The Forbidden City

Forbidden City

Yesterday I was able to visit the Forbidden City, about a 30 minute subway ride from the school. It was a really cold day with a little bit of wind but there were still a lot of people out braving the weather. I heard that they have done a lot of renovation recently and it looked really nice. Everything was open though and I only noticed one building with scaffolding around it. The entire complex was really huge and I walked around for about half the day and still didn't see everything. My favorite parts included the Imperial Gardens and the first couple of courtyards. I've posted some pictures, hope everyone is well.

Tiananmen Square

November

I've posted some pictures from a recent trip to Tiananmen Square and the National Center for the Performing Arts Building. Tiananmen Square was much larger than I had imagined and it would be really neat to see it filled with people. The Performing Arts building is a fairly new building which I've heard isn't very popular with the Chinese. It's rounded like an egg and surrounded by water so that it looks like it is floating on a lake.

Olympic Stadium

Olympic Stadiums

I’ve posted some pictures from my visit to the China National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, and the Water Cube, where Michael Phelps won all his gold medals. I was able to go inside the Water Cube but not the Bird’s Nest. One of my classmates is an architecture student in Denmark and he had studied both buildings so he served as our tour guide for most of the trip. One of our teachers also walked around with us and we asked her about how the Chinese liked the stadiums. It sounds like for the most part they like the Bird’s Nest but are not crazy about the color, too gray and not enough colorful. Our teacher also expressed apprehension that both buildings had been built and designed by foreigners. The Water Cube has more color than the Bird’s Night, especially at night, so more Chinese may like it, but both stadiums are really amazing and now have lots of history.

English Pays Off

Earlier in the week I was able to make a few extra bucks by recording English phrases for some sort of Korean cell phone company. I had been told this was a popular way for native English speakers (especially Americans) to earn some cash. The whole process was a little bizarre but I suppose quite common in China. I was approached by a bespectacled Chinese man with frisky hair on campus one day and he told Jose, my roommate, and I to meet him at a popular coffee shop and then he would take us to an apartment close by. We met him around 6 pm and made it inside the poorly-lit apartment building by about 610 where we were told to take off our shoes and then led into separate rooms. Their room and the surrounding hallways had the recognizable and pungent smell of homemade Chinese food but inside it was quite clean and the living room was spaciously and orderly arranged except the scattered sandals and pumps in the corner. A Chinese girl had me sit down in front of a computer with a microphone and asked me how much Chinese I knew. I said a little and she gave me a few instructions and then I began speaking English sentences, phone numbers, and dates that popped onto the screen. By about 6:50 I was finished and led back into the main room where a Chinese man that was evidently running the show was working on a computer. About 10 minutes later Jose came out and we both put our shoes back on and waited at the door. They said everything was okay and the man took out 150 kuai in cash for each of us, about 22 dollars. It was nice money for so little work and hopefully I’ll be able to do it a few more times before I leave.

The November weather seems to be on schedule, we’ve had chilly mornings, windy days and cool evenings. Halloween passed pretty uneventfully, I only saw three trick-or-treaters outside last night and they seemed to be more into their costumes than getting candy. This next week should be busy but interesting with the election on Tuesday and then our class taking a trip to the Olympic stadiums on Wednesday. We get to visit the Bird’s Nest for sure and hopefully the Water Cube so I should have lots of pictures to post next weekend.

More Tingly Than Hot

My computer is back up and running (for now), but I never figured out what caused it to crash in the first place so we’ll see how long it lasts. The last couple of days I have had a lot more interaction with Chinese people other than my teachers thanks mostly to my new language partner and my high tolerance for spicy foods.

Last week I had my first session with my language partner, an energetic 24-year old Chinese girl named Bi Hui Hui. We have a Chinese tutor session for an hour and then I help her with English for an hour, although we don’t always work on English for the whole hour because she thinks her English isn’t very good and says she gets embarrassed, even though my Chinese isn’t half as good as her English. Either way I have really benefited from our meetings (we met four times last week and once already this week) and hope that she will continue to want to meet throughout the rest of the semester. I really get to practice on normal everyday situations and I’m always asking her about encounters I have and what phrases and expressions I should have used. It’s also the most exposure I get to a Chinese person as our talks have been more candid than I would have thought because of the language barrier. But she has been super nice and even got her boyfriend to help me work on my computer last week when it wasn’t working and is very patient with me while I butcher her language. She really likes to sing and is taking part in a campus wide karaoke competition on Friday which I have hinted at attending even though she assures me it won’t be very interesting.

Over the weekend I was dining at the dumpling restaurant that I often frequent when I was able to strike up a conversation with a broad-faced Chinese man sitting across from me with a badminton racquet and a gruff voice. Through the smell of the vinegar and soy sauces splashed on the tables, the steam and sweat rising from the tiny, bustling kitchen area, and the strong aroma of the egg and chives soup that dotted most of the tables, he caught a whiff of the spoonfuls of crushed pepper I was shoveling into my dipping bowl. He told me that I must really like hot food and then asked me where I was from. I told him I was an American and we switched between English and Chinese while discussing how long I had been studying and how long I was staying. When he had finished he stood up and said goodbye and evidently was too distracted to remember to pay for his meal. I didn’t notice either until the petite but stern owner briskly scurried past me and out into the hall looking for the alleged malefactor while mumbling under her breath. About 30 seconds later she walked back into the room shaking her head and smiling and counting her money.

I added a survey in the top right corner to see what people would like to hear more or less about, let me know what you think, you can vote for more than one.

Down and Out in Beijing

I am having some computer problems so I won't be able to post any new blogs for a while. I can't keep Windows up for more than about five minutes before it freezes but hopefully I'll be able to get it fixed pretty soon. Hope everyone is doing well.

Great Wall

I was able to visit the most famous attraction in China this week, the Great Wall, during a school sponsored trip on Thursday. We left around 8 in the morning and it was about a two hour drive north of Beijing. The area we visited is called Mutianyu, a very well-preserved section and therefore a popular tourist destination. But since it was a Thursday morning it wasn’t too crowded, even though it was a perfect day to go with clear skies and a slight chill to cool you off after the long walk up the mountain (the steps were super steep and it took us about 40 minutes with several breaks). The fall is a great time to go to Mutianyu because it is surrounded by wooded areas and really makes for a colorful landscape. We walked along the wall for several hours taking pictures and watching for Mongols attacking on horseback from the north.

Two things that struck me while walking around were the sheer immensity of the project (the walls and fortifications stretch for some 4,600 miles) and then the seamless blending of the wall with its surroundings. One famous Chinese historian contrasts the Western view of man conquering nature with the Chinese view of man bending to nature in order to sustain such an enormous population. That idea is supported by the almost organic wall that winds up over the backs of the ridges and then slides back down into the valleys in its serpentine attempt to hide itself in the vegetation. For the trip back down the hill I road on a sled-like conveyance with wheels that rolled down an aluminum slide like a bobsled. They put my safety concerns to rest by offering a one RMB (the Chinese currency) insurance policy, or about 14 US cents. Overall the trip was terrific and my high expectations were certainly met. I hope to return at some point and maybe visit some of the other sections of the wall. I posted some pictures under the link below.

Great Wall

Hilarious In Translation

We’re through the first week of classes after the break and ready for the rest of the semester. I’ve identified Listening Class as my weak point and realize I have a long way to go in that area. Trying to understand men is the most difficult because they tend to keep their mouths closed very tight and sort of mumble out of the backs of their throat. I’ve tried to watch more Chinese television (a real tough assignment I know) so we’ll see if that helps. My Speaking Class is the favorite class of most of my classmates. The teacher is a very jovial Mr. Wang (one of about a billion Wangs in this country, the most common surname) who makes class quite lively and comic with his constant berating of the Italian girls’ accents and historical digressions on Confucius. He diverts from the lesson plan more often than the other teachers and attempts to give us useful words that the textbooks may have omitted.

My death defying adventure of the week was riding on the back of my classmate’s moped on the way to lunch. As I’ve mentioned the traffic is quite helter skelter and yesterday was no exception. Fortunately or unfortunately he was a fairly experienced driver which meant he felt comfortable weaving in and out of lanes, speeding up then slamming on the brakes as we approached intersections, and passing on the inside and outside shoulders. There is a white metal fence that divides the highway and I don’t think he understood that my knees were forced outward further than his because my left kneecap was inches from drubbing each post Three Stooges style. Despite the gravity of it all I was too foolish to actually be scared; it all seemed to be happening on tv or in a video game (watch out for that old lady! Dodge the bus, dodge the bus!). I knew we had lost the game when a Russian sped by us on a sport bike doing a wheelie down the main thoroughfare, after which my classmate, who is French, turned toward me and said “crazy Russians”.

The above picture is a warning sign posted in our dormitory inside the laundry room. Most of their mistranslations are innocuous grammar errors but this one took me a second to decipher. Nevertheless I’ll keep my voice down to avoid any cascading sock-avalanches.

A Thousand Moons and A Thousand Words

The holiday week is almost over and students that took trips are beginning to return to campus. I stayed in Beijing and made several short excursions to different parts of the city and thought I would post pictures of the places I visited. None of them were too glamorous and the attractions were more the people themselves than the landmarks. On Tuesday I went to the Beijing Worker's Stadium, the American Embassy (which was closed), and some small shops. Wednesday I went to Beida, China's most prestigious university, or as my guidebook describes it, MIT and Harvard rolled into one. And on Friday I went to the Houhai Lake region, a kitschy tourist trap but still a nice place to walk. All in all a good week. You should be able to click on the picture below and it will take you to "10-1 album" where you can click on the first picture and then scroll through the rest.

10-1 Week

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Silk Market

Today is the first day of the National Holiday week here in China that continues through next Sunday. The National Holiday, which is officially on October 1st, celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party after their victorious civil WAR with Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang Party. I’m not sure what to expect this week besides a ubiquitous amount of Chinese flags and a deluge of visitors from all around China coming to Tiananmen Square to celebrate. Should be interesting.

The weather turned cold mid-week and people have begun bundling up in the mornings, buying new winter coats, and drinking a lot more hot coffee. Classes have also started thinning out as one friend told me she only had 5 people in her class one day. I was able to get some real-world application for classroom studies on Saturday when some classmates and I went to the Silk Market, a “fake goods” area of town that is a regular stop for tourists making the rounds in downtown Beijing. The thin façade of legitimacy as you walk inside (no visible DIRT, clean floors and orderly stalls) quickly vanishes when the first clerk accosts you with shouts of “lookee, lookee, you want buy shoes for you girlfriend?” and grabs you by the arm to drag you into their bathroom-sized stall. Nevertheless haggling with them over prices on items I had no intention of buying allowed to me to practice my Chinese more than at any point in the trip. I learned words for lots of new things like “belt”, “scarf”, “I’m getting angry”, and “don’t come back!” It was surprising to learn how many languages in which they could bargain as my friends knew Spanish and Italian and said the Chinese store clerks almost spoke it fluently.

We had taken a taxi to get to the market but the traffic was really bad so we decided to try the subway on the way back. It was very easy on which to get around and it only cost 2 kuai, or about 30 US cents. The traffic can be quite harrowing at times because there are so many pedestrians, bikers, cars, motorcyclists (which are really more like mopeds), and other miscellaneous vehicles like this motorized bicycle with a large METAL covering that surrounds the driver. I’ve heard that these have been outlawed but they still prowl the streets and even serve as taxis for short distances. One night on my way back to the dormitory a woman on a bicycle collided head on with one and the impact was strong enough to knock her backwards. She wasn’t injured but was very upset and a guy she was with on another bicycle came back and began to argue with the other driver. I’ve heard differing accounts on how often this sort of thing happens; some people say it is quite safe and rarely occurs while others say it happens all the time, it’s just not talked about.

A Day in the Life

Dorm Room
It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m preparing to go play tennis with my roommate around 7 pm. We haven’t been able to play much because the courts are always crowded plus you have to pay to play on them, a couple of dollars per hour. This week has consisted mostly of waking up around 7 am in order to be at school at 8. We have comprehensive class for the first two hours where we practice speaking, writing and listening, then a 20 minute break from 950 to 1010. The next two hours is either speaking class or listening class. I have two female teachers and one male teacher. All three seem to be diligent in their preparation and serious about teaching class. The ages of the students in my class ranges from a woman who looks to be in her late 30s to early 40s with two kids to several recent high school graduates, one of which I believe is 17.

After class most people go out to eat for lunch. Recently I went to a small fruit market that had a tiny café in the back with four tables and four chairs at each table. After waiting about 10 minutes for one of the tables to open, we sat down and ordered dumplings, or 饺子 (jiaozi). They’re a fairly authentic Chinese dish and they’re usually stuffed with meat or vegetables. I think some of ours had lamb and then some had vegetables. A small bowl is used to put spices and some kind of sauce (vinegar or soy sauce) in which you dump the dumplings. It all tasted really good and I think I ended up paying less than 2 US dollars for the whole meal. We’ve since been back several times.

I’ve been able to interact with the Chinese (besides my teachers) fairly often but not as much as I’d like, but it’s obviously very difficult at this point. In addition to waiters and waitresses, I was able to speak with a woman from the dormitory who came to inspect our room the other day. She was checking to make sure we had everything in our room that the list said we should have and we alternated between saying the items in Chinese and English, then answering in the affirmative (“yo”, “yo”, 有，有, or “we have”, “we have”) or the negative (“mei yo”, 没有，”we don’t have”). I noticed that she had brought a pen and let my roommate borrow it, then picked up my pen to sign the document. I was afraid she had mistaken my pen to be hers so I told her (in Chinese) that that was my pen! She thought this was very funny and said she just wanted to borrow it, to which I agreed, then told me that I was very strange.

Extra MSG

What would a trip to a foreign country be without a food-related incident? I'm sure there will be plenty while I'm here, but I had my first one today while eating at a restaurant down the street from my hotel. Choosing from a picture menu is helpful but it didn't preclude my picking a dish I wasn't quite sure how to eat. I chose a braised pork and green bean soup dish with a side of rice but I didn't realize the chopped up pork meat would still be attached to the bone. After putting the first piece of pork in my mouth I realized my mistake but found no quick remedy except for spitting the bone out and placing it beside the bowl. It has seemed to me so far that the Chinese eating etiquette is limited compared to ours, with the slurping and placing two arms on the table, so I thought I'd be okay. There were no Western utensils to cut the meat off with and my chopstick experience is sparse so I kept going with my meal. Later the waitress offered me another plate on which to place my bone scraps along with a curious smile. The adventure only cost me $3.65 and a little piece of my dignity.

After an all-day rain yesterday I've seen the blue Beijing sky for the first time today. I also had my first class today after taking a placement test on Monday. They grade the classes as A, B, C, D with three levels in each grade and "A" being beginner. I got into the first level of "B" along with my roommate, Jose. Jose and I both went to Embry-Riddle and we had met a couple of times at school but had never gotten to know each other very well. We went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch yesterday, a Korean restaurant last night, and then an Islamic restaurant on campus today. The district of Beijing that we're in, Haidian, is very diverse because of all the universities around. My class this morning was from 8 am to noon and it seemed very intense but I think I'll learn a lot.

Islamic restaurant on campus

Rough Landing

Bags are packed.

My first meal in China was at KFC.

My plane arrived in Beijing with a thud. The passengers let out a collective gasp and then began nervously laughing. Luckily that was the only part of my day of traveling that didn't go smoothly. I made it to my hotel with all my bags and quicker than scheduled.

There is definitely a noticeable haze in Beijing but I couldn't tell from just breathing when walking around; running may be different, although everybody was riding around on bicycles and I did notice one person jogging yesterday. When riding from the airport to my hotel in the taxi yesterday I realized how sprawling Beijing is. It's hard to tell where the main part of the city begins as large buildings sprout in clusters in several different locations. The architecture of these buildings was fairly monotonous with the same drab, austere layout that resembles a military barrack only taller. I haven't been able to see any of the new buildings yet. The weather was pretty hot and muggy and we had a short shower later in the day.


All the people I've met have been very friendly, especially one Chinese lady on the airplane who spoke fluent English that helped me with getting a taxi. The hotel, which cost 50 something dollars a night, had a friendly staff with a bell boy that carried my bags to my room. I got to walk around campus and spoke to some people who reserved my dorm room for the semester. All in all a good start to my trip but very tiring. I fell asleep at about 730 last night and didn't get up until 730 this morning. Classes won't start until Monday so I'll just be getting acclimated over the weekend. I think people can comment on this blog (not sure how it works) but I hope you all will comment or email me to keep in touch. My schedule isn't set yet as far as classes so I don't know how long I'll be able to keep this blog going but we'll see.