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.