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.
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