So long :(

I have now been back in the US for a week, and I think I can definitely feel the "re-entry shock" we were warned of. Everything in the states seems much too big, empty, and clean (not to mention expensive!). I'm definitely starting to have a case of China withdrawal :(

Anyways, the last couple weeks in Beijing were full of fun. The weekend before finals, we decided to go to Qingdao for some time at the beach. This is the place where Tsingtao Beer is made. The entire city felt much more Californian/European than Chinese, as the air was cleaner, the streets were wider, and the sky seemed much bigger and bluer. We spent all of Saturday tanning at two Chinese beaches, one of which was next to a famous mountain called Laoshan (pictured in the background):


On Sunday morning we visited the Tsingtao Beer Factory. There were huge displays of the history of beer in Qingdao and the influence that the Germans had on the Chinese beer-drinking culture. We also got some free Tsingtao beer, but Jason pretty much drank all of it for us.


Every night we ate at the same street that was famous for fresh seafood. All of our meals involved picking a live fish from a tank and watching it get killed in front of our eyes.


The last Friday in Beijing right after finals, CET had its graduation banquet at the Holiday Inn. This was my exciting opportunity to wear my custom made Chinese qipao :) It was also the last time that everyone was officially together. Here is me with two of my teachers. Yang laoshi and Wen laoshi. I'm going to miss them!

Here is my dear feizhu foodie club. I'm going to miss all of you guys so much!


And of course, I will miss Beijing. It has been a great semester, zaijian!

History class in Xian

This past weekend we took a short trip to Xian, which was once the capital of China during the ancient dynasty era. Touring all the historical spots made each stop feel somewhat like a history lesson, but it was definitely one of the most fun "history" classes I've had!

Our hotel was right across the street from Huiming Jie, which is a street full of Muslim vendors, souvenirs, and food (of course). There was a huge area of fruit stands which sold all sorts of dried fruit. Apparently kiwi is one of Xian's famous fruits, so many of the fruit stands were selling tons and tons of dried kiwi.


We ate some traditional Muslim street food for dinner. This picture is of "yangrou paomuo", which is lamb soup with small pieces of chewy bread and lots of spices inside. I promise the soup tastes much better than it looks or sounds.


On Saturday our day started bright and early with a tour around all the famous historical sites in Xian. Our first stop was a factory that produces fake terra cotta warriors for all the street vendors to sell. They actually looked surprisingly authentic in the factory, much more so than on the streets.


Our next stop was Huaqing Chi, which was the vacation home for ancient Chinese royalty, similar to the Summer Palace in Beijing. Huaqing Chi is known for having hot springs which emporers used to use for bathing. The palace is absolutely gorgeous and situated next to a mountain range that is mentioned in several Chinese legends.



Huaqing Chi is also famous because Chang Kai Shek lived there during World War II after the Japanese overtook Nanjing and he retreated to Xian. There were displays of his old office, bedroom and bathroom, and of course the Taiwanese in me had to take a picture (you can see the Taiwanese flag in the background).


After leaving Huaqing Chi we went to visit the grave of Qing Shihuang, who was the Chinese emperor during the Qing Dynasty. Although his empire only lasted 17 years, Qing Shihuang is known for unifying China through creating a uniform language, system of weights and measures, roads, and connecting the Great Wall into one piece. His mausoleum is actually one big hill, with tons of stairs to hike up in order to get to the point sitting directly above his coffin which is buried underground. Those stairs were quite a workout.


After visiting Qing Shihuang's grave, we finally made it to the Terra Cotta Warriors, which Qing Shihuang had built during his reign so that they could be situated around his grave in order to serve him in his afterlife. The warriors are spaced out into 3 pits, and two of the pits actually have most of the statues covered in order to prevent the terra cotta from being damaged by the sun. One of the pits, however, had row after row of warriors for tourists to look at. The craziest thing about these warriors is that they were discovered by a local farmer who is still alive, and now sits in the Terra Cotta Warrior museum signing autographs for tourists who want to meet him.


We ended our day with a bike ride on the Xian city walls. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the day, since the walls were almost empty by this point and we could just ride bikes down a straight, smooth, and wide path. Too much fun!


This coming up weekend is CET's cultural immersion weekend, where we will visit peasant farms and give presentations about American life at a middle school in an area just outside of Beijing. Looking forward to getting out of the city for yet another weekend!

To heaven and back

It has once again been much too long since I last updated. There are only 3 weeks until I take finals and leave Beijing - so much to do in so little time! A while back, my friends and I finally visited the Temple of Heaven, which is actually one of the closer historical monuments to our school (with the exception of the Forbidden City). Contrary to our usual luck, we actually picked a beautiful spring weekend to visit the temple and therefore felt like we were in a fairy tale as we wandered through the gardens on the way to the actual temple.


Being the tourists we are, of course we had to take the token waiguoren picture in front of the actual temple. Unfortunately we forgot to recreate our Charlie's Angels poses that we like to do in front of historical monuments.


Last week the 300 and 400 classes took a field trip to "Shijitan", which, directly translated, is the Beijing Centennial monument. This museum began construction in the year 2000 and has fake historical exhibits from all over the world. However, before we actually entered the museum, we got a special treat by the front entrance, where there was an Olympic exhibit that showed the actual torch they'll be using in the Beijing 2008 games. Soon this torch is headed for a world tour, where it will be displayed in Olympic exhibits in museums in every continent. The most exciting part - the torch's only stop in North America is nowhere else but home sweet home in San Francisco!


After the Olympic exhibit, our classes went to visit the actual museum and spent the majority of our time in the China section of the museum, since our lessons are currently focused on famous Chinese historical figures such as Confucius and Sun Yat Sen. The exhibit was pretty incredible - famous scenes and people from Chinese history were carved out onto stone walls in a huge circular room. I'm not quite sure who the stone figure in this picture is depicting, but nonetheless my fellow classmates decided to pose with him.


Outside the museum there is a huge timeline that documents the basics of all Chinese history starting from the beginning of the dynasties thousands of years ago. The timeline is designed so that when you stand at its end in the year 2000, you can see directly all the way to the Beijing railway station.


I decided to be really cool and take a picture with my zodiac sign in the year I was born. Since I was born at the end of the ox year on the Chinese lunar calendar but born in January on the western calendar, my zodiac sign was actually listed in the year 1985. As you can see, I have a wrapped up toe which I managed to stub when I tripped in the grocery store.


While on one of our dinner escapades last week, we passed by the hospital where my great grandfather used to work before the beginning of World War II. It's called Beijing Xiehe hospital and located in the Wangfujing area which is now a ritzy shopping district with lots of foreigners. Amazing that my family's history is so close to me right now!


This past weekend was CET's Great Wall camping trip! We hiked 6 miles from the Simatai to Jinshanling area of the Great Wall and camped out at night on the wall at Jinshanling. Despite my stubbed toe I actually managed to keep up!


We set up tents on the wall but many people chose just to sleep outside in sleeping bags under the stars. It was amazing to see stars for the first time in about 3 months, since Beijing is too polluted in the city to ever see stars at night.


Most people managed to get up early and watch the sunrise the next morning, but being the lazy sleeper that I am, I didn't wake up until the sun was fully up (In Phil's words, I was "burning daylight"). Anyways, I appropriately bought a shirt saying that I slept on the Great Wall, because that is indeed what I did.


This weekend I'm headed off to Xian to see the famous clay soldiers. I think we're all starting to realize that time is running short and we have to squeeze in as much as possible on the weekends (and weekdays) to make sure we get the full China experience before leaving. Should be fun!

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!