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?