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/