Waiguoren or Beijingren?

It's hard to believe another week has gone by so quickly! Classes and activities are in full swing now, making everyday a busy but fun day in one way or another. In case you're wondering what the title of this post means, "waiguoren" is the Chinese term for anyone not native to China (wai = outside, guo = country, ren = person), which means a "Beijingren" is someone from Beijing. All the American students here are waiguoren in every sense of the word (though I'm sometimes taken for a Beijingren by the locals), but with every day we're here I think we all have more and more moments that make us feel like Beijing locals, such as taking that first subway trip alone or finally buying suscipicious food from a street vendor. However, there are also constant reminders that we are waiguoren. For example, everytime I get back from bargain shopping and show my roomate my purchases, she tells me that I paid about twice as much as I should have for each item. And this is after I bargain for 1/10 the asking price and feel quite proud of my "taojia" (price talking) skills. Every weekend is also waiguoren time because it's when we go out and do every touristy thing possible in China, but more about that later in the post.

This week we started our elective activites at CET. On Monday I went to a wushu (martial arts) class which was actually quite relaxing. It was much more tame than I expected and reminded me more of my old Chinese dance classes than of kungfu movie moves. On Wednesday, we had a class where we learned how to bao jiaozi (make dumplings)! The picture below is of one of the kitchen staff rolling out the dough for us to make the dumpling skin. Our dumplings all ended up looking more like ugly white saucers rather than the pretty dumplings they have in restaurants, but nevertheless they were deliiiiicious.


Friday was my official waiguoren day. I went shopping with some friends on the other side of town at the Sanlitunr Yashou market, where the ratio of Caucasian to Asian shoppers was probably 60:40. After that we completely splurged on some amazing Indian food at the China World Trade Center, which is right next to the embassy district. I also had my first Starbucks in Beijing, making the waiguoren day complete :) At night my roomate's friend took us to a music club where they have local bands perform every night. The singing really wasn't that great and the place was entirely too smoky, but it was still interesting to go to a new place and compare American and Chinese band performances. Here's a picture:


On Saturday we decided to go to the China Worldpark, which has fake monuments of basically every famous landmark in the world. It was entirely too cold so we didn't stay too long, but it was rather comical taking pictures in front of every landmark like a little kid at Disneyland, and walking from France to Cambodia in 5 minutes. I think the most entertaining part of the park was that there was a fake Great Wall in the country with the real Great Wall. Also, the Great Wall had the only spot where you could stand and see every monument in the park at once. Too much fun. Here's Stonehenge:


Saturday night CET had an activity at the Sanwei Teahouse. This was the perfect event for my nerdy musical and excessive tea drinking self. We all got to sip on amazing green tea while watching a Chinese chamber music performance (!!!) complete with erhu, yangqin, and pipa. The musicians were all from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music which is like the Julliard of China. Also, I recognized many of the pieces they played which just made it that much more exciting. In this picture, the erhu is on the left, yangqin in the middle, and pipa the banjo-looking thing on the right.


My friends and I have all gotten into a craze of buying Pashmina scarves for ourselves and our roomates. We all happened to wear our scarves to the teahouse, and looked like a rainbow when standing in the same place:

Today (Sunday) I finally made it to the international church with some friends in the morning. After that my roomate took me "liuda liuda" (walking) around her old neighborhood in Beijing. We went to the "yi ren hutong" (one-man alley) by her old apartment, which is well-deserving of its name, as you really can't fit more than one person in the width of the alley at once. It was really exciting to see a snapshot of old Beijing, especially since the government here is supposedly tearing down all the hutongs before the Olympics start as part of the city development. I definitely felt transformed to another world while walking through the hutongs, and it's too bad they won't be here in the future - they speak so much of the city's past and really add culture to Beijing.

After our hutong adventure, we went to eat some traditional Beijing snacks. So good!

I took the subway about 5 times this weekend and I'm really starting to get entertained by little things each time I take it. First of all, they have both Chinese and English announcements of each stop on the loudspeaker, but they differ so much in content. Here's an example of what they say:

Chinese: "Dear customers, the next stop is Fuxingmen. This stop is a transfer stop, where you can transfer from line 1 to line 2. If you are getting off at Fuxingmen, please move toward the exits so that people can get off as quickly as possible. Also, if you are sitting down, please give up your seat should you seat should you see anyone elderly or sickly. Once again, the next stop is Fuxingmen."

English: "The next stop is Fuxingmen."

Another thing intriguing about the subway is the various ads they have on the walls. The most common ad I've seen is for the Urological Hospital of Beijing. There's a picture of a middle-aged Caucasian couple, smiling and looking very content with life. Aside from the hospital ad, almost every other ad is about the comfort and convenience of the subway system. Makes you wonder what kind of place that hospital is.

Anyways, I've procrastinated on homework until Sunday night as usually. Memorizing time!

-Waiguoren truly