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.

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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