works, how the American political system works, and the current problems facing America, as well as potential solutions to those problems require a lot of education. Even outside of attending (most) colleges, you'd have to do you good amount of reading and research on your own to learn about these issues, not to mention a lot to stay up to date of the constantly changing course of international events, and even just domestic economics. Such an education, even just to have the leisure time to thoroughly self-educate yourself about these issues, takes a certain amount of money. Finally, affiliation with a major party. Have we ever had a non-democratic, non-republican president? Okay, okay. Let me rephrase: when was the last time? A quick bit of research tells me that it was... Millard Fillmore, who took office in 1850, associated with the Whig party. (I am passing over Andrew Johnson, possibly one of the greatest slaughterer of native Americans, because his National Union party was just an attempt at a combined Republican and Democratic Party, and fell apart after a mere four years) 好久没有 (roughly: long time don't have). If in this election, a person tried to run as an independent, or as a socialist, green (probably the best chance), libertarian, feminist, or any other party, I don't think they would have made it to the top. The funding, both in terms of corporate sponsorship and in terms of individual donations, between the Dems/Repubs (my fingers are getting tired of my rant/lecture/catharsis) and all other competitors, there is basically no comparison of the amount of money raised for campaigns. An independent or third-party candidate would have to either be a part of, or have support from a (or multiple) major corporations, and although I can't think of a good reason right now (if you know one please let me know!), I don't see this happening right now.

Okay, I have class tomorrow, I have hardly done ANY research today, it is late (here, it is like 10am back home), and I still haven't written my oral test. Man, even in China I don't have enough time for all the stuff I wanna do.

WangFuJing Night Food Market, Languages

So, I've been here for a bit over two months. I still haven't eaten dog, cat, or horse. I even found a restaurant that had dog meat on the menu, but when I asked them about it they said that they didn't have any. Probably because of Olympic things, with the city becoming more "western friendly." It kind of makes me wonder at what point making Beijing more hospitable to westerners starts infringing on Beijing life. If Europeans and Americans come to China and see kids peeing on the side of the street, is that China's fault that the Westerners are offended. In different cultures, I think it is the traveler's responsibility to adapt to the environment, not the local's responsibility to make the traveler feel at home. After all, nobody is gonna force Westerners to eat dog meat if they don't want to offend their delicate Victorian sensibilities. But, regardless of how much I complain about it, the Chinese government (understandably) wants to impress foreigners, and make Beijing more like Paris, New York and Berlin than a third world city. There has already been plenty of discussion on what they are losing in order to become a first-world city so fast, but I still find it interesting to ponder. How much of China is being lost, just to make it more Western, and what is gained and lost in that? It is interesting to study abroad in a place that is changing like this. Not that South America and Europe never change, but I think my friends who are studying in those places may not go through the same kind of things. ...I can't wait to get back together with those guys and hear all the stories. :)

A little while back two girls from Sweden got in touch with me, saying that they had just graduated high school and were traveling through Beijing, looking for someone to hang with. We were planning to get together and watch a traditional Chinese acrobat show. I had asked one of the people running the CET program here about acrobatics, and they said there was a art of town （天桥, tian qiao, kind of means heaven/sky bridge) that was famous for acrobatics. Apparently, back in the pre-revolution days there were all kinds of street performers and stuff there. Anyway, we went to check out this area, but the tickets were a bit more than we wanted to pay. After wandering a few more blocks to check out some other nearby theaters, but they were just various other kinds of theatricals, and we wanted to see some acrobatics (杂技, za ji). We went back to the acrobatics theater... and they were all out of tickets. Although we had planned on seeing an acrobatic show, I was kind of okay with not seeing it, 'cause money was a bit tight at the moment, and I have seen three different Chinese acrobatic shows in the past three or four years, so I think it would just be more of the same. So, we wandered around the Temple of Heaven area for a while, since that is right next to tian qiao, and then grabbed a bus to WangFuJing street. I had been here before, but it was a new part of China for the Swedish girls. They had been in Mongolia prior to this, sleeping in tents with coals in the middle, and starring up at the stars every night. Beijing is a bit different from that. We walked up WangFuJing street, and hit the night food market. This is where the real fun began.

The fact that the Swedish girls didn't speak any Chinese made me feel really cool, since I was kind of like their tour guide. We meandered down the aisle, eying tasty-looking food stuffs, having vendors shout at us, and playing with them lots. As we wandered we had vendors shout out their foods to us, from the mundane fruit-on-a-stick to the guys you couldn't take seriously because they were trying to sell you deep friend bull's balls and chopped-up pufferfish soup. We ran into a group of Westerners who were encouraging another Westerner to eat the bull's testicles, and while the large group was there, the girls I was with overheard the people talking and realized that some of them were from Sweden! Free bull's ball ensued for the Swedish girls. While chatting with people, I found another American, and apparently he was from Minnesota, same place as me! He asked me what I had eaten so far, and Igave him the list: snake, shark, and starfish. I told that I was eying the scorpions, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet. He asked if I would eat them if given the chance, and I told him that I definitely would. Then he offered to but me a stick of scorpions (a lot of the food at that night market is on a stick), at which point I tried to barter with the vendor to get the price down a little, but to no avail. The Minnesota guy was really impressed that I was able to speak Chinese (although a claim that I am practically fluent from someone that doesn't even know the language seems to lack a bit of legitimacy). We exchanged quick stories of why we were in Beijing, and then went on our separate ways. The Swedish girls and I continued on and got fried ice cream, some sugared fruit, and a blowfish, before filling up our bellies. I had a really good time there. We wandered around the rest of WangFuJing a little bit, but most of it is nothing special, just a brightly lit street devoted to the worship of consumerism. Eventually bit the girls goodbye, wished them luck with the rest of their travels, and grabbed the subway back home.

Hearing the girls talk about the school system in Sweden really makes me want to raise my kid (don't worry, that day it still a LONG ways off) at least bilingual, maybe trilingual. In Belgium kids speak German, French, and English. In Sweden they all speak Swedish and English, and many speak a third language. In Hong Kong most students understand English, Cantonese, and Mandarin by the time they graduate high school. Maybe I could move to Belgium or something... At the very least, even if I end up having a family in the US, I'm gonna make and effort to raise a kid with both Spanish and English. Looking at some friends who are where I am (or above me) with Chinese, and also fluent in French or Spanish really makes me wish that I had another language under my belt. I'm still planning on doing a little French during Senior year when I get back to Kalamazoo College, but that is really no comparison to having had taken Spanish classes from elementary though high school, like Jamie, Alana or other people have.

Fall Break Part 3: Whore of the Orient

So, I feel I need to get all this stuff written down before it fades from my memory. It's only been a week or two, and events are already blurring. Curses upon imperfect human abilities of recollection! Arg!

Two things in specific. I remember how Eric told me the stories about his travels and adventures, and what he talked about a good deal that I found especially interesting was his time in New York. His stories seemed to open up a lot of possibilities in my mind. He told me about how he had worked as a bike messenger, which sounded like a really fun job to me, a person that is so physically active and thrives on adventure. Dangerous too, though. He also told me about how New Yorkers kind of hate the bike messengers since they break the laws, take risks to deliver their packages faster, and cut off pedestrians and cars, all in the name of speed. The other interesting job he had in New York that struck my interest was a ninja. And I am only kind of joking about that. There is a resturant in NY called Ninja New York. Funnily enough, the first time I heard about it was from my first CouchSurfing hosts, Mike and Becky, when they showed me a YouTube video about it. (by the way, I really like linking to other pages. It makes me feel to wiki-tastic) He told me about how he worked there, how the tips were GREAT money, how the job was physically demanding with jumping about and such, and how it was so fun to scare people. I am thinking that I might have to live in NY for a while and check out these jobs. Also, he said it is a great place to get going on things, but also a place where it is easy to lose yourself and stagnate. Perhaps after France, Nepal, and possibly New Guinea I'll have to hit up New York for a while.

There is one more event that occurred in Shanghai which is particularly humorous. It involves my friend David, a woman's bathroom, and a flock of very friendly Shanghai girls. We strolled down East Nanjing Road, a major shopping area of Shanghai, very modernized, like New York or Tokyo or something. I hopped a little tram car part of the way (quite literally. I hopped on the outside by grabbing a window. Some Chinese lady inside was a bit shocked), and somewhere along the way we found another hotel. We went inside to see if they had a good map, and to ask about a Salsa club in Shanghai. Although the guy at the counter spoke some English, there was still some trouble communicating, and Dave eventually ended up acting out and displaying physically that we didn't want a bump-and-grind kind of dance club, but wanted a Latin dance club. I laughed at this for a while, and eventually told the guy that we were looking for shā shā wǔ (莎莎舞， Salsa Dance). Dave had to use the bathroom, so we wandered around the hotel lobby waiting for him. Jamie saw a girl playing the piano, and went to talk to her. I was just exploring the (surprisingly large) lobby, looking at some sculpture they had. A pair of Chinese girls came in the door at one end of the lobby. One of them was pretty cute, and I smiled... and then they came over to 'question' me. Why did I smile at them? How come I can speak Chinese? (Shanghai has a lot of foreigners, most of whom I assume cannot speak much Chinese) One of them left to go to the bathroom (free, clean, public bathrooms are a bit of a rarity in China, so places like fast food restaurants and hotels are prime locations for... well, for 上厕所。 I chatted with her for a little while, and when we ran out of things to say (since neither of us was amazingly energetic about the conversation, the cute one had left, and I figured that Dave was done in the bathroom by now). I went back to Eric, Eric, and Jamie, expecting David to be there, but he still wasn't done. We spent a few minutes chatting, and soon David came walking up to us... with about half a dozen young Chinese ladies following him (including the cute one that I had briefly met earlier)! So, apparently the line in the men's bathroom was too long, and Dave really had to go, so he went into the woman's bathroom. When he was there however, he discovered that the stall had just run out of toilet paper (you usually have to bring your own where ever you go in China, but this was a pretty ritzy hotel in one of the most Westernized cities of the continent). He has called out from his stall (in Chinese) "This toilet doesn't have..." but he didn't know the word for toilet paper in Chinese, so he ended the phrase with an emphatic groan. Someone eventually pushed some toilet paper under the door to his stall, and when he finished his business and came out he was discovered to be a man by all the girls in the bathroom (as though his deep voice and hairy arms when grabbing the toilet paper weren't enough). Dave's desperation, combined with his limited ability in Chinese (this is just his second year) was apparently enough to make him seem pitifully cute, because they all followed him back to us, chatting merrily. They were infinitely pleased to find that Dave had friends, and they we talking, laughing at the ludicrousness (可笑, ke xiao） of the situation. They eventually asked us where we were going next, and if we could all go out for coffee together (so Westernized!). Jamie and I were a little suspicious of a tea scam, althogh in retrospect I wish we had gone with them. When I replied that I didn't drink coffe, they tried other options. "Tea? Juice? We'll qing you!" (Culture note: In Chinese culture, it is common to qing, or treat, (请) one's friends and acquaintances, to pay for their meal or drinks. This carries the unspoken expectation that the "qinger" will be qinged in the future.) The fact that they were willing to pay for our drinks was what should have been the sure-fire sign that it was not a scam, but I still had a bad feeling about it. It seemed too unlikely. We eventually turned down their offer and said goodbye (much to their, Dave's, and later my, disappointment).

As we walked outside, we were crossing the street and Dave was telling us how this happened, as we still weren't clear on how David left us to take a shit, and came back 15 minutes later with 5 Chinese girls! He said that he went into the ladies bathroom... and at that point some very flamboyantly accented Chinese guy turned to us and said something along the lines of "You want ladies? I can take you to ladies." We cracked up. We kept asking, and I eventually to get him to go away I told him that we didn't like ladies, we liked boys.

In the lonely planet guide book, which our program sent us in our pre-departure packet before we went to China, and which is also a fantastically useful resource, the first words of the chapter about Shanghai reads as follows: "Whore of the Orient..." Not only did we find it funny, but out experiences (in only a few days, at that) caused that became our nickname for Shanghai too.

On Wednesday morning, Jamie headed over to a special appointment at the Chinese Pod office, while myself and the other guys hit up the Sex Museum. We met up later, cleaned, packed, got our passports stamped, and hopped into our sleeper to go to Hong Kong.

Halloween

So, Halloween isn't a traditional Chinese holiday or anything, but there is still plenty of celebration for it in Beijing. It's just among the foreign community and the foreign savvy Chinese. It was actually kind of funny to walk down a street (granted, it was in a very foreign part of Beijing) and see Beijingers in which costumes and crazy makeup and things like that. I suppose just a little example of the cross cultural influence. We get The Art of War, full use of a dirt-cheap labor force, and Kung Fu, they get factories, zombie costumes, and Kentucky Fried Chicken (which is a big hit here by the way, you can't ride a bud or a cab for more than 10 minutes without seeing the KFC logo)

On Monday I went to check out the Beijing Juggler's Club, which I had found online jsut prior to fall break (the story of which I will continue later). I met the guy that seems to organize the thing （Fed， a chill and talented Italian juggler， although he can do lots of skills， including Diabolo， Silks， Parter-Acrobatics， balancing objects on his head， and probably a few other things as well）, as well as some of the folks who are regulars， who range from beginer to profesional performer， although most people are at the beginer end of the spectrum. There were several people playing with poi, and a few doing balls and/or clubs. One German lasy I met there, Ines is a trick bike performer, but she definitely has some dance and acrobatic skills as well, and I think she is just picking up juggling. I had just got my break down fire staff in the mail, (SOOO COOL! Thanks so much mom & dad!) and when I took it out and starting spinning and tossing it a little a few guys thought it was really cool. I didn't light it up or anything, but Fed was impressed with the lightness and balance of it. Fom a performer and pursuer of circus skills older and more experienced than I to complement it, that makes me think I made a good choice. Homeofpoi.com (use this discount code to get 9% off!: Joe6)has always done me well before. Before I left Fed handed me a few flyers for an event on Friday, "Death Prom." I told him that I would definitely check it out, and when I said that some friends and I had done Michael Jackson's Thriller dance previously, he invited me to come to the practices and join in.

Jamie and Alana and I went to the practices on Wed and Thursday, chose roles as a geek, a princess, and a stoner, and got turned into zombies. The show on friday was fun. It was like a social party with entertaining acts every now and then between old school swing music, but our roles were to infiltrate the audience. ATＩＮＴＥＲＮＥＴCAFEＡＮＤSOMETHINGＩＳFUNKYＷＩＴＨTHEＫＥＹＢＯＡＲＤ，ＰＲＯＢＡＢＬＹＢＥＣＡＵＳＥITＩＳMEANTＦＯＲCHINESEＣＨＡＲＡＣＴＥＲＳ，ＲＡＴＨＥＲTHANＥＮＧＬＩＳＨ,WILＬFINISHＵＰＤＡＴＥLATER.

Fall Break Part 2: More of Shanghai

So, on another morning I got up (relatively) early (maybe 9 or so) to go and check out the nearby 中山 (zhong shan, roughly middle mountain) Park. I didn't see any 空竹 (kong zhu) or 绸子　（chou zi, ribbon dancing), but it was still a nice walk. We met a Chinese guy playing the harmonica, saw a cute kitty (cute kitties ALWAYS attract girls, which this one did too, whom Jamie proceeded to thoroughly charm), and even saw some dancing. Apparently there was some kind of cultural and arts performance going on, 'cause there were people performing some kind of song and play thing, and a while later it broke out into social dancing, during which Jamie and Dave jumped in to completely dominate the middle of the dance floor. A few timid Chinese people even started to mimic their movements, trying to do the kind of 'mock Irish step dancing' that Jamie and Dave were doing. Just another example of how the Chinese people just need someone to show them how to be wild and crazy, and then they can do it too. Just a little situational motivation.

After getting some street food Shanghai's 包子 (bao zi, meat inside a covering of dough, commonly translated as 'dumplings') are huge! maybe three inches across! We hopped the Subway, and then a taxi to head to a travel agent's office to pick up our train tickets for Hong Kong, and then hit up the Shanghai museum. It has a nice collection of old pottery and sculptures, some paintings which I wasn't interested in, and a lot of old coins. The minority art was some of the most interesting stuff, perhaps because they packed the best of a dozen different cultures into one area. There were some REALLY cool-looking masks. After the museum we were hanging around ina nice little public square near the museum when a group of girls approached us. We started chatting, and then we starting walking together. They led us to a tea house, at which point Jamie and I both started to get pretty suspicious. Jamie asked to see the menu, and after a few minutes of insisting he got to take a look. With all they stuff as expensive as it was, we decided not to waste our time with what already seemed like it was gonna be a tea scam.


After this we wandered around to get some cheap food, and then over to a main road to meet some other friends who also came to Shanghai. We meet up with them, and the a few of us went down to the waterfront to reserve some tickets on a river cruise for us all, since that was something that Jamie really liked. The river cruise was cool, although we all wondered why the boat has StarWars: Episode 1 pre-production sketches inside... hmmmm. The view of both shores from night time was nice though.


There are a few events which have gotten muddled together, and I am not exactly sure which day they happened, but they are worth telling. First and foremost, on one day, I think it was one of the first days, we hit the bund (an area of Shanghai by the waterfront), and what appeared to be a communist-era monument. I am sure that we were terribly disrespectful to the monument, but it was so much fun. We climbed, jumped, and scrabbled all over it. Pictures on photobucket can give more details to that. After that, we walked North more, and had a terrible time bartering with a Uighur candy salesman. We wanted just a little bit of candy, and he charged is 60 kuai, a ludicrous amount! The argument was getting so agitated that a crowd was gathering to watch. We eventually just gave him half of what he was asking for, and took half of the candy he gave us. We walked farther north and found a hotel where we asked for a map, and if they knew of any salsa clubs, but they just thought that we were weird foreigners. Granted, we were a bit strange, but we just wanted a salsa club. These people couldn't help us though. Walking out of the hotel, I saw a shop accross the street with strange purple lighting on the inside. Staring at it for a minute, I realized there was a lady, standing inside the door. She motioned at me to come over to her, and then I got to get a bit of a suspicious at to what kind of place that was. I suppose the sign above the shop saying "Pleasure" something could have helped that judgment, but I just hadn't seen it. We laughed a lot, and I had a bit of an urge to go and talk to her, to ask her how many foreigners they get, and what it is like being in that business, just I didn't have the courage.

The sex museum was pretty disappointing all in all, but there were a few interesting pieces. There was one culture that was not only it that a basically impossible position to sustain, they are also on the back of a dragon. Most intense sex. EVER.

I had mixed feelings to find a store in Shanghai with the A in a circle logo. It was cool to see, but was also sad that it, too, has now been appropriated by a corporation. (for those of you that don't know, the A in the circle in a symbol for anarchism, a school of thought which I have been interested in for a while)

There are a few other events in Shanghai which are worth noting, but those will have to be in a different post. I need to go to my philosophy class, and then to a dress rehearsal for a Halloween performance this Friday, "Death Prom", featuring jugglers, dancers, and lots of other stuff. Wish me luck.

Also, if you actually read this, please leave me a comment so that I know you are out there. I'm mostly assumed that it is just my mom and dad reading this, but I would be excited to know who else is reading my adventures, so leave me a comment please!

Fall Break Part 1: Shanghai

So, it has been nearly a month since I wrote a blog entry. I think that I have pretty good excuses for this. I don't remember what my excuse was for the first two weeks, but the next week was mid-terms week, so I was busy studying, and the week following was VACATION WEEK! WOOO! Some fun stuff happened before mid-terms and vacation, like checking out a Buddhist temple for a weekend (I have a particularly fond memory of jogging up the mountain that said temple was on in the moonlight. Quite beautiful), but most of my mind at the moment is preoccupied with things a bit closer to the present, and I want to write about my fall break before I forget the details.


On Friday I had my Chinese mid-term: damn was that easy! I at least expected it to be longer than our regular bi-weekly tests, but it was both the same length (2-3 pages) and was pretty easy. I'd like to attribute that to my good study habits, but in all reality I got tired of studying a day or two before the test itself happened, so my preparation immediately pre-test time was minimal. After all, staring at a stack of 500 flashcards of Chinese words is pretty good motivation to go watch a movie or something. Anything to avoid another mind-numbing cycle of going through flashcards, really. Anyway, after the test, my roomie and I headed to the bank. This is because my account was running low and I wanted to check my activity to see if it was all correct. Unfortunately, there has been no errors or anything. I have burned through 1,000 US dollars already. Shit! Even in China where things are cheap, too many times eating out and too many taxis sure added up. That was disappointing, and I spent a little while mentally beating my self up over it. I decided that I would just use my credit card for fall break, and after that be super frugal. I plan to get a "job" in Beijing teaching English too, to add to supplement the 124 yuan in my bank account here in Beijing. But enough of money worries. On to the fun stuff.

Friday evening Jamie, David, Eric Swanson and I hopped on a train (soft seat) at Beijing Train Station, heading for Shanghai. I slept fine on the train, although it would have been nice if the overhead lights had been turned off. I finished my audio book of "Call of the Wild" while on the train, and we arrived in Shanghai the next morning at about 7. We hopped on the Subway to go to our host's place, and exited out of the wrong subway station (although it was just right across the street from the correct one) and spent about two hours wandering the streets first trying to make sense of the directions, then trying to locate the streets and landmarks, and finally being ecstatic when we managed to locate one of the streets he mentioned. When we arrived as Manfred's place, the door was closed, there was no doorbell, and no one came when we knocked. I was worried that it was a bust, but after a few minutes of knocking a skinny man in a towel came to the door. This was Manfred, and he had just gotten out of the shower. We soon met Shu Shu and Eric Xu, Shu Shu being Manfred's Chinese girlfriend (Manfred is Italian) and Eric being a Chinese-American who had just recently come to Shanghai, and was living with Manfred. We said some hellos, relaxed for a little bit, dropped our stuff off, and headed out. Eric was going to go out searching for a pick-up game of ultimate frisbee that he had located online previously, and when he invited us to tag along we were eager to go. We failed to find the game, but ended up spending the afternoon at Century Park in the Pu Tong area (eastern park of the city). We wandered around a bit, talked, and eventually settled on a spot of grass for napping, since the other guys were tired from having not slept very well on the train last night. I was fine though, so I spent a while talking to Eric about various things. It definitely bordered on being one of those "deep" conversations, and we talked about his travels and work, differences between Chinese and American youth, and teaching and performing. After a while I got up and started playing with my ribbon, and Eric gave it a shot too. The other guys woke up after a while, and we walked nearby to an interesting structure. I think it used to be the center support pole for a tent or something, but now it was just a big steel pole with some cables hanging from it... or at least that is all it would have been to a lesser mind. I saw the potential for play, though. With David's help, we invented "human tether ball." Swinging on these cords got the attention of some nearby Chinese people, and one or two guys gave it a shot, while some families and ladies took pictures and watched. Chinese people are normally pretty timid and shy, but when you provide them with opportunity and set an example for them it is surprising what wild things they will do! Eric was certainly surprised to see the Chinese people participating in our crazy little game of swinging from cable to cable. While leaving the park, in such a good mood from the human tether ball, Dave and I did a little leapfrogging, and got some good pictures out of it too.



We hopped on the subway and headed to downtown Shanghai for the Jin Mao tower, supposedly the tallest in Shanghai, but that info in our guidebook was false! We viewed it from a dozen different angles, and another building right next to it was at least a few stories taller. Nonetheless, we didn't know that yet, and Jamie and Dave wanted to see the top floor, the 88th. I didn't feel like paying the 50 kuai fee for getting up to the 88th floor, so I suggested we try and get to the bar on the 87th floor for free. After taking an elevator up to the hotel lobby, and then another elevator to a second lobby, and then a third elevator up to the bar, we were rewarded with a great view. We had a 10 minute wait (which was spent gleefully gawking out of the windows at the city far below), and then we sat down at a table and were shocked by the prices. I was all for leaving. After all, we had what we came for (the view), so why should be give them ludicrous amounts of money for their food and drinks? But, experiencing tyranny of the majority (not for the last time on this trip, I must say) we ordered a few drinks and a few desserts, ate a helluva lota free munchies which I guess came with getting a table, and enjoyed the evening view from the tower. After that though, we were hungry for some actual food, so we headed to a nearby mall and food court, ordered some fast noodles, and ate 'em up.

I'm a bit tired of writing right now, so I am gonna save the rest for later, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. I am interviewing a Chinese acrobat tomorrow, as well as doing my volunteering for the anti-desertification NGO at Beijing Agricultural University.

Just Living

So, all in all, it has mostly just been life as normal. My internet is down, and I am at a nearby internet cafe, but it is not a very good one. Rather that bringing my own laptop and getting wireless, this is a place where I put down 6 yuan and I get to use their computer for an hour, but it is slow. Granted, faster than the internet I get in the dorm, but a lot slower than the wireless place. I think I may have to go there sometime to upload all the photos I want to to my photobucket site. This weekend was super: Thursday, after my morning classes were over, I went to a market across from the Zoo (only about a 10 minute bus ride). Boy was that crazy. It makes places like the Mall of America look like such kids stuff. This was a random Thursday, and it made the day after Thanksgiving in Walmart seem like a walk in the park. It was literally hard to walk down a hallway at times. The layout of the place was just a concrete floor, with a grid pattern on each floor. There were maybe 6 or 8 floors. Little shops populated the entire area, none more than 8 or 9 feet wide, and maybe 5 feet deep. I ended up buying two pair of pants (one of which is really cool, one of which is too tight to be comfortable), a Manchu-button style shirt, and the most adorable hat that I have ever seen. It is a watermelon! What I mean is, there is a band of green at the edge, and the rest is red with black specks throughout it. My first adventure in shopping, and the whole bunch cost me a little over $20. Although it may be a lot cheaper than I would get the equivalent in the U.S., I still think I need to watch my spending a bit more carefully. I don't want to eat up all my savings while I am here.


Friday after our test (we have a Chinese test every other Friday) a bunch of us went up to the new summer palace. What a beautiful place! A huge lake surrounded by carefully cultivated trees, incredible rock outcroppings, and amazing traditional Chinese architecture. As with all touristy places, people where hawking their goods. I have several people try to sell me postcards, one a kite (Chinese style), some watches, t-shirts, and a hat. I ended up buying a 'Beijing 2008 Olympics' baseball cap, just so I can be sure I get some kind of Olympic paraphernalia.

On Saturday I got up early so that I could get down to Wangfujing (sort of the main commercial district of Beijing, a 'downtown,' or at least one downtown, because a city this big has plenty. The only comparisons are really other 'world capitals' like New York, Paris, Tokyo, and the like.) I was going down there to meet a photographer that I had been in contact with online for a little while through a modeling website, and we were planning to have a photo shoot. Unfortunately, his assistant ended up coming down to the lobby to tell me that he had to leave because his wife was having a baby. Whoa! I wasn't disappointing or anything, as it just gave me a few more hours to add to my mini-vacation that day. I stopped by the foreign language bookstore on Wangfujing and bought an English-language copy of 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' one of the four great Chinese novels, and I have been told the best. There is also a very famous McDonald's on Wangfujing, which used to be the largest in the world. I hadn't eaten at McDonald's in China, and I wanted a place to sit down and do some homework for a few hours anyway. I didn't know of any coffee shops around, so I headed in and ordered some kind of egg, muffin, cheese, and plastic concoction. GOD IT WAS HORRENDOUS! I am amazed that the place is so successful. Maybe it really is one of those 'gotta catch them young' kind of places, because I can't see how anyone would prefer that over a banana, a jian bing (a kind of egg-pancake which is common street food here, and is cheaper than a burger at McDonald's), or even just a PB&J sandwich. Regardless, the second floor of the McDonald's was pretty chill (granted, it was about 9am), and made a very good study environment. I end up writing a two page piece that I ended up using for an oral test, very successfully, I might add. After I got sick of homework, it was off to... well, wander around for a while. There was an aikido class a few stops to the east on the subway that I wanted to check out, but it wasn't until 2:30. I could have just gone back to the dorm for a few hours, but I wanted to spend a day out and about. Eventually I found oriental plaza (it was pretty controversial at the time of it's building, because it is basically a big upper-class mall, and as a basic 'worship capitalism' kind of building within sight of Tiananamen Square and other historically important locations, it was severely unliked by many locals). I wandered around there for a while, and grabbed some munchies at an AMAZING bakery that was on the lower level. I would gladly pay another 6 kuai for one of those cream and strawberry pastries. Mmmmm. Regardless, I got on the subway and eventually found the aikido place. Finding new places in hard with a sort of lack of good address, a lack of competence in the native language, and having never been to a place before. However, I got a change to talk to the teacher, take a class, and I even bought a gi (Japanese martial arts outfit) for cheaper than I had ever imagined, working out to about 20 U.S. dollars. Can't find 'em for less that 40 or 50 bucks in the states. I really liked the class. Since I had done a bit of aikido before, my lack of fluency in Chinese didn't hold me back too much. The format of aikido class (teacher demonstrates, then the students pair up to practice) helped too, since I could see exactly what was supposed to be done, then I had another person to help me do it. It is a ways away though. I timed myself on the trip back, with a 10 minute walk to the subway, a 25 minute subway ride, a 15 minute bus ride, and 5 minutes to get back to my dorm room, that makes almost an hour to get there or back. I like aikido a lot, and the calm atmosphere while learning various joint-locky things really appeals to me, as well as the total lack of arrogance and machismo that is common in many more modern martial arts school, but I don't want to spend over and hour and a half commuting there and back each time I want to go to class. Also, they only have three classes a week, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday evening, which is a little strange, but the weekend classes are actually more convenient for me than weekday evening classes would be, especially considering the commute. Regardless, I want some more info about some places that are closer: one possible aikido school, two possible kung fu organizations, and a one man outfit. I don't want to rush my choice of training location. Observing all my options is my best way to find the best place.



Sunday, Jaime and I had a big day planned. While Jaime went to church on the east side of the city, I headed to 紫竹院 (bamboo park) to play 空竹 （Chinese yo yo/diabolo). The little old lady there, as well as her friends, other people playing with 空竹, were happy to see the foreigner return. I learned some more new tricks, including a really impressive one where I let go of one of the sticks and the diabolo and just released stick spin around to be caught while I continue to play. I can't pull it off cleanly nor consistently, but it is an awesome trick with a lot of potential. Anyway, after that I headed back to the dorm to drop of my diabolo and head out to Tiananmen. I met Jaime there, and we headed to our goal: the forbidden city! Commonly called gu gong (故宫, roughly "the palace museum"), this is where the emperors of China have lived for about the past 500 years. What an amazing place. Walking through here made me feel distinctly different from my friends who are studying in Germany, or Central and South America. I'm not just studying abroad in a different country, but in the capital of an ancient empire, and empire and civilization mighty and influential enough to consider themselves the center of the world, and have nobody call them out on it. It is an incredible feeling to go through these massive courtyards and think back to movies I've seen that have scenes there ("The Last Emperor", and "Curse of the Golden Lotus" specifically come to mind). I haven't got all the photos uploaded yet, but it's gonna be a work in progress for a while. Together, Jaime and I got about 200. There are a fair number of doubles, since we both took pictures of the scenery an architecture, but that still leaves a lot of 'em.

Photos at http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a4/evilgollum/China/

Datong Weekend

So CET organized a trip to Datong this weekend. We went to see the Hanging Temple (built into the side of a cliff, with elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism present), the Wooden Pagoda (a big... well, a big wooden pagoda), some grottoes with a lot of Buddhas in them, and a random town with some random other Buddhist temple. Pictures are up on my photobucket site, and damn! Some of these sights are just incredible. I got a new camera before we left for the weekend. Jamie helped me barter it down to 800 kuai (about $114) for the camera and a big memory card. A good buy, because, other than how fast it east up AA batteries, is is a great camera. Excellent quality pictures, good video, and even sound recording, which I will definitely use for interviewing for my ICRP and for other research projects. I also bartered on my own for the first time (successfully). I bought some jacket that I think will come in handy when the weather gets colder. Aside form all the touristy stuff we did, it was a five hour bus ride from Beijing, as well as a few hours each day to get between cities/temples, so I brought along my Gandhi book and my MP3 player. I am pleased to say that I have finished my Gandhi book, and I have gotten a start on my audio book of Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden'. I am also planning on reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, once of the four great novels of Chinese history, but it is huge, so I think I may not get around to that immediately. While walking through the town, I took a bunch of pictures of the poorer, older China, that isn't shown off to foreigners like the Bird's Nest and the shiny parts of Beijing are. I'm hoping to get them printed up. I think they would make a nice series of photographs to hang above the fireplace someday.


I went back to the bamboo park this morning, the first is a while, and I bought a new diabolo. It is a lot nicer than the one I got in the states. The lady that sells them is also really good at diabolo. She taught me three or four new tricks in 20 minutes. I think I will definitely try to return there on the weekend mornings to learn more diabolo. I could become pretty good by the time I get back to the states. Still looking for a martial arts place, but getting closer. A friend found a place that does Aikido, BJJ, Jeet Kune Do, and some other stuff relatively close. I am excited to check it out, because Aikido and JKD are the things that I would most like to study. The Wushu teacher from Sports University still hasn't gotten a hold of us, which is too bad, 'cause I'd love to learn some crazy Shaolin Staff. I am still thinking about visiting Shaolin Temple during winter break. I finally got the wireless internet working on my laptop too. All I had to do was press 'function F3.' Wow. That was simple. But it enables me to go the the nicer internet cafe, the other being more of a gaming environment where I have to pay to use a computer, and this place being a cafe where I can get their wireless signal on my computer as long as I buy something off their menu. One fruit dish later, I was happily typing and uploading away. Speaking of which, my photos are all uploaded now, and I am getting a bit bored. 再见!

WangFuJing

So, I was originally just accompanying Jamie to an international bookstore on WangFuJing (王府井） Street, but we found another large bookstore first. In there, I got to looking at the classical Chinese literature section. I was already interested in reading Legend of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传), a famous martial arts novel writer by a Hong Kong guy in the 1950s, but now I am thinking about looking into seriously old school stuff, like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (红楼梦), and Outlaws of the Marsh (also called Water Margin, 水浒全传). These are all super intense though, as in, they kind of put the Lord of the Rings trilogy (魔戒, in case you are interested)to shame for being too puny to count as classic literature. However, that was not our only stop. After this we kept walking down WangFuJing street, heading toward the International Bookstore. As we walked, the dark clouds in the distance grew closer, and people started to run. It felt like I was in a disaster movie, or maybe the Chinese version of Godzilla. But soon enough it started raining. Jamie and I sought shelter in a nearby grocery store, but as I should know by now, very little in China is what it seems. It was actually some kind of super shopping center, with different stores on each level, and sometimes two or three on the same level, integrated enough so that it looked like it was one store with different sections. I ended up looking at digital cameras there, but it was a bit expensive, so I told the lady that I wanted to look at other stores. Then she said I could have it for cheaper, and I was really confused, 'cause the price tag said 1,280 RMB, but she just said I could have it (and a memory card) for 1000 RMB. I didn't understand, and tried to clarify. Then Jamie put his arm over my shoulder and lifted the veil from my eyes. She was bartering to get me to buy it. She has already dropped the price that much, so she was willing to drop it more. In the end, I got the camera and a 2Gig memory card for 800 RMB. And I used by brand new debit card (in Chinese they call it a dragon card, 龙卡) to buy it. I had just cashed all my travelers checks and opened a bank account that afternoon. Jamie and I wandered around the store some more, and he eventually got to looking for an umbrella. The store workers were so surprised that we (meaning he, I had trouble even following the conversations) had such good Chinese, that we started chatting. Tired of being labeled a 美国人 (American), I told them that I was from France. We talked for about 15 or 20 minutes, and some guy from the other side of the store who was selling sodas even brought us two free cups of coke. Sweet!

By the time we got outside the rain had mostly stopped, and we found the international bookstore quickly. Jaime wanted to buy some English language children's books for a kid that he was tutoring, and I looking for bilingual versions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but to no avail. I want something with English on one page, and Chines on the other, so that I can both read the novel, and improve my language (although, to be honest, I would probably mostly just read the English. But still...). As we left this bookstore, we walked around a corner, and saw the most wonderful thing: food. 30 or 40 stalls set up, with workers yelling the names of food in English and Chinese, shouting out prices... the WangFuJing night food market that I had been looking for. After walking the length and having many people shout out thickly accented "hello"s, and the names of various meats, Jaime and I shared some shark on a stick, I ate a snake, and he got some lamb's kidney. I was thinking about starfish and scorpion, but they were both a bit expensive. Still, I think it was a good first venture. I will have to go back there to try more wild food. They have squid, various testicles, goat penis, sea urchin, fried banana pudding, fruit with a sugary syrup over it... the list goes on. Some of these workers were really energetic! They would start to prepare the food before you even settled on a price, and some even grabbed an arm and pulled you close to shout their foods to you. Jaime played along with one guy, bartered a bit, and then bought some meat after agreeing on price of 5 kuai. I handed the guy s 10 kuai bill, then he started to try and sell us three for 10 kuai instead of one for five. We shouted back and forth, and when I finally got my 5 kuai of change back, he slapped my arm for being so stingy. He could never get away with that in the states. Somebody would sue his ass so fast! But a lot more stuff flies in China. This evening really showed me how much my listening needs to improve. I couldn't understand most of what people said to me, even though I could speak fine. Something that will just take time. My old camera was broken, and I didn't have batteries for my new one yet, so no pictures, but next time I go to WangFuJing I will definitely snap a couple shots.

Lao She Teahouse, Lama Temple, Paralympic Judo

We have a field trip to the Lao She teahouse today, a touristy little teahouse that has a sampling of various kinds of traditional Chinese entertainment, from 相声 (cross talk, a comic dialogue) to storytelling, a little sampling of 京剧 (Beijing opera) and some 杂技 (acrobatics). I am pretty excited, because I have been interested in acrobatics for a while, and this will be my first time seeing Chinese acrobatics in China. I told a teacher that I was interested in doing my ICRP (integrated cultural research project) and he was very excited, so I might even get a chance to speak with one of the performers, or get the name of a contact after the show tonight.

On Sunday some friends and I went to Worker's Stadium (Only the PRC would give it a name like that, eh?) to watch the paralympic judo finals. Imagine two blind people, who are both highly proficient in their martial art, going at it on the mat. Really exciting. When the Chinese competitors were up, my spine tingled from nearly the entire stadium shouting 加油 (literally means 'add oil to the fire', used as a cheer) in unison. That kind of power from the crowd was just amazing. It was also my first big sporting event, which was cool, and I can say that I have officially been to a (para)Olympic event now.

My classes still haven't been too exciting. The history and politics classes I took at Kalamazoo covered everything so far in much better detail. With the teacher lecturing with as little detail of the events as he is doing, I feel as though I know more, which is disappointment, because there should be a whole class offered here on these issues. But I think that we will soon be wrapping up the 'background info' part of the class and starting the 'contemporary social issues' part of the class, which should be cool. I've also found a few more martial arts places through some English language magazines here in Beijing (published mainly for expatriates, I assume), so I hope to check out some of those within the next week. A few of them look really convenient. Even though several are on the opposite side of town (a judo place is even right next to the German embassy!), they are right next to the subway, which is super nice. I know I've said it before, and I will say it again: I love the public transportation here in Beijing.

On Tuesday, one of my more open weekdays, Jamie (a friend, former suitemate, and future housemate) and I went to the Lama Temple yesterday. Lama Temple (雍和宮) is the biggest temple in Beijing, and it is the biggest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. The buildings were beautiful, and there were dozens of amazing statues, many of which looked more Hindu that Buddhist. There were a lot of pictures that we weren't allowed to take, mostly inside the rooms that housed Buddha statues, but we got a few of the buildings' outsides. The culmination of the temple is a 26 meter (that's a little over 85 feet!) foot tall Buddha statue carves from one single sandalwood tree. It was about four stories tall, and was apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records. Aside from the incredible statues and architecture, one of the most interesting things about the temple/museum is how many people from the city came to offer prayers. Every time we passed a Buddha statue there were Chinese people, in t-shirts, monks robes, slutty looking skirts, punk rocker hoodies, and everything else, holding incense sticks in their hands and bowing the the Buddha. Regardless of whether they prayed for wisdom, good grades, a promotion at work, or to get lucky that night, the duality of the old and new was very interesting. These are people from all walks of life in the city of Beijing, coming to a 300+ year old Buddhist temple to say a prayer. Just another example to the interesting dichotomy between the new and the old that I see here.

I'll try and get some pictures up when I get back to a 网吧 (internet cafe/bar).