Okay everyone, this is my last post, really (except perhaps to say that
some pictures have been updated). Hopefully I'll get to the picture
thing soon. Anyway, this is my final paper, entitled (pretty
ingeniously, I think), The End, which I had to write for the Gardner
project. Though it might be interesting. I'm doing quite fine back in
the U.S. Not suffering from any of the so-called culture shock, though
I suffered plenty from the much more real jet lag. I'm in school now;
that's interesting -- my econ teacher likes to talk about eating
hamburgers while you're naked. He's Chinese too! How appropriate. And
yeah, that's about it for now. I had a great time in China, and I
enjoyed writing in my journal. Hope you all enjoyed it too. And now
here's my final essay -- it probably repeats a lot from the last few
weeks in China, since I had to write, yeah, about my last three
weeks there. And for obvious reasons I skip some of the more salicious
details (like getting hit in the face at the punk concert -- I don't
think I even got a chance to mention that on here -- funny story, I'll
have to tell it sometime). But yeah, that's it. Goodbye everybody!
---------------------------
The End, or Crunch
Time at CET: The Last Three Weeks in China
NOTE: I kept a
somewhat detailed journal of my life while in Beijing, so I’ve culled a fair amount of my report
from this chronicle of my adventures (though edited for my horrible spelling,
even worse grammar, and occasional use of improprieties). Also, I started
writing this while traveling in the wilds of Yunnan after CET ended (because, you know, the
wilds always have a fairly good selection of internet cafes) and finished after
returning to the wilds of North Carolina (i.e., Cary), so hopefully that accounts for any disjointedness in my
paper.
I wasn’t particularly nervous about our presentation to
the Olympic Organizing Committee. We’d already given one to the Pudong government
in Shanghai, and with only one
week’s worth of research. Here I had a good three months worth of research (on
English-language communication in Beijing’s
restaurants – it was fairly fun research to conduct) and a considerably longer
time to prepare and flesh out my ideas than the one frantic evening I’d had in Shanghai.
So why should I be nervous? I went to class as usual that morning (which means
I tried to look excited as we repeated sentence patterns over and over and over
and over), not particularly excited or agitated. I think I spent more time on
deciding how I was going to dress than worrying about messing up (which really
says something, since I only have one pair of dress clothes). But since this is
China,
preparing for my presentation (or rather, getting dressed) ended up a little
more complicated than I had planned:
May. 18th,
2005 @ 09:16 pm . I had a very fun time preparing for our presentation
to the Beijing Mayor's Office and the Olympic Organizing Committee. As you may
(or may not) know, showering every day is, on very rare occasions, somewhat of
a problem for me. Not the actual showering, mind you, I'm fully capable of the
lathering and scrubbing involved, just getting the motivation to actually go to
the washing facilities tends to be an issue. So the fact that I was gung ho
about showering should be seen, by everyone involved in this presentation, as a
very, very good thing. I just wanted to be nice and clean, you know? (and I
hadn't, uh, showered for a few days). But what do I learn, 30 minutes before I
leave for the shower? The hot water heater for the entire school (all the
buildings, not just our dorm) EXPLODED, leaving us with no, no hot water.
But I, since I just love showering so, decided to go ahead anyway. At first I
tried the cold route, but like I said -- no hot water at ALL so I gave that up
quickly. Then I got my pitcher from my room, filled it half full with boiling
water from the boilers, half with cold water, and went to the shower and, using
just that, managed to soap up, shampoo, AND, hear this, condition. I even
shaved using that little method. So I ended up being the only UNC kid there who
had showered. The hot water heater, of course, is going to be out for quite a
while, since this is China. In the meantime, we have THREE electric showers that
can serve about three people showering for 10 minutes, and then take over an
hour to reheat. This serves not only us 80 people in Donglou, but also the 40
or so in Xilou and who knows how many Chinese students they keep on the fourth
floor, hidden away from us. So it should be a fun, uh, week or so.
It took more like
two weeks. But this being China
and whatnot, the death of a hot water heater didn’t really upset me all that
much. Hot water heaters die in the United States
too, and they take a while to replace (though probably more like three or four
days than 12), but China’s
a developing nation and if you don’t have a sense of humor about these things,
well, you’ll go crazy.
But I’m (theoretically)
writing about my Olympic project presentation, not my bathing habits. So when I
arrived, very well-showered, at the Olympic press center, my confidence started
to erode a bit. I’m a pretty nervous person usually, but that doesn’t usually
manifest itself (at least, not the bad type of nervousness) when I’m talking in
front of people, even when facing a wall of video cameras, reporters, and
government representatives (there weren’t actually that many, maybe 10 of all
of them total). I think working for the Daily
Tar Heel did it for me, since I know those reporters (and cameramen and
officials) want to be there as much as I do. But this time, I felt different.
It wasn’t nervousness. It was dread.
I don’t know why,
really. I was much better prepared than my Shanghai
report. But that didn’t make me feel any better. I’m just a college sophomore,
a history major-cum-journalist-wannabe. I don’t know anything about restaurant
management; why should any of these people care what I have to say? A horrible
headache ripped in to me; I don’t know why I was panicking. Lili (our TA for
Professor Zhao’s class) tried to comfort me – apparently, she saw on CCTV a big
group of elementary school student journalists do something very similar to us,
with the same public relations official, and they looked like they were having
a great time. So my report has the same importance as elementary school student
journalists? Not a big surprise, but her attempt to cheer me up didn’t make me
feel all that much better.
But in the end, my
presentation went relatively well, I suppose. My Renmin
University graduate student
partners had come over the other night to help me translate my entire
PowerPoint, so Professor Zhao could concentrate on translating my more nuanced
ideas and suggestions since all the basic description of my project was up on
the screen. Everyone told me that I did a good job. But I didn’t really feel
relieved after giving my project, not at first. I was disappointed. It didn’t
help, really, that some high-up from Renmin
University took the opportunity to
tell my partners how bad a job we’d done (or they’d done – he forgave me
because I was an undergrad and entitled to do a bad job, apparently). But I
kept thinking of all the missed opportunities that I’d had, given the scope and
time period of the project, to craft my report into something I could truly
feel proud of. But as we were celebrating and eating lunch (or I should say
“celebrating”, because we ate Old Beijing food, most of which reminds me of
some evil blob/science fiction villain that I’m stuffing in my mouth) I forgave
myself some – I had done a lot of work and spent lots of time popping in on
restaurants, interviewing managers, and just generally trawling around Beijing
in search of poorly translated menus. It took a lot of time just to do that, so
unless I wanted to dedicate my entire study abroad experience to this project
(and I didn’t, since I also wanted to learn Chinese), I really couldn’t improve
my project all that much. So I suppose ultimately I was happy, or at the very
least content, with my Olympic project.
That evening, CET
hosted a career fair for us. Four people came, three businessmen (and woman)
and a guy from the State Department. Lucky for us UNC students, we already had
our dress clothes from the presentation. But with any presentation that deals
with, you know, how I have to survive after I get out of college, it left me
feeling deflated and a little depressed. The gist of the presentation seemed to
be, “Yeah, Chinese won’t really help you that much, unless you really, really want
to get into business. Other than that, nope, nothing.” Which is a point of view
I can somewhat sympathize with. Business makes the world go ‘round. It’s why
I’m studying economics. It’s why I want to do journalism. But I really, really
don’t want to spend the rest of my life laboring in a little cubicle, working
for some business I really don’t care about all that much. So when business
high-up types (the important people) tell me that the only way I can succeed is
by, well, working for them, it usually doesn’t make me feel too great,
especially since I was already not too thrilled about my Olympics project.
And speaking of Chinese,
the week brought our CET language immersion weekend. I suppose the name is
rather self-explanatory – basically, we’d travel to a relatively remote
location (the town of Miyun, about
a two-hour bus ride away from Beijing)
where we can only speak Chinese, and if we break this rule, we get fined (about
700 kuai) and sent back to CET. I (and pretty much everyone else at CET) was none
too happy about the school threatening us with a monetary fine (I try to
imagine my French class taking us out to the mountains, then fining us 90 bucks
and making us find our own way home if we spoke a sentence or two of l’anglais). So I probably ended up
approaching the weekend with a bad attitude from the start.
Ostensibly, the weekend was supposed to be
fun, and to a certain extent it was. My roommate realized I was in a bad mood
and did his best to cheer me up and make the Chinese-only communication easier
(he started by using English to explain words I didn’t know; when another
student told him to stop, he switched to spelling out words on the [rather
flimsy] basis that English letters don’t REALLY count as English). And we got
to play ping pong (which I lost horribly) and other games. But we still had to
do work, preparing a presentation showing how much we’d improved in Chinese. I
suppose I should be flattered – my teachers (or the higher ups at CET) placed
me in the second level Chinese class instead of my normal beginner one – but at
the time I was just angry I didn’t get to be with my friends and classmates. The second day of the weekend was considerably
more interesting. Each of the groups went to a peasant village near Miyun and
interview random peasants about their lives and aspirations as well as eating
with a local peasant family. The village, I think, was pretty well off – in Shaanxi
province, my friends and I had visited a coal-mining village in the mountains,
where people still lived in caves, but this village had electricity, fairly
large houses, and a pretty good TV-to-person ratio. Most importantly, I got a
chance to really use my Chinese. I found out that yeah, I can barely speak
Chinese, but I already knew that. But I also realized my listening and
comprehension level was much higher than my speaking (as opposed to people who
learn a language just at college). Even though I didn’t fully understand the
peasant who I had to interview, I gleaned enough to answer each of the
questions on my interview sheet (my roommate was actually surprised that I
could do that). Plus, talking to the man was interesting. He told me how he had
just built another house for his parents, and how he was getting ready to send
his daughter to elementary school, and that he hoped she’d go to college and
then go to study abroad in America. It was nice to have a modicum of a real
conversation with a non-English speaking Chinese person (who wasn’t cutting my
hair) about his life and daily concerns, even if a little sheet of paper was
guiding it.
So in the end, I suppose I enjoyed the
language immersion weekend. But once I stepped back off the bus back at CET
(first words in English: “Man, I love speaking English!”) I was faced with the
prospect that, like it or not, soon I had to leave China.
Well, not quite. After the program, my parents were flying over and, after
seeing Beijing, we were all going
to go to Yunnan for a few weeks
and travel around. But still, CET was ending soon; I would have to leave all my
friends, and then in the meantime, my workload was going to model an
exponential function and probably drive me close to insanity. Because not only
did I have my Chinese finals to prepare for (not walk in the park, since
Chinese is, well, kind of hard) and I also had our final American image project
for Professor Zhao’s class. I always felt we rushed into the American image
project to start with. We started planning and preparing for the Olympic
project from day one, and I was conducting research by the third week of
school. But though we talked about the American image
project a little in the beginning, no real planning started until well after
the middle of school, and we actually started conducting interviews with about
five weeks to go in the semester (the gist of the project was interviewing
various Chinese people in different professions and of different ages about
their views on the United States, using our Ren Da partners, of
course). So with about a week and a half left in the semester and the
interviews finally finished and translated (with varying degrees of success)
into English, I got to spend a considerable chunk of my free time in the
computer lab (which by this time contained four or five working computers –
spyware, viruses, and the 8-15 year old kids staying at Beijing Institute of
Education had done a pretty good job on the rest).
And of course,
since I’m just finishing my sophomore year in a pretty intimidating foreign
country, I’m stuck with contemplating what I’m going to have to do to bring the
bacon in after I get out of my four-year college vacation. Once again, my
journal probably says it better:
May. 27th,
2005 @ 07:39 pm. Lately I've been trying to decide what *I* want to do
after college. It's tough. But living here in China for four months, meeting a
lot of interesting people, both Americans and Chinese, and seeing how many
opportunities there are for smart people who are just willing to come and,
well, take advantage of them, has made me realize that I don't want to start
working right after college, or go to grad school right away. I want to get a
chance to have fun and see the world while I'm still young, because traveling
when you're older, while I'm sure is still awesome, is not even close to being
the same experience. So while I have no concrete plans (god knows if I'm going
to come back to China, but since I've put so much trouble into learning
Chinese, I imagine I probably should -- plus there's still a whole lot to see),
I do know I want to, you know, do some living after college, because it's not
expensive, work isn't THAT hard to get, and it can only ultimately make you
more marketable for both businesses and grad schools.
We’ll see what my parents think
of that.
And, right out of
nowhere, the end came. Finals were actually pretty underwhelming. In
retrospect, I don’t know why I worried so much about them. They basically
boiled down to, can you speak Chinese? And, I mean, on some sort of relative
scale, I can’t speak Chinese at all, but for the requirements of beginning
Chinese I’m pretty competent, so there were no problems really. My teacher even
complimented me during the one-on-one, which never happens, so that was either
good or she just took pity on me.
About
this time, my parents also arrived in Beijing.
That was interesting. Seeing them so fascinated by every little aspect of China,
totally overwhelmed by the language, but thinking that every little mundane
moment was an adventure reminded me of what I was like when I first got to China.
And it also gave me a measure of how far I’d come in just four months. My
parents thought my hesitant Chinese I used to order flowers for my teachers was
amazing; I just despaired that I couldn’t fully express myself. But when
learning a language, I suppose it’s easy to forget how far you’ve come and just
concentrate of how much (how very, very much) you don’t know, and I suppose
recently I’d fallen into that trap. I realized how much I’d adapted; from the
first bathroom I went into in the Beijing
Capital Airport,
I never imagined I’d ever get used to the weak sewage system’s inability to
flush toilet paper. Now it was so mundane to me I even forgot to mention it to
my parents. I used to be afraid to go anywhere in Beijing
by myself, and now I couldn’t understand my parents’ apprehension at taking the
subway to Tiananmen or renting a car to go to the Great Wall. Even the Beijing
air (which is pretty much like breathing dirt) I had adapted to and taken for
granted (or rather, forgotten how disgusting it was).
 Then the semester ended. Graduation seemed to last no
time at all. My most vivid memories involve the Western buffet, the kuai we
spent on gigantic bouquets for our teachers, and me having to wing a speech (in
Chinese, of course) thanking our teachers. I think I called them beautiful.
Right
after graduation, Lili herded all of us UNC students into a group of taxis to
take us to Ren Da for our final American image presentation. Now, good stories,
like good paintings (or, well, any type of painting, really) have frames (and
not that I’m saying that this is a particularly good story). Parallelism. A
repeated element to make some sort of contrast between moods, states,
characters, what have you. A Tale of Two
Cities had, yeah, the two cities. The
Iliad has two tough guy heroes. Even Star
Wars has the two Death Stars. So I feel it’s appropriate for my story to
end as it begins, with a UNC presentation. Not that I meant for that to happen
or anything, that’s just how the dice fell and the weeks got chopped up. But especially since this is a UNC program, I feel
it’s somewhat fitting.
The
meeting took place in Renmin University’s
journalism school’s pressroom. It was pretty impressive, too – big flat panel
monitors, fancy hardwood tables, high-tech mics (that I managed to embarrass
myself with when mine kept urning off during my presentation). Ostensibly, we
were to discuss the results of our interviews and then give our Ren Da partners
a chance to respond. This happened for about 10 minutes. But the afternoon was
still interesting, to an extent. For the first time in our class, our partners
got a real chance to discuss what they thought about America.
And it wasn’t really all that good (of course, after doing this project for a
few months, that really doesn’t surprise me all that much). An example:
Jun. 6th, 2005 @ 11:10 am. They
were making a big deal (I think foolishly) out of this internal e-mail at Dell
which said something like, "IBM is now owned by the Chinese communists.
Tell dealers to carry us instead of them". Now, this is a single e-mail
(not even a memo) from a single person at Dell, and the Ren Da students were
trying to say that this showed that the U.S. government was trying to contain China economically. It sounds more like old fashioned
corporate name-calling and competition to me. They just want to sell more
computers!
It would have been nice to get a
chance to respond, but at the very least I enjoyed hearing their opinions.
And
that’s about it. The rest of my weekend was spent celebrating with my friends,
American and Chinese, helping my roommate out, doing some last minute souvenir
shopping, celebrating a little more, and then saying goodbye. I finished the
semester feeling worn out and actually not looking forward to my trip to Yunnan.
But Spring City
is a place to feel refreshed, and as my plane left Beijing
two and a half weeks later to return to America,
I thought something along the lines of, “You know, China’s
not so bad after all”. Which is high praise, really, for a country that makes
itself really hard to love sometimes.
|
Adam is back! Adam is back! Adam is BAAAACK!
I'm happy. :) |
|
So I`m at Narita now )trying to get a hold of Japanese keyboards, which is taking me quite a while). Time`s been passing quite quickly actually -- I bought the Japan Times which kept me occupied for a while, and now I`ve found a computer. God things are expensive here. Well, not that much more expensive than the US, and it IS an airport -- but the lunch I got today I could have gotten for 20 kuai at Yoshinoya -- I think the adapting to costs of living will take a bit ... But on the bright side, it`s quite wonderful being in, ya know, a developped country. I can flush toilet paper! And there are WATER FOUNTAINS. The concept is mind boggling. And on the front page of the paper -- wow, a story criticizing the Japanese government! (and China too, actually, since they used a drug effective againt avian flu on CHICKENS so now the virus has adapted). And wandering around Narita is making me want to visit Japan even more (though the constant ABBA coming over the speakers makes me wary -- but hey, better than Kenny G). But okay, soonish I:ll be boarding a flight for my marathon trip to New York and then on to North Carolina. So yeah, everybody, I`m exhausted, shocked at how expensive everything is, and tripped up on WAY too much caffeine (free refills, so I drank a lot, obviously but I`m overall doing quite a lot, obviously but I`m overall doing quite well. I`m but I`m overall doing quite well. i`m REALLY excited now about coming back, and Ican`t wait to see you all! And the next you hear from me, Iimagine, I`ll be in America! Okay, see you all very soon! |
Okay, so last night I tried updating, but then the computer I was using died, killing my entire journal entry. So I'll try to recreate it as best I can.
So yesterday, we took it pretty easy in the morning. We changed some money, sent some postcards, had a nice American breakfast at the Tibet Cafe, and then around 12:00 we set out for the monastery in the north of town, the most important (and biggest) Tibetan monastery in southern China. Zhongdian is a pretty cool place -- it's essentially Tibet without, you know, all that military occupation. The people are all Tibetan, the clothes are, the language is -- it's, yeah, Tibet. And I have a theory now that the Klingon architecture and stuff is based off of Tibet (wow, I'm a dork). Tibetan architecture (especially temple architecture) is very, well, Klingony -- it's tall, blank, slanting backwards buildings. The the roofs are curved a bit and have random spears sticking out of them. Tibetan swords all kind of resemble their weapons, and even the language, well, it's very angular and knife-like, just like that of the warrior race of Kling. Or whatever the hell you'd call them. That just sounds dumb.
But yeah ... I was telling about yesterday. So we hopped on a public bus to the monastery. While we were walking up the steps, we literally ran onto everyone who had been on the bus the day before -- the young couple, the funny old couple, and the Shanghairen. We chatted a while with the Shanghairen -- they're coming to Michigan for two years in a few months to get MBAs, so we exchanged information and said if they were ver in North Carolina they could stay with us. They were VERy nice. BVut hey, they're Chinese, and from SHanghai. So yes, we finally did make it up to the monastery. It was quite a cool place -- Tibetans are very serious about their religion (unlike most other Chinese, who are just really pragmatic about religion in general -- though the minorities in Xishuangbanna were also pretty hardcore about Buddhism), so it was interesting to see a temple in full effect. Words can't really describe it -- just look at some pictures of Tibetan temples.
The coolest thing was, while my mom and I were walking through an ambulatory in a sanctuary, a young monk invited us back into their sitting area and had us sit down. They he proceeded to ask us a bunch of questions, play with my camera (it looked like he was kind of annoying the older monk with him, since he kept taking pictures) and my cellphone (he thought the ringtones were really cool). Then when we were leaving, he called us down again and talked to us some more, asking us even more questions (like, "Can you take a train to America? How long is it?") He was only 16, and had beena monk for three years. His parents lived in the nearby village, and he saw them every 10 days. Cute kid.
So afterwards, we ate lunch with this Chinese-American named Linda we met at the temple (no relation to Ms. Linda Shen -- at all, really, as far as you can possibly get) who was basically a loopy, hippyish kind of girl travelling China to "find herself". Yay. But she was nice,. which is more than I can say for lots of foreigners (or, I should say some),. we've met. After lunch, we wandered throught the old town of Zhongdian (or Shangri-la now, I suppose), which was cool. It's in the process of being touristised -- I think they want to be a new Lijiang -- but in the meantime, it was still really cool to see an old-fashioned Tibetan town. My mom was especially happy at all the cows wandering through the streets. SHe has a cow thing. And then we ate dinner at a little korean place, and that's how we ended our day.
This morning we had to wake up really early to take the plane to Kunming. We were lucky in Kunming -- we managed to get our flight to Beijing changed to about 6 hours earlier. So we arived around 3 in Beijing and came to CET to get our luggage. I saw Diana here (who's taking summer classes at CET -- poor girl -- they're just starting, having the scavenger hunt tomorrow. It's weird to see everyone so excited, because when I left, well, everyone was INCREDIBLY happy to be leaving) and met up with Lili and Emily the Australian again. Then me and my parents went to dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant in Wudaokou, and they really liked it, which is good because maybe I can get more Japanese food in the states. And I just saw them off, and I'm about to go to the Friendship hotel. Tomorrow I'llhang with Yang, and then Sunday I am off on a travel marathon to AMERICA! I'll see you all soon, and I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog. Of course, I'll probably post more, so this isn't REALLY the end. But I've really enjoyed writing it, so I hope I managed to make OTHER people happy too. Okay, bye everyone, and see you all very very soon! |
Well, we're finally at the Shangri-la (or at least reasonably close to it). Today the bus rolled up to Zhongdian after a rather amazing journey, and I'm in this Tibetan cafe now. Got to eat Yak meat too. The people are all really nice here -- they're pretty much all Tibetan, since, yeah, Zhongdian prefecture is pretty much the start of the Tibetan world, and since it's so expensive to go there, yeah, might as well see here. Tomorrow we're seeing the most important Tibetan monastery in China, so it should be exciting. Honestly, I really never expected that I'd EVER turn up in this part of the world. It's pretty exciting if I think about it -- I'm in the Himylaya mountains (I know I spelled that wrong, but I typed it three different ways and they all looked wrong) at the base of a mountain kingdom of Buddhists (of course, one under military occupation). But, ha, I don't think I usually thnk about that all that much. Usually more like, "God, I need to take a shower," or "Jesus Yak meat is disgusting". My parents both really like it though and want to order more ... yay ...
Anyway, yeah, our journey here to Zhongdian was exciting in and of itself. We started off from Lijiang at 8:30 this morning, on a bus to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Because, yeah, it's the Tiger Leaping Gorge, there were lots of annoying backpackers on it, including our "friend" that we met at the Stone Forest, say again in Lijiang, and now got stuck on a b us with. That was fun. He was complaining, along with his annoying backpacker buddies, that he had to put his huge backpack on the top of the bus because there wasn't enough room (this is a small microbus, by the way). And then in the back, there were a gaggle of annoying Australians and their Chinese guide (who I felt really sorry for) who were mammering on about the most annoying (and somewhat racist, towards Chinese) things. I was sitting right in front of them. It was annoying. But there were also some really cool Shanghairen on the bus, two married couples travelling together, who spoke really good English (all of them) and then an old Chinese couple, who were really funny (but spoke no English). Anyway, it took a good two and a half hours to reach Qiaotou, at the beginning of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. All the annoying foreigners got off, and I was going to also, until I figured we should probably stick with the Chinese. Good idea, also. For ane xtra 10 kuai each, she drove us all the way to the Tiger Leaping Gorge and waited for us there (so we could leave our baggage).
The gorge itself was AWESOME. It's hard to describe. It's near the beginning of the Yangzi river, where it gets really narrow and heads through thin passes in the mountains. There's a ton of white water, and it's about 3000 meters from top to bottom -- it's really quite a site. And because there's a nice stairway all the way down, we got to climb down to the Yangzi, where we were standing about three feet away from Level 5 rapids (it rained a lot last night, so the river was even crazier than usual). I mean, it's hard to describe the gorge -- you can look up pictures if you want. It's probably on the geologic coolness factor of the Grand Canyon (it gets the name because there's a story of a tiger being pursued by hunters jumping over the gorge -- the touristy spot we were at was right there).
Anyway, we met the Shanghairen and the old couple back at the bus, and the bus driver lady (who was actually really nice when the annoying waiguoren weren't there) took us back to Qiaotou. There was no bus station there, so we had to flag down a bus heading towards Zhongdian. We decided to all travel to Zhongdian together because, well, they were nice and we were clueless. We had just sat down to eat at a restaurant when a Zhongdian-bound bus pulled up, so we had to dash out and get on. This bus was a lot nicer -- we could put the luggage underneath, and it was, well, not quite a "real" bus, but better than that minibus. The raod to Zhongdian was certainly interesting. We were winding through the mountains (with no guardrails, of course) and it was quite bumpy -- I was flying out of my seat a lot. We passed a lot of minority villages on the way, which were cool -- don't know which minority (I'm getting Tibetan, Naxi, or Masao, which is related to Naxi). And we got to go through a lot of virgin forest, or so I'm told, because I managed to fall asleep. So we got in Zhondian around 3:30, and, well, we were kind of confused. It's pouring rain out, at my mom was kind of getting in an, er, agitated mood. We decided to follow the Shanghairen to a hotel they had found, but our taxi driver was, well, not so smart and refused to follow the taxi, so I ended up just telling him to take us to the first listed in the Lonely Planet (which they really liked).
This hotel (the Tibet Hotel) is pretty cool -- all, well, Tibetan like. I was only speaking Chinese with the desk man, and he took us up to see the rooms. My mom was complaining, I think mainly because it was a two star hotel instead of a three star (she couldn't really give me a specific reason why she didn't like it). And then the guy gave us a big discount, and while we were paying downstairs he told me (in Chinese), I'm only giving you a discount because you can speak Chinese. And I told my mom what he said, and then said I doubt it. And then the guy smiled and said, "Really." Yeah, he spoke perfect English. Good job, Adam. And then we came to the Tibet Cafe to eat a bit, and now here I am. So yeah, that's it! We're tired, but Zhongdian is pretty cool. It's got an old town too, but is a LOT less touristy. Hopefully it'll stop raining -- everyone says they don't know if it'll rain tomorrow. But okay, that's it for now! I'll be back in America SUNDAY. It's coming so fast. Wow. But okay, see you soon! |
| » In the middle of the pouring rain |
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I'm in the little guardhouse at our hotel now, with a thunderstorm raging outside (it's been doing so for the past, oh, two hours). We were all eating at this little outdoor cafe down by the canal when it started. At first, no big deal, because we had an umbrella. But then we had to relocate to inside the restaurant. The waitresses and waiters were evacuating all the customers outside (and the food and chaun table) by using the outdoor umbrellas and running around (and having a pretty good time at it). Finally, we just ended up sitting upstairs for about 30 minutes watching the rain until it was light enough to run back to the hotel. Of course, the door was locked, but after we banged on it for a while, they opened up. But yeah -- it's pretty cool to be in Lijiang in the middle of a thunderstorm, with all the old houses and canals.
I'm really worn out today. Last night, I ended up helping the fuwuyuan at the hotel with her English and then talking to a Swedish guy until well past midnight (and then wrote postcards and watched a cheesy Chinese TV series after that), and I had to wake up early, so I'm kinda beat. Today, me and my dad rented bikes to go to Baisha, a village not too far (about 10 kilometers from here). The ride was pretty easy, but my dad was hurting -- guess he's getting old. Village was pretty cool -- lots of hay and animals, but the houses were still all in the traditional Naxi style -- it was surprisingly scenic for a farming village. After that, my dad and I had a drink at the Sakura cafe again and see my friend. Then we met with my mom, I passed out on the bed (from tiredness) and we went to dinner. Thus taking us to the beginning of the story all over again. It's cyclical-like, huh? Cool, methinks...
Anyway, early tomorrow morning we're taking a bus to Qiatao at the tiger leaping gorge, and then continuing on the Zhongdian, which is the beginning of the Tibetan world. So it should be interesting! Hopefully I'll have computer access there. And yeah -- thunder is REALLY big now. Okay, see you guys really soon!
Jun. 14th, 2005 @ 09:00 pm
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| » Never thought I'd see my dad have to use a breathing mask, at least not until he was, like, 80 |
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Lijiang's an awesome place. I had a really good day today, though I'm pretty tired. So we all woke up this morning and had the hotel's free breakfast, which was, of course, horrible, since it was a Chinese breakfast. And since my parents are still horribly addicted to coffee, we wandered through the old town for a little bit to find a cafe (and here I also had toast and eggs, which made me happy too). So after a little of that, we headed to the north of Lijiang to go to the black dragon park. No reason you would've heard of it -- it's just a cute little park with a really, really good view of Snow Mountain (the full name is Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, and it probably translated better to call it "ice-capped" or something like that, but it's always translated as "Snow Mountain", so I think it's kind of funny because, well, that's SUCH a horrible name. Like Wet Lake, or Salty Ocean, or .. well, I was going to type something mean about Sarah, but I won't :)). My mom insists on taking pictures of all the Chinese little kids she comes across. Pretty weird. She sounds like such a voyeur, because she talks to herself and says things like, "Good, they don't see me ... just keep doing that, yes, keep doing that ... soooo pretty....". Of course, it all fairness, whenever Chinese parents with their little babies walk by us, they make their kids wave their hands and say "Halloo" and "Bai bai!!!". I feel bad for the kids. But my parents really love it.
Then we ate Naxi food again for lunch, and we finally got to try the fried goat cheese my mom's been, uh, craving or something for a while. You can imagine how that tastes. I think she's going to make us eat Yak meat tomorrow. I can hardly wait. Anyway, after lunch, we hailed a cab and got him to take us to the oft fabled Snow Mountain, which is a whopping 5800 feet tall, making it, I think, easily taller than any mountain in America. It's pretty touristy (and expensive! jeez, it was expensive), and they have a cable car going all the way to 4800 feet, where there is actual snow, and they even have SLEDDING. Now, at 4800 height, most people get altitude sickness, and we all did. I had it the least, my mom second, and my dad -- well, wow. He could barely stand up. It was so bad for him that he had to buy a little aresol can of oxygen to breathe. But it was really awesome. I've never been up that high before in my life -- I got to see glaciers, peaks above the clouds, and, yeah, get altitude sickness. And the cable car ride was, well, pretty cool. Great views of the entire valley here at Lijiang.
So after that we returned to Lijiang and went to eat Japanese food at this restaurant on the canal called Sakura. It was nice, I suppose, and I made a new friend there who I have to write a postcard to when I get back to the states. Then we set off and started wandering the old town of Lijiang. And got lost. All the alleyways are, well, labyrnthine, I guess would be the word, though I don't like it. It really is a cool little city. Reminds me of Europe, kind of, except that people are a lot friendlier (and Chinese). ANd everywhere, there's the little canals trickling beside the streets. My mom bought some Naxi handicrafts that are pretty cool, and my dad and I smoked a Yunnan cigar-like object (don't know the actual name though).
So yeah, I've been having a great time here. Travelling in Yunnan has reminded me when I love China. Studying in Beijing with all the stress and idiocy from CET was getting to me, I guess, and I forgot that, you know, there's an entire country outside of my anal retentive school. But I'm really excited coming back to America too! Mainly so I can see all the people I've missed for the past four or so months. And I shall see all you soon! Until then, goodbye!
Jun. 13th, 2005 @ 09:51 pm
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| » Muddy biking, and in the mountains |
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I'm in Lijiang now, which is an old cobblestoned city with winding alleyways and canals (complete with goldfish desperately trying to swin against the current). It's a really cool place, but the areas we've seen so far have been quite touristy. There's a lot of Chinese and foreign tour groups flooding the area (doesn't seem to be so many individuals, but then again, they don't stand out as much). Tonight we ate at a Naxi restaurant (the minority that lives here, a pretty sizable one at that) and then went to see a Naxi concert, which played their folk music and also traditional Chinese music (which I, honestly, cannot stand -- it's SO horrible), but it's cool because this is the only orchestra in China playing on original instruments, because during the Cultural Revolution, the Naxi burried them so they wouldn't get smashed and burned. Smart people. We had to travel all day to get here, flying from Jinghong to Kunming and then to Lijiang, and the airport was pretty far away from the old town at that. So I'm a bit tired (and I'm using the hotel's computer -- it's an awesome hotel. It's a restored courtyard house located on a hill overlooking the old city. Purdy awesome) and I don't know how much more I'll be writing.
Yesterday, all three of us went biking through the rice paddies and paths between villages, going to a few temples and towns. And then me and my dad biked along the Mekong River. His bike, though, lacked a good seat, so he's pretty much giong infertile. It was so desperate, he had to stuff his shirt into his underwear (which looked, well, interesting). Fun stuff there too. And it was raining for a good part of our biking (and also completely sunny) so, well, I was caked in mud by the time we were done. Like, literally caked in mud.
But okay, that's enough for now. I'm very tired -- sorry I'm writing so little. Hopefully I'll post again tomorrow. Good night!
Jun. 12th, 2005 @ 10:29 pm
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| » Holy shit, I'm in a freakin' rainforest |
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Okay, I've been getting a lot laxer about updating my journal as I've been travelling. Sorry about that. It's a lot harder to do when there's not a computer lab sitting right next to you and I actually have to build up the willpower to seek out some type of internet cafe. So yeah, sorry about that.
Also, for the past five days or so, I've been sick, really sick the day before yesterday and yesterday, to the point where I just lay in bed for a significant portion of the time. It was pretty bad, though I'm pretty much over that now. My dad is sick now, though, but I hope it's just diahrrea and not whatever bug I had. But okay, enough of that. We're in Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna prefecture in Yunnan, near the border with Vietnam, and it's probably the coolest place I've been, ever. It's literally a town in the middle of the rainforest -- flying in, we saw green hills stretching out in every direction, the Mekong river, and then buried in a little valley this out of place town. It's very laid back here, pretty relaxing, as far as Chinese cities go. There's palm trees planted on all the street corners, not too much traffic, people always out and strolling around. The people are almost all minorities here (Yunnan is the province with the highest percent of minorities in China, almost 50), so people are all dressed in their ethnic costumes, and they for the most part look much more southeast asian than Chinese. They are, I suppose, and lots speak local dialects closer to Thai (all the signs are also in both Chinese and Thai).
Yesterday, I napped for a bit when we got ehre because I was still feeling really bad. In the meantime, my parents managed to find this cool little cafe (where I am now) called Meimei's, which is run by this woman named Orchid (ah, Chinese names). It's an awesome place that caters to foreigners; she's really nice and helpful too, scheduling trips and doing tickets and whatnot. So after they met up with me again yesterday, we went back to Meimei's to buy tickets for an ethnic show in the evening, and then we went to a Thai restaurant to eat. This is the first time, I suppose, I've had real Thai food,a nd I guess the good news is it's not that different from Thai restaurants in the states. I just wish my stomach had been in a more, uh, accepting mood so I could have eaten more of it. And then after the restaurant, we went to get our tickets and go to the show. Oh, the show. My parents both thought it was awesome. I, uh, have a more mixed opinion. I've been to shows like this before -- flashy colors, cheesy music, scantily clad women (and men, in all fairness) dressed in local (and just bizarre) costumes doing dances, acrobatics etc. etc. etc. Of course, the BEST (I'm being sarcastic there) part was actually before the show, when of course, they have the obligatory "embarass the audience" section. So they had a bunch of scantily clad Dai girls (and boys) doing a wedding ceremony, and they called up three "volunteers" to compete to see who could do it. I was pretty much homefree, until one of the Dai girls, standing near us, started yelling "Laowai! Laowai!" (the politest word for foreigners). We were the only foreigners there, so I knew I was screwed. The contest was pretty simple -- the girls all held hands and then tied themselves up in a knot, and we had to see who could get them untied the quickest. I won, probably because the girls were all helping me (they kept some, "Come here! No, here!"). Of course, if I had known that "winning" would mean I'd have to do MORE stupid things, I don't think I would've wanted to. So then I was the groom in a wedding ceremony. Great fun. At least I knew it was a wedding ceremony (she has a red head covering on). And all this time, the host is asking me questions -- in Chinese -- so I'm really stressed. At least I understood "Laopu" (wife). So I have to carry this girl around and drink lots of ricewine. Lots of fun. I know my parents really enjoyed it. The show itself was nothing special, I thought. Ridiculous costumes, cheesy music, water splashing (they had to do an imitation water-splashing festival, of course). But like I said, my parents enjoyed it. It was entertaining, I suppose.
And then today. My dad couldn't come because he's sick. So my mom and me came to Meimei's to meet our guide (Rush). He speaks really good English -- his mom was an English teacher -- and he said he really likes taking foreign tourists around. His wife is a tour guide for Chinese, and he said she makes more money, sicne they go to all the big sights and buy lots of crap, so she gets a cut, but foreign tourists like more of the hiking and backpacking, which doesn't involve, yeah, the cheesy souveniers (though I suppose we've bought plenty; they're just in Beijing). We rented a van to go out into the coutnry, and it took about an hour and a half over bumpy dirt roads through the rainforest to finally reach the Dai village on Mandian. All the minority villages here are really cool looking -- they're all built up on polls, and the people ahve really colorful clothes on (some of them -- some of the Dai just dress like Chinese). So we started to hike with Rush to the Mandian waterfall. At first, I thought it was going to be pretty easy, but then we were trekking on the side of a very large drop into rapids beneath -- sometimes, the ledge was about a foot, and everything was really wet and slippery (it is a rainforest, I suppose) -- I tripped once, but fortunately, no ledge there. After that, I was pretty much scared that I was going to die on the hike. But it was definitely worth it. The scenerey was awesome. The trees had their roots all growing up them, there were cicadas everywhere, ants and all other rainforest creatures scurrying about. And the waterfall itself was awesome -- you just have to see the pictures (and video, since I took one). We chatted there for a while with Rush -- he's an interesting Chinese person. His views are very, well, Western, in terms of government, Taiwan, Tibet, etc. He's also an environmentalist -- he's from Wuhan in Hubei (a very big city) who moved down here because he loves the environment and the quiet. It seems like he really likes his job.
After we got back to the village (the entire trip took about three and a half hours) we paid a Dai family to make us lunch. It was surprisingly good food (considering the peasant food I ate in Miyun). Their house was also pretty nice -- they had a rather big TV. Rush says that the minority peasants around here are pretty well off, as far as peasants go. The trip back was equally bumpy, and yeah, that was about it for our day. Now I have to go get my haircut and stop using Meimei's computer (and hope my finger gets feeling back -- it just stuck my some sticker in the jungle and now, yup, no feeling). Okay, hope everyone is doing well, and I'll see you all very soon -- 9 (or 10) days! Bye!
Jun. 10th, 2005 @ 04:46 pm
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| » Down in Spring City |
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That's what Kunming is called here, and yeah, it's a good name, because even though we're at the very south of the country, it's still so much cooler and breezier than Beijing. I'm in a crappy (actually, pissy, judging from all the scents wafting in through the windows) internet cafe tucked away in the back alleys in Kunming. Interesting place. And I still need to finish writing about what happened this weekend. Mayhap I'll get some time to do that tomorrow.
We stayed in a hotel near thje Beijing Capital Airport last night. Wasn't too much of a big deal. We didn't have any trouble checking out of CET -- the shifu even gave me a big plastic bag to put our two smaller bags in so we'd only get charged for one. It was weird, seeing CET so deserted. I had said goodbye to everyone earlier. Pheobe started crying when I told her in the afternoon.
Okay -- they're hungry and complaining. I'll have to finish this later. Bye!
Jun. 7th, 2005 @ 08:20 pm
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| » Zai jian |
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The past few days have been crazy. I'm afraid that in the 45 minutes I have left before the computer lab closes, I won't be able to even begin to describe all the thing's that've happened. But hey, what the hell, might as well try. So okay, my parents got here Thursday night. But Thursday morning, I first had my final written test, which I imagined must have gone somewhat well, since they gave me a diploma Saturday (and no, not everyone got a diploma -- that was entertaining). And I had been really sick the day before, so the testing itself, well, it went a lot better than it could have been. I made it through. And then Thursday afternoon -- I don't actually remember what happened. Must not have been all that interesting, I suppose. I probably putzed around a lot. Which leads us to Thursday night, when my parents got here. Of course, CET managed to screw it up. THey wrote them the address to CET -- not to their actual hotel. So the taxi driver did his best to follow the instructions, which apparently he did a very good job, but in the end he ended up at the wrong place. So CET sent them to the hotel where most parents stay, the Xindadu, which is closest (and not theirs). I, being the, what, nice filial piety-like son I am, got to the RIGHT hotel an hour early and stayed there waiting for them. For an HOUR AND A HALF, until the Xindadu gave me a call, saying, "You, where are you?! Your parents have been here for an hour and a half!" But then they realized that my parents were at the wrong hotel and were somewhat nicer. So I went and met them and we sorted it all out, and they ended up at the Xiyuan and everyone was happy, except I went to bed around 1:30 because of it. And that marks, I suppose, the beginning of my crazy weekend stretch.
So Friday, I woke up really early to do my oral exam, which once again went well. I spent so long blabbering about my life at CET that the dialogue was just two questions. Pretty easy. Once again, my assumption is that I did pretty well, because, well, I passed. We were having our graduation ceremony later in the day (at 11 AM) and the office had given us (100 level class) 40 kuai to buy our teachers a gift, so my job was to buy them flowers, Tom's to get them picture frames. So we both went to meet my parents and then we split up. They came with me to the flower store and then left to see the Forbidden City and the surrounding area. Ahh ... I think I don't know how much flowers cost. At first, the woman was like, 12 kuai! And I thought that was really really cheap, so I got two bouquets to give each teacher. Yeah, it was 12 kuai a FLOWER -- I spent 300 on the flowers themselves, then another 100 on the vases for them (and 40 for the picture frames from Tom). I mean, wow, lilies are expensive. But at least, I suppose, we got them a really nice gift. So me and Tom got back just in time to change before we had to go to the graduation, which was at the Marco Polo Hotel (near Tiananmen). Oh, what a buffet we had. Western and Chinese food, and it was DELICIOUS. I ate so very much, even though I'm going back to America, in, what, 15 days? Maybe less that that. I'm very tired right now. But the graduation was nice. I got to give a speech for our teachers (in Chinese of course), which I didn't prepared so it was like, "Thank you very much. You're very good teachers, very, uh, awesome, hard-working, and, uh, pretty". Way to show off. And TONS of group photos -- an uncanny amount, I might say. We said goodbye to Jiao laoshi there -- she actually seemed sad. I'll miss her. I suppose I had a lot of fun in that class, even though it was way too troublesome, we started too early, and, yeah, it was pretty boring sometimes. But my teachers, especially Jiao, were great so it made up for it, I suppose.
Then right after graduation, all of us UNC people and Lili rushed into taxis to go to Ren Da for our little conference to end our American image project. I got an example of how goddamned hot Beijing can be -- on the taxi ride, the driver's butane lighter EXPLODED from the heat. Fun stuff there. Freaked me out pretty good, since I was right next to it. The conference was, well, not too interesting. All of our Ren Da partners, along with some media and a few Ren Da professors were there. Ostensibly, we were to talk and debate about the findings of our surveys, and that's how it started (I had a fun time getting my mic to work -- Juliana and Lili thought it was pretty funny, me making a fool of myself). I only said one thing the entire conference. Of course, it pretty quickly degenerated into Professor Zhao and Zhong illuminating THEIR views on the China situation. And our partners got a chance to talk for once, which was interesting. They were making a big deal (I think foolishly) out of this internal e-mail at Dell which said something like, "IBM is now owned by the Chinese communists. Tell dealers to carry us instead of them". Now, this is a single e-mail (not even a memo) from a single person at Dell, and the Ren Da students were trying to say that this showed that the U.S. government was trying to contain China economically. Right. But yeah, it finally ended. I got to leave early, actually, because my parents called me and I had to go out to the gate to meet them for dinner.
Okay ... lab is closing. I'll finish tomorrow! (I hope) Good night guys.
Jun. 6th, 2005 @ 11:10 am
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| » Almost done! |
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I'm almost done! I finished the first half of my Chinese final, the written test, and I turned in my final UNC papers. And I bought the plane tickets to Yunnan today. AND my parents are arriving tonight at 11 -- I have to go meet them. So everything is wrapping up nicely. By Tuesday I'll be in the rainforests of Yunnan, by the 20th, I'll be back in North Carolina. I can't wait. I think I'm really getting sick of being in China. Probably the fact that I'm sick now isnt' helping (but I'm getting better -- I feel a whole hell of a lot better today, and they stopped the incessant hammering above my room).
The past week has been really, really busy. We've had three UNC papers to do, preparations for our UNC finals, and all the normal moving out stuff (which I really have to do right after this). Plus, I've been sick. So I've been a little bit stressed this past week -- I really just want to go home, I suppose. Anything interesting happened the past week? Well, this is bad of me, but I've played qutie a bit of WarCraft III against Yang, and Tom, Gian, Bocong, and Ted (who's pretty much like Satan, good ol' Prince of Darkness, who comes to my or Tom's door and says something like, "Come on ... you know you want to play ... you know you want to..."). Saturday night I think we stayed up until 5AM playing ... not one of my finer moments, I suppose. What else? We went on Friday to see an acrobatics performance. It was pretty cool, and a bit unnerving -- there was a 12 year old girl who was basically sitting on her head. Lots of it was like a circus performance, though the martial arts acrobatic were pretty cool. It was better than I had expected (though I suppose I wasn't expecting all that much, considering it was a Chinese tourist attraction).
I guess that's about it. Classes ended. We have graduation tomorrow. The Chinese roommates move out on Saturday. My parents are arriving. Yeah, that's my life for the next few days or so. Hopefully, I'll be completely better tomororw, but we shall see. And in the meantime, I'll talk to you all later! And see everybody pretty soon (a few weeks?) Bye!
Jun. 2nd, 2005 @ 04:59 pm
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| » Sick |
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I'm sick. It sucks. I've spent the entire day, pretty much, lying on my bed, miserably staring at the ceiling. The goddamned VIBRATING ceiling, since they're doing construction work right above my room. "Construction work" apparently means hitting the floor with a hammer over and over and over again, so yeah, that's been my morning. And I have my FINAL tomorrow. Great stuff.
In other news, well, okay, stuff has happened the past week or so, I'm just in no shape to write about it right now. My parents are coming tomorrow, and I have to go change some traveller's checks to pay for our flights. Fun stuff there. Then tomorrow morning I have my 2-hour written test, Friday I have my oral test and my two UNC papers due, and CET graduation, AND this stupid conference for Zhao's class. It'll be fun, basically. But then I'm done, I suppose, and off to Yunnan on the seventh. Maybe I'll write about the rest of week later. But okay, bye everyone, and see you all soon.
Jun. 1st, 2005 @ 05:24 pm
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| » San pei xiaojie -- drinking, chatting, and fucking, or last night (okay, it's not THAT bad) :) |
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Don't know the characters, sorry. Well, I don't know what pei it is. But my teacher got to explain this concept to us (and this is Jiao, the old one) after we told her about our evening last night -- or I should say Mark's evening. A xiaojie is, well, literally a Miss, and you used to use it just like you use Miss in English (like, instead of yelling fuwuyuanr! at all the waitresses, you could politely call them xiaojie) and in some circles (like a very fancy restaurant) it still means that. But the more common usage today is prostitute, and if you call, "xiaojie, xiaojie" to a waitress, it sounds more like soliciting prostitution than, say, asking for more kung pao chicken. So the san pei (san is three) is basically drinking with, chatting with, and fucking, and Jiao had a fun time explaining to us exactly what that meant and how most good restaurants (especially those targetting businessmen and foreign tourists) utilize san pei xiaojie. So on to our evening last night!
We have a lot of work now. My UNC class is coming to a head at the exact same time as all of our Chinese finals, so I have THREE major reports to do now, all due by the end of next week (and we have a two-day mega-final in Chinese next week as well). So us UNC kids are, understandably, a little stressed out. For once I seem to be dealing with the stress better than everyone else. I've got some sort of Daoist calmness about me this week; probably just so pissed after last week that I don't have any energy to extend on being pissed. Oh, and I skipped class yesterday instead of go in really, really tired, so that probably has worked to make me rather happier this week. So as I was saying, we'r eall rather stressed, and some of us (not me) are starting to stress out that they haven't experienced enough of China, or something like that. Maybe it's because I'm travelling after the program or maybe because I don't think it's particularly fun to cram activities into every minute of your day. Some people are trying to comfort themselves for their perceived lack of, uh, "experiencing China" by insisting, "Oh, yeah, I'm definitely coming back. Right after college, coming back and teaching English." Which, you know, very well may be true. But "definitely" to me is a much stronger word than, "Oh, yeah, it'd sure be nice if I could". I somehow doubt that most of those people are coming to come back and fulfill their plans, including one CHINESE major (whose spoken Chinese is about MY level, which is, you know, just sad, especially for someone who's taken four classes already). Mmm, don't know why I'm being so negative here. Lately I've been trying to decide what *I* want to do after college. It's tough. But living here in China for four months, meeting a lot of interesting people, both Americans and Chinese, and seeing how many opportunities there are for smart people who are just willing to come and, well, take advantage of them, has made me realize that I don't want to start working right after college, or go to grad school right away. I want to get a chance to have fun and see the world while I'm still young, because travelling when you're older, while I'm sure is still awesome, is not even close to being the same experience. So while I have no concrete plans (god knows if I'm going to come back to China, but since I've put so much trouble into learning Chinese, I imagine I probably should -- plus there's still a whole hell of a lot to see), I do know I want to, you know, do some living after college, because it's not expensive, work isn't THAT hard to get, and it can only ultimately make you more marketable for both businesses and grad schools.
But okay, that was totally unrelated to the subject of this post. Last night. So because we're all rather stressed, or most of us are, rather, we decided to go to a Xinjiang place that has dancing girls, snakes, and belly-dancing. Sounds pretty good, right? So Susie picked this place. I should have known to fear from the beginning. That's Beijing even describes it as "Over-hyped and now overpriced" but the girls insisted in was going to be a good place, and since other peole had gone too (it's called Afanti), I figured it had to be good. Problem one: the other CET people who had gone had eaten at ANOTHER restaurant with belly-dancers that must have been somewhat good, because even Linda had a good time, and if someone even mentions sexual exploitation of women, or, say, the word "boob" (not really), she flips out. And this place was big on the exploitation. Duanwei came with us also (10 of us altogether). I wanted Yang to come too, but he has one of his tests required for graduation this evening (the other is tomorrow). He's starting just about now -- he won't be back until late. So Yangyucheng has been rather nervous lately, and trying to cut back on his World of WarCraft addiction, which I imagine must kind of be like quitting crack, judging from his reaction.
Getting off topic again. So we went to this restaurant. Took a very long time; our cab driver got lost. It was in the Sanlitun South area (which should of also made of quiver in fear, since it's the main place for expats to, well, hook up with each other, or with the famed san pei xiaojie of lore). Suze had made reservations for all of us, which was nice, I suppose -- we had a table right up close to the stage. Troubles started pretty quickly -- the menu was RIDICULOUSLY expensive. We ended up getting an 800 kuai set meal that was meant for only SIX PEOPLE. So for 80 kuai, I got a ridiculously small amount of decent food -- for 80 kuai at the Xinjiang place near us, I could eat until my stomach swelled to the size of, I don't know, something really big, like, shit, a bathtub or something. And then the show ... oh, the show. So they had this female MC, dressed in traditional Xinjiang clothes (which are actually pretty cool looking). She had this really thick accent (she talked in English, of course, because the place was a tourist trap -- looks like the dropped off busloads of old, sketchy Westerners, my favorite type!) and she said things like, (imagine a thick Chinese accent now) "You have all these BEAUTIFUL ladies to choose from! Which will you choose to share a ROMANTIC moment with?" Right, pimplady. So basically, they chose random foreigners to come on the stage -- almost always men, and more often than not old ones -- to dance with the "belly dancers". Definitely in quotes. Because, okay, they had this one (very very attractive) American girl on stage with them at one point, and SHE could belly dance probably 10 times better than any of them could.
But okay, so down to the just simply embarrassing parts. Mark. Oh, Mark. So the first time they got him up there, I can't really blame him. I mean, they were looking for a random foreigner to dance with this stripper-belly dancer, and Mark was their john. He made eye contact. Bad idea. I was starting down at my plate as hard as I could. It helped. But I guess he just enjoyed it too much. It's all on tape. When they pulled him into the back room you can hear me yelling, "God NOOO! NOO! DON'T GO IN THERE!". We've reviewed it. But the SECOND time. Mark was loving it, I know. He does love the Chinese girls, especially the minority ones as he always tells me (and everyone else). So they got a bunch of foreigners to come up this time, and they were looking at our table -- I'm pretty sure they were looking at me or Tom, but Tom shook his head no a lot and I was staring at the wall, so Mark was their most eager pick, again. This time he got to do many embarassing things with many more people (and the hot American). The best, which is again caught on video, involves him TAKING OFF HIS FUCKING SHIRT. Really. He took it off and was half naked on stage, dancing with the sketchiest belly dancers I've ever seen. Oh my oh my. I was honestly embarrassed to be in that place. It'd be better if it were either a lot cheaper or a lot less sketchy (the foreign old men and sketchy businessmen didn't help the atmosphere either) but that ended our wonderful sanpei evening -- with, the best to my knowledge, none of the san pei being achieved.
Oh, and then Susie got on top of one of the lions guarding the front of a bank and the guards ran out to yell at her to get off. Gian explained to them that, "Sorry, she's just retarded".
But okay, that was my evening last night. Got to go watch Princess Leia in a gold bikini now -- Tom and Lili are watching (mm ... a date?) and Tom was like, "Adam, come NOW." And I'm partial to slave girls tied to Jabba the Hutt, so I'll be going. ANd I've written 11 more postcards, so those shall be on their way. Sorry about the pictures -- I don't know what's up, but Webshots is having weird problems or something. Oh well. Sorry for the long post (and profanity). There's just no good verb for copulation. But okay. Goodbye!
May. 27th, 2005 @ 07:39 am
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| » Speakin' English, and it feels so good |
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Or writing English, anyway. I'm back from the language immersion weekend, and, well, it was better than I thought it was going to be. But on the converse side, it also wasn't all that great. So the moment we got on the bus Saturday morning (which was very early, and also quite rainy) we weren't allowed to speak any English. I actually didn't have that much trouble with it. Yang was actually very hyper; I think he's just a lot more comfortable speaking Chinese (or maybe he was just unusually happy this weekend), so he was helping me a lot, by writing words in English (and telling me sometimes, but our little Chinese police -- name withheld in case s/he reads this -- actually told Yang to stop [this person is a student] -- when he said ONE word in English, telling me "countryside". Yang, being the smart man he is, just started spelling words out for me (aloud) after that, or waiting until the Chinese police weren't around). But yeah, I don't think being able to only speak Chinese actually cut down on the amount I talked, though it certainly made me say ... stupider... things. I suppose. Certainly didn't sound like a very intelligent person.
But we went to this restort in the twon of Miyun, located in the mountains around Beijing, by a giant resevoir. It was nice and peaceful there I suppose -- not really a village, since there were a lot of town and vacation homes for people in the city to escape to. And it was raining. So once we got to Muyun -- took a little more than two hours -- we seperated into our groups (I was with the 150 class) and went to lunch. Food at this place was DISGUSTING. It was country-style food, which apparently means, yeah, really bad food and really weird dishes -- and a lot of fish. After lunch, we rested for a bit and then went to group meetings to plan for a presentation in the evening. So I was with the 150 kids, three of them, and they wanted to basically malke fun of their class in their skit, which is good and whatnot, except that I'm not IN their class and didn't share in any of these experiences (plus, some of the 150 kids I find really annoying). So I ended up being the narrator for their presentation (Yang, somehow, managed to avoid it completely). On the bright side, I could understand everything the 150 kids said, and, with the exception of Rob, I could speak as well, if not better, than them, which was a little bit heartening. They knew a few new words that I didn't, but that didn't end up being such a big problem.
After that, we were free for an hour and a half or so and then dinner. Me and Yang tried to play DDR (ate our money though) and then House of the Dead 2 (also ate our money) -- they had an arcade. But we didn't have free game time yet, so we mainly putzed around -- played football in the rain until the guard kicked us of, and then watched TV in our room, first Chinese TV I've really watched. And let me say, Chinese TV has a LOT of ads for breast enlargement. A RIDICULOUS number of ads. Linda tells me that in all of Asia, breast enlargement is pretty big business. Obviously, judging from those ads ... So then dinner, which sucked (again), and then we got to go play games. I played ping pong a bit with Mark, and then I had a pretty bad headache so I went to climb the mountain right near the resort. The path up the mountain was rock, but it was pretty long (took about 45 minutes to climb) and all, obviously, up hill. It had an awesome view of the resevoir, which was a flooded out valley, so in the middle of the lake there were the tops of mountain peaks. Very pretty view. BUt it was getting dark VERY quickly, so I had to rush back down because it would not be fun coming down that in the dark. So I got back down without incident, but by now it was time for, duh duh duh, China Night. But I ended up having fun. 100 level's skit was hilarious. The basic idea was, the guys dress up as the girls (except Tom, who was very sick, and me -- we got to keep out dignities) and the girls as the guys and they both made fun of each other. And the guys went all the way with it -- you'll have to see some of the pictures of Yang feeling up Eric's fake boobs. So the "guys" went to Hou Hai to pick up waitresses, get drunk, and throw glasses in the lake, and the "girls" talked about shopping and clothes. Ours was about, well, switching up everyone's role in class, and it wasn't really all taht funny, except for Rob's performance, which was inspired (since he forced Tang laoshi to play him and he played her and then he, uh, yeah, berated her). Other hilights -- Ted's group did the entire Star Wars: A new Hope, with Ted playing seven different roles (and the two other people each playing one). That was probably the next funniest. Everything broke up after Chian night, since no noe was all that interested in dancing to Chinese techno and singing Chiense karaoke, and Team B quickly bought out their beer supply. Fun stuff.
So Sunday -- woke up early, ate a crappy breakfast. Nothing surprising there. Then we went to the countryside (which was not that far away) to do a project with peasants. I was in a much better mood this day, so that was certainly good. I was with the 150 kids again, and we went to this peasant's house to get our assignments, and then split up to do the interviewing. We had to ask basic questions like what they did, hopw much they made, whether things have changed, their kids, etc etc. And my interview went surprisingly well. I went with Yang, so he could help me, but even with the peasant speaking really quickly (or rather, normal speed) I was able to understand about 60% and I answered every question on my own. So that was good. Seeing a village was very interesting. Mind you, this is not really a normal village -- it's near Beijing and it's located very near a major road. So a lot of people wer einvolved in construction and other manual labor in towns nearby, so they were slightly better off. But the houses were fairly big -- Four people (and two little kids) for four rooms, since he had recently bought another house nearby for his parents. And the kids all go to school, and all stay through at least middle school, and many more through high (not so many do the college thing though). The food the peasants cooked up was also really interesting -- mainly vegetables.
So after seeing the village for a few hours, we got on back on the bus and headed back to Beijing. I am running out of time -- still got to do my homework! now, so I'll have to leave the rest for later. But good night everyone!
May. 23rd, 2005 @ 09:32 pm
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| » May the force be with you... |
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So last night, a whole bunch of us (probably about 20 people or so) went to see Episode III. Well, first, we had a total nerd fest in the reading room -- we ordered pizza and watched episode 1 and 2 right before (and during episode 2, fast-forwarded through most of the really awful scenes, most involving Anikan and Padme, which made the movie a lot better). Edward and Ryan kept arguing about the most pointless Star Wars minutiea, for example, if humans can speak Huttese. Made me feel better about my coolness, honestly. But I ended up actually really enjoying Episode II -- I thought it was a pretty good movie in its own right, and in some senses, it's the best of all the Star Wars movies (and certainly the best of the new trilogy). But of course, we went to a midnight showing, so the movie got out at around 3 in the morning, and I ended up going back with Lili and eating some late night jiaozi with her at the 24 hour store, and then talking with Mark for a while, so I wasn't in bed until after four in the morning.
And I had a test the next morning. I actually woke up around 6 in the morning, because that's when construction here in China starts (yay), so I turned off my alarm -- and fell back asleep. I overslept my test by like 20 minutes and had to rush there, but I still managed to finish in time (and I think it was the best test I had in a while,s icne I studied a lot during Star Wars the other day). My teachers gave me the first oral because I was late, but then Jiao told me I did really well, which she NEVER tells me, so that's pretty good.
In other news, I've been REALLY pissed the past week or so, for a variety of reasons (this stupid trip being near the top). I, uh, kind of went crazy this morning when the construction woke me -- I think I was actually screaming, though I don't remember that well. But Tom and I went to talk to Adam today about how ridiculous the threats they were giving us were. Tom, of course, acted like a little politician, saying stuff like, "Yeah, I understand bla bla bla" while I was like, "That's just stupid". But it didn't accomplish much. Adam even tried to pull the, "Well, you didn't have to sign up" which is total bullshit, because none of us in 100 level (save Mark) DID sign up, and then he and Zhu Li came and told us "they didn't want to make it required" and that we were "strongly encouraged to go". So yeah, pissed about that. So tomorrow morning, nice and early, I'm heading off to the shithole of Miyun to only speak Chinese. Fun stuff.
And I guess that's about it. Talk to you all later.
May. 20th, 2005 @ 09:01 pm
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| » Presentations done!, showering, and god CET is a bunch of assholes |
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So the presentations are done! But first I had a very fun time preparing for our presentation to the Beijing Mayor's Office and the Olympic Organizing Committee. As you may (or may not) know, showering every day is, on very rare occasions, somewhat of a problem for me. Not the actual showering, mind you, I'm fully capable of the lathering and scrubbing involved, just getting the motivation to actually go to the washing facilities is my problem. So the fact that I was gung ho about showering should be seen, by everyone involved in this presentation, as a very, very good thing. I just wanted to be nice and clean, you know? (and I hadn't, uh, showered for a few days). But what do I learn, 30 minutes before I leave for the shower? The hot water heater for the entire goddamned school (all the buildings) EXPLODED, leaving us with no, no hot water.
But I, since I just love showering so, decided to go ahead anyway. At first I tried the cold route, but like I said -- no hot water at ALL so I gave that up quickly. Then I got my pitcher from my room, filled it half full with boiling water from the boilers, half with cold water, and went to the shower and, using just that, managed to soap up, shampoo, AND, hear this, condition. I even shaved using that little method. So I ended up being the only UNC kid there who had showered. Whoo! The hot water heater, of course, is going to be out for quite a while, since this is China. In the meantime, we have THREE electric showers that can serve about three people showering for 10 minutes, and then take over an hour to reheat. This serves not only us 80 people in Donglou, but also the 40 or so in Xilou and the god knows how many Chinese students they keep on the fourth floor, hidden away from us. So it should be a fun, uh, week or so.
And the presentations of course. We started off pretty unprofessionally. Well, I mean, we are fairly unprofessional, but I think it looked pretty bad. Professor Zhao was late to meet us at the gate, so we got to the Olympic Press Center late, and then once we were in the press room with all our partners, we had lots of issues actually setting up the powerpoints, memory keys dying, the usual chaos that happens when none of our teachers do any planning for a pretty major presentation (or anything, for that matter). And some of the Chinese grad students were, well, woefully underprepared. They're kind of weird. They always suck up REALLY obviously to anyone in the government, even if they're just some random secretary who works at the press center. But when it comes to giving a presentation in front of actually semi-important people (the mayor's personal spokeswoman and the Olympic Press Center press releations head), they act totally unprofessional. Lots of them weren't dressed up at all (all of us UNC people were -- Edward was even in a totally white suit; looked like colonel Sanders) and some of the powerpoints were full of weird noises, tacky animations and BACKGROUND MUSIC. Yeah, good idea.]
My presentation (if anyone is interested, perhaps I'll post up the powerpoint on my blog) went off pretty well though. I ran over the four minute time by about a minute, but because my slides had both English and Chinese (my Ren Da partners came over last Sunday to translate them), Professor Zhao could translate the more important things. Not that a UNC undergrad investigating Beijing's restaurants is really important, but I suppose the entire project was kind of a joke anyway. I was actually a little embarassed at the end of our presentation. I mean, there's not really anything I could have done to make it better, given the time, resources, and my Chinese level. I just felt kind of stupid giving such a report to a bunch of semi-important people; I mean, I coudl have written this in high school. And I'm not sure I've learned that much from the research either, save a little about how restaurants train their wait staff in English. And this sociology professor at the meeting (some big shot from Ren Da) tore my partners a new one, telling them that he expected a whole lot more from grad students, so I felt kind of bad for them too. But I also felt relieved that it was all over. I don't think I realized how stressed I was getting abuot the presentation (which was probably good, since I wasn't especially nervous about it) but after I was done, I felt really, well, free, and that bad headache I had before was gone. Considering how poor my public speaking ability is anyway, I think I managed to pull a pretty good job.
There were some reporters and TV cameras there too -- apparently, we were all on TV this morning all over China (the report was picked up for syndication); one of Edward's friends in Yunnan e-mailed him telling him he saw him. Also, the People's Daily report was picked up by the Qinghua News Agency, which means it'll be in papers all over China. One paper here is doing an entire half page with sections on each project. So I guess we're, yeah, kind of famous? Not really. I wonder what the Chinese people actually think of the report. Probably something like, "Who do those stupid foreign kids think they are?" I mean, if a bunch of CHinese kids came to America and did a report like this, I probabl ywould think taht too.
But okay, enough complaining about the report. We went with our UNC class after lunch to an Old Beijing Restaurant across the street and had real old Beijing food, which, for the most part, I'm not that big a fan of. Some of it is really quite weird and looks like, uh, some type of sci fi ooze villain but is actually tofu. Mmm. THe entire presentation took a few hours, so when we got back to CET, we had to immediatly go to a job fair that CET was holding. They had four people currently working in CHina (three business, one foreign service) to give suggestions and advice and whatnot. Most of what they said was stuff I already knew (you aren't going to be able to sell yourself BECAUSE of Chinese; it's just a skill to completement other skills) but, well, I never like job fairs like that. It always leaves me feeling, well, freaking out about what the hell I'm going to do with my life. It seems like, unless you want to do business (which I'm not sure I do), there's not all that much you can do, save work for the government. Journalism -- no mention of that. I don't know how that's going to end up working for me, but hey, I guess we'll see. It's go to be ... fun ... seeing what happens. And who knows, maybe Chinese will end up being completely useless!
Oh, and that evening, I got roped in to playing Age of Empires 2 with Ted and some Chinese roommates, whihc was really fun, but really ate up a lot of my time I should have been doing work that I know have to do. Like, right now. When I'm writing this instead. Oh well.
So today, not that much happened. For Chinese, we had to go to the old person park near the school and interview random Chinese people why Chinese kids were growing so fat. That was fun. Couldn't udnerstand most of what they said, especially the Beijingren. That's basically a long, drawn out grrr sound to me. This afternoon we had UNC class; didn't do much, except regroup after our first presentation and prepare for our second project. That should be fun. This evening we had a meeting for our immersion weekend. The basic idea is, we go to this town outside of Beijing (Miyuan) where we can only speak Chinese and essentially do homework. Okay, so I'm pissed about this anyway, because I wanted to travel to Inne rMongolia this weekend, and then Zhu Laoshi (the head of CET) and Adam came and talked to our class and basically told us we HAD to go. But now, here's the deal -- they basically threaten us against speaking English. If we do, we get kicked out and have to buy our own taxi ticket back to CET -- and they charge us a 500 kuai fine (which, of course, is total bullshit; I told Rouxia I wasn't signing their stupid pledge sheet until I knew if we actually had to pay a fine, because the only reason these people fucking have MONEY is because we pay our goddamned tuition, and she was like, no, you don't have to. And they'd probably refund the ticket anyway, since the mian idea is humiliation. They TOLD us to bring 200 kuai. BUt if they try to make me go back, they can pay for my ticket right there, since I'm technically already paying for the hotel room -- and their goddamned salaries! God, I'm pissed about this). We can't say a SINGLE word of English. Like, alst semester, someone got in trouble for singing a Chinese song that had a line of English in the chorus -- CET needs to get a goddamned life.
But okay, enough of that. So that's what I'm doing this weekend, and I'm not happy about it. We have groups that we ahve to work with too, and I was moved out of my 100 level class and into the 150, which, I mean, I guess is flattering, but I'm not with all my friends in the 100 class. And, well, I'm not going to say the 150 kids are better than me, because there are two people in that class who I actually speak better than (and each has had FOUR classes of Chinese -- it's really sad; the class is only four people), but they do know more vocabulary words than me, and since I can't ask "What does that mean in English?" in Chinese, because, you know, they'd fucking get kicked out ... okay, I'll stop ... I was really pissed, mainly because they were giving us these really childish threats. Yeah, so there ahs to be something to make us speak only Chinese, but why can't they have a good-natured threat? Like having to sing a Chinese song in front of everyone or something? Why do they have to be assholes about us? And they make us sign the damn little sheet of paper, as if that thing ACTUALLY means we have to do it (and pay them money). Whatever. I'm pissed.
Okay, so that was my past few days. Hoep you guys have been having fun. UNC Webmail is not really working that well, because of all the German hyper-nationalist spam we've all been getting, so my hotmail account, adam_rodman@hotmail.com, probably works better for the time being. And webshots is being really stupid, so uploading my photos is taking FOREVER. I might just go to an internet cafe to get it done. But now I must go do my homework. Goodnight everybody!
May. 18th, 2005 @ 09:16 pm
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| » Beijing Mayor's Office, here I come! |
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In five minutes, I'm going to the Olympic Organizing Committee to present my research -- wish me luck!
May. 18th, 2005 @ 12:55 am
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| » Another item appended to the list of things I can't do ... |
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And believe me, there are lots of things on that list including some fairly essential points, like dance (somewhere around number 32) and, you know, shower regularly (somewhere closer to the top, or so I'm told). But after this weekend, I can confidently add moshing to the prestigious list of my (un)accomplishments. The frightening story unfolds before your eyes ...
So as I mentioned earlier, Esy and Nikita came to visit us this weekend, arriving pretty early Friday morning. In the afternoon, we had a quick lunch with them at the Xinjiang place, though I had already eaten noodles and baozi with Juliana (she was, I think, stressed about her upcoming trip -- her weekend was so much cooler than mine. She, Susie, and Emily went to inner Mongolia, and (1) got to sleep in a yurt (2) got to go to the desert when it was (3) raining and had to (4) help try and push their car out of the mud, and then just wait inside for the rain to end. Okay, well, it sounds cool to me; after just writing that, I can see how it might be a bit stressful). But anyway... so I spent the afternoon mainly loitering around, since the Fudaners went shopping with Susie, and then in the evening Nikita went to dinner with a Beijing friend while the rest of us (and Esy and Dave, who acted pretty much like a couple) just at around here at CET.
I've been wanting to do something with Yang recently, and he really likes rock music, as do I, so I decided we'd go to a rock concert. But plans as usual get ammended and we ended up going to a punk concert (the we includes me, Tom, Kristina, Yang, Gian, and the Fudan girls) with the cool Chinese people at CET, who are probably my favorite group, since they're pretty interesting. They're Roberto (Tom's roommate), and Pingping (my Xi'an partner) among others. And Dubin, who actually plays in a rock band, so he knows all the acts (personally, usually). So my problems actually start before the concert. At CET, a person from some grad program (associated with John Hopkin's university) came to talk to us about this Nanjing program they have (which I thought sounded really interesting, but I'm too young to seriously start doing the grad school thing) and she brought free pizza. PIZZA! And pretty good pizza, considering this is China. So I had probably four- five slices. A bad idea if you're going to a concert where the main form of entertainment consists of jumping into other people.
But alas, my woes did not end there. First of all, I think I really like Chinese beer, better than American beer. I DEFINITELY like Chinese beer better than American beer. And they had Yanjing on tap for really cheap! So I ended up drinknig quite a lot of it at the club. But it even gets worse -- Gian (who is a guy -- I've mentioned him a few times before) kept challenging me to chug beers with him, which I did, quite a few times ... and then the jumping... considering how much I love, well, not sitting still, you can just imagine how much I liked jumping around ... but before the messy ending to all this, the music --
I was actually surprised that I kidn of liked the music. Chinese punk is more influenced by 70s punk like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Ramones than any more recent acts, so for the most part, the music was pretty good (there were four bands that night). I had fun, and I know Yang had fun, which is good, because I think when he comes out with us (except when we're playing pool) he usually doesn't enjoy it all that much. And yeah, I had fun...
Until, well, all of the prementioned factors caught up with me. I won't go into details, but sufficed to say, I had a pretty shit rest of the night. Kristina and Gian were really nice and helped me through it, even though (I imagine) I was pretty disgusting at the time. But yeah ... so I was in bed by around two o'clock, I think -- I don't really remember it all taht well.
So Saturday morning, I felt like shit. Or rather, pretty much all Saturday I felt really bad, but it was just a lot worse in the morning. I pretty much took it easy during the day, which means I kind of putzed around and didn't do all that much. I was going to go to an art gallery with Lili, but she actually told me NOT to go -- she was just being nice because she knew I didn't feel well, and it's really far away, but it was kind of funny when she uninvited me, because she was like, "I know you don't really like art, and that you were just coming because I was going alone" and whatnot -- Lili's just a very direct woman. Oh yeah, and I slept a bunch. In the afternoon, I went with Tom, Mark, Kristina, and little Austin to shop for DVDs, which was actually a bad idea because, well, I felt like crap AND I hate shopping -- and I ESPECIALLY hate shopping for DVDs. It took me 10 minutes, and I bought only one, which Sarah should be pretty pleased about hearing -- it's the DVD9 rerelease of Help!. So I kind of just hung out outside the DVD stores for a while. Then we all went to dinner at a Japanese noodle place, which is also really good, since I love Japanese food. I still felt bad Saturday night, and we WERE going to go meet up with Eric and company at Hou Hai (they were probably, you know, trashing bars and hitting on waitresses and all taht fun stuff), but since we were going to get up early the next morning to go to the antiques market, me, Tom and Nikita played it easy and went with Yang, Kevin, and some other people to play pool and the place really close to here. Which went alright -- I won both my games against Joanna and Tom, so I was fairly happy. I was in bed by one, so I was happy.
Sunday morning, I got up really early to go to the antiques market with Mark (Krafft, the big one), Duanwei, Yang, and Nikita. The antiques market opens at 5 in the morning, stuff starts to close at noon, and is qutie far away -- took us an hour and a half to get there -- so we had to get going pretty early. But it was awesome. Basically, it's like the Flea Market, but only selling "antiques" and touristy crap. I bought four things there, but I'll definitely take my parents there when they're in Beijing -- I think my mom will go crazy. I also found that I'm not THAT bad at bargaining if I try -- you gotta start off with a really (too) low starting price, and then act like you don't care about it (or know how much they're worth, like thsoe morons trying to sell crappy t-shirts for 80 kuai -- that's how much they are in America!) So I left there pretty happy, and now I have some gifts for people (though I need to buy a lot more).
We went for lunch after meeting up with Dave and Esy -- who were wearing matching T-shirts, for God's sake -- to basically a food court, where I had more Japanese food, courtesy of Yoshinoya. After lunch, we, Duanwei, Yang, and Mark went back to the market to pick up some of our stuff taht needed preparing (I bought another seal of my name, since this one has my now full Chinese name on it). And Duanwei kept complaining about the Fudan girls, and I was kind of surprised. Basically, he thought they acted too much like Americans (?) and not Chinese people, and were too arrogant and show-offy (they always speak English, even to each other, and if he asked them something in Chinese, they'd resopnd in English). But yeah, it was kidn of weird. Apparently, they (or rather Nikita) also annoyed Yang, but not that much, because she kept comparing Shanghai and Beijing (with the obvious intent of putting down Beijing -- she's a native Shanghairen), and I heard her saying that, so I can understand why that would annoy him. Mark insisted on taking public transportation back to CET, so it was another hour and a half trip back.
For what was left of the afternoon, I took it easy and worked on homework some. Then in the evening, me, Tom, Kristina, Dave, and the Fudaners went to the Italian place in the Japanese shopping mall for a goodbye dinner. The food was really good (but expensive), and I probably ate too much pizza. We actually didn't have all that much to talk about at dinner, which pretty much sums up the weekend with Nikita and Esy -- we (or, I should say here, me and Tom) don't actually have that much in common with either of them, we just happened to simultaneously have a really good time in Shanghai. So yeah, my weekend with the Fudaners wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. Just, you know, so-so. I'da rather been in Mongolia.
Finally, Sunday evening, I worked on my homework and, yeah, relaxed. Tomorrow we're giving our presentation to the Olympic Organizing Committee and the Beijing mayor's office, so that's pretty exciting.And some interesting Star Wars development, but I'll update you all on that later. So yyeah, sorry for the very, very long post; just had to catch up. And hope you all had a good weekend. Bye!
May. 16th, 2005 @ 05:36 pm
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Esy and Nikita got in this morning, and I'm probably going to be doing stuff with them all weekend. But yeah, just thought you might want to know. They're out shopping with Susie right now, which I (probably wisely) decided to skip doing. And I've started uploading my photos! If Webshots is working properly, all my Summer Palace and other miscellaneous photos should be up any time now. So check them out in China! 4.
My week has been mostly uninteresting since I posted last. Yesterday evening, though, I went to the weird food night market at Wangfujin with some people. Basically, it's a 24 hour market set up in a pedestrian mall (really long) which has "traditional snacks", which apparently means the weirdest goddamned food I've ever seen. I was feeling a bit ill, so the weirdest thing I ate was a centipede. But Susie and Julianna though -- they got starfish, snake, and my personal favorite -- goat's testicles. How did they taste? "Pretty good," according to Juliana, "It tasted pretty good, pretty much like chuanr, but with the consistency of testicles." The consistency of testicles? Right. She should be a food critic or something.
And yeah, today my test did not go all that well, I don't think. The oral was especially bad; I think Sun Laoshi must have felt bad for me. I'm actually quite tired right now; gonna go take a little nap before the Fudaners get back. We're going to a rock concert tonight, so it should be interesting. Hopefully I will post more later. Bye!
May. 12th, 2005 @ 03:41 pm
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