Spring break escapades

Spring break has officially been over for a week and things are back in full swing in Beijing again! I had an excellent spring break with my parents in Yunnan, a province in southern China known for having many Chinese minority groups. In one week, we visited Kunming, Lijiang, and Dali, which are all cities in the area. Our trip started on Sunday, when we flew from Beijing to Kunming. Our first stop was at a park with a famous building that I forgot the name of (sorry Mom). Anyways, those of you who are familiar with Chinese architecture know that most historical Chinese buildings have "duilians", which are inscription panels on each side of the doorway. This building had especially interesting duilians with famous Chinese poems narrating Yunnan's military history on either side.


The park also was on the border of "Dian Chi", which is a famous pond in Chinese history. Hearing the tour guide talk about this pond reminded me of Thoreau's Walden Pond with its ice cracking (nerdy moment of the day). Anyways this pond seemed pretty from the park but it turns out that it's actually the sewage disposal site for all the toilets in Kunming, so my mom and I decided to nickname it "Grey Poupon" (aka Gray Poo Pond).


For dinner we had Yunnan mushroom hot pot, since Yunnan is especially well known for its large variety of mushrooms. Delicious!


That night we watched a show with traditional songs and dances of many of the minority groups in Yunnan. I decided to take a picture of the Hmong performance just for my Hmong friends at Brown :)


The next day we visited Jiuxiang, which is an area with amazing caves and also a really pretty river. To get to the caves, we had to take an elevator down a cliff, row a boat across the river, and then hike through the caves. There was a waterfall inside the cave which was quite breathtaking.


The cave experience finished off with a cable car ride across the mountain back to our starting point. It felt like sitting on a ski lift chair, except without snow or skis on our feet.


On Tuesday we visited the Kunming Stone Forest (Shi Lin). This forest is famous because it tells the story of a Chinese princess named "A Shi Ma" who waited for eternity by a river to be rescued by her lover "A Hei". Because A Hei was held back by a war (?) he was unable to go rescue A Shi Ma and she is therefore now a rock by the lake at Shi Lin. In Yunnan, many of the locals refer to all young men as "A Heis" and the ladies as "A Shi Mas".


After Shi Lin we went to a teahouse to try Puer tea, which is a famous and expensive tea that is local to Yunnan. Puer tea is supposedly good for health, and we tried different types that lowered blood sugar and cholesterol. Surprisingly they all tasted very good, except that they were supposedly of "emperor quality" and therefore much too expensive to buy.


That afternoon we flew to Lijiang, which is a city much less industrial than Kunming and full of fresh air. Lijiang's most prevalent minority is the Dongba tribe, which has their own pictorial form of written Chinese. At night we went walking around their ancient city and had our Dongba names written out for us on a calendar made of their traditional paper.


On Wednesday we drove 3 hours up the mountain to the Tiger Leaping Gorge (Hu Tiao Xia), which is a canyon area of the Yangtze River. The gorge is famous for a stone in the middle of the river, and we hiked to this area of the canyon. The hike was absolutely beautiful, but security guards in the park kept yelling at us to stay on the side of the trail farther from the river, for fear that there would be an avalanche and our heads would be smashed by rocks falling from the surrounding cliffs. Nevertheless, the scenery was breathtaking!


Thursday morning we visited the "Mini Forbidden City" in Lijiang where the ancient ruler of southern China used to live. Inside the palace, they had some ancient paddles they used to spank bad royal children. Of course, my mom and I got a kick out of this.


Afterward we climbed up a tower in the ancient city, and at the top we had a bird's eye view of most of Lijiang. In the background of this picture you can see Yulong Mountain, which is the famous mountain in Lijiang that has snow year round.


That same afternoon we drove to Dali, a city in Yunnan close to the Himalayas. On the way, we passed by a marble factory where they had very interesting marble artwork that looked more like Chinese painting than natural marble.


We then took a boat cruise on a lake at the foot of the Himalayas. Our boat guides were local Dali farmers with some very cute kids. As always, the scenery on the cruise was beautiful.


At night we had dinner at "Yangren Jie", or white man's street, which is filled with foreign food and many tourists. I had my first plate of spaghetti since getting to China - delicious! I had a picture of the street, but unfortunately it didn't load properly.

The next day we went back to Kunming and went hiking again on some nearby mountains. There was some Taoist influence on the structure of the trail but I don't remember what it was. Regardless, we got to see Grey Poupon from another angle and were able to see just how large and significant it is to Kunming.


This mountain was also the site of the grave for Ni Er, the composer for China's current national anthem, the Red Flag Ode. I was especially excited because we played the Red Flag Ode on our orchestra tour in China last winter.


The next day, we woke up bright and early and flew back to Beijing. Overall, it was a very fun week and a good chance to see a different part of China and get out of the Beijing pollution. It was also interesting to hear all the different minority dialects when walking around Yunnan, and to hear Mandarin spoken with a completely different accent. Now it is back to the daily grind of Chinese classes at CET, hard to believe there's only 1 1/2 more months until I leave China!

Fresh air in Anyang

Well it has once again been much too long since I updated - sorry for the delay! My parents got to Beijing this past weekend, and I am currently studying hard for midterms before jetting off to Yunnan for our spring break. Anyways, two weekends ago CET had its historical trip to Anyang, a medium-sized city in the Henan province south of Beijing. We left on a Friday afternoon and took a six hour train ride there, which was, like every part of China, extremely crowded (but actually quite comfortable). We were all quite exhausted after arriving there the first night and most people just collapsed and went to bed. The next morning we headed off bright and early to go hiking in the Taihang Canyon on the outskirts of the city. My first impression of the canyon was the the very advanced, civilized bathroom greeting us at the bottom of the mountain (which I was fortunate enough to use):


Luckily the air on the mountain was much more fresh than the air inside the bathroom. It was so refreshing to finally breathe some clean air as we hiked through the canyon. Many locals set up small stands along the trail selling their traditional carvings and dried fruit. Some locals even live on the mountain - quite the opposite of a metropolitan Beijing life!


We finished off the hike at a beautiful waterfall, and after a lunch at a local peasant restaurant, hiked some more in Wang Xiangyan in the afternoon. All the hiking made me feel more like I was in Lake Tahoe than in China - so much beautiful scenery!


On Sunday we visited the Museum of Yin Ruins and the Tomb of Yuan Shikai in the city of Anyang. Because I really know nothing about Chinese history, it was a little hard for me to follow along with what the tour guides were saying in their broken English. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see more Chinese architecture and goof around like the obnoxious tourists we are. Stephanie and I decided to do the "foot pop" from Princess Diaries while in the garden at the Yin Ruins.


In the afternoon, we went to the Chenghuang Temple, where local middle school students gave us a kung fu show, and then proceeded to try to teach some CET guys how to do kung fu. It didn't quite have the same effect.


We then saw a show of Chinese women dancing with traditional drums. This time it was the girls' turn to get embarrased, as they made us try out the drumming.


Overall the weekend was a very fun trip and a great opportunity to get out of Beijing. In a few days I will be departing again, this time for Yunnan with my parents for CET's spring break. Should be a good time! (but I have to get through midterms first...)

I'm a tourist

So it's been a while since I've written in here - studying abroad is too full of fun! This past weekend was probably the most tourist-filled (and exhausting) weekend I've had since I got to Beijing. Our teachers decided to be really nice and cancel our test this past Friday, and took us to the park to play Chinese games like little kids. It felt like elementary school recess, China style - we played with jianzi, which is a small feathery thing that you kick around, and also learned some cheesy kid songs. This is a picture of my class in the park:


Last week, I started private erhu lessons with another friend at CET! It's similar to viola in many ways, so it was actually easier than I thought to play a recognizable melody. The hardest part is probably using the bow and holding the instrument on my lap instead of my shoulder. Because we're actually going through with the lessons, we decided to go buy erhu's last week at Xinjiekou, which is a huge area full of music shops with both Chinese and Western instruments, and of course my nerdy musical self immediately fell in love with the place. It was quite a humbling (but exciting) experience to buy the erhu, as I really wasn't sure how to pick out a good instrument and was guessing my way through the entire process. In the end we found a shop with really nice Chinese instruments and they were really helpful with picking out a high-quality, affordable instrument. If you look in the picture, the guy in the background is tuning up the erhu I bought. The wall on the left is full of guzhens, another traditional instrument, and the wall on the right is all erhus.


Friday night CET took us to see Chinese acrobats (zaji) on the other side of town. The performances were all amazing and almost not human - no wonder China's Olympic gymnastic team is so good! The scariest part was that all the performers were really young, probably ranging from 6-18 years old. The girl in this picture is BITING on the stick and balancing her whole body with her teeth. I don't even know how they think of these maneuvers!


On Saturday, my roomate brought me and some of my friends to the Forbidden City. I've been there twice before, but this time it was especially fun because she has some friends who happen to be tour guides there and were able to take us around and give us a backroad version tour of the Forbidden City. I never cease to be in love with this place everytime I visit.


Ellis, Annetta, and I decided to pose with Mao's picture like the tourists we are, and of course what could we do except pretend to be Charlie's Angels:


On Sunday, we decided to go to Beihai Park to go paddleboating. This might have been the first actual sunny and warm day all semester, which just made the park even more beautiful. The park was very crowded with locals, and some of them were painting Chinese characters on the ground with huge brushes and water. Pretty cool!



Yesterday, I discovered that I have the hidden talent of playing BADMINTON! Any of you who know me well know that I am hopeless at any sport that involves a ball or other people. For some reason though, yesterday afternoon I decided to be brave and go with some friends to try playing badminton at a nearby gym, and I could actually continuously hit the birdie back and forth! It was amazing (and fun), and now I have one more way to exercise!

Tomorrow CET is taking its first weekend trip to Anyang, which is a town that's about 6 hours away by train. I'm not quite sure what to expect - I think it's famous for having oracle bones, and we're also going to spend some time climbing mountains. I'll update about it when I get back, wo ai ni men!

Dog tastes like beef

This week started out relatively tame - I went to my first painting class at CET and the teacher taught us how to paint Chinese vegetables. Luckily, my roomate the art major was there to help me create a painting with a somewhat recognizable cabbage, radishes, and peppers.


On Thursday the adventures began. Annetta, Ellis, Jason, and I, being the foodies that we are, decided that we really wanted to try eating dog meat. Yup, dog, like the thing that barks in your backyard. I am not one to be cruel to animals in any way, but I have to say that the spicy dog soup that we ordered was actually quite good (it tasted like beef). I probably won't eat it again but it's one more item to add to the list of strange foods I've tried.


Last week during class, we had an assignment to walk to a nearby park and look for environmental phrases posted around the area. It was probably one of the more interesting walks I've had around our neighborhood. While walking past the Korean barbecue restaurant, we saw all the servers going through morning exercises and getting ready for the day. They were all marching and chanting in unison and it reminded me somewhat of high school PE class.


We also walked past a yam vendor, and I finally gave into the irresistable aroma and bought my first Chinese street yam. Eating that yam was pretty much like biting into heaven, and it definitely helped our dry class activity move along a little faster.


On Friday night we went out to celebrate Joanna's birthday at a $2 buffet barbecue. There ended up being about 30 of us taking probably the most crowded subway ever for an entire hour across town. Nevertheless, it was well worth the wait and we were able to take over the restaurant like the obnoxious waiguoren we are.


This weekend was slightly more relaxed than the past few weekends, which I definitely needed after three weeks of never sleeping more than five hours at a time. On Saturday, my roomate took us to Huan Le Gu, which is the new amusement park in Beijing. I thought I was good with rollercoasters, but the rollercoasters here were INTENSE. After 3 or 4 rides, my head was ready to explode and I wasn't quite sure I'd make the subway ride back to school.


On the way home, we stopped at Lao Beijing Zhajiang Mian, which has the best zhajiang noodles in Beijing. Zhajiang noodles are basically like Chinese spaghetti, and they were absolutely amazing at this restaurant. The other great part was that we realized this restaurant is only 2 blocks from school, so we now have a new place we can regularly go to.


If you haven't noticed from this entry, life in Beijing is very food-centric. A few friends and I and our Chinese roomates have started calling each other "fei zhu" (chubby pigs), partially also due to the fact that it is the year of the pig on the Chinese calendar. Luckily, many of us fei zhu like to go running so that hopefully we will not return to the US looking like fei zhu. With that said, my time abroad probably wouldn't be half as fun without all our food adventures.

Bon appetit!

Pictures!!

I finally uploaded all my pictures so far...

http://community.webshots.com/user/twasers0607

Enjoy!

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

Chinese bargaining, excessive good food, and schizophrenic weather

Nihao my fellow waiguoren! This is a long and overdue entry, as there's been so much going on this past week that I haven't had time to update. The first week of classes are over, and I am officially exhausted! Every weekday we have grammar classes in the morning with a "tingxie" (dictation) quiz first thing, where we get tested on 30 characters that we had to memorize the night before. Grammar class is followed by small group drills, and then either discussion or supplementary material such as watching a Chinese movie. Starting next week, we also have 1 on 1 sessions in the afternoon and an elective class (mine will be "Business Chinese"). We will also be starting fun electives - I signed up for martial arts and Chinese painting, and might also be taking private erhu lessons with some other students who are interested :) On Friday, we had our first weekly exam and it was quite tedious and difficult - we had a long written section with a short essay as well as an 8-minute oral. I think I've decided that reading and writing Chinese is much more difficult for me than speaking.

Thursday was a very exciting day, as I finally got to meet up with my grandaunt who lives in Beijing. We went walking in the Wangfujing area and then took the subway to her apartment on the other side of town. It was incredible to hear some of the stories she told me of my grandma and other relatives and also to have so much connection with someone I'd only met once before for a few hours!

Friday afternoon after our long week of class was over, I went shopping with some other students at the Silk Street Market. This mall is probably one of China's biggest carrier of fake goods, and also an incredible place to practice bargaining in Chinese since all the shop owners like to hike up prices if they know you're not a native. That night we had an amazing dinner at Quanjude Roast Duck, which is Beijing's #1 roast duck restaurant. We split a whole duck between four people and saw the chef chop it up right in front of us!

On Saturday CET had it's first outing at the Summer Palace. It was unfortunately one of the rare rainy days in Beijing so we were unable to completely enjoy our time there. I still had fun seeing the famous parts of the Summer Palace, such as the walkway with 100 ancient Chinese stories narrated in traditional paintings, and the huge royal dock shaped like a stone ship - I can't believe how spoiled ancient Chinese royalty was! Saturday night I went with other students and their Chinese roomates to KTV (Chinese karaoke). We all had a great time singing old American pop songs, watching our roomates belt out Chinese pop, and trying to decipher all the Chinese characters on the TV screen while they were singing. It was also funny seeing which American songs our Chinese roomates liked - the two American songs my roomate absolutely had to sing were "My Heart Will Go On" and "Barbie Girl". When we finally left the karaoke place at 3AM, it was SNOWING outside, which apparently never happens in Beijing in March. Nevertheless, it was extremely pretty and made up for the fact that it didn't snow in Providence before I left last semester :)

Today (Sunday) my roomate invited me and a few other American students to her house for Yuanxiao Jie, the holiday that signifies the official ending of Chinese New Year. We had a deliiiiiiicious lunch in her family's 7th floor apartment, complete with homemade Szechuan sausage, dumplings, and tangyuan/yuanxiao (two types of sweet sticky rice ball desserts that are traditionally eaten on this holiday). That lunch was so good, I may never be hungry again.

Here are some pictures for your entertainment:

Xizhimenwai - my neigborhood!

My grand aunt in front of her apartment

Posing with the token Quanjude duck (notice our huge shopping bags)

Walkway of story paintings at Summer Palace

Anyways, I think I've procrastinated enough, as I have an essay due on Tuesday that I have not started. Apologies if the writing in this entry is really bad - the language pledge is making me forget how to speak English, but at least my Chinese is improving (hopefully)....

Zai jian!