Xinjiang

Hello!

I'm back from an awesome week out west in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.  My friend, Robin, and I split our time between Urumqi (the capital) and Kashgar.  Xinjiang's largest ethnic minority group is the Uighurs, a muslim group with its own language (Uighur) and little in common with most Chinese people. Here are some tales from our adventures.

Friday, April 22

Waiting to board the plane at the Beijing airport, it was already clear that we were headed somewhere different. Many of the passengers waiting for the flight we dressed in colorful, traditional clothes and/or were speaking in what we assumed to be Uighur. When we landed in Urumqi, we were greeted by smog not dissimilar to Beijing. The signs for baggage claim were in Chinese, Uighur, and Russian--no English. Xinjiang borders Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan (in addition to Mongolia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India), which have large Russian-speaking populations, so many of the signs throughout the city were trilingual. 

After making it to the hostel, we went out to explore the city a bit. We soon encountered two special police in full riot gear.  In 2008 there were large Uighur riots in Urumqi; the police and military came in and eventually put down the protests, but the police presence in the city is still very large--streets lined with special police vans, riot police on patrol, and even some heavily armed police--something you never see in Beijing. Over the last 40 years or so, more and more Han Chinese (the majority ethnic group that comprises 97 percent of China's population) have moved out to Xinjiang for business and in an effort to outnumber the dissenting minority groups. Aside from the Uighur's disdain for Han Chinese and the Chinese language, the more visible result was that Urumqi looked just like every other smaller Chinese city;  retailers, high rises, KFC, and Dairy Queen were available in and around the center of town. If you were not in the smaller Uighur neighborhoods there didn't seem to be anything particularly unique about the city. 

We walked over Hong Shan (Red Hill) Park, which was right around the corner from the hostel. The park sits atop of rocky hill/cliff and sports a three-story pagoda that dates back to 1788. Today, it offers a panoramic view of the city and the surrounding mountains (depending on visibility). Inside the pagoda there was also a model of city as it was in 1947. At that time the tallest building around was three stories and such things as KFC hadn't turned up yet. Near the pagoda was another structure whose name translates into "Subdue the Dragon Pagoda". According to the story, there is a dragon trapped inside and if he were ever to be released he would bring floods and devastation and all other sorts of inconvenience on the city. So...best to keep him locked up. 

Hong Shan Park

That night we went to an open air food court of sorts with a couple of travelers we met at the hostel. Every evening a small square is ringed by food stands making kabobs, spiced nan, and various other local delicacies. All incredibly cheap. All delicious. Except for the intestines--we avoided those.

Saturday, April 23

Today we went to the older, more Uighur-ish part of town. Before we left for our adventures we had a cup of real coffee at the hostel--real coffee! Not that cheap, canned nonsense that we usually get in Beijing. Part of the interest/reason for sharing this fact was the contraption used to make it. I don't know what it was called, but it was two glass bulbs--top filled with coffee, bottom with water--and a bunsen burner underneath.  Not the fastest way to brew a cup, but definitely one of the more interesting. But I digress. 

A young Chinese traveler staying at the hostel, HongZhou, joined us for our morning adventures. He didn't speak any English, but it was nice to have a native speaker with us. We hopped on a bus and headed south to the market.  The fare was a bit different than that in Beijing; the knives were more ornate, the scarves were probably real wool or silk, and it wasn't overwhelmingly full of touristy trinkets like busts of Mao and his little red book or fans with pandas on them. Nearly all of the shopkeepers were Uighurs or belonged to another ethnic minority--I don't think we saw a single Han Chinese there. It was still early in the morning and being big white people, we attracted a good bit of attention from every shopkeeper we passed. One shopkeeper, a woman wearing a headscarf, asked if I was Russian. Back in Beijing, North America is usually the first guess...specifically the US. I guess out in Xinjiang the proximity to Russia makes that seem like a reasonable guess. She also made a point of explaining that most people around town don't have blue eyes. So, in her mind, the nearest place where that could be in the gene pool was Russia. 

We grabbed breakfast/lunch at a nearby restaurant. Some veggie fried rice (a different take than usual) and some lamb kabobs hit the spot...and for cheaper than in Beijing. The restaurant was more decorated than most and all of the women working there wore headscarves. Once again (as would become the trend anywhere we went), we attracted the stares of the regulars. 

Making the lamb kabobs (烤肉)

Once we were sated, we walked to the "International Bazaar", which was housed in a large brick building topped with minarets. It offered more knives; pottery and coffee pots that looked like they came more out of Arabian Nights than China;  plus nuts, dates, and raisins that went on forever. The relatively nearby city of Turupan is a large raisin producer, so plenty of those dried out grapes make their way around the province. For the rest of the afternoon we wandered around the city and just took in the sights, sounds, and smells of the Uighur neighborhoods. There were several blocks of butcheries that had full, half, and parts of lambs hanging, being hacked up, and being sold in whatever quantity you needed. 

International Bazaar

Sunday, April 24

In the morning we took a cab to the airport to fly to Kashgar. Despite the flight being completely booked, we were the only two foreigners on board. Judging by the looks that some of the passengers gave us, it was obvious that we stood out from the rest of those on board. Announcements onboard were in Chinese, English, and what we assumed to be Uighur. Kashgar is to the southwest of Urumqi and not all that far from the Kyrgyz and Pakistani borders; it's only an hour's flight from Kabul. Not that we were thinking of visiting...just putting it in perspective as to how far into the middle of Asia we'd traveled. 

The arrivals terminal at the Kashgar airport consisted of little more than two baggage carousels and an exit. We got our bags quickly, hopped on a bus, and made our way south into town. Once we made it to the hostel and deposited our bags, we set off to find the livestock market. We soon discovered a complicating fact: most cab drivers in Kashgar don't speak Chinese. Depending on where they are from they speak Uighur or any of a number of other dialects from neighboring Kyrgyzstan or  Kazakhstan. Either way, we resorted to pointing at the map that had Chinese characters on it (probably of little use), gesticulating, and hoping he knew what we were talking about. Thankfully the cab meters in Kashgar start at five RMB compared to Beijing's 10, so the mistakes (of which there were several) were not as costly. 

The cabbie dropped us off at a place that was not the livestock market.  After walking down and back up a road for nearly half an hour and soliciting help from a police officer who spoke no Chinese, we asked an officer in military fatigues for help. He, too, spoke virtually no Chinese...he just pointed at a local with a three-wheeled flatbed cart; we used some sign language to negotiate a price and hopped in back. After a 10 minute ride on surface roads, which included several curious stares from passing locals no doubt wondering what on earth two whiteys were doing traveling in such a fasion, we pulled off and joined the queue to enter the market.  If we had managed to blend into our surroundings like ninjas up until that point, the gig was up. Hundreds of Uighurs wearing jackets, pants, traditional hats engrossed in haggling over sheep, cows, and donkeys. And there we were with backpacks, wearing shorts and t-shirts trying to squeeze past and avoid being defecated on by sheep. Realizing that the market wasn't quite what we had anticipated we grabbed a cab and made our way back to the city. 

We explored the old city for a while, but agreed that the stone alleys and mud/straw-walled homes looked more quaint and romantic from afar--closer inspection revealed heaps of garbage, dilapidated homes...but they had still been turned into a tourist attraction. Not as egregiously as sections of the great wall, but it still seemed very artificial. We returned to the hostel, chatted with a few other guests for a bit, then headed to the market.  While the market in Kashgar did have a few trinket booths, the majority of them sold nuts and raisins, pashminas, rugs, and head coverings for men and women. (Side note: I don't know if they technically qualify as burqas, but we saw several women in Kashgar with full face coverings). 

Old City of Kashgar

Monday, April 25

Today we went ventured southwest into the mountains to see Karakul Lake. In Urumqi we had met an Australian by the name of Dave who turned up at the hostel in Kashgar, so Robin and I joined forces with him. We hired a car to take us there a back, grabbed a couple freshly baked nan that looked quite similar to sesame bagels and stocked up on water, and were on our way. 

Karakoram Highway south of Kashgar

Most of the ride was on the Karakoram Highway--a stretch of highway that links Kashgar to western Pakistan. It even passes through Abbottabad, but that is a bit a hike past where we stopped. After passing through farms and desolation we began to climb into the mountains; the empty stretches of asphalt were only punctuated by a few trucks and a military check point where we had to present our passports to armed guards wearing military fatigues. In the distance we could see jagged, snow-covered mountains that looked as though that belonged in a Coors Light commercial. Along the way we passed several herds of sheep or goats wandering along the highway and even a few yaks grazing in a small field near the road. By the time we reached the lake we were not all that far from the Tajikistan border. We arrived relatively early before the winds kicked up, so we were greeted by a fantastic reflection of the snow-covered mountains on the water. The lake is at an elevation of 3,600 meters (over 11,100 feet), so the air was noticeably thin.  It was a sunny, beautiful day so we hiked around the lake for a while. Chunks of ice still lining parts of the shore told us that winter was still making its way out. 

Lake Karakul (3,600m) with Muztagh Ata (7,500m)

Tuesday, April 26

Today we teamed up with a few Israelis and went north into the desert/mountains to find Shipton's Arch. The arch, "discovered" by an Englishman in 1947 is the tallest natural arch in the world at over 1,200 feet (about the same as the Empire State Building). To get there, we could not use the cab that had taken us to Karakul Lake the day before. Half of the drive from Kashgar was off-road. We piled into a four wheel drive and set off. We'd been on paved road for an hour or so when we just turned left...and the road was gone. In its place was a somewhat defined trail over dirt, rocks, and ravines. The dashboard was equipped with a device would have looked more at home in an airplane cockpit; a ball--half black, half white--floating in the glass case told you what degree the truck was pitched forward/backward and laterally. Over the following hour that we bounced around the desert that ball was jumping all over the place. I think we managed to reach a 20 degree grade at one point and had some 10 degree pitches that had us apologizing to our neighbors for bumping into them. 

After we rattled out our fillings, we finally arrived at the end of the "road" and set off on foot to climb up to the arch. The approach goes through several canyons narrow enough that you can palm both sides without fully extending your arms; in the last few years some locals have constructed a set of ladders to make the climb a bit easier/less treacherous...at least that was the intention. But before we could even start the ascent, we were greeted by a Kyrgyz local who--in broken Chinese--told us that he built the ladders himself and each person had to pay him 30 RMB. Shenanigans. I explained to him that there was no way we were paying that much and, seeing as he wasn't exactly working at a ticket booth, he was in no position to tell us we had to pay anything to get it. His response? "I don't understand". Figures. This went on for at least 15 minutes, during which time he whistled down the canyon for backup. Fortunately for us the only people who showed up were Han Chinese (not backup) whose guide spoke something that the gatekeeper understood. After some more nonsense, the price was reduced to 16 RMB per person--2 RMB per each of the eight ladders. Before we could even grab our change, the Chinese gents paid for all five of us. All 10 of us ended up hiking up to the arch together. Because most of the canyons remain in the shade and the fact that temperatures had only recently warmed up, snow and ice still covered large parts of the approach. But thanks to the thaw, feet--and sometimes entire legs--sunk through the snow. We finally reached the arch could look through it to see various mountain ranges to the east. The hike puts you no more than 200 feet from the top of the arch, but looking down gave you a better idea of just how big it was. Not recommended for those suffering from vertigo. 

Shipton's Arch

Wednesday/Thursday, April 27/28

In the morning we walked down the street to visit the Id Kah Mosque. Construction was completed in 1442, but the compound incorporated structures that date back to 996. With a capacity of 20,000 worshippers, it is the largest mosque in China. We weren't dressed appropriately to enter the main parts of the mosque, so we just looked around a bit and admired the ornately decorated exterior. After a little while we turned back, stocked up on nan and water, then made our way to the train station. 

Id Kah Mosque

Kashgar is approximately 1,500 kilometers from Urumqi. A typical train ride from one to the other is right around 24 hours long. These are facts. 

The train departed Kashgar just before 1:20 PM. Estimated time of arrival in Urumqi: 1:30 PM the following day. We had hard sleeper berths, which means that we had a reasonably comfortable bed that was large enough for us to lie down on but not quite long enough for us to fully stretch out on. This seems to be a trend in China. We chatted with the other people on the top bunks of our cabin, read, looked out the window, snacked...nothing crazy. We had brought a bushel of bananas, more nan-bagels, plus nuts and raisins purchased at the market in Kashgar so we were pretty well equipped for an overnight trip. 

The only windows that opened were in the hallway--and those only opened a few inches--so it was a bit toasty in the train. Nevermind air conditioning...that certainly didn't work. Everything was smooth sailing when we turned in for the night and woke up the following morning. Then, around 9 AM, we stopped. Word finally came down the car that somewhere ahead of us were very high crosswinds that posed a danger to the train. Apparently a train was actually blown off the tracks in 2007, so this was something that they took seriously. We were told we were going to wait 40 minutes to see if the winds died down. 40 minutes? No problem. I've got homework to do anyways.  Well, 40 minutes came and went and we were most decidedly still sitting there. Two hours went by. That turned into four. That 1:30 PM arrival time in Urumqi came and went. The response from the staff by that point was simply that we were waiting for the winds to die down and that there was no set time to resume our journey. Meanwhile, the train was sitting there getting rocked side to side by the wind. Then somebody said that trains had spent as much as seven days sitting there waiting for the wind to stop howling. Seeing as our flight from Urumqi back to Beijing was in two days, that was a mighty large problem...not to mention the fact that we had zero interest in spending a week on that train. We watched the sunset through the dirty window of the cabin that didn't open. The dining car sold out of every food except for instant noodles. Our banana supply began to dwindle. 

Around 10 PM Thursday evening (nearly nine hours after we were supposed to have arrived in Urumqi) we began to contemplate a plan B. As hair-brained as it sounded, we toyed with the idea of packing up our stuff, hiking to the highway that ran parallel to the tracks, and hitchhiking the approximate 400 kilometes that remained between us and Urumqi. We agreed that if we were not moving by noon the next day we were going to have to strike out on our own. Understand that we both acknowledged that such an idea was wholly irresponsible and contradicted just about every concept of self-preservation. Nevertheless, we stocked up on water in anticipation of having to hike to the highway and ride back to Urumqi in something less comfortably appointed than our cabin. Mercifully, the wheels on the train began to go 'round and 'round just before midnight. High fives were exchanged. Suddenly we each had five liters of water that were not going to be as necessary as we had feared they might. 

Friday, April 29

We arrived in Urumqi a little after 8:00 AM Friday morning. 43 hours after leaving Kashgar--give or take. Fun fact: Urumqi to Beijing by train is 36 hours. Beijing is significantly further away from Urumqi than Kashgar. It's the difference of starting from Washington, DC and going to Orlando, Florida in the time it would normally take you to reach Albuquerque, New Mexico and start your return trip.  You can imagine how eager we were to get off that train. 

We made it back to the same hostel we stayed in a few days earlier, had some of that good, real coffee again and planned our day. We had heard of a site about an hour away that is the geographic center of the Asian continent and figured we'd go check that out. It was just a matter of finding a cab or private car that would agree to take us there and back for a reasonable price. The first two that we hailed wanted way too much, but the third was priced to sell. An hour or so later we were northwest of the city in the middle of absolutely nothing. After righting a couple of wrong turns we picked up a random woman walking down the road and gave her a lift for a mile or so. As luck would have it this farmer knew exactly where we wanted to go and how to get there. The site was built in the late 1990s and--by the looks of it--hasn't been touched since. The site was ringed by small stone markers of all the countries considered to be part of the Asian continent; this ranged from Indonesia, the various 'Stans, to Israel, and also Palestine. Each marker had a brass circle on one side with an image of the county and its capital. For some strange reason, the China map indicated "Ben Jing" as the capital. Rather embarrassing. Not too far down the line was Japan. The map of the country was almost completely scratched away and the flag had also been graffitied. Anti-Japanese sentiments don't come as a surprise at this point, but it was interesting to see them manifested like this so far out west. The mountains provided a picturesque backdrop to the dilapidated monument. After 20 minutes or so we had seen all there was to see and were back in car. It was more about the point of having said we went to the center of Asia; we knew there wasn't a whole lot going on out there. We got back to the hostel, finally showered (after that train ride even the ice cold shower was welcomed), relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon, and went back to the open air food court for another tasty, cheap dinner. 

"Heart of Asia"

Saturday, April 30

Today was our last day in Urumqi/Xinjiang, so we went to check out the provincial history museum. There were a few mummies that had been discovered in the desert and small exhibits on some of the ethnic minorities that inhabit Xinjiang, but a lot of it was flagrant propaganda. Lots of business about how everyone lives harmoniously and that's why everything works so wonderfully. What nonsense. 

Out flight home was scheduled for just before 8:00PM that evening, so we got to the airport around 6. We got to the gate and had been sitting there for a few minutes before hearing an announcement informing us that our flight was delayed until midnight. Splendid. They gave us hotel and food vouchers then bused everyone on the flight to a nearby police/military training hotel, where we got rooms and were fed. After a few hours we were bused back to the airport so we could hurry up and wait. We ended up taking off around 1:30 AM and landed in Beijing around 5. After getting our bags and a cab back into town I dragged myself in the apartment a little after 6:00 AM Sunday morning. 

What a trip.

I posted more pictures on flickr, so check those out!

New Semester and the Month of March

So at the beginning of the semester there wasn't much to report and I was trying to find a routine and then--all of the sudden--a month had gone by and things were just crazy. Here's a [big] nutshell of what's been going on in Beijing. 

The weather has been a bit confused to say the least. Since I've gotten back it has snowed twice; the second time was only two days after unseasonably warm weather. Only a week or so ago the temperatures were flirting with the mid to upper-60s and I wore shorts out for an afternoon...which drew many bewildered stares from the locals. Then the publicly provided heating turned off and the temperature dropped back down to 40s. Figures. I'm waiting for real, consistent warm weather. I know once it gets properly hot and nasty I'll be missing the cooler temperatures but right now I'm looking forward to not considering how many layers are needed to leave the house.

Classes started at the end of February. The variety of nationalities in my classes is at least as diverse as last semester if not more so.  Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Kenya, Canada, and Mexico are all represented. Probably a few more that I'm forgetting. 

This semester I'm taking the obligatory grammar and language course, listening and speaking, as well as two electives: conversation and newspaper. While the newspaper class is definitely the most challenging, it is also the most interesting. Our textbook has articles from the last five years or so and we also go through the daily paper each class. The articles are refreshingly objective (we read Beijing Youth Daily...People's Daily sometimes has a bit more of a spin to it) and don't seem to gloss over topics that might otherwise seem sensitive here in China; we've talked about Libya and the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East--I even presented an article on Tuesday about the airstrikes on Libyan military installations. We've also talked a lot about the situation in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami; thankfully the families of all of my Japanese classmates escaped the destruction. And, of course, these articles are a great source of new, useful vocabulary. 

I also picked up a new teaching job this semester. Through Tsinghua University's continued education program, I'm teaching professionals with China Railway & Construction Company (CRCC). Ordinarily, I would just smile and nod at the mention of some Chinese company, but--much to the surprise of my new employer and my new students--I was familiar with CRCC; it is engaged in several of the African projects that I examined in my thesis. Many of my students (all of whom are older than me save for one peer) are bound for African or Middle Eastern countries. Some have already spent time in those regions. 

My students are an inquisitive bunch. Coming from a company like CRCC and a country like China where train travel is a mainstay in mass transit, they have asked many questions about the US train network and when we are going to build a high speed train system. When I explained that the interstate highway system and air travel account for most of the long distance public transit in the US, they countered by saying that high speed train projects would generate jobs. Touché. But then they added this: would the US bring Chinese companies over to help build the high speed trains? Hang on, what happened to generating jobs in the US? It was suggested that the US thought about talking to China--more specifically CRCC--when it decides to build a high speed rail system. I'll be sure to drop that in the suggestion box. 

During another class questions from the students led us to covering topics like why Texas isn't considered part of the South, the Alamo, Texas BBQ, the separation of church and state, how the US treated the Native Americans, and the Amish. I never know what they're going to ask about next, but I really enjoy it. Last week one student decided he wanted to hear about Iraq. That's fine, let's talk about Iraq. However, the questions soon turned into "Why did you go to Iraq?"; "But you didn't find WMDs, did you?"; "But then why did the US go there?" I'm sorry, I wasn't a fly on the wall in those meetings, much less a decision maker. I tried to explain that the administration presented a certain story and certain facts to the country based on the information that was at hand at the time. That didn't seem to satisfy this guy. Mercifully, somebody changed the subject. 

The office complex where I teach has a bike/scooter parking garage. The first night I taught the man who keeps an eye on it struck up a conversation with me about this and that. Where I was from, America? (thumbs up), what I do, the usual interview. It's gotten to be part of the routine as I leave class that I chat with him for a few minutes. The other night, we chatted for closer to half an hour. He came up to me and started by saying how in Chinese a name is usually only two or three characters long--your family name first, followed by your given name. So...how long are names in English? And what is yours? I explained that English names could vary from a few to several letters in length. Then I tried to explain that my name was Adam--like that guy in the Bible. Suddenly a light went off in his head and ran back to his stand and grabbed a book. "The Bible!" he said excitedly as he pointed at the book. Sure enough, he was holding a translated version of the Bible. Turns out he's been a Christian for over 20 years. He asked if I was Christian or Catholic, so I explained that I was Jewish. Another excited look. More thumbs up. We started talking about the Old vs. New Testament, though at that point I was more just saying "the older section versus the newer section"...I don't have a fantastic religious vocabulary yet. More thumbs up were exchanged and I said my goodbyes for the evening. 

Speaking of bicycle parking garages, I finally learned how to play Chinese chess. There are some similarities to Western chess and some rules/concepts that took a bit to wrap my head around. But this meant that I was finally able to play with my friend who supervises the garage at my apartment. He said he wasn't very good. Needless to say I suffered a devastating loss. Twice. 

I've also put a bunch of photos up on flickr, so give them a look.

I've got some adventures coming up soon, so stay tuned.

Safety in the Workplace

Chinese Chess

Practice

Bamboozled

Purple Bamboo Park

Back in the PRC

Happy Chinese New Year!
 

I got back to Beijing just in time to help welcome in the Year of the Rabbit. I was home for four weeks and had a great time seeing friends and family. One particularly exciting thing happened while I was there: Laura and I got engaged! We had gone into DC for the afternoon so that I could show Laura around a little bit since the only times she'd been in DC in the nearly two years we'd been together was on race courses. After walking around the Mall for a bit, we made our way down to the Tidal Basin by the FDR Memorial. Despite wearing this ancient and ridiculous old fur hat of mine, Laura was still freezing.  She said, "This is really pretty, but I can't feel my toes. Can we please go back to the car?" I too had been warmer, but I had a plan, so I convinced her to walk just a bit further to a bench sitting in the sun. I directed Laura's attention across the Tidal Basin towards the Jefferson Memorial; meanwhile, I [not so stealthily] removed a small ringbox from inside my coat. I told her, "So...I have a question for ya," and Laura, smirking at this point, replied "Yeah?" (It's worth mentioning that at this point that I wasn't the coolest of cucumbers, so it was rather obvious that something was up.) I turned her around and, getting down on a knee, asked "Will you marry me?" Laura nonchalantly replied "Yeah, I could do that". It wasn't until several minutes later that she stopped and asked if she had, in fact, said "yes". When I told her what the actual reply had been, she thought I was kidding. My grandparents had gotten into town that evening and Michael had a long weekend leave, so the whole gang was together for the first time since June. 

After a couple more weeks of drinking the tap water, soaking in blue skies, and visiting potential wedding venues, I flew back to Beijing. The haze was there to greet me when we landed. As I took the subway from the airport back to Wudaokou, I noticed that the subway was mercifully empty...especially for a weekend. I then remembered that the first day of Chinese New Year had been three days earlier, so a many Beijingers had participated in the massive, country-wide exodus and gone home to their families to celebrate. But in a city of 22 million, even if a large chunk of the populous leaves, there are still several million people still sticking around. 

In the week since my return, the city has been filled with the near-constant cacophony of fireworks and firecrackers. During the day, the rat-a-tat of firecrackers echoes off of the tall concrete apartment buildings like machine gunfire; at night the skies are illuminated by multi-colored explosions and the apartment complexes again lend their acoustics to the ka-booms of fireworks that would ordinarily appear to be professionally prepared. But that's the thing--it can all be bought on the street by the everyman. It just depends on how much money you want to spend. 

We aslo got a couple inches of snow...something that Beijing and its citizens seem poorly equipped to handle. The white blanket provided a pretty change of pace from the ubiquitous grey cement, though the snow on the streets and sidewalks was almost immediately blackened by exhausted and pollution. Between the bitter cold and the icy sidewalks, I'm still holding out for warmer weather, but the snow was at least a change of pace. 

Unfortunately, the friend with whom I was meant to travel out to the northwest with managed to contract dengue fever from a mosquito in Thailand, so that adventure was put on hold. Classes resume on the 28th, so until then I'm just studying, trying to explore the city some more, and already missing foods like guacamole, cheese, and good beers. 

More soon.

Double black diamond

Making a snowman

Lighting firecrackers

Year of the Rabbit

The Doldrums

Happy Holidays!

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I haven't forgotten about you all--there just hasn't been much of anything to report. The last four weeks can be rather easily summed up in one run-on sentence: It's gotten bitter cold, classes kicked into a high gear in preparation for the now imminent final exams, there were a few fleeting days of confused weather where we got to enjoy temperatures flirting with the high 40s, now winter has decided he's here to stay, and finals begin on Monday.

To be a bit more specific, this past weekend/earlier this week we had unseasonably warm weather--Sunday was technically just shy of 50. Rather atypical for late-December. Regardless of where that warm front came from, it has been shooed away by the Mongolian winds that dragged the temperatures back below freezing and put the windchill in the single digits.

This semester I have four...or five finals. Two speaking, one listening, one written, and (maybe) a reading comprehension exam. Those last two might just be one big one. Between the weather turning properly cold and exams lurking around the corner, I haven't had much time to go explore, take pictures, or get into trouble. Thanks to the lengthy break surrounding Chinese New Years, I'll be able to remedy that. I did, however, do a bit of exploring right after the last post. Those pictures are up on flickr, so feel free to give those a look. I posted a few highlights below.

On an exciting note, I'm coming home for three weeks immediately following exams. I'll get to drink the tap water (and enjoy other delicacies) from the 8th to the 30th. Hopefully I'll get to see as many of you as possible while I'm home.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Giving Grandma a push

Muslim ethnic minority community center

Beijing's largest mosque. Originally constructed in 996.

Chauvinism, Tianjin, and Diplomacy

Hello!

It's been a bit and, as always seems to be the case, I've got stories. Let's begin at the beginning.

Last Friday (the 19th), I was in my elective conversation class and we were talking about family, the roles of each family member, dynamics, etc. We broke off into small groups to discuss our respective families and to see if there were any major differences in our respective cultures. My group consisted of a Malaysian girl, a German girl, a North Korean man, and myself. The German and Malaysian girls' respective families sounded perfectly normal and lovely. Then we got to the North Korean gentleman. As a preface, he is in his early 40s and has a 10 year old and a six year old back in Pyongyang. The teacher was hovering around our group asking questions here and there and she asked him who made the decisions in the house. He clearly said that, as the man, he made the decisions. This is where it gets good: he continued to explain matter-of-factly that women have only half as much courage as men. This drew rather incredulous, disbelieving looks from the girls in the group and a rather loose-jawed look of bewilderment from me. Not the one to just make baseless claims, he provided us with a watertight example. Some time in the recent past, a woman was riding her bicycle and was approaching traffic. Because she had only half as much courage as a man, she couldn't decide whether to veer left, right, or stop. Consequently, she continued into traffic was killed by a bus. The nation mourned her death and decided that women could no longer ride bikes. Not only could they no longer ride bikes, but if they were found riding bicycles, they would be confiscated and the female riders fined. At this point the German girl asked if women were permitted to drive in North Korea. The response: "Of course! That's much safer." Even the teacher was floored by the answers. Class moved on without any additional ridiculous stories and we broke for the weekend.

The next morning a classmate, Joe, and I went southeast to Tianjin. Formerly a large port city and a diplomatic hub, Tianjin is a little over 150km away from Beijing. However, there is a high speed train linking the two cities that travels the distance in less than half an hour. It seems that hitting speeds of over 330km per hour helps this. Once we arrived, we started chose a direction and started walking that way. Although the river that runs through the city looked just as polluted as any we'd seen so far, there were dozens of retirees fishing. Though we didn't see anyone get a bite, we agreed that anything still living in the river wasn't safe to eat. We kept wandering, struggling to make sense of the map that didn't have a scale...rather difficult to figure out far away things are when you don't know if an inch is one kilometer or five miles. While exploring a neighborhood, we met two gentlemen who pondered the same issue. After getting a "go in...that direction" from them, we decided we would just continue exploring. Joe knew a girl that lived in Tianjin, so he called her to see about meeting up with her for lunch. That turned into us having lunch at her home with her family. We sat and visited with her parents for a bit while they finished preparing lunch, then sat down to a huge spread: crab, noodles, pork steak, rice, and cabbage. In typical Chinese custom, the hosts pushed tons of food on the guests. And in typical Chinese custom, the guests had to say that everything was fantastic, that they were full, and had to keep eating. Translation: we were stuffed. We'd gone through that exchange three times when the wife came out of the kitchen with a fresh bowl of egg fried rice. My immediate thought: "You have to be kidding me." But we had some of it anyways, telling our stomachs to figure it out.

We said our gracious goodbyes and thank yous then made our way to the  light rail that was supposed to take us to the sea. As we traveled out of the center of the city and into the more rural countryside (that also had plenty of coal plants and factories) we passed countless fields with laborers picking cotton by hand. Not what we had expected to see so close to a city center. We got off the train where we had been told to and started walking in the direction of the sea. At this point we were in an industrial/commercial district at least 20km southeast of the city--and somewhere white folks don't usually go. This was made clear by the looks and stares we received as we wandered eastward towards the water. After about an hour of exploring we hadn't found anything resembling the sea, though we did come across a plant of some sort of factory with two smoke stacks spewing exhaust into the already polluted air. The lake beside the plant was filled with dead fish, and we deduced that the plant was responsible. We decided to turn back towards the rail and return to the city to catch the high speed train back to Beijing. As a city, Tianjin was only whelming...nothing more, nothing less. But it was still another experience and adventure.

As all of you must know by now, North Korea has been up to no good. Nothing was mentioned of the entire situation in class, though there certainly weren't any niceties exchanged between my South Korean and North Korean classmates the following day. This past Friday (the 26th) I was, once again in my conversation class and I ended up speaking to my classmate, Guangzhe, about the whole situation. The following is, more or less, the brief conversation that we had about North Korean-American relations (or the complete lack thereof):

G: The South is making trouble and always says bad things about North Korea. What do you think about the situation?
A: Well, I think it's a very sensitive issue.
G: Why is the US doing military exercises with South Korea? Why does the US go to other countries?
A: Well, the US has an historic relationship with South Korea. They've been allies since the Korean War the same way North Korea has been friends with China.
G: Why does the US say so many bad things about North Korea?
A: Well, they have very different political policies, so they disagree on a lot of things. But I'd guess that North Korea doesn't say too many good things about the US.
G: ...No...Normally, we North Koreans don't like Americans.
A: What about me?
G: You're ok (thumbs up).
A: You're alright too.

I didn't know how to say "human rights violations" or "ruthless dictator," though I don't think that would have advanced the conversation even if I did. Class started and our conversation ended, but we agreed to get lunch at some point to just talk and perhaps solve the diplomatic problems that plague the Korean peninsula.

I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving, where ever it was, and that you're still working off all of the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and gravy.

More soon.

And Happy Hanukah!

Waiting for a bite

Trying to help us make sense of nonsense

Tianjin at night

Post-Midterms, Fall, and Fun Facts

Hello!

I'm sure you're getting over the shock of two posts in two weeks, but I'll tell you a story while you recover.

Midterms (all four of them) went smoothly. The only aspect worth writing home about is the oral exam. As I mentioned in the last post, my partner, Guang Zhe, is from Pyongyang, North Korea. More recent conversations have revealed that he is 41, married, and plans to stick around in Beijing for at least another year after this one to continue studying physics. We've yet to discuss his wife beyond her tastes in movies (romance flicks), but hopefully I'll have more to report in the next post. But back to the oral exam. We were given five prompts that we could be asked to present. I wrote three and Guang Zhe wrote two. So I'm studying the dialogues that he had written and one of them begins to depart from the anything relevant. Then it just gets absolutely ridiculous. (As a preface, the prompt was finding an apartment, teepee, or some form of domicile.) Somehow, he felt that the following dialogue would advance the conversation. As luck would have it, the crazier part belonged to the role I was reading. The following is a translation of what he wrote:

A: Where are you from?
G: Guess!
A: I'd guess you are a North Korean.
G: That's correct, how did you know that?
A: I'm very familiar with you North Koreans, to tell the truth my grandfather participated in the 1950 North Korean War.
G: Really? That's very interesting, please continue.
A:  My grandfather was very close to North Korea. Today many Chinese people have very good feelings towards North Korea.

...and that's how the entire conversation was supposed to end.

Naturally, when we discussed his work in class the following morning I said that it was "very interesting," which wasn't a total lie; I was fascinated by how that seemed a linear topic of conversation. We ended up presenting a different dialogue, but I was still left rather bewildered by the random plug for Chinese-North Korean relations.

Since midterms, the weather has turned for late-autumn/winter. With overnight lows now flirting with the upper 20s, the leaves have gone to turning color. The only upside of the strong winds coming in from the mountains is that the skies are blue once in a while, which makes for some pretty days.  I've been taking advantage of the weather and exploring Wudaokou and other parts of Beijing. As long as you bundle up and wear several layers of clothes, it's still perfectly tolerable. This weekend I went down into the center of the city to check out Beihai, a large man-made lake/park attached to the Forbidden City. The oldest parts of the park date back to the 10th century, but later emperors in later dynasties expanded it. The last renovation, which brought the park to the size it is today (nearly 70 hectares) was sanctioned by the same emperor who built the Old Summer Palace and the Fragrant Hills temple in the mid-18th century. My Chinese history is a bit fuzzy on that period but either China was in an enormous surplus, or this guy, Qianglong, broke the bank with all of these projects. Either way, it's more than you can comfortably take in in just one afternoon, so I will eventually go back there to see the entire other half of the park that I didn't have time to get to. Until then, I'll leave you with some snapshots of autumn here in Beijing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Blue sky day!

Autumn in Beijing

Beihai

Midterms and Red Leaves

Salutations!

The few weeks following National Week have been relatively uneventful--hence the lack of a new blog. I didn't really feel like there was a whole lot to report on. But I suppose I have a few stories...

After National Week we finally resumed a normal schedule, meaning that classes were Monday-Friday and that the weekends were ours once again. The Chinese have this less than wonderful practice of giving you days off during the week only to have you come in for part of/all of the weekend. Personally, I'd take a full week or just a three day weekend instead of coming in on Saturday and Sunday. But regardless, we've put those sorts of schedules behind us for the next several months.

The weather has decidedly turned for autumn. Overnight temperatures have flirted with freezing and afternoon highs have ranged from 45 to the high 50s. An interesting observation about temperatures in Beijing: back home, when they say a high of...say, 65, that usually means that you'll have a few hours in the afternoon when it will be 65 degrees. Here in Beijing, however, the mercury touches the high and begins its descent. Almost to prove that it could. The most accurate metaphor that I've come up with so far is someone jumping to touch the ceiling; you might get a finger on it, but you immediately start plummeting towards the floor. That said, this weekend was quite gorgeous, with highs jumping back into the 60s. None of this would be of much consequence but for the fact that the heat does not turn on for another two weeks. Thankfully, my apartment has an electric radiator that is good enough to keep the side of one leg warm if you park it directly next to you. Needless to say getting out of the shower and getting out of bed are not the most pleasant activities these days.

We have three midterms this week, one of which is an oral exam in front of the class with a partner. Here's where it gets interesting: my partner is from North Korea. There are two North Koreans in my class; these two gents are significantly older than the rest of us (i.e. in their 40s) and aren't the most chatty characters. That said, the one who I'm paired with is friendly enough to chat with during breaks--I don't want it to sound as though they scorn social advances. Both of them are also in the speaking elective course that I have Friday afternoons. Discussions during the last two sessions have yielded some interesting fun facts about both fellas. They are both from Pyongyang and like ping pong and volleyball (I'm still working on the bigger picture). The quieter one (not my partner), mentioned that his oldest friend of over 30 years (hence my assumption that he's in his 40s) used to be a teacher, but now has a position in the government.  My partner, whose Chinese name is Guang Zhe, majored in physics and now teaches physics at Kim Il-Song University in Pyongyang. The other day as we talked about where he worked we somehow managed mention Kim Il-Song, Kim Jong-Il, and the heir-apparent, Kim Jung-Un. We were in a group that included a German, a Malaysian, another American, and myself; neither the other American classmate nor I were gutsy enough to ask pointed questions about the leadership in that setting, though I hope to at some point. My expectations for his response are not particularly high. I'm more interested in what his perceptions of America are. Either way, I joke that I'm at the forefront of American diplomacy whenever I talk with Guang Zhe about anything more substantive than our upcoming exam. The other exams are written and cover the multitude of lessons that we've blazed through in the last two months, so there has been plenty to study.

This past Friday my friend Casey (the aforementioned American classmate) and I ventured west to Fragrant Mountain because we'd been told that all of the trees out there turn red with Fall and are really pretty. Conveniently, one of the bus routes that stops right at the south gate of campus goes all way out there. It just stops about 20 times along the way. The bus was packed and we had our personal space violated just about the whole way out there. We finally arrived and joined the throngs of people making their way towards the park. By this time it was after 3 o'clock, so there were more people leaving than arriving. But that was all relative. The park has structures that date all the way back to the 12th century, though most of what we saw was constructed in the mid 18th century by the same emperor who built the Old Summer Palace that I visited several weeks ago. Unfortunately, many of these structures suffered the same fate as the Old Summer Palace at the hands of the Anglo-French forces during the Second Opium War. We came across several plateaus where there were visible foundations and signs that explained what used to be there. After climbing for a while, we turned around and, thanks to the relatively clear day, were able to see most of Beijing. There was still a visible wall of haze in the distance, but we could see the Summer Palace in the foreground and were even able to make out the area surrounding the Olympic Green. Because the weather has been on the fence about making the full commitment to fall weather, many of the trees were still very much green...but that allowed those early bloomers to stand out that much more. (Check out the attached pictures at the bottom) We made our descent back down the mountain and saw a few more gorgeous trees and pretty alcoves, including one housing a waterfall that fed a small aqueduct that dates back to the mid-18th century.

After we exited the park, we made it down the road that leads up to it; this narrow street is lined with all sorts of stores and stands selling food, clothing, ancient weapons, cowboys hats, you name it. It was definitely a colorful display. And we were definitely the subject of many stares, being two of the few foreigners in the crowd. After getting turned around a bit we finally found a bus route that would take us back to Wudaokou. If we thought that we had been crowded on the way out there, we were dead wrong. My saving grace was being a head taller than most of the other passengers, but that did not change the fact that there were points where I could barely move my arms. I had thought that rush hour on the subway was bad enough, but pack a bus full of people who elbow and shove their way on, add abrupt braking and potholes and you've got a whole new ballgame. I've decided that people back home riding the DC or New York or Boston public transit systems have no room to complain about rush hour. Mercifully, two-thirds of the way back we reached a subway station and a number of people poured out of the bus. There was room to spare again. It was beautiful. Then we hit traffic. We realized that we were only a couple of blocks from Wudaokou at this point and we weren't even going fast enough to be categorized as "crawling," so at the next stop we bailed and walked (faster than the bus) back to Wudaokou. We grabbed a tasty dinner at a local restaurant where we were just as excited to finally sit down as we were to eat. After the long week and an afternoon of hiking and being manhandled on the public transit system, I slept like a baby.

No planned adventures coming up, but after midterms I'm sure I'll be looking to explore more of the city, so I'll keep all of you posted.

Red Leaves

Reflections of Fall

Everlasting Tranquility