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

Camping on the Great Wall

Hello! The National Week holiday is wrapping up, but I still managed to have a pretty awesome adventure on the Great Wall.

On Monday afternoon a classmate, Robin, and I made our way across town to a bus station to catch one of the public buses that goes out to the city limits. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the bus depot was contained within the subway station; we got on the bus two minutes later, marveling at how easy things had gone so far...and wondering when the hiccup would occur. We made our way out of town, the only two foreigners on the bus. After a period of time that did not seem long enough to have already reached our destination, we reached a stop and the driver's assistant told us this was our stop and that we had to get off. Needless to say, we were a bit confused. After a circular conversation with the driver and his assistant (and rising tempers of the passengers who didn't care what the foreign devils were doing) we figured out that the bus was headed northwest from this point, while we wanted to head northeast. More importantly, the part of the wall we wanted to begin at was in neighboring Hebei province--beyond the service area of Beijing public transportation. Naturally, several cars for hire were waiting at the bus stop--eager to rip off unsuspecting foreigners. This is where Chinese language skills really come in handy. We were originally quoted an absurdly inflated price, but after about 10 minutes of bargaining and negotiating, we settled on a more reasonable fare to get us the remaining 70 kilometers.

We made it out to the wall without anymore issues. The driver was, in fact, quite friendly and talkative, so we chatted for most of the drive. Quick history of the section of the wall we were started at: Jinshanling, was built in the 1570s during the Ming Dynasty and is 10.5 kilometes long. The area near the ticket off has been touched up for tourists, but the remainder of the wall towards our destination, Simatai, has been left to withstand Old Man Time and Mother Nature on its own. This means that stretches of the floor are littered with broken stones and some walls are now missing. It also means that far fewer tourists visit this section of the wall.

Once we arrived at the wall we bought our entrance tickets, grabbed a couple more [overpriced] bottles of water, and started making our way up the hills to the wall. Armed to the teeth with peanut butter and nutella sandwiches, water, and the finest sleeping bag/sleeping pad that the Walmart Super Center had to offer, we began our adventure. Because of the national holiday, there were a good number of Chinese tourists there, but by this point it was about just after 4 o'clock, so most were heading in the opposite direction. Not long after we got up to the wall this one Chinese girl (maybe 9-12 years old) remarked as she approached us, "Oh foreign people," to which I quickly replied, "Oh, Chinese people." This elicited a hearty laugh from the family members who she was with...and a look of surprise from the girl. We laughed and continued southeast down the wall.

The late afternoon sun was casting shadows over parts of the wall and parts of the valleys around us, but it was still plenty warm. At this point, the most pressing piece of business was to ditch the Chinese tourists and find a suitable tower to call home for the evening. These days the sun calls it quits a little after six o'clock, and we discovered a prime location just as the sun began to dip behind the distant mountains. (See below photo) The sunset was beautiful. Being over 160 kilometers outside of Beijing really does wonders in terms of visibility. We figured out which part of the tower was least susceptible to crosswinds and unrolled our weapons-grade sleeping pads and sleeping bags. I'd brought four pre-made peanut nutella sandwiches, while Robin had brought a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter. We had our "dinner" and started made a small fire. Vegetation around the wall is lacking to say the least, so making a fire ended up being a matter of principle rather than an actual source of light or heat for any extended period of time.

At this point it was dark and Robin glanced out the door towards the east and noticed a flashlight not far away--and coming towards us. Not knowing if it was another hiker or some sort of warden/ranger who would be less than thrilled about us being there, we grabbed our things and, quiet as two ninjas, made our way down a path that was conveniently located at our tower. (I should probably take the time to explain that you can secure a permit to camp on the wall for a price, but nobody ever does. But without knowing for certain if there was one man who made a nightly sweep for tourists, we decided to take the prudent route and clear out.) We hung out on this path until we saw the flashlight several towers past us and could no longer hear any voices. Not knowing who, exactly, that was, we decided we'd just keep the flashlight usage to a minimum. I should also add that the stars were incredible. You could see thousands of them. The big dipper was enormous and you see countless satellites as they made their orbits over northern China. We could also see Venus. It was beautiful. After straining our eyes against the dark from both the eastern and western doors, we decided that they wouldn't be anymore mystery travelers that evening. We finally hunkered down on our flimsy sleeping pads and tried (unsuccessfully) to stretch out in our sleeping bags that were never designed for persons of our height. The options were to either adopt a fetal position and be fully wrapped up, or stretch your legs out and pull the bag off your shoulders. As for the conditions, it was a bit breezy and a stone floor half a millennium old is not particularly forgiving, so it wasn't exactly the best night's sleep of all time. But it was still worth it.

I set the alarm for five o'clock so we could soak in the sunrise. We hadn't taken the time to look up what time sunrise actually is, so we had a good bit of time before the sun finally reared its head over the mountains. But when we first awoke the window directly above us (see below photo) framed a crescent moon and the orange glow of pre-sunrise light behind the mountains. Breathtaking.

We set off for Simatai as the sun revealed its full self from behind the eastern mountains. As we looked back on the tower that we made home for the night, we could see the sunlight filter through the valley, burning off the fog that had collected in the hills. We passed a few more towers before stopping on a nice set of stairs to have breakfast. More peanut butter and nutella sandwiches and water in the sunshine as we marveled at what stretched before us and the enormous efforts required to construct it 500 years earlier. If the trip had ended there, it would've been great. But as it always seems to happen, things got crazier.

A few more towers past our private breakfast nook, we happened across a few Americans who had camped atop another tower. These characters were James, who lives/teaches here, and Mike and Meghan who were visiting him and his family. After visiting with them for a while, James offered to give us a ride back to Beijing. We gratefully accepted, helped them break camp, and made our way towards Simatai together. However, soon thereafter, we were intercepted by three Chinese men (only one of which was wearing a uniform), who said that Simatai was closed and that could not go that way. (We had known that Simatai was closed for repairs, but we were not venturing past the exit point, so we figured there shouldn't be a problem.) None of our new friends spoke Chinese, so I became the translator/negotiator. The issue was that, because that stretch of the wall was closed, there was no one there to sell us tickets. After half an hour of hyperbole about how Mike's bum knee would result in his death if we had to turn around, numerous reiterations that James' car was near Simatai, and offers for the "guards" to accompany us, James shoved 100 RMB at the one wearing a uniform (they initially wanted more than 150) and we said goodbye. And I may or may not have told them that there were six more Western tourists only a few towers back who had not paid an entrance fee. And they may or may not have went off looking for said tourists.

Thinking we were in the clear, we made our way through the last few towers, across a foot bridge over the Simatai Reservoir, and up the last few hundred stairs--only to be met by two more guards. One of these characters was holding a piece of paper that explained in Chinese and English that the wall was closed for repairs. I told him that we'd just talked with some of his colleagues, paid them 200 RMB, and that we were leaving. Goodbye. He stopped us and said that he was going to call them. We were quite literally standing at the exit, so I emphatically reiterated that we had been stopped by his friends, paid them, and that we were leaving. Goodbye.

We made it back to James' car, had a few more snacks, and then loaded up the car and headed back to Beijing. James invited Robin and me to come over for some food, so we all headed to his house, where we met his wife and three adorable little girls--who speak Spanish, English, and Chinese. Oh, and the oldest is six years old. Crazy. After hanging out for a few hours, we were invited to stay for dinner. We ended up staying until nearly midnight, at which point we desperately needed to go home, shower, and go to bed. We exchanged contact information and said our thank yous and goodbyes to the new friends that we had met only 14 hours earlier.

Chalk it up to another awesome adventure.

Sunset

What we woke up to

Ruins

View from breakfast

The second guard who wanted to stop us at the exit

Looking back after crossing the Simatai Reservoir

Ruins, Classes, and Stereotypes

Hi everyone. Sorry this entry is so tardy. Classes started and all that free time went the way of the Dodo. But I'll get to that in a bit. This entry is going to be a bit on the long side, so grab a tasty beverage, kick up your feet, and let me tell you a tale or two. Or three. Or a baker's dozen. We'll see how it goes.

Last Saturday (The 10th) I went to check out the Old Summer Palace. This is different from the Summer Palace that I saw two years ago. The Old Summer Palace is five miles northwest of the Forbidden City and--conveniently--only a few miles from my apartment.

Initial construction started in 1707, but things really took off in the middle of the 18th century. The structures and their vast gardens served as the home for "day to day" imperial business (the Forbidden City was only for ceremonial business). An interesting twist for these gardens and the palace buildings, however, is/was their architecture. The emperor at the time, Qianglong (one of my favorites), had a sweet tooth for exotic things and architecture; as a result, some of the structures followed the Baroque stylings from Europe. These buildings only comprise a small percentage of the total structures within the grounds, but they do demonstrate the increased interaction between the East and West during the 18th century.

Things were going pretty swell for all parties for a century or so until the Second Opium War came along in October 1860. French and British troops had marched inland to Beijing; the respective forces initially looted the grounds despite each one telling the other that they had done nothing. Then two British envoys, plus nearly twenty British, French, and Indian troops were captured, tortured and executed by the Chinese. In retaliation, the Anglo-French troops destroyed the palace. It took 3,500 British troops three full days to torch the palace. Most of the structures were destroyed. Those that survived were later destroyed in 1900 during the Eight-Nation Alliance (Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the United States) invasion.

Fast forward 110 years, rewind a few weeks, and you've got what I saw last weekend. The man-made lakes were filled with lilies and were ringed by trees and hills built with the dirt excavated to build the lakes. What remains of most of the structures conjures images of the Parthenon--a few columns columns remained standing, but many ornate carvings laid on their sides or leaned precariously against their neighbors. Today, the destruction of the Old Summer Palace serves as a tangible example of foreign aggression and humiliation in China.

That following Monday (the 13th) was my first real day of classes. They start bright at early at 8:30 each morning (ugh) and consist of four 50 minute blocks. We have reading and writing courses, listening and speaking courses, and once a week I have an elective speaking course. Each section is taught by a different teacher. So far I like the reading and writing teacher the best. She's the only one who never uses English and pushes us through the material. I have her for at least half of every day--twice a week I have her for the full four hours. After four years of college where I had a class here...a class there...where a nine o'clock class was considered inhumane, jumping right into things at 8:30 has taken some getting used to. Especially when you know you're going to spend the next four hours sitting on a small wooden seat that was designed for something considerably smaller than you are. But I digress. Seeing as BLCU is an international student university, my classmates hail from all over the place. So far I've met (in no particular order) Spaniards, Japanese, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, French, Brits, Canadians, Swedes, Colombians, Mexicans, Tunisians, Egyptians, South Koreans, and even a few North Koreans. The crazy thing is that with a considerable number of these students, we're best off conversing in Chinese--either because their English isn't very good or because I have no idea how to speak their mother tongue. (I've used my rusty Spanish a few times, but we don't need to dwell on that.)

Last Friday I was in my speaking elective and we were discussing social customs when one goes to a friend's house for dinner. I was grouped with a Japanese girl and a Tunisian girl. The text we had read had the guest referring to his friend's parents as Uncle and Aunt. When it was my turn to describe customs in 'Merica, I explained that we just refer to friend's parents as Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so. Here's where the real kicker comes in: I was telling these two girls that we would customarily bring a bottle of wine, salad, or dessert if we were going to someone's house for dinner and as I was reaching for other possibilities, the Japanese girl asked, "Bi-sa? Pizza?" I said, no. Not pizza. "Mai-dang-lao? McDonald's?" No, not McDonald's. "Han-bao-bao? Hamburger?" No not hambur--do you really think that's what all American's eat? The response: yes. I had to take a detour from the prescribed discussion to set this girl's mind right. The teacher came and sat with us and I told her of this misconception. She didn't seem to think it was all that ridiculous. I explained to her that it was a bit off base; I also told her how Chinese practices such as picking up your plate/bowl and shoveling food into your mouth with chopsticks wouldn't fly at a typical American dinner table. "Really? What do you do?" We keep our plates on the table and use a knife and fork. "So you don't pick up the plate?" No, it's impolite. "Oh!" So what did we learn today class? Americans eat more than just pizza, McDonald's, and hamburgers and we don't pick up the plate to finish off that last tasty little morsel. Cultural exchange at its finest.

We have the rest of this week off for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which marks autumnal equinox and the end of the summer harvesting season. For some reason, however, after having no class Wednesday through Friday, we'll have class Saturday and Sunday. After next week we'll have a full week off to celebrate the inception of the PRC on October 1st.

No plans yet for the break, but I'll keep you posted.