I'm finishing my third week back at my American University, and it's like returning to the States all over again. Sure, I've assimilated to living in this country, and I've become three months removed from the China experience, but my friends are asking me about it as if I've just returned, which to them I have.
It's getting harder to talk about the trip the farther I am from it. I find myself using more general adjectives to describe it as "awesome" and "unbelievable" rather than detailing the experience of climbing the Great Wall or seeing the hospitals or wandering through all the parks. I don't think it's going to get any easier to talk about, but I think I'm getting better rehearsed about the way I can talk about it not to dominate but still to share. I do have the "In China..." moments a lot, though, because my friends don't know about the little things that I'll think of as they come up, so I can tell the stories that way.
It's also super weird to see the group I traveled with on campus. This isn't like it's bad or awkward, but we all associate each other with being in Beijing, and now that we're in the states, it's a little more unexpected to see each other. I have a class with one of the guys from the trip, and I see somebody pretty much every day just wandering about. It's interesting that we've all coexisted on campus but never recognized each other until now. I think I like it.
As for school, things are going really well here. I am so used to the educational system at my university and in the US that it's very comforting to be back in that pattern. I get up, go to my classes, hit the gym, see my friends every day, do theater. I am happy to be back, even though the touring doesn't feel as special or exciting here. Beijing was wonderful, and so is the US.
Today is awesome because it fits my pattern of a day at school.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Reassimilating
My reassimilation to the US began on the plane. The first big thing that came back to me was on the flight from Beijing. I got a Diet Coke from the first drink service, and it was a Chinese can. I figured all the sodas were Chinese, so on a later drink service, I got Coke Zero, but it was an American can. I prefer American Diet Coke and Chinese Coke Zero, so I always got the inferior soda, but in China the tab on the can is rectangular or oblong, whereas in America it is very rounded. It's just different; neither good nor bad, but I got used to the other shape.
The next big one was on my descent in my hometown when I looked at the highway and did not see the ridiculous traffic that is always in Beijing. I then almost said "duibuqi" instead of "sorry" when I bumped into someone at baggage claim.
My first day at home was pretty relaxed and easy. I woke up at 6 or 6:30, lounged around til 10, then I walked to the drugstore (I really missed drugstores!!!) to pick up a prescription, retainer cleaner, and replenish my makeup supply which I entirely expired in China. I had lunch, then bought a pair of sneakers, followed by visits to both of my grandmothers. I ended my day with a Tae Kwon Do class, and it was fantastic. I was so happy to see my family and friends, and to be using my American phone again. I did a lot of texting to make plans for my weeks at home. Things feel really normal here, and I like that so far.
Tuesday was an early wake up, relaxing morning, trip to the gym, revisiting the local grocery store, seeing one of my high school BFFs, and going to Tae Kwon Do. I think the big reassimilation thing was the grocery store because I could identify everything and read all the packages. Stores are so much more intimidating in China. I really appreciate the softness, thickness, and plushness of my bed and towels here. My bed at Bei Da was a rock in comparison, and my towel very thin. Not things that were bad and uncomfortable, but here it is significantly more comfortable. I got to break a board and really feel at home in my group at TKD tonight, so it left me feeling very happy. I am getting confused between Korean numbers and Chinese numbers becasue there is crossover in pronunciation, but the numbers with the same pronunciation are different values (yi=1 in Chinese, 2 in Korean).
Wednesday and Thursday were uneventful, but I noticed that I got used to reacting to Chinese traffic patterns, so I'm surprised every time a car stops for me. In the US, traffic is mostly because there are such frequent stop signs and traffic lights, not necessarily the number of cars like it is in China. In China, there are too many cars and too few rules. The cars go whenever and wherever they can, the buses don't stop for anything or anyone, the bikes go where the cars can't, and the people go wherever they please; it's kind of insane, and it's so different to be in such an orderly traffic pattern again.
On Friday I found the apples my mom bought for me (they're my favorite kind, Pink Lady), and they were normal size. There is such rampant use of hormones and growth enhancers in China that no fruit is normal size, and even though it's big it doesn't even taste that good. This apple was delicious.
The overall thing is that I'm finding so many moments when I want to say, "This time in China..." or "In China they..." and I really accumulated a lot of stories and experiences!
Today is awesome because I've been appreciating the comforts of being home.
The next big one was on my descent in my hometown when I looked at the highway and did not see the ridiculous traffic that is always in Beijing. I then almost said "duibuqi" instead of "sorry" when I bumped into someone at baggage claim.
My first day at home was pretty relaxed and easy. I woke up at 6 or 6:30, lounged around til 10, then I walked to the drugstore (I really missed drugstores!!!) to pick up a prescription, retainer cleaner, and replenish my makeup supply which I entirely expired in China. I had lunch, then bought a pair of sneakers, followed by visits to both of my grandmothers. I ended my day with a Tae Kwon Do class, and it was fantastic. I was so happy to see my family and friends, and to be using my American phone again. I did a lot of texting to make plans for my weeks at home. Things feel really normal here, and I like that so far.
Tuesday was an early wake up, relaxing morning, trip to the gym, revisiting the local grocery store, seeing one of my high school BFFs, and going to Tae Kwon Do. I think the big reassimilation thing was the grocery store because I could identify everything and read all the packages. Stores are so much more intimidating in China. I really appreciate the softness, thickness, and plushness of my bed and towels here. My bed at Bei Da was a rock in comparison, and my towel very thin. Not things that were bad and uncomfortable, but here it is significantly more comfortable. I got to break a board and really feel at home in my group at TKD tonight, so it left me feeling very happy. I am getting confused between Korean numbers and Chinese numbers becasue there is crossover in pronunciation, but the numbers with the same pronunciation are different values (yi=1 in Chinese, 2 in Korean).
Wednesday and Thursday were uneventful, but I noticed that I got used to reacting to Chinese traffic patterns, so I'm surprised every time a car stops for me. In the US, traffic is mostly because there are such frequent stop signs and traffic lights, not necessarily the number of cars like it is in China. In China, there are too many cars and too few rules. The cars go whenever and wherever they can, the buses don't stop for anything or anyone, the bikes go where the cars can't, and the people go wherever they please; it's kind of insane, and it's so different to be in such an orderly traffic pattern again.
On Friday I found the apples my mom bought for me (they're my favorite kind, Pink Lady), and they were normal size. There is such rampant use of hormones and growth enhancers in China that no fruit is normal size, and even though it's big it doesn't even taste that good. This apple was delicious.
The overall thing is that I'm finding so many moments when I want to say, "This time in China..." or "In China they..." and I really accumulated a lot of stories and experiences!
Today is awesome because I've been appreciating the comforts of being home.
Monday, August 13, 2012
August 12: My 36-Hour Day
I'm home!! It's really great to be back. I really missed my family, and my bed is so fluffy, and I drove a car today, and I don't feel like traffic is going to kill me. I had a great time, and now I'm very happy to be home.
For me, August 12 was a 36-hour day because it started in China and ended in the US Eastern Time Zone. Using Eastern Time to standardize, my day started at noon on Saturday and ended at midnight on Sunday. Yay time travel?
I got up at 5AM, finished my preparations, skyped home, then went on the bus to the airport. My trip had a few parallels one the homecoming flight as it did on the outgoing flight. I had an overweight bag (this time I just paid the fee; I literally had nowhere to put the things), I got iced coffee, I had some time to sit before my flight. I didn't sleep on my flight from Beijing because I was seated near the bathroom and the traffic kept me up. I journaled about the flight, and I don't have much else to say here. I finished watching LOST, and I liked the ending (controversial, I know, but the writers ended the story).
My connection in San Francisco was terrible. I had less than an hour to get to my flight. Customs was easy, but it took a long time to pick up my bag for re-checking, and then I had to go through security again, and that took a long time. I even asked and was allowed to move past the group of Texas A&M students who were also returning from China; they were kind. It was stressful, but I made it to the plane, and then I slept for 2 or 3 of the 4.5 hours of that flight. The people across the aisle from me were alumni of my university, and one of them even lived in Beijing for a few years in the area where I was, so that was a cool connection to have.
My parents were waiting for me right where I came out from the airport gates. It was wonderful to see them. We picked up my bags and went home, where I unpacked everything, ate dinner (my mom cooked), showered, then went to sleep. It was a fantastic end to an endless day.
Travel day was awesome because it ended up at home!!!!!
For me, August 12 was a 36-hour day because it started in China and ended in the US Eastern Time Zone. Using Eastern Time to standardize, my day started at noon on Saturday and ended at midnight on Sunday. Yay time travel?
I got up at 5AM, finished my preparations, skyped home, then went on the bus to the airport. My trip had a few parallels one the homecoming flight as it did on the outgoing flight. I had an overweight bag (this time I just paid the fee; I literally had nowhere to put the things), I got iced coffee, I had some time to sit before my flight. I didn't sleep on my flight from Beijing because I was seated near the bathroom and the traffic kept me up. I journaled about the flight, and I don't have much else to say here. I finished watching LOST, and I liked the ending (controversial, I know, but the writers ended the story).
My connection in San Francisco was terrible. I had less than an hour to get to my flight. Customs was easy, but it took a long time to pick up my bag for re-checking, and then I had to go through security again, and that took a long time. I even asked and was allowed to move past the group of Texas A&M students who were also returning from China; they were kind. It was stressful, but I made it to the plane, and then I slept for 2 or 3 of the 4.5 hours of that flight. The people across the aisle from me were alumni of my university, and one of them even lived in Beijing for a few years in the area where I was, so that was a cool connection to have.
My parents were waiting for me right where I came out from the airport gates. It was wonderful to see them. We picked up my bags and went home, where I unpacked everything, ate dinner (my mom cooked), showered, then went to sleep. It was a fantastic end to an endless day.
Travel day was awesome because it ended up at home!!!!!
Saturday, August 11, 2012
The Very Last Day
My bags are packed. My roommate has gone. I've said many good-byes and see you in Septembers. My time in China is at an end, and it has been unequivocally fantastic.
Today was a day that I had set aside for packing, sleeping, and travel preparations, but being the insanely obsessively organized person that I am, I actually ended up having nothing to do today. I woke up at 6:45, which was not a great start, and there was a note from Andrea outside my door and a woman inspecting her room. When I couldn't fall back asleep, I watched some videos on YouTube and the one episode of BBC's Sherlock that I own while I rested and reclined.
Around noon, I decided to leave my room. I contacted a friend for whom Andrea left a phone card, and we met up outside for the handoff. I ended up taking the elevator with another girl from my program, Grace, and she was making plans for both lunch and dinner, which I joined. For lunch, we went to a steamed bun shop down the street from our dorm, and I had the tofu strips cold dish. This is my new favorite kind of tofu. It is a lot like a noodle, but it is tofu. My favorite preparations are when it is treated like a noodle or used to wrap vegetables like sushi. Anyway, I ate with Grace, Pooja, Feifei, Brian, Matthew, and Victoria.
After lunch, we stopped at the bakery for some final sampling of Chinese pastry, which I had yet to do. I got an egg tart and something filled with red bean paste, both of which were small tastes, sweet and delicious. At that point, Matthew and I decided to make a trip to the Silk Market for him to do his souvenir shopping and the rest of our lunch group went for manicures.
I really like talking with Matthew because he always has something interesting to say. Amid the talk of bargaining and which items to get, we discussed how to read people, views on souvenirs, seeing our families, and what we look forward to upon our return home. It was a really nice, peaceful time, but I think the fact that it was The End, the last shopping trip, the last chance for an adventure or story, was hanging over us a little and coupled with the rain, it was also a little sad in the nostalgic kind of way.
We got back at 4:45, which was just enough time for a decent rest before meeting up at 6:30 for dinner. My language partner, Helen, joined the group, which was really great because I wanted to see her one more time before going home. She went home herself for a few weeks, so I'm happy she returned to Beijing today because the timing worked out really well to see her again.
The group took the subway two stops to the Haidian Mall shopping area (near Carre-Four). It was later than anticipated, so we changed our plans and ate at a Taiwanese restaurant called Bellagio. My small table ordered a garlic ginger chicken (it was unexpectedly cold rather than hot), Chinese broccoli, and eggplant (my favorite, as always) as our dishes, and we had beef fried rice. Taiwanese desserts are a specialty, and I shared a chocolate ice with Helen.
I really loved being together as a large group for the last time, but I particularly liked getting to spend one more dinner with Helen. She has been the kindest language partner I could have asked for, and I am so grateful that she is my friend. I got to give her my broom, so I'm glad that went to someone who will use it, and as we said good bye in the foyer of my dorm room, there were endless hugs and promises to stay in touch. Really, we will, because there is a lot of geography between us, but I do care about what happens to her. We really did become great friends in the short time that we've known each other, and I appreciate how lucky I am to know her.
On the subway ride home, one of the guys was emphasizing the lastness of it all, and it was making me have a lot of feelings. I think he was trying to get me to react and possibly cry, but since there's such a mix, I just end up flapping my arms and ranting about feelings. It's all okay; I will be coming back to China, so it's not a true good bye, just the end of this particular trip with this particular group of people. I will miss them a lot, but I will see the majority in six weeks, and the others have e-mail as well.
I made my final run to the C-Store to get some food for tomorrow's breakfast and plane rides, then I finished my e-mails and went to bed before my early start to a long day of travel. I actually live the day twice because of the way I cross the international date line, so that's extra fun. I'm looking forward to the family hugs on the other end.
Today is awesome because I got to see my 中国朋友 one more time, have some great conversations, and spend my last day of Study Abroad in China with lovely people doing relaxing things.
Today was a day that I had set aside for packing, sleeping, and travel preparations, but being the insanely obsessively organized person that I am, I actually ended up having nothing to do today. I woke up at 6:45, which was not a great start, and there was a note from Andrea outside my door and a woman inspecting her room. When I couldn't fall back asleep, I watched some videos on YouTube and the one episode of BBC's Sherlock that I own while I rested and reclined.
Around noon, I decided to leave my room. I contacted a friend for whom Andrea left a phone card, and we met up outside for the handoff. I ended up taking the elevator with another girl from my program, Grace, and she was making plans for both lunch and dinner, which I joined. For lunch, we went to a steamed bun shop down the street from our dorm, and I had the tofu strips cold dish. This is my new favorite kind of tofu. It is a lot like a noodle, but it is tofu. My favorite preparations are when it is treated like a noodle or used to wrap vegetables like sushi. Anyway, I ate with Grace, Pooja, Feifei, Brian, Matthew, and Victoria.
After lunch, we stopped at the bakery for some final sampling of Chinese pastry, which I had yet to do. I got an egg tart and something filled with red bean paste, both of which were small tastes, sweet and delicious. At that point, Matthew and I decided to make a trip to the Silk Market for him to do his souvenir shopping and the rest of our lunch group went for manicures.
I really like talking with Matthew because he always has something interesting to say. Amid the talk of bargaining and which items to get, we discussed how to read people, views on souvenirs, seeing our families, and what we look forward to upon our return home. It was a really nice, peaceful time, but I think the fact that it was The End, the last shopping trip, the last chance for an adventure or story, was hanging over us a little and coupled with the rain, it was also a little sad in the nostalgic kind of way.
We got back at 4:45, which was just enough time for a decent rest before meeting up at 6:30 for dinner. My language partner, Helen, joined the group, which was really great because I wanted to see her one more time before going home. She went home herself for a few weeks, so I'm happy she returned to Beijing today because the timing worked out really well to see her again.
The group took the subway two stops to the Haidian Mall shopping area (near Carre-Four). It was later than anticipated, so we changed our plans and ate at a Taiwanese restaurant called Bellagio. My small table ordered a garlic ginger chicken (it was unexpectedly cold rather than hot), Chinese broccoli, and eggplant (my favorite, as always) as our dishes, and we had beef fried rice. Taiwanese desserts are a specialty, and I shared a chocolate ice with Helen.
I really loved being together as a large group for the last time, but I particularly liked getting to spend one more dinner with Helen. She has been the kindest language partner I could have asked for, and I am so grateful that she is my friend. I got to give her my broom, so I'm glad that went to someone who will use it, and as we said good bye in the foyer of my dorm room, there were endless hugs and promises to stay in touch. Really, we will, because there is a lot of geography between us, but I do care about what happens to her. We really did become great friends in the short time that we've known each other, and I appreciate how lucky I am to know her.
On the subway ride home, one of the guys was emphasizing the lastness of it all, and it was making me have a lot of feelings. I think he was trying to get me to react and possibly cry, but since there's such a mix, I just end up flapping my arms and ranting about feelings. It's all okay; I will be coming back to China, so it's not a true good bye, just the end of this particular trip with this particular group of people. I will miss them a lot, but I will see the majority in six weeks, and the others have e-mail as well.
I made my final run to the C-Store to get some food for tomorrow's breakfast and plane rides, then I finished my e-mails and went to bed before my early start to a long day of travel. I actually live the day twice because of the way I cross the international date line, so that's extra fun. I'm looking forward to the family hugs on the other end.
Today is awesome because I got to see my 中国朋友 one more time, have some great conversations, and spend my last day of Study Abroad in China with lovely people doing relaxing things.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Closing Banquet and Thoughts on Conclusions
It was really hard to get out of bed this morning. I was tired and I knew that the only thing we were doing in Chinese class was watching a movie (I Hope You're the One/Fei Chan Gu Ra (?), the first in the series of which we watched the second last week). I went, though, and was the first one there. I did well on my final, and ended the summer with the highest marks for my class, which I am very proud of since I did put in the work. Yao Laoshi gave each of us mooncakes as a parting gift, went over the exam with us, we watched the movie, then practiced for the talent show. In the middle of our rehearsal, Gu Laoshi came in and handed out our program polo shirts, so that was exciting.
I had two eggs for lunch from the baozi cafeteria, then I finished the cafeteria money on my card by buying a soda from the convenience store. For the early afternoon, I walked all over Bei Da's campus so I could make sure to see everything one last time. I got to take pictures and vlog a little, and it was pretty emotional to realize how much this campus has come to feel like it's mine and that I'll really miss it. The vlogging was pretty sentimental, particularly because I felt like it was my present self talking to my future self so I could remember how I was feeling as this program was ending.
I know I've talked about the program ending for a while now, but being the last day of actual programming, it's feeling more real than the time crunch countdown that I've been feeling. I really leave the day after tomorrow. There is absolutely no time to find more things to do. It's ending. It just hit home a lot harder when I was walking around.
When I got back to my room, I did some more packing and organizing for departure, and then I did some computer business. I had a couple of e-mails to answer, my camera needed uploading and charging, I charged my electronics for the airplane, and I took the time to fill out my program evaluation for the office at my university. The survey took a lot longer than they said it would, but that could be my own fault for taking a long time to write detailed answers. I hope it helps them. After all the business was taken care of, I had a little more than an hour before the talent show, and I used that time to watch some videos and generally relax before our final program. And, yeah, hitting 1700 photos was pretty exciting!!!
The talent show was at 6PM in Shaoyuan Building 7, the same place we had orientation and welcome lunch on the first day as well as the 4th of July celebration. I met with my classmates to walk over at 5:40 so we could be there a little early, and we arrived in time to greet our teachers and find seats before the program started. We sat by class, which was both nice and limiting, and Gu Laoshi began the evening with a speech (in Chinese) welcoming everybody and introducing the different groups of people present. There were not only the students, but also the Bei Da officials, our language teachers, some alumni from our American university, and the incoming international students from Beijing and their parents. Next, the head of the language program at Bei Da made a speech about how well we did learning Chinese, and we got to eat dinner when she was done.
After dinner, we had the talent show. Our class went first and sang "Nan Zi Han" from Mulan. The problem was that our Jackie Chan video was not playing loudly enough for us to hear, so we didn't do as well as we had practiced. Then Brian from class 2 sang "Swing Life Away" while accompanying himself on the guitar. The next act was class 3 reading a poem, followed by the Beijing freshmen spontaneously (at Gu Laoshi's suggestion) singing "Beijing Huanying Ni," which is still my new favorite song. We did our charades (which felt very silly), then class 5 re-enacted a Chinese dating show, class 3 sang their song, class 2 sang "Good Riddance" but wrote a new verse about being in China using both Chinese and English, and class 4 wrapped the show with their songs performed by the class band.
After the talent show, we mingled with the freshmen and took photos. I had some great conversations with three of them, one of whom is going to live in my dormitory! That was very exciting. I gave them my e-mail, and one of them saw the Chinese vocabulary I had written on my legal pad that I was carrying. She asked how long I had been learning Chinese and was impressed that it had only been eight weeks. I am so excited to see these new students on campus, and I hope that I can hang out with my Chinese dorm-mates to keep up what I've learned here. I'm so excited for them to come to join my university!! Their energy is fantastic and they are so ready to jump into everything.
I walked home with Andrea and Sam, and we got to talk about successful Chinese langauge experiences in the world rather than the classroom, and I began hugging people good bye because I don't know who I'm going to see tomorrow before I go. It's tough, but I know that I will be seeing the majority of them in just six weeks, so it's really okay. I just need to do the hugging to put a capstone on our time together here.
By the time I got home, it was after 10:00, so I had some relaxing time before going to sleep.
Today is awesome because I got to meet a new member of my residential college. Today is notsome because of saying good bye.
I had two eggs for lunch from the baozi cafeteria, then I finished the cafeteria money on my card by buying a soda from the convenience store. For the early afternoon, I walked all over Bei Da's campus so I could make sure to see everything one last time. I got to take pictures and vlog a little, and it was pretty emotional to realize how much this campus has come to feel like it's mine and that I'll really miss it. The vlogging was pretty sentimental, particularly because I felt like it was my present self talking to my future self so I could remember how I was feeling as this program was ending.
I know I've talked about the program ending for a while now, but being the last day of actual programming, it's feeling more real than the time crunch countdown that I've been feeling. I really leave the day after tomorrow. There is absolutely no time to find more things to do. It's ending. It just hit home a lot harder when I was walking around.
When I got back to my room, I did some more packing and organizing for departure, and then I did some computer business. I had a couple of e-mails to answer, my camera needed uploading and charging, I charged my electronics for the airplane, and I took the time to fill out my program evaluation for the office at my university. The survey took a lot longer than they said it would, but that could be my own fault for taking a long time to write detailed answers. I hope it helps them. After all the business was taken care of, I had a little more than an hour before the talent show, and I used that time to watch some videos and generally relax before our final program. And, yeah, hitting 1700 photos was pretty exciting!!!
The talent show was at 6PM in Shaoyuan Building 7, the same place we had orientation and welcome lunch on the first day as well as the 4th of July celebration. I met with my classmates to walk over at 5:40 so we could be there a little early, and we arrived in time to greet our teachers and find seats before the program started. We sat by class, which was both nice and limiting, and Gu Laoshi began the evening with a speech (in Chinese) welcoming everybody and introducing the different groups of people present. There were not only the students, but also the Bei Da officials, our language teachers, some alumni from our American university, and the incoming international students from Beijing and their parents. Next, the head of the language program at Bei Da made a speech about how well we did learning Chinese, and we got to eat dinner when she was done.
After dinner, we had the talent show. Our class went first and sang "Nan Zi Han" from Mulan. The problem was that our Jackie Chan video was not playing loudly enough for us to hear, so we didn't do as well as we had practiced. Then Brian from class 2 sang "Swing Life Away" while accompanying himself on the guitar. The next act was class 3 reading a poem, followed by the Beijing freshmen spontaneously (at Gu Laoshi's suggestion) singing "Beijing Huanying Ni," which is still my new favorite song. We did our charades (which felt very silly), then class 5 re-enacted a Chinese dating show, class 3 sang their song, class 2 sang "Good Riddance" but wrote a new verse about being in China using both Chinese and English, and class 4 wrapped the show with their songs performed by the class band.
After the talent show, we mingled with the freshmen and took photos. I had some great conversations with three of them, one of whom is going to live in my dormitory! That was very exciting. I gave them my e-mail, and one of them saw the Chinese vocabulary I had written on my legal pad that I was carrying. She asked how long I had been learning Chinese and was impressed that it had only been eight weeks. I am so excited to see these new students on campus, and I hope that I can hang out with my Chinese dorm-mates to keep up what I've learned here. I'm so excited for them to come to join my university!! Their energy is fantastic and they are so ready to jump into everything.
I walked home with Andrea and Sam, and we got to talk about successful Chinese langauge experiences in the world rather than the classroom, and I began hugging people good bye because I don't know who I'm going to see tomorrow before I go. It's tough, but I know that I will be seeing the majority of them in just six weeks, so it's really okay. I just need to do the hugging to put a capstone on our time together here.
By the time I got home, it was after 10:00, so I had some relaxing time before going to sleep.
Today is awesome because I got to meet a new member of my residential college. Today is notsome because of saying good bye.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Done with Schoolwork!!
Meiyou zuoye 没有作业 I don't have homework!!!
I really like the conclusion of classes, no matter what country they are in. It is quite liberating to not have to do homework or study anymore, particularly when the studying I have been doing was intensively learning around 25 Chinese characters each night.
I also realized that I only wake up in Beijing three more times (contact lens count and whatnot), and that's totally weird to me. I think that over my time here, even though I've known it was temporary and finite, I set up a sort of routine and life, and that pattern has been very fun and awesome all summer. I'm sad to see it go, especially because there are so many more things to see and do in this enormous country. That said, I'm still okay with leaving because I haven't seen my family for a long time and I haven't been home since March, so there are also things to look forward to as consolation for leaving my adventure in China. I think it's good that I have a bittersweet conclusion because it means I had a great time while I was away and I have people and things to come home to!
I took my Chinese final in the morning, and when we were all done with the test we practiced for the talent show and finished a movie about food and family that we had been watching all week. I finished my test pretty quickly and ended up having time to do some life tasks including a stop at the dorm, and I ended up walking back to class with four of the five students in our Chinese 2 class. It was pretty funny, and nice to have walking companions. Before class (since I woke up remarkably early today) I decided to go to the store on campus that uses the meal card to buy yogurt and a coffee, but then I remembered that they don't have the coffee I like and the yogurt I got was really odd. It was a cardboard cup of drinking yogurt that came with a straw. The package had a picture of a strawberry and some sort of grain on the outside, and when I started sipping, it was indeed strawberry yogurt, but there were pieces of cooked barley or something. It made it taste like cake and I didn't finish it because I didn't like it after a while.
After Chinese class, our class and class 3 went to a restaurant called Spice Spirit for lunch. Our Laoshi drove me and two other classmates, and he has a membership at the restaurant, so he knew just what to order. He really ordered too much food, but it was delicious. The main thing he wanted us to try was the Sichuan oil cooked fish, and that is served with a piece of bread to soak up the oil. I ate a little bit of that to try it, but my favorites were the salad, the lettuce with peanut sauce, the mapo tofu, and the pineapple rice. I think all the food was really delicious, but the entire meal was very spicy, so there was nothing to cool off my mouth with. The lettuce with peanut sauce and the pineapple rice were cooling and the rice was sweet, but the spicy was everywhere. I liked it though; it was tasty spicy. Other things on the table were prawns (they had full shells so I didn't try it), frog, chicken, spicy noodles, and spicy vegetables.
I spent the two hours of afternoon time I had relaxing in my air conditioned room, and then I left to meet Yizhou (my friend from high school who is a 北京人) at the subway station near Houhi for our meetup. In planning, we decided to meet at the station because we could then take a taxi together, and we were meeting early to beat rush hour crowds. I know the subways so well, so when we picked a station I knew exactly where it was and how to get there with the transfers without having to look it up, which was really cool.
When I was waiting at the 地铁站 (subway station), a guard came up to me to see what I was doing. I either looked lost or suspicious, but I told him 我的朋友在地铁三个站 (my friend is on the subway for three more stops). I didn't know how to say I was waiting for my friend, but the message came across and I was really happy to have handled the interaction.
We took a taxi from the station to the Houhai area, and it was really cool there. Houhai is a lake with a few bridges, an island, and lots of boats for rent that is surrounded by storefront after storefront of bars, clubs, and restaurants. Yizhou had made a reservation at a Yunnan restaurant, so we walked around and then went there for dinner. We ordered their specialties of beef and fish (best fish I ate; it was grilled with lemongrass), and we got chicken soup, pea flour glutinous rectangles, and bamboo rice. I really liked the food and the fish was my favorite. The soup was the best soup I've had in China (not such a fan of the seaweed soups), and the rice was extra sticky and a little bit sweet. The restaurant was decorated with paper flowers, lanterns, and wooden surfaces, and we had a table on the second floor by the window overlooking the lake, so it was a fantastic setting.
I loved getting to spend time with Yizhou and talk about life. She told me about her summer internship, travel to and from her American university, her upcoming semester abroad in Hong Kong, and her jazz dance class. I told her about my time in China and we played some "where are they now" with our former classmates. I used a lot of my Chinese language with her, and she was excited that I could speak at all, and I was excited to be speaking, so it was really fun. We walked all around the lake and took some pictures before ending our evening with beverages from a smoothie/juice/tea shop, and then going to the train station together. We took the same line but in opposite directions, so our good-bye hugs were on the subway platform. It was so fantastic to get to spend time with my friend, and I am truly happy to still be friends after these years apart.
Returning home was easy, and when I got back to my room around 10:00, I wrapped up my day with a shower, writing my blog, and going to sleep.
Today is awesome because I finished my classes, I had two fantastic meals, and I got to see Yizhou.
I really like the conclusion of classes, no matter what country they are in. It is quite liberating to not have to do homework or study anymore, particularly when the studying I have been doing was intensively learning around 25 Chinese characters each night.
I also realized that I only wake up in Beijing three more times (contact lens count and whatnot), and that's totally weird to me. I think that over my time here, even though I've known it was temporary and finite, I set up a sort of routine and life, and that pattern has been very fun and awesome all summer. I'm sad to see it go, especially because there are so many more things to see and do in this enormous country. That said, I'm still okay with leaving because I haven't seen my family for a long time and I haven't been home since March, so there are also things to look forward to as consolation for leaving my adventure in China. I think it's good that I have a bittersweet conclusion because it means I had a great time while I was away and I have people and things to come home to!
I took my Chinese final in the morning, and when we were all done with the test we practiced for the talent show and finished a movie about food and family that we had been watching all week. I finished my test pretty quickly and ended up having time to do some life tasks including a stop at the dorm, and I ended up walking back to class with four of the five students in our Chinese 2 class. It was pretty funny, and nice to have walking companions. Before class (since I woke up remarkably early today) I decided to go to the store on campus that uses the meal card to buy yogurt and a coffee, but then I remembered that they don't have the coffee I like and the yogurt I got was really odd. It was a cardboard cup of drinking yogurt that came with a straw. The package had a picture of a strawberry and some sort of grain on the outside, and when I started sipping, it was indeed strawberry yogurt, but there were pieces of cooked barley or something. It made it taste like cake and I didn't finish it because I didn't like it after a while.
After Chinese class, our class and class 3 went to a restaurant called Spice Spirit for lunch. Our Laoshi drove me and two other classmates, and he has a membership at the restaurant, so he knew just what to order. He really ordered too much food, but it was delicious. The main thing he wanted us to try was the Sichuan oil cooked fish, and that is served with a piece of bread to soak up the oil. I ate a little bit of that to try it, but my favorites were the salad, the lettuce with peanut sauce, the mapo tofu, and the pineapple rice. I think all the food was really delicious, but the entire meal was very spicy, so there was nothing to cool off my mouth with. The lettuce with peanut sauce and the pineapple rice were cooling and the rice was sweet, but the spicy was everywhere. I liked it though; it was tasty spicy. Other things on the table were prawns (they had full shells so I didn't try it), frog, chicken, spicy noodles, and spicy vegetables.
I spent the two hours of afternoon time I had relaxing in my air conditioned room, and then I left to meet Yizhou (my friend from high school who is a 北京人) at the subway station near Houhi for our meetup. In planning, we decided to meet at the station because we could then take a taxi together, and we were meeting early to beat rush hour crowds. I know the subways so well, so when we picked a station I knew exactly where it was and how to get there with the transfers without having to look it up, which was really cool.
When I was waiting at the 地铁站 (subway station), a guard came up to me to see what I was doing. I either looked lost or suspicious, but I told him 我的朋友在地铁三个站 (my friend is on the subway for three more stops). I didn't know how to say I was waiting for my friend, but the message came across and I was really happy to have handled the interaction.
We took a taxi from the station to the Houhai area, and it was really cool there. Houhai is a lake with a few bridges, an island, and lots of boats for rent that is surrounded by storefront after storefront of bars, clubs, and restaurants. Yizhou had made a reservation at a Yunnan restaurant, so we walked around and then went there for dinner. We ordered their specialties of beef and fish (best fish I ate; it was grilled with lemongrass), and we got chicken soup, pea flour glutinous rectangles, and bamboo rice. I really liked the food and the fish was my favorite. The soup was the best soup I've had in China (not such a fan of the seaweed soups), and the rice was extra sticky and a little bit sweet. The restaurant was decorated with paper flowers, lanterns, and wooden surfaces, and we had a table on the second floor by the window overlooking the lake, so it was a fantastic setting.
I loved getting to spend time with Yizhou and talk about life. She told me about her summer internship, travel to and from her American university, her upcoming semester abroad in Hong Kong, and her jazz dance class. I told her about my time in China and we played some "where are they now" with our former classmates. I used a lot of my Chinese language with her, and she was excited that I could speak at all, and I was excited to be speaking, so it was really fun. We walked all around the lake and took some pictures before ending our evening with beverages from a smoothie/juice/tea shop, and then going to the train station together. We took the same line but in opposite directions, so our good-bye hugs were on the subway platform. It was so fantastic to get to spend time with my friend, and I am truly happy to still be friends after these years apart.
Returning home was easy, and when I got back to my room around 10:00, I wrapped up my day with a shower, writing my blog, and going to sleep.
Today is awesome because I finished my classes, I had two fantastic meals, and I got to see Yizhou.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Puppets, Nanluoguxiang, and Wrapping Up TCM
Today was a special day. I skipped Chinese class to finally see my puppet show and I finished my TCM class, so the Public Health portion of this trip is concluded. I woke up at the normal time today, but instead of going to class, I first skyped my parents and then took the subway over to the puppet theater. I got there early and was asked to wait downstairs. I was one of five people there; the other four were two women with their two boys. They took photos in all the places I was last night, and I did some additional exploring before taking my seat front row center.
Ten minutes before curtain time, and little boy and his father arrived. Then, at both five til and five past ten, a bunch of audience members arrived. There was a young family who sat next to me on the right, and another family who sat on my left. The little boy didn't want to sit next to me, but I think he was more comfortable after I said 你好. Chinese people do not arrive early or on time for things.
It was kind of awkward to be alone and clearly foreign, and I was sad for the theater and company that the audience was so small, or at least it was for most of the time leading up to the show. However, despite this sadness, my excitement grew as time passed. I was finally going to see the show I've been trying to see!! Sixth time's the charm, right? The space itself was adorable, the music playing was very Chinese and certainly too loud, but it set the right mood, and I could see costumed people moving backstage.
The show started with one person wearing a triangular hat speaking, then an empress type character entered and the two of them talked. I don't know what they said, but they mentioned 朋友们 (pengyoumen; friends) a lot and used the phrase 朋友们一起 (pengyoumen yiqi; friends together), so that's was cool that they were using inclusive audience language.
The first shadow play was with three human characters and a tiger. The couple talked and possibly argued about something, and then another man entered, and the husband served him water and something alcoholic (I heard 水 and 酒). Then the drunk guy took a hike and the story ended with him fighting a tiger. The fight was really cool and very dynamic. The puppets did exactly what I wanted them to do, and I loved the interaction with music in a sort of Peking Opera style way, and there was even a time when the husband was rapping (more like speaking rhythmically, but it was still cool). They did have Chinese subtitles for the dialogue, so that helped since they spoke so fast.
Instead of an intermission, the pengyoumen were invited backstage to try the puppets. At first I didn't realize we were all allowed to play, but I was out of my seat as soon as I realized what was happening. It was the coolest part!! I was so happy to see behind the shadow screen and try controlling one of the people. Seeing the real construction of these puppets and the theater was so rewarding, particularly because I knew what I was looking at. I'm really happy that this is a standard part of their shows.
After the break, we saw another shadow play. This one had no dialogue and took place on a lake. The characters were a bird (a heron or stork), two frogs, a turtle, and some fish. The scenes were set using still pieces made from the same painted leather as the puppets, and there was a rock in a lake with some lily pads and a lotus plant that bloomed during the show. The bird was so lifelike and moved so well when it was flying, preening, and hunting. I love the frog puppets, they are pretty common to try playing with, and the turtle was just so funny because his head poked in and out of his shell. The puppets did what they were supposed to do, moving like life and dying like toys, and I was so happy to see the show.
It was a very hot day!! I managed the subway by myself totally fine (it was only one stop), and as I was walking back to the dorm, I got hiccups. I used TCM to make them go away by holding my breath and pressing the Neiguan acupoint, and it worked! That was pretty awesome. I had baozi for lunch with some friends, then did some studying, and took my TCM final at 2:00. It was an easy test, but I felt like the questions were looking for certain answers without asking the question they wanted to ask. It was open book, so it was very smooth.
I finished and got home around 3, when I started working on my studying for Chinese and writing my final paper for TCM. I wrote my paper about treatment of injuries with TCM therapies based on our clinical experiences. It was not a big deal. At 3:30, I met with Marissa to go to Nanluoguxiang because we planned to go together at the point when neither of us had been. It was fun to walk around, and we enjoyed going into the cupcake shop, tea shop, and journal shop. It was a cool area to walk around, and we made it back to campus around 6:30. On the train going there, for one stop there was a young family and the little boy tried to speak English to me. He said "peace" and "you are beautiful" and I responded in Chinese. His parents seemed impressed that I could reply in their language, and when they left I said "zaijian, pengyou," which means goodbye friend, and the cuteness of the interaction was a fantastic memory. I finished my paper, and then was in for the night. I needed to study for my Chinese final because I have to reinforce all the grammar plus learn the vocab that was reviewed in class today. The test shouldn't be too hard, but I do need to prepare.
I'm feeling great in this last week. I'm keeping busy, seeing the last things I need and want to see, and getting through the work part with effort and ease. I'm very happy with how this trip has gone, and I felt my progress when ordering ice cream at the hutong today (I don't like cupcakes; we were just intrigued by the presence of a cupcake shop since they're so trendy). I couldn't have done that when we got here and now it's not a big deal at all. That is simply amazing to me.
Today is awesome because I finally got to see my puppet show and it was everything I wanted, and I finished TCM class successfully.
Ten minutes before curtain time, and little boy and his father arrived. Then, at both five til and five past ten, a bunch of audience members arrived. There was a young family who sat next to me on the right, and another family who sat on my left. The little boy didn't want to sit next to me, but I think he was more comfortable after I said 你好. Chinese people do not arrive early or on time for things.
It was kind of awkward to be alone and clearly foreign, and I was sad for the theater and company that the audience was so small, or at least it was for most of the time leading up to the show. However, despite this sadness, my excitement grew as time passed. I was finally going to see the show I've been trying to see!! Sixth time's the charm, right? The space itself was adorable, the music playing was very Chinese and certainly too loud, but it set the right mood, and I could see costumed people moving backstage.
The show started with one person wearing a triangular hat speaking, then an empress type character entered and the two of them talked. I don't know what they said, but they mentioned 朋友们 (pengyoumen; friends) a lot and used the phrase 朋友们一起 (pengyoumen yiqi; friends together), so that's was cool that they were using inclusive audience language.
The first shadow play was with three human characters and a tiger. The couple talked and possibly argued about something, and then another man entered, and the husband served him water and something alcoholic (I heard 水 and 酒). Then the drunk guy took a hike and the story ended with him fighting a tiger. The fight was really cool and very dynamic. The puppets did exactly what I wanted them to do, and I loved the interaction with music in a sort of Peking Opera style way, and there was even a time when the husband was rapping (more like speaking rhythmically, but it was still cool). They did have Chinese subtitles for the dialogue, so that helped since they spoke so fast.
Instead of an intermission, the pengyoumen were invited backstage to try the puppets. At first I didn't realize we were all allowed to play, but I was out of my seat as soon as I realized what was happening. It was the coolest part!! I was so happy to see behind the shadow screen and try controlling one of the people. Seeing the real construction of these puppets and the theater was so rewarding, particularly because I knew what I was looking at. I'm really happy that this is a standard part of their shows.
After the break, we saw another shadow play. This one had no dialogue and took place on a lake. The characters were a bird (a heron or stork), two frogs, a turtle, and some fish. The scenes were set using still pieces made from the same painted leather as the puppets, and there was a rock in a lake with some lily pads and a lotus plant that bloomed during the show. The bird was so lifelike and moved so well when it was flying, preening, and hunting. I love the frog puppets, they are pretty common to try playing with, and the turtle was just so funny because his head poked in and out of his shell. The puppets did what they were supposed to do, moving like life and dying like toys, and I was so happy to see the show.
It was a very hot day!! I managed the subway by myself totally fine (it was only one stop), and as I was walking back to the dorm, I got hiccups. I used TCM to make them go away by holding my breath and pressing the Neiguan acupoint, and it worked! That was pretty awesome. I had baozi for lunch with some friends, then did some studying, and took my TCM final at 2:00. It was an easy test, but I felt like the questions were looking for certain answers without asking the question they wanted to ask. It was open book, so it was very smooth.
I finished and got home around 3, when I started working on my studying for Chinese and writing my final paper for TCM. I wrote my paper about treatment of injuries with TCM therapies based on our clinical experiences. It was not a big deal. At 3:30, I met with Marissa to go to Nanluoguxiang because we planned to go together at the point when neither of us had been. It was fun to walk around, and we enjoyed going into the cupcake shop, tea shop, and journal shop. It was a cool area to walk around, and we made it back to campus around 6:30. On the train going there, for one stop there was a young family and the little boy tried to speak English to me. He said "peace" and "you are beautiful" and I responded in Chinese. His parents seemed impressed that I could reply in their language, and when they left I said "zaijian, pengyou," which means goodbye friend, and the cuteness of the interaction was a fantastic memory. I finished my paper, and then was in for the night. I needed to study for my Chinese final because I have to reinforce all the grammar plus learn the vocab that was reviewed in class today. The test shouldn't be too hard, but I do need to prepare.
I'm feeling great in this last week. I'm keeping busy, seeing the last things I need and want to see, and getting through the work part with effort and ease. I'm very happy with how this trip has gone, and I felt my progress when ordering ice cream at the hutong today (I don't like cupcakes; we were just intrigued by the presence of a cupcake shop since they're so trendy). I couldn't have done that when we got here and now it's not a big deal at all. That is simply amazing to me.
Today is awesome because I finally got to see my puppet show and it was everything I wanted, and I finished TCM class successfully.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Totally Awesome Tuesday
How on earth I got to my 46th post is beyond my comprehension. I am also nearing 1600 photos from the entire trip, so that's pretty cool.
Anyway, back to today. I had my morning Chinese class (perfect tingxie, new vocab, talent show discussion, and movie), and then I had a really fun lunch conversation with Matthew and Philina. We talked about religion and politics, and it was awesome to compare ideas and opinions in such a relaxed and accepting way when we differed so much. I ate vaguely Asian chicken from the western food part of the cafeteria. It's chicken with Asian flavored sauce, vegetables, and rice, served with a spork. Then we had an hour break before the TCM field trip when I checked e-mail, YouTube, and took care of some computer business.
Our TCM field trip took us back to the hospital for a lesson in Tuina or massage/chiropractics. We were told to wear our lab coats again, which is always fun because we look like doctors, but then it didn't matter because we were in the classroom instead of the clinic. It was a very fun lesson because we had a Power Point (Chinese professors LOVE to use PowerPoint and they call the slideshows ppts after the way the files are saved), but each slide was a description of the motion and we just learned the different massage strokes and tried them out on ourselves and each other. My partner was really good at it, so I was very lucky!!
On the bus ride back and extending for about an hour, I had a high quality conversation with Matthew again. I continued one of our topics from earlier, but then it morphed into a conversation with food, and then we talked about personal philosophies, experiences and impressions of Beijing, and some really cosmic stuff. It was fantastic, and I am so happy to have had this conversation.
Tonight was take two of going to the puppet theater, but alas it was another failed attempt. We had a notecard with the name of the place and some directional hints written in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English so we could work with the taxi driver, and he was fantastically nice, but he couldn't find the place, so after driving around for a while, we had him drop us near the subway stop. We asked for directions from the guard, the tourist center, and the ticket counter for the park, and they kept pointing in the same direction, so we knew we were walking the right way. Then, all of a sudden, we found a big sign for it on the outside of the temporary metal wall surrounding a construction site that had an arrow, so we walked around the construction site, past the sweet potatoes and stinky tofu, and couldn't find it. We asked one of the construction workers and he said it was inside, but we had to enter through the other opening to the site, so we went back the way we came.
We found it! Except there was no show tonight. The woman from the theater told us there will be a show at 10AM tomorrow, and we asked about some scheduling and didn't buy tickets because of class. She was so kind and let us look around the building, and it was amazing. They have a museum component with both modern and 300 year old puppets, information about how the puppets are made, and so many puppets of all sizes. It was so wonderful to look through. She spoke only Chinese, and I understood most of it, which was also really cool. I ended up buying a ticket for tomorrow morning's show with the encouragement of my friends because this is such an important experience for me, and the Chinese class I am skipping will not be a big deal to miss and I can teach myself what I need to know for the final. Having this particular experience is more important than going over new vocabulary I won't have a chance to use, and I haven't missed a single class this whole time, so I do feel a tad guilty, but it's cosmically okay.
We left the puppet theater happy to have at least located it, and ended up taking a lovely walk through the neighboring Yuanmingyuan Park. It was a beautiful park with gorgeous lakes filled with lilies and lotus. They were actually having a lotus festival, and the park was one of the most well maintained nature settings in all of Beijing. The lakes had bridges that were absolutely beautiful, there were lots of cats running about, and we even saw a frog in the grass. It was certainly not a lost evening to have a walk in a park with good friends and good conversation.
We took the subway back, I went to the c-store for a beverage and ice cream before heading to my room to regroup, and then I went to bed, excited for the puppet show that I will see tomorrow!
Today is awesome because I had amazing conversations, learned massage, found a new park, and located the puppet theater.
Anyway, back to today. I had my morning Chinese class (perfect tingxie, new vocab, talent show discussion, and movie), and then I had a really fun lunch conversation with Matthew and Philina. We talked about religion and politics, and it was awesome to compare ideas and opinions in such a relaxed and accepting way when we differed so much. I ate vaguely Asian chicken from the western food part of the cafeteria. It's chicken with Asian flavored sauce, vegetables, and rice, served with a spork. Then we had an hour break before the TCM field trip when I checked e-mail, YouTube, and took care of some computer business.
Our TCM field trip took us back to the hospital for a lesson in Tuina or massage/chiropractics. We were told to wear our lab coats again, which is always fun because we look like doctors, but then it didn't matter because we were in the classroom instead of the clinic. It was a very fun lesson because we had a Power Point (Chinese professors LOVE to use PowerPoint and they call the slideshows ppts after the way the files are saved), but each slide was a description of the motion and we just learned the different massage strokes and tried them out on ourselves and each other. My partner was really good at it, so I was very lucky!!
On the bus ride back and extending for about an hour, I had a high quality conversation with Matthew again. I continued one of our topics from earlier, but then it morphed into a conversation with food, and then we talked about personal philosophies, experiences and impressions of Beijing, and some really cosmic stuff. It was fantastic, and I am so happy to have had this conversation.
Tonight was take two of going to the puppet theater, but alas it was another failed attempt. We had a notecard with the name of the place and some directional hints written in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English so we could work with the taxi driver, and he was fantastically nice, but he couldn't find the place, so after driving around for a while, we had him drop us near the subway stop. We asked for directions from the guard, the tourist center, and the ticket counter for the park, and they kept pointing in the same direction, so we knew we were walking the right way. Then, all of a sudden, we found a big sign for it on the outside of the temporary metal wall surrounding a construction site that had an arrow, so we walked around the construction site, past the sweet potatoes and stinky tofu, and couldn't find it. We asked one of the construction workers and he said it was inside, but we had to enter through the other opening to the site, so we went back the way we came.
We found it! Except there was no show tonight. The woman from the theater told us there will be a show at 10AM tomorrow, and we asked about some scheduling and didn't buy tickets because of class. She was so kind and let us look around the building, and it was amazing. They have a museum component with both modern and 300 year old puppets, information about how the puppets are made, and so many puppets of all sizes. It was so wonderful to look through. She spoke only Chinese, and I understood most of it, which was also really cool. I ended up buying a ticket for tomorrow morning's show with the encouragement of my friends because this is such an important experience for me, and the Chinese class I am skipping will not be a big deal to miss and I can teach myself what I need to know for the final. Having this particular experience is more important than going over new vocabulary I won't have a chance to use, and I haven't missed a single class this whole time, so I do feel a tad guilty, but it's cosmically okay.
We left the puppet theater happy to have at least located it, and ended up taking a lovely walk through the neighboring Yuanmingyuan Park. It was a beautiful park with gorgeous lakes filled with lilies and lotus. They were actually having a lotus festival, and the park was one of the most well maintained nature settings in all of Beijing. The lakes had bridges that were absolutely beautiful, there were lots of cats running about, and we even saw a frog in the grass. It was certainly not a lost evening to have a walk in a park with good friends and good conversation.
We took the subway back, I went to the c-store for a beverage and ice cream before heading to my room to regroup, and then I went to bed, excited for the puppet show that I will see tomorrow!
Today is awesome because I had amazing conversations, learned massage, found a new park, and located the puppet theater.
Monday, August 6, 2012
The Last Monday
Today was a pretty good day, though I had a very boring evening. I woke up at 8AM, went to my classroom early to finish studying for my tingxie, had Chinese class that consisted of tingxie, learning the new vocab, doing the textbook exercises, and watching part of a movie about food. Then everybody gathered for our final closing meeting. We went over the schedule for the week in terms of classes and field trips, learned our departure procedures, and said good-bye to Zhang Laoshi who has to go home early for business relating to his new tenured position at his university. It is sad to see him go, but he has been an amazing leader for our trip and I'm glad to have known him.
I had lunch with some friends in the cafeteria I ate in with my language partner during the first week of the program. I had some vegetarian dishes, a carrot and potato dish and eggplant, and it was tasty, but there was a lot of gloopy sauce that I didn't want to eat. After lunch, I went back to the dorm to have a break before TCM, and then went back to Building 3 for my class.
Our lecture today was on the integration of TCM and Western Medicine (WM). Our professor was the same guy who talked to us about herbal medicine, and I really like him. He's smart, thoughtful, organized, and has the deepest voice I have ever heard. The first half of class consisted of him lecturing on the history of integration, movements for and against integration, and the successes of integrated therapies. After our break, he brought us into a discussion of why integrated therapy is good or not, and we were able to voice our opinions in class. It was a very productive last lecture.
After class, I made a trip to the store to buy my breakfast food for the rest of this week, then I brought my things home and got to work on e-mail and learning my characters for tomorrow's tingxie. I also tried to set up our TV so I could watch some of the Olympics, and I got it to work, but I didn't enjoy broadcasting the ping pong match with Chinese narration because I didn't understand what the commentators were saying. I really love the Olympics, but I will have to get the videos as a replay after it ends because I just can't figure out how to watch the things I want to see in a language I understand. Still, Jake Herbert for gold in men's wrestling on Saturday!
I had a simple dinner in the building 5 cafe, then came home for a quiet night of studying and video watching. I had initially planned on having dinner with people, but then the plans fell through, so I was alone tonight. I have plans for the rest of the week, so it's fine, but I'm kind of getting tired of spending time alone. I've also realized that it's August, which means I'm de facto participating in BEDA (Blog Every Day in August) since I'll have 12 posts anyway, so I might as well finish out the month or something. Maybe; I've kind of blogged every day all summer, so maybe being home will be a break from writing online. It's just interesting to be doing the thing that I've watched people do.
Today is awesome because TCM lectures wrapped on a high note.
I had lunch with some friends in the cafeteria I ate in with my language partner during the first week of the program. I had some vegetarian dishes, a carrot and potato dish and eggplant, and it was tasty, but there was a lot of gloopy sauce that I didn't want to eat. After lunch, I went back to the dorm to have a break before TCM, and then went back to Building 3 for my class.
Our lecture today was on the integration of TCM and Western Medicine (WM). Our professor was the same guy who talked to us about herbal medicine, and I really like him. He's smart, thoughtful, organized, and has the deepest voice I have ever heard. The first half of class consisted of him lecturing on the history of integration, movements for and against integration, and the successes of integrated therapies. After our break, he brought us into a discussion of why integrated therapy is good or not, and we were able to voice our opinions in class. It was a very productive last lecture.
After class, I made a trip to the store to buy my breakfast food for the rest of this week, then I brought my things home and got to work on e-mail and learning my characters for tomorrow's tingxie. I also tried to set up our TV so I could watch some of the Olympics, and I got it to work, but I didn't enjoy broadcasting the ping pong match with Chinese narration because I didn't understand what the commentators were saying. I really love the Olympics, but I will have to get the videos as a replay after it ends because I just can't figure out how to watch the things I want to see in a language I understand. Still, Jake Herbert for gold in men's wrestling on Saturday!
I had a simple dinner in the building 5 cafe, then came home for a quiet night of studying and video watching. I had initially planned on having dinner with people, but then the plans fell through, so I was alone tonight. I have plans for the rest of the week, so it's fine, but I'm kind of getting tired of spending time alone. I've also realized that it's August, which means I'm de facto participating in BEDA (Blog Every Day in August) since I'll have 12 posts anyway, so I might as well finish out the month or something. Maybe; I've kind of blogged every day all summer, so maybe being home will be a break from writing online. It's just interesting to be doing the thing that I've watched people do.
Today is awesome because TCM lectures wrapped on a high note.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Hipster Hutong
Today was my last Sunday in Beijing. I woke up, skyped with one of my best friends from home, grabbed a tuna panini for lunch from the cafe in the dorm area (which is the same lunch I had on the first Sunday), and had a generally boring and quiet day about my room. I started organizing my things for packing, watched Howl's Moving Castle, and studied my Chinese flashcards. I'm feeling pretty in control of everything in this last week and the whole upcoming international travel thing.
At 6:30PM, I met up with Professor Carmichael to go to a converted hutong for dinner and exploring. We had a lovely route planned from a slightly farther subway stop that would theoretically take us past some interesting things as we made our way to the hutong and beyond for a vegetarian dinner, but things never go according to plan in China.
We got out of the subway and started walking in the generally correct direction. It was a cool area with lots of small quirky shops and restaurants of all sorts. We eventually came to an adorable little park with a small pond, some sculptures, and lots of willow trees and flowers, and that was the highlight of the exploring. When we got out of the park, we were a little lost and ended up hailing a cab to get us to the hutong. It was the first female cab driver I had seen.
Anyway, we got caught in a traffic jam and started walking, but then we were one street too far north, so we wandered up and down there until we were tired and hungry and lost, so we got in another taxi to get there, and then we finally got to the hutong around 9PM.
It was the most hipster place I have seen in all of China, and the idea of a hipster hutong is just an oxymoron. The shops there were all unique and quirky, which I was not expecting at all because I thought they'd be like the "ancient streets" we visited in the south that were shop after shop of the same useless souvenirs. We walked into a few shops with journals to find a gift for our residential college master, and we found the right thing to bring back, which is nice a funny.
We had a very late dinner at a restaurant in the hutong. We ordered jasmine tea, cucmbers, Chinese broccoli, mushrooms and broccoli, and tofu wrapped vegetables. I really liked the dishes, and the tofu was my favorite. I really liked the rolls both plain and dipped in the dipping sauce. It was probably my favorite dipping sauce.
We discussed a lot of favorite things from the trip: foods, meals, sights seen, places visited, parks, shopping, etc. It's really cool to be able to look back over the past two months and see where I started and where I'm ending. Overall, I came in knowing nothing, and I'm leaving having seen all the sights on my list, understanding the culture a lot better, and being able to speak some Chinese. I have mostly memorized the subway map, have visited many hospitals, and am perfectly comfortable at Bei Da. It's really been transformative.
I got home just in time to write my blog, do a final flip through my flashcards for tomorrow's tingxie, take a quick shower, and go to sleep before my final week of classes.
Today is awesome because I got to see the hipster hutong and get lost in a really neat park.
At 6:30PM, I met up with Professor Carmichael to go to a converted hutong for dinner and exploring. We had a lovely route planned from a slightly farther subway stop that would theoretically take us past some interesting things as we made our way to the hutong and beyond for a vegetarian dinner, but things never go according to plan in China.
We got out of the subway and started walking in the generally correct direction. It was a cool area with lots of small quirky shops and restaurants of all sorts. We eventually came to an adorable little park with a small pond, some sculptures, and lots of willow trees and flowers, and that was the highlight of the exploring. When we got out of the park, we were a little lost and ended up hailing a cab to get us to the hutong. It was the first female cab driver I had seen.
Anyway, we got caught in a traffic jam and started walking, but then we were one street too far north, so we wandered up and down there until we were tired and hungry and lost, so we got in another taxi to get there, and then we finally got to the hutong around 9PM.
It was the most hipster place I have seen in all of China, and the idea of a hipster hutong is just an oxymoron. The shops there were all unique and quirky, which I was not expecting at all because I thought they'd be like the "ancient streets" we visited in the south that were shop after shop of the same useless souvenirs. We walked into a few shops with journals to find a gift for our residential college master, and we found the right thing to bring back, which is nice a funny.
We had a very late dinner at a restaurant in the hutong. We ordered jasmine tea, cucmbers, Chinese broccoli, mushrooms and broccoli, and tofu wrapped vegetables. I really liked the dishes, and the tofu was my favorite. I really liked the rolls both plain and dipped in the dipping sauce. It was probably my favorite dipping sauce.
We discussed a lot of favorite things from the trip: foods, meals, sights seen, places visited, parks, shopping, etc. It's really cool to be able to look back over the past two months and see where I started and where I'm ending. Overall, I came in knowing nothing, and I'm leaving having seen all the sights on my list, understanding the culture a lot better, and being able to speak some Chinese. I have mostly memorized the subway map, have visited many hospitals, and am perfectly comfortable at Bei Da. It's really been transformative.
I got home just in time to write my blog, do a final flip through my flashcards for tomorrow's tingxie, take a quick shower, and go to sleep before my final week of classes.
Today is awesome because I got to see the hipster hutong and get lost in a really neat park.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Summer Palace and Acrobatics Show
Today, Saturday, August 4, 2012, was our final group excursion. We met at 8AM to take subway line four from the East Gate of Peking University Station to the Beigongmen Station, and then entered the north gate of the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is the complex that was built for the emperor's mother, and Empress Dowager Cixi lived there. There is a manmade lake and island, which is a pretty nice tribute that a son can make to his mother.
Side note: all places in China have gates on all sides where you have tickets and security. So, at Bei Da we have a North Gate （北门), East Gate, Southeast Gate (across the street from where I live), West Gates, etc. It actually gives me a sense of the area a location occupies and helps me find my way. Knowing the gate system was really helpful when exploring Beihai last week.
Anyway, back to the excursion. We went through the north gate of the Summer Palace, and first passed through the Suzhou city that the emperor recreated in Beijing. Apparently, he had the eunuchs and maids dress as vendors from the south and he would pretend to be an ordinary person and hang out there. We walked on a really pretty tree-lined path until we got to the marble boat on the lake. There, we stopped to take pictures and buy water before moving on to the main attraction.
The main building that people visit is a hall with a multiple-armed Buddha in it. To get there from the marble boat (by the way, this is one of two marble boats in Beijing; the other one is on Nameless Lake on Bei Da's campus), we walked on a long covered path with famous paintings on the ceiling. Bei Da scholars analyzed the paintings to determine which stories they represented from Chinese history and myth. Then we got to the buildings. We had to climb 100 stairs to get to the top, and the view of the lake was beautiful. We had thirty minutes to explore that area, and once I had done my rounds, I sat with Gu Laoshi and we chatted for a while. He told me that it is a requirement for Beijing couples to go on a date to the Summer Palace, and we chitchatted about lifey things with the program.
Before we left the upper level, a girl from Inner Mongolia asked if she could take a picture with me. It was pretty adorable; she started asking Gu Laoshi in Chinese because she was shy, but he made her ask me herself. She could have spoken Chinese and I would have understood, but she said it in English. I happily posed with her. I was initially warned that this would happen a lot, but it really hasn't. I was asked to pose in Fragrant Hills Park and a man took pictures of me and Anabella at the Qing Tombs, but other than that, the photos have been without permission and from a distance.
The next place we visited was a bronze pavilion, and then we had lunch at the royal kitchen. Gu Laoshi ordered delicious food for us, and my table really enjoyed everything. It was the first time we had a meal entirely without pork. Highlights include fish without bones, kung pao chicken, shrimp, Beijing style breads, amazing tofu, and walnut cookies. Lunch was really good today, and I fully enjoyed my meal. I really don't eat much of a breakfast before starting the day because I don't like to eat early, so I was hungry, and it energized me for the rest of the day.
After lunch, we took a boat ride across the lake to visit the island. The boat was reminiscent of the trip to Hangzhou, except it moved faster and we had a breeze. At the island, we visited a building that has been turned into a souvenir shop, and mostly just walked across the island to the marble bridge with 18 arches to go to a pavilion on the mainland where a flautist was performing. I had my second photo ask at that pavilion, and this time a boy asked me to take a photo with him and afterward he thanked me and told me I was very beautiful. This only happens in China.
Walking over to the East Gate of the Summer Palace, one of Gu Laoshi's former students stopped him when she ran into us. It was completely unplanned, and rather hilarious to run into an alumna of our university in Beijing of all places, so we were all kind of amused by the occurrence. At the East Gate, we visited the dragon-cow creature statue that determines if you're telling the truth, looked at a gallery of chipped marble art, and then took taxis back to rest for a few hours before the Acrobatics Show. It was a beautiful hot and sunny day, so the siesta was lovely.
At 5:30, we met in the bus to drive across the city to the Chaoyuan district to see the show. I sat with Professor Carmichael on the bus, and we had a lovely conversation on the ride over. When we got to the theater, I took some time to look around. The front light system was a couple of moving lights, and I later realized that all of the instruments were intelligent fixtures: Max 700s, Mac 301s, Varilites, all the fun stuff we use for DM.
The show itself was spectacular. It began with a dance number, then a chair stacking balancing act, straw hats, umbrella pedaling, partner strength acrobatics, shoulder ballet, wheel spinning, cycling, and motorcycles in a sphere. The chair act was stacking chairs and balancing on top with handstands and such. The straw hats were juggling, tumbling, and staking people with straw hats as a prop. The umbrella thing was a woman on her back with her feet in the air, twirling and balancing a parasol. Partner strength acrobatics was two people who held each other up and did various balance and strength related feats. Then we had intermission, and the first act after intermission was shoulder ballet, where a woman stood on pointe on a man's shoulders and head. The wheel act was an axis with a wheel on either side that spun through the air and two men inside or on top doing various things while balancing as the thing spun. The bicycles were stacking people on moving bikes. The motorcycles were eight men on motorbikes driving in formation in a mesh sphere.
It was all amazing and I kept being more and more amazed at what these performers were doing. The lighting was pretty cool as well; since the instruments could change colors, each act had a color to set the mood, but it also changed when major events happened in the performance. The backdrops were various locations around Beijing.
After the show, I came home, had a snack, relaxed, and went to bed.
Today is awesome because of the Summer Palace and Acrobatics show.
Side note: all places in China have gates on all sides where you have tickets and security. So, at Bei Da we have a North Gate （北门), East Gate, Southeast Gate (across the street from where I live), West Gates, etc. It actually gives me a sense of the area a location occupies and helps me find my way. Knowing the gate system was really helpful when exploring Beihai last week.
Anyway, back to the excursion. We went through the north gate of the Summer Palace, and first passed through the Suzhou city that the emperor recreated in Beijing. Apparently, he had the eunuchs and maids dress as vendors from the south and he would pretend to be an ordinary person and hang out there. We walked on a really pretty tree-lined path until we got to the marble boat on the lake. There, we stopped to take pictures and buy water before moving on to the main attraction.
The main building that people visit is a hall with a multiple-armed Buddha in it. To get there from the marble boat (by the way, this is one of two marble boats in Beijing; the other one is on Nameless Lake on Bei Da's campus), we walked on a long covered path with famous paintings on the ceiling. Bei Da scholars analyzed the paintings to determine which stories they represented from Chinese history and myth. Then we got to the buildings. We had to climb 100 stairs to get to the top, and the view of the lake was beautiful. We had thirty minutes to explore that area, and once I had done my rounds, I sat with Gu Laoshi and we chatted for a while. He told me that it is a requirement for Beijing couples to go on a date to the Summer Palace, and we chitchatted about lifey things with the program.
Before we left the upper level, a girl from Inner Mongolia asked if she could take a picture with me. It was pretty adorable; she started asking Gu Laoshi in Chinese because she was shy, but he made her ask me herself. She could have spoken Chinese and I would have understood, but she said it in English. I happily posed with her. I was initially warned that this would happen a lot, but it really hasn't. I was asked to pose in Fragrant Hills Park and a man took pictures of me and Anabella at the Qing Tombs, but other than that, the photos have been without permission and from a distance.
The next place we visited was a bronze pavilion, and then we had lunch at the royal kitchen. Gu Laoshi ordered delicious food for us, and my table really enjoyed everything. It was the first time we had a meal entirely without pork. Highlights include fish without bones, kung pao chicken, shrimp, Beijing style breads, amazing tofu, and walnut cookies. Lunch was really good today, and I fully enjoyed my meal. I really don't eat much of a breakfast before starting the day because I don't like to eat early, so I was hungry, and it energized me for the rest of the day.
After lunch, we took a boat ride across the lake to visit the island. The boat was reminiscent of the trip to Hangzhou, except it moved faster and we had a breeze. At the island, we visited a building that has been turned into a souvenir shop, and mostly just walked across the island to the marble bridge with 18 arches to go to a pavilion on the mainland where a flautist was performing. I had my second photo ask at that pavilion, and this time a boy asked me to take a photo with him and afterward he thanked me and told me I was very beautiful. This only happens in China.
Walking over to the East Gate of the Summer Palace, one of Gu Laoshi's former students stopped him when she ran into us. It was completely unplanned, and rather hilarious to run into an alumna of our university in Beijing of all places, so we were all kind of amused by the occurrence. At the East Gate, we visited the dragon-cow creature statue that determines if you're telling the truth, looked at a gallery of chipped marble art, and then took taxis back to rest for a few hours before the Acrobatics Show. It was a beautiful hot and sunny day, so the siesta was lovely.
At 5:30, we met in the bus to drive across the city to the Chaoyuan district to see the show. I sat with Professor Carmichael on the bus, and we had a lovely conversation on the ride over. When we got to the theater, I took some time to look around. The front light system was a couple of moving lights, and I later realized that all of the instruments were intelligent fixtures: Max 700s, Mac 301s, Varilites, all the fun stuff we use for DM.
The show itself was spectacular. It began with a dance number, then a chair stacking balancing act, straw hats, umbrella pedaling, partner strength acrobatics, shoulder ballet, wheel spinning, cycling, and motorcycles in a sphere. The chair act was stacking chairs and balancing on top with handstands and such. The straw hats were juggling, tumbling, and staking people with straw hats as a prop. The umbrella thing was a woman on her back with her feet in the air, twirling and balancing a parasol. Partner strength acrobatics was two people who held each other up and did various balance and strength related feats. Then we had intermission, and the first act after intermission was shoulder ballet, where a woman stood on pointe on a man's shoulders and head. The wheel act was an axis with a wheel on either side that spun through the air and two men inside or on top doing various things while balancing as the thing spun. The bicycles were stacking people on moving bikes. The motorcycles were eight men on motorbikes driving in formation in a mesh sphere.
It was all amazing and I kept being more and more amazed at what these performers were doing. The lighting was pretty cool as well; since the instruments could change colors, each act had a color to set the mood, but it also changed when major events happened in the performance. The backdrops were various locations around Beijing.
After the show, I came home, had a snack, relaxed, and went to bed.
Today is awesome because of the Summer Palace and Acrobatics show.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Chinese Class Bonding at Traditional Hot Pot
Today was mostly centered around my Chinese class. I got there early to study for my oral test, and I took it first before class officially started because we had a long movie to watch. I think it went well; I was able to respond to the questions and I remembered the dialogue. I did forget the pronunciation of the word for "flash frozen" because there was a sentence about frozen dumplings I had to read, but that's okay.
We watched a movie called Fei Cong Gu Ra 2, which was the sequel to a movie about a middle aged man who is in search of a wife. The girl he proposes to wants to do a trial marriage to make sure they could last, and it ends up being a contest of who can annoy the other the most first, then the guy's friend gets malignant melanoma and dies, and it brings them back together after a lengthy separation. It ended with the setup for the third movie, and it is the basis for a dating show on Chinese TV.
After class, all of us, including Yao Laoshi, took the subway over to a traditional hot pot restaurant. Laoshi knows the place and ordered for us, and it was really good. We had beef, lamb, noodles, mushrooms, fungus, cabbage, green vegetable, tofu, chilled tofu, radish, bittermelon, maybe more stuff for the broth, and three cold dishes: Beijing tofu, peanuts, and cucumbers. I ate it with the traditional dipping sauce that was plated beautifully with the character for lamb written in sesame oil on top, but others had spicy sauce or garlic sauce. Everything was delicious, and while I swore I'd never eat hot pot again after that first week of eating only hot pot, I'm really glad I went. We had a really nice time, and I think we bonded as a class and got to know our teacher better as a result.
Once we finished eating, we walked back to campus. On the way, Laoshi pointed out some spots he knows: a foot massage place, the place he and his friends used to go for barbecue and beer, the grocery store. We actually stopped in the grocery store to get ice cream, but I finally found the tea tins I was looking for, so I got them because I saw them. It was a really nice walk, and we re-entered campus through the West Gate and walked past the lake and the pagoda. I realized that I hadn't been to the north part of campus since we stopped having class in the Russian Building, so I have to make sure to do a final walk all around campus before I leave next week.
I spent the afternoon catching up and getting ahead on work. The paper for Public Health class was assigned to us after we turned in our final exams, and the assignment sheet said it was due on August 31, so I was planning on writing it on the airplane, but it is actually due on Monday, so I set aside the time to just get it done. I also wanted to finish the reading in the TCM coursepack so I could have my highlighting done before it's finals crunch time next week. Since I finished those items at an odd time, I moved on to preparing my flashcards for next week's Chinese vocabulary, and then all of a sudden it was 7:00. It was a quiet evening as afternoon turned to night, and I went to sleep early so I could be fresh for the final group excursion tomorrow to the Summer Palace.
Today is awesome because my Chinese class got a chance to socialize together and I got a lot of schoolwork done.
We watched a movie called Fei Cong Gu Ra 2, which was the sequel to a movie about a middle aged man who is in search of a wife. The girl he proposes to wants to do a trial marriage to make sure they could last, and it ends up being a contest of who can annoy the other the most first, then the guy's friend gets malignant melanoma and dies, and it brings them back together after a lengthy separation. It ended with the setup for the third movie, and it is the basis for a dating show on Chinese TV.
After class, all of us, including Yao Laoshi, took the subway over to a traditional hot pot restaurant. Laoshi knows the place and ordered for us, and it was really good. We had beef, lamb, noodles, mushrooms, fungus, cabbage, green vegetable, tofu, chilled tofu, radish, bittermelon, maybe more stuff for the broth, and three cold dishes: Beijing tofu, peanuts, and cucumbers. I ate it with the traditional dipping sauce that was plated beautifully with the character for lamb written in sesame oil on top, but others had spicy sauce or garlic sauce. Everything was delicious, and while I swore I'd never eat hot pot again after that first week of eating only hot pot, I'm really glad I went. We had a really nice time, and I think we bonded as a class and got to know our teacher better as a result.
Once we finished eating, we walked back to campus. On the way, Laoshi pointed out some spots he knows: a foot massage place, the place he and his friends used to go for barbecue and beer, the grocery store. We actually stopped in the grocery store to get ice cream, but I finally found the tea tins I was looking for, so I got them because I saw them. It was a really nice walk, and we re-entered campus through the West Gate and walked past the lake and the pagoda. I realized that I hadn't been to the north part of campus since we stopped having class in the Russian Building, so I have to make sure to do a final walk all around campus before I leave next week.
I spent the afternoon catching up and getting ahead on work. The paper for Public Health class was assigned to us after we turned in our final exams, and the assignment sheet said it was due on August 31, so I was planning on writing it on the airplane, but it is actually due on Monday, so I set aside the time to just get it done. I also wanted to finish the reading in the TCM coursepack so I could have my highlighting done before it's finals crunch time next week. Since I finished those items at an odd time, I moved on to preparing my flashcards for next week's Chinese vocabulary, and then all of a sudden it was 7:00. It was a quiet evening as afternoon turned to night, and I went to sleep early so I could be fresh for the final group excursion tomorrow to the Summer Palace.
Today is awesome because my Chinese class got a chance to socialize together and I got a lot of schoolwork done.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Clinical Training in TCM
The most remarkable thing about today is that I got to administer TCM therapy to my classmates. After the usual Chinese class and baozi for lunch, my group for TCM put on our lab coats and went to the TCM ward of the Peking University Health Science Center Third Hospital to learn in the clinic. Dr. Guo, a practitioner with 23 years experience, explained some of the therapies to us, showed us some techniques on actual patients, and then did some demonstrations and tutorials on cupping, moxibustion, acupuncture, and gua sha for us, and we got to try all of it.
Personally, I applied cupping to one or two of my classmates, I administered gua sha, and I took pictures when Dr. Guo asked if anyone had brought a camera. I let a classmate apply cupping to me, but since I didn't really have a particular ailment, it was more for getting the technique than curing me.
The technique for cupping is that you soak a cotton ball in alcohol, place it in forceps, light it on fire, stick the fire to the bottom of the jar, and then quickly apply it to the appropriate point. The timing is what takes practice. With gua sha, you run the scraper (which is really blunt and is more of a massage tool than anything else) along the jing luo meridians where it will help the ailment.
The coolest part of the day was that Dr. Guo could find the acupoint based on the consultation and then diagnose the patient's problem. For instance, a girl who runs a lot but doesn't stretch said she had knee pain, the doctor found the point, and then said that she was hurting because she was tight. Or another girl with stomach pain had a point on her back that correlated with a specific kind of stomach pain that she had, but did not specifically describe. The diagnosis was really amazing to witness.
I did feel kind of guilty for us taking hospital beds when there were patients waiting. The patients were very kind and when the doctor asked if the American students could observe, they all said yes and even encouraged our intellectual curiosity.
After class, I had about an hour to myself where I watched "Once More with Feeling," the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because the songs were stuck in my head. At 6, I left with some friends to have dinner in an area called San Li Tun. This is where the western shopping centers are, a bunch of interesting international restaurants, and the bar scene. I had yet to go, and since I'm a fan of Middle Eastern cuisine, it was a good night to go.
On the way, since we were going with one of the Chinese teachers, we had some train troubles. First, Laoshi and I got on the train as the doors were closing, so we had to get off at the next stop to rejoin the group on the next train. It was pretty hilarious, particularly because she wasn't my Laoshi, but the doors almost closed on my body, which was scary. Then, on the next train, there was a man who almost got in a fight with Laoshi and was being mean to her because he thought our group was being too loud. The students nearby defended her, which was both nice and kind of scary, and we got off the train shortly after the incident. Then we went out the wrong gate of the train station, so we were late for the reservation.
First of all, San Li Tun is a really cool area. It's very modern, with gorgeous architecture that is primarily glass and beautiful LED lights in the trees. I'm really happy to have finally seen it! Second, the restaurant was awesome. It was called Bite-a-Pitta, but really Bait HaPita, or Pita House. It was Israeli food and I had hummus, falafel, pita, and shakshuka (onion, bell pepper, tomato stew with eggs cooked on top) for dinner. It was so good, and I told the owner that I really enjoyed her restaurant. Who knew I would be speaking Hebrew in China? I left dinner in high spirits.
Today is awesome because I got to be a TCM therapist for a day.
Personally, I applied cupping to one or two of my classmates, I administered gua sha, and I took pictures when Dr. Guo asked if anyone had brought a camera. I let a classmate apply cupping to me, but since I didn't really have a particular ailment, it was more for getting the technique than curing me.
The technique for cupping is that you soak a cotton ball in alcohol, place it in forceps, light it on fire, stick the fire to the bottom of the jar, and then quickly apply it to the appropriate point. The timing is what takes practice. With gua sha, you run the scraper (which is really blunt and is more of a massage tool than anything else) along the jing luo meridians where it will help the ailment.
The coolest part of the day was that Dr. Guo could find the acupoint based on the consultation and then diagnose the patient's problem. For instance, a girl who runs a lot but doesn't stretch said she had knee pain, the doctor found the point, and then said that she was hurting because she was tight. Or another girl with stomach pain had a point on her back that correlated with a specific kind of stomach pain that she had, but did not specifically describe. The diagnosis was really amazing to witness.
I did feel kind of guilty for us taking hospital beds when there were patients waiting. The patients were very kind and when the doctor asked if the American students could observe, they all said yes and even encouraged our intellectual curiosity.
After class, I had about an hour to myself where I watched "Once More with Feeling," the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because the songs were stuck in my head. At 6, I left with some friends to have dinner in an area called San Li Tun. This is where the western shopping centers are, a bunch of interesting international restaurants, and the bar scene. I had yet to go, and since I'm a fan of Middle Eastern cuisine, it was a good night to go.
On the way, since we were going with one of the Chinese teachers, we had some train troubles. First, Laoshi and I got on the train as the doors were closing, so we had to get off at the next stop to rejoin the group on the next train. It was pretty hilarious, particularly because she wasn't my Laoshi, but the doors almost closed on my body, which was scary. Then, on the next train, there was a man who almost got in a fight with Laoshi and was being mean to her because he thought our group was being too loud. The students nearby defended her, which was both nice and kind of scary, and we got off the train shortly after the incident. Then we went out the wrong gate of the train station, so we were late for the reservation.
First of all, San Li Tun is a really cool area. It's very modern, with gorgeous architecture that is primarily glass and beautiful LED lights in the trees. I'm really happy to have finally seen it! Second, the restaurant was awesome. It was called Bite-a-Pitta, but really Bait HaPita, or Pita House. It was Israeli food and I had hummus, falafel, pita, and shakshuka (onion, bell pepper, tomato stew with eggs cooked on top) for dinner. It was so good, and I told the owner that I really enjoyed her restaurant. Who knew I would be speaking Hebrew in China? I left dinner in high spirits.
Today is awesome because I got to be a TCM therapist for a day.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Puppet Show Fail
Today was pretty good and much better than yesterday. It was still raining, so I wore pants for the first time in China. Apparently it has been unusually rainy this year, so on the one hand it's been less hot, but on the other we've been wet and unable to do things. Chinese class was normal and we had lunch as a group with announcements. The announcements were about today's field trip for TCM, the changing of the due date for our Public Health paper from August 31 to August 6 (Monday), and the second cancelling of our herb picking trip. At this point, it's cancelled for good, but there's still hope that we might have the trip at the last minute. I'm saving my jeans.
For TCM, half the group did clinical training in acupuncture and cupping, and my half of the group got some background on the Peking University Health Science Center and watched a movie about a child abuse trial based on the marks from the TCM therapy Gua Sha (scraping). Gua Sha is a home remedy for colds, stomachaches, and the like, so the child's grandfather did it to make a tummy ache go away. The kid then hit his head and was taken to the ER, where they found the marks on his back, and then turned him over to child welfare services. The movie was infuriatingly unrealistic about the legal system and the characters were caricatures, but it got its point across about cultural literacy.
We got back from the field trip just after 5PM, which gave me an hour to get ready for the puppet show. I went with Marissa and Professor Carmichael to the Chinese Shadow Puppet Cultural Club, which was recommended by the Beijinger (a magazine for expats in Beijing). Seeing a Chinese shadow puppet show was something on my list since I learned about the tradition in my puppetry class last February. The puppets are intricately cut, painted so they cast in color on the shadow screen, and have lots of joints that let them move very dynamically. Needless to say, going to this show was something I was VERY excited about.
Well, we left at 6 and took the subway to the appropriate stop then walked in the direction the internet said to walk. We walked the 100 meters, but there was no theater. Then we kept walking, and stayed on one street, but it ended up turning into another street that was not the right street, so we started walking back the way we came. Then it was 6:35, so we hailed a taxi to take us to the address. The taxi driver took us back to the East Gate of Peking University. At that point, it was 6:45, we weren't going to make it to the show, so we walked home with plans to see the puppet show next Tuesday. I'm pretty disappointed that it's taking until the last week to go because it's something I've been wanting and trying to do for a long time, but we have come up with a new plan to get there. I'm sending the website to Marissa and Professor Carmichael and we're all going to look up the characters and directions and take a taxi next Tuesday. This WILL happen.
I ended up doing homework tonight. I read about acupuncture and learned my characters for tomorrow's Chinese test. I'm looking forward to learning acupuncture tomorrow afternoon, and I'm planning on writing my paper on Friday afternoon to get it out of the way. I really hope it stops raining for these last 11 days so I can keep doing things.
Today is awesome because I got a perfect score on my tingxie.
For TCM, half the group did clinical training in acupuncture and cupping, and my half of the group got some background on the Peking University Health Science Center and watched a movie about a child abuse trial based on the marks from the TCM therapy Gua Sha (scraping). Gua Sha is a home remedy for colds, stomachaches, and the like, so the child's grandfather did it to make a tummy ache go away. The kid then hit his head and was taken to the ER, where they found the marks on his back, and then turned him over to child welfare services. The movie was infuriatingly unrealistic about the legal system and the characters were caricatures, but it got its point across about cultural literacy.
We got back from the field trip just after 5PM, which gave me an hour to get ready for the puppet show. I went with Marissa and Professor Carmichael to the Chinese Shadow Puppet Cultural Club, which was recommended by the Beijinger (a magazine for expats in Beijing). Seeing a Chinese shadow puppet show was something on my list since I learned about the tradition in my puppetry class last February. The puppets are intricately cut, painted so they cast in color on the shadow screen, and have lots of joints that let them move very dynamically. Needless to say, going to this show was something I was VERY excited about.
Well, we left at 6 and took the subway to the appropriate stop then walked in the direction the internet said to walk. We walked the 100 meters, but there was no theater. Then we kept walking, and stayed on one street, but it ended up turning into another street that was not the right street, so we started walking back the way we came. Then it was 6:35, so we hailed a taxi to take us to the address. The taxi driver took us back to the East Gate of Peking University. At that point, it was 6:45, we weren't going to make it to the show, so we walked home with plans to see the puppet show next Tuesday. I'm pretty disappointed that it's taking until the last week to go because it's something I've been wanting and trying to do for a long time, but we have come up with a new plan to get there. I'm sending the website to Marissa and Professor Carmichael and we're all going to look up the characters and directions and take a taxi next Tuesday. This WILL happen.
I ended up doing homework tonight. I read about acupuncture and learned my characters for tomorrow's Chinese test. I'm looking forward to learning acupuncture tomorrow afternoon, and I'm planning on writing my paper on Friday afternoon to get it out of the way. I really hope it stops raining for these last 11 days so I can keep doing things.
Today is awesome because I got a perfect score on my tingxie.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
没有
没有. Meiyou. Don't have it. These are probably the two most infuriating syllables I know of the Chinese language.
I had a bit of a rough day today. I did not sleep well, did not feel well, and to top it all off, it was raining, I ran out of deodorant, and our toilet broke. Lots of little things just piling up and it made me upset. And they're the type of little things that are easy to deal with in the US, but because of language barriers and the absence of a store like CVS, things are much more difficult in China.
I went to seven different on-campus stores in search of deodorant. I even looked up the word, wrote out the pinyin and characters, double checked it with my teacher, and asked the salespeople if they had it. Each store said 没有. Finally, after the field trip and after reporting the broken toilet, I walked down the street our dorm complex is off of because I saw a cosmetics store there when we were driving home. I showed them what I was looking for and they said 没有. I left to try to find another store, but on my way back I decided to look around there to see for myself. Plus, I needed a small body wash to get through the rest of the trip. Lo and behold, they had five varieties of men's and women's roll on and spray deodorant. So much for 没有. The on campus places definitely didn't have it, but it was so frustrating to find what I was looking for in a place where I was explicitly told they didn't have it.
Classes were fine today. We had an ordinary Chinese class and a lecture at the hospital on acupuncture and moxibustion for TCM. It was most of the same information as yesterday, but with a new person, so there were fresh nuggets of knowledge to be gained. Plus he did some cupping demonstrations and let a fellow student try applying the cup to another student, so that was pretty cool. On the way back from the hospital, Gu Laoshi distributed the lab coats we are to wear when we do our acupuncture lesson in the clinic. Tomorrow and Thursday we are split into two groups. One group goes to the acupuncture clinic, and the other group has a classroom activity. The syllabus says we watch a movie. I'm in the movie group for tomorrow and the acupuncture group for Thursday.
In my free time, I read from my coursepack, studied my vocab, handled e-mail, and then went to sleep early. I had a simple on-campus dinner with some friends, and I ate my chicken, vegetables, and rice with the spork I was given.
Today is awesome because all the issues were resolved by the end of the day and tomorrow will be better.
I had a bit of a rough day today. I did not sleep well, did not feel well, and to top it all off, it was raining, I ran out of deodorant, and our toilet broke. Lots of little things just piling up and it made me upset. And they're the type of little things that are easy to deal with in the US, but because of language barriers and the absence of a store like CVS, things are much more difficult in China.
I went to seven different on-campus stores in search of deodorant. I even looked up the word, wrote out the pinyin and characters, double checked it with my teacher, and asked the salespeople if they had it. Each store said 没有. Finally, after the field trip and after reporting the broken toilet, I walked down the street our dorm complex is off of because I saw a cosmetics store there when we were driving home. I showed them what I was looking for and they said 没有. I left to try to find another store, but on my way back I decided to look around there to see for myself. Plus, I needed a small body wash to get through the rest of the trip. Lo and behold, they had five varieties of men's and women's roll on and spray deodorant. So much for 没有. The on campus places definitely didn't have it, but it was so frustrating to find what I was looking for in a place where I was explicitly told they didn't have it.
Classes were fine today. We had an ordinary Chinese class and a lecture at the hospital on acupuncture and moxibustion for TCM. It was most of the same information as yesterday, but with a new person, so there were fresh nuggets of knowledge to be gained. Plus he did some cupping demonstrations and let a fellow student try applying the cup to another student, so that was pretty cool. On the way back from the hospital, Gu Laoshi distributed the lab coats we are to wear when we do our acupuncture lesson in the clinic. Tomorrow and Thursday we are split into two groups. One group goes to the acupuncture clinic, and the other group has a classroom activity. The syllabus says we watch a movie. I'm in the movie group for tomorrow and the acupuncture group for Thursday.
In my free time, I read from my coursepack, studied my vocab, handled e-mail, and then went to sleep early. I had a simple on-campus dinner with some friends, and I ate my chicken, vegetables, and rice with the spork I was given.
Today is awesome because all the issues were resolved by the end of the day and tomorrow will be better.
Monday, July 30, 2012
A Day of Experiential Learning
Today, we had a shortened Chinese class so we could learn Chinese Calligraphy (中国书法). We had a calligraphy master come in who was in his eighties, and he spoke about the 5000 year history of calligraphy. He said that writing regular Chinese characters is like walking and calligraphy is like dancing. He kept emphasizing the beauty of this style of writing. We learned how to paint lines, dots, and the character for people (ren 人). He went around and helped us execute the writing, mostly by putting his hand over ours to guide its motion. At the end, we got to take him our Chinese names for him to write, and he did mine in cursive calligraphy. My Chinese name is Bai He 百合, and when he wrote it in the different font, it became epically beautiful. After I told him my name, he said he needed to prepare before he could write such a beautiful name, which was pretty neat. I really enjoyed the lesson, and I think the art is so beautiful.
In the afternoon's TCM class, we learned about acupuncture, moxibustion, and Qigong. Acu-moxibustion is the category of non-drug therapies in TCM. Acupuncture is also called needling and involves placing a needle in a specific point on the body to achieve a certain effect. Moxibustion is placing moxa wool that has been set on fire atop one of these points (moxa wool is made from dried and aged mugwort leaves). The theory behind it is that the key organs each have a meridian with acupoints along it that when stimulated will restore proper health. For instance, a treatment to the big toe is connected to the liver, which regulates reproduction, so an acupuncture needle to the big toe can help with a reproductive problem. Moxibustion can be either direct or indirect depending on the problem, and indirect moxibustion involves placing the burning herb on top of ginger or another barrier that is on the skin. Other treatments in this non-drug category include cupping and tuina (massage).
When the professor showed a slide of acupuncture needles with burning moxa on top, one of the students asked about it, and we had about half an hour of the class as demonstration. Four students had acupuncture in various places for various things. There is a point near the elbow that is connected to the shoulder, and two students had that one, one of whom had the moxa burning on the needle which heated her entire arm. One girl had a needle in her hand to help with a cold, and another had one in her wrist and one in her forehead to help with sleep. It was really cool to watch, and I videoed the whole thing. It was so much better to observe the treatments and have them explained live than to simply go through the slides.
After the demo, we did go through the slides, but he moved pretty fast and kept only to relevant information. After we finished talking about acu-moxibustion, we moved onto Qigong. Qigong is an exercise and meditation regimen to aid flow of Qi through the body and be generally preventative. We got to get out of our seats and learn Ba Duan Jin 八段锦 which are eight forms that directly relate to TCM. The first one is breathing, the second one is a motion like shooting a bow and arrow, the third one is pressing one hand up and one hand down and is related to the spleen, for the fourth one you arch your back by pushing your ribcage forward and twist to the back for a good stretch, the fifth one is in a deep horse stance and you sweep your head in a circular motion toward the ground and up again, the sixth one is a forward stretch for the kidneys and back, the seventh one is for the liver and you punch out and then pull your hand back with force, and finally the eight one is seven repetitions of rising to releve and then falling back onto your heels. It was really cool and fun to do the forms, and I think I'm going to try to take up a soft martial art because it was really relaxing. We then learned some history and theory of Qigong before our class ended.
Today was by far the best lecture we have had in the entire Public Health sequence. The slides were to the point, and we had a strong experiential component. Between that and calligraphy, today was fantastic. However, when I was walking back from lunch, a bird pooped on me, so that kind of marred my outlook when coupled with feeling tired and a little sniffly. Gotta take the bad with the good, but I'm going to focus on the awesome things that happened today instead of the bird poop.
After class, I finished my Chinese homework, studied my characters for tomorrow's tingxie, and worked with my photos for a while. I have my combined total of photographs and videos from this trip is 1425, so I think I'm doing a good job of documenting everything both visually and verbally. I didn't really do anything special for dinner or afterward because I was tired, so I stayed home and had an early night.
Today is awesome because I witnessed expert calligraphy and learned Qigong. Today is notsome because of bird poop.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Jingshan, Beihai, and Peking Duck
This is the two week mark for how much time I have left in Beijing. It's insane, but I'm almost done with my sightseeing, so I can leave satisfied. It's a strange sort of countdown because I'm so happy and privileged to be here, but when the end is nigh, I can't help but look forward to seeing my family again.
Today I got to check three major things off my tourist list: Jingshan Park, Beihai Park, and Peking Duck. I left campus with my friend Caleb around 11:15 to head over to the parks. We took the subway and then walked, and it was kind of a long walk from the subway, but it was well worth it. We started with Jingshan Park, which is the hill that is the highest point in all of Beijing. When we got to the north gate, which was closed, I asked a police officer where the entrance was in Chinese (景山公园人口在哪儿). I'd give my success a 7/10, with my Xiangshan inquiry as a 10/10. They have an exhibit of dinosaurs at the lowest level near the gates, so that was kind of funny, but the views from the hill were amazing. We got to look out over the lake at Beihai and the Forbidden City from the most beautiful perspective. I should also mention that today's weather was amazing. The sky was blue and visible and the sun was shining bright and hot. It was very hot. If last Sunday's weather was a 10/10 for Beijing, today was an 8.7.
After Jingshan, we backtracked to Beihai. At that point we were starting to fade a bit, so we did not rent a boat to go out on the lake, which is the thing to do there. Instead, we sat on a bench in the shade facing the lake and ate our dried fruit while talking about Dance Marathon. We then walked around the park, took some pictures of the pretty things, and then headed back to the subway after an exhausting day of walking around in the hot sun. We were both pretty affected by the heat, and I was certainly dehydrated.
On the subway ride home, there was a baby sitting on his mom's lap next to me. I would estimate his age at 8-10 months, and I don't think he'd seen any white foreigners before. He smiled and pointed with an amazed look in his eyes and kept reaching out to touch me. I did let him, and he was just the most adorable baby. It's interesting to be such a spectacle here when I look very ordinary at home. It's not a bad thing, but I just look different and it's really obvious. I try to smile and wave when people stare both to seem friendly and to call them out for it.
After a relaxing break in the dorm, I headed back to the subway to go to dinner at Da Dong for Peking Duck as two friends' birthday dinner. While I rode line 4, I was standing next to a Spanish couple. I was reading their tour book over their shoulder, and I said to them "me gusta tu libro," and struck up a conversation with the woman. She asked where I was from and what I was doing in Beijing, and I asked her the same. It was their first day, and they tried to see the Summer Palace but it was closed. I recommended that they check out the parks at night because the lighting there is supposed to be gorgeous (and I had just been there, so I knew they were cool, and it would be much nicer in the evening without such extreme heat). They were really nice, and it was kind of fun to speak a little Spanish in China, even though we ended up speaking mostly English.
The restaurant was frustratingly difficult to find. It turns out that I walked past the building about four times without realizing it because it was marked as "Business Tower" instead of "International Tower." I walked up and down the street for 20 minutes before calling my friend who was already there, and when I found it I was very happy. It was decorated with gauzy tulle curtains and table cloths. The key color was pink and there was also a lot of white. I was really surprised to see pixel pars on the ground casting magenta light onto the curtains, which was a really interesting design choice because they could change their color palette whenever they want just by changing the color of the light.
The food itself was quite good. We had tofu and scallions, broccoli, and eggplant in addition to the duck. The duck was carved tableside, and we had a condiment plate with sugar for the skin and garlic, cantaloupe, cucumber, mushroom, onion, and hoisin sauce for the duck pancake. I had never eaten duck before, and I really enjoyed it. I liked putting all the flavors together but also trying them separately. In addition to the things we ordered, included with the duck were soup, grapes over dry ice (the prettiest plating ever), and a persimmon slush-goop thing (eloquent, I know). I didn't really like the soup or persimmon, but the grapes were fun to eat simply because there was a cloud in the plate. We all freaked out a little at the plating. It was a fun night.
Today is awesome because I got to go to beautiful parks and eat delicious food with friends.
Today I got to check three major things off my tourist list: Jingshan Park, Beihai Park, and Peking Duck. I left campus with my friend Caleb around 11:15 to head over to the parks. We took the subway and then walked, and it was kind of a long walk from the subway, but it was well worth it. We started with Jingshan Park, which is the hill that is the highest point in all of Beijing. When we got to the north gate, which was closed, I asked a police officer where the entrance was in Chinese (景山公园人口在哪儿). I'd give my success a 7/10, with my Xiangshan inquiry as a 10/10. They have an exhibit of dinosaurs at the lowest level near the gates, so that was kind of funny, but the views from the hill were amazing. We got to look out over the lake at Beihai and the Forbidden City from the most beautiful perspective. I should also mention that today's weather was amazing. The sky was blue and visible and the sun was shining bright and hot. It was very hot. If last Sunday's weather was a 10/10 for Beijing, today was an 8.7.
After Jingshan, we backtracked to Beihai. At that point we were starting to fade a bit, so we did not rent a boat to go out on the lake, which is the thing to do there. Instead, we sat on a bench in the shade facing the lake and ate our dried fruit while talking about Dance Marathon. We then walked around the park, took some pictures of the pretty things, and then headed back to the subway after an exhausting day of walking around in the hot sun. We were both pretty affected by the heat, and I was certainly dehydrated.
On the subway ride home, there was a baby sitting on his mom's lap next to me. I would estimate his age at 8-10 months, and I don't think he'd seen any white foreigners before. He smiled and pointed with an amazed look in his eyes and kept reaching out to touch me. I did let him, and he was just the most adorable baby. It's interesting to be such a spectacle here when I look very ordinary at home. It's not a bad thing, but I just look different and it's really obvious. I try to smile and wave when people stare both to seem friendly and to call them out for it.
After a relaxing break in the dorm, I headed back to the subway to go to dinner at Da Dong for Peking Duck as two friends' birthday dinner. While I rode line 4, I was standing next to a Spanish couple. I was reading their tour book over their shoulder, and I said to them "me gusta tu libro," and struck up a conversation with the woman. She asked where I was from and what I was doing in Beijing, and I asked her the same. It was their first day, and they tried to see the Summer Palace but it was closed. I recommended that they check out the parks at night because the lighting there is supposed to be gorgeous (and I had just been there, so I knew they were cool, and it would be much nicer in the evening without such extreme heat). They were really nice, and it was kind of fun to speak a little Spanish in China, even though we ended up speaking mostly English.
The restaurant was frustratingly difficult to find. It turns out that I walked past the building about four times without realizing it because it was marked as "Business Tower" instead of "International Tower." I walked up and down the street for 20 minutes before calling my friend who was already there, and when I found it I was very happy. It was decorated with gauzy tulle curtains and table cloths. The key color was pink and there was also a lot of white. I was really surprised to see pixel pars on the ground casting magenta light onto the curtains, which was a really interesting design choice because they could change their color palette whenever they want just by changing the color of the light.
The food itself was quite good. We had tofu and scallions, broccoli, and eggplant in addition to the duck. The duck was carved tableside, and we had a condiment plate with sugar for the skin and garlic, cantaloupe, cucumber, mushroom, onion, and hoisin sauce for the duck pancake. I had never eaten duck before, and I really enjoyed it. I liked putting all the flavors together but also trying them separately. In addition to the things we ordered, included with the duck were soup, grapes over dry ice (the prettiest plating ever), and a persimmon slush-goop thing (eloquent, I know). I didn't really like the soup or persimmon, but the grapes were fun to eat simply because there was a cloud in the plate. We all freaked out a little at the plating. It was a fun night.
Today is awesome because I got to go to beautiful parks and eat delicious food with friends.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Ping Pong, Temple of Heaven, Peking Opera, and Collected Thoughts
I totally forgot to write yesterday; therefore, this post comes to you in 10 parts.
Part 1: Ping Pong
Friday consisted of my oral exam in Chinese, then we watched Disney's Mulan in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. After lunch and a short break to relax in the afternoon, I met with the group at 4:00 to play ping pong. The ping pong group ended up being me, Matt, Victoria, Jess, and Gu Laoshi. Jess' brother is a serious ping pong player, and Gu Laoshi (unexpectedly yet unsurprisingly) is a really awesome ping pong player. The volleys between Jess and Dr. Gu were competition grade and really amazing to watch.
I was terrible at ping pong, but after yesterday's session, I can no longer identify that way. I got into a really great rhythm and Gu Laoshi gave me some really great pointers. I played against Matt, Jess, and Dr. Gu, and I'd say that final volley with Dr. Gu was the best I have ever played in my life.
The gym at Bei Da is where the 2008 Olympic ping pong matches were played, and we were playing on the Olympic tables, which was amazing in and of itself. The tables are set up in a basement room with posters of the Chinese ping pong players on the walls. The floor is red marley, just like all competition ping pong floors. It was very hot in that room, and I don't think I have ever sweated so much playing a table game. It was really fun, though.
After playing, I freshened up, got dinner with friends, went for ice cream, and went to bed.
Part 2: Beijing Weather
The weather in Beijing has been strange lately. Last Saturday was the worst rain in six decades. The final count was that over 70 people died as a result of the rain. Beijing has bad drainage, so flooding is frequent and rapid. Last night, coming home from ice cream, I got caught in some serious rain and my shoes are still wet because I had no choice but to step in puddles because of the flooding.
The heat in Beijing is very different from where I've lived in the US. At home, summer heat is very burning from the blazing sun beating down on you constantly. Here, you can't really see the sun, but it's very hot and humid. The heat wraps around you like a blanket, so at first you feel fine, but then all of a sudden you realize you've been sweating. People get slick and sticky here very easily.
As I was walking outside in the aftermath of yesterday's rain, I noticed that the snails had come out onto the sidewalk. There were a lot of snails, living and dead, and I didn't realize that they were here until I saw them this morning.
Part 3: Subways
I know Beijing underground better than I know the city itself. The subway system is fantastic, and I know it really well because I use it so much. To buy a ticket, you go to a machine, press 1, pay 2 yuan, and then swipe the card and get on the train. It's very easy, especially for a non-Chinese speaker. I like knowing the stops and what's near them because it gives me some sense of direction and a certain command of my surroundings. I think it surprises my fellow travelers when I just know where things are, though. It surprises me, too, but I like it.
Part 4: Vocabulary
I'm reallizing that when I come home there are certain things I will continue to say in Chinese. "Xie xie," "duibuqi," and "tai____le" are definitely coming home with me. I'll probably use some of the adjectives I've learned, and use Chinese as code with friends. It's kind of cool to realize how much I've learned and I hope that I retain more than the basics.
Part 5: Nature
Despite being in one of the world's biggest cities, I have found that the majority of my 1200 pictures are of nature. A characteristic feature of Beijing is that in the middle of a bustling urban setting, there will be a park or some sort of place to enjoy nature that makes you feel entirely separate from that busy man-made world. Besides being pretty, the things I have photographed have been a little surprising and out of place, and I really like that about this city.
Part 6: History
Today it really hit me that everything here is just way older than the United States itself. Like, I leaned against a 500 year old pillar at the Temple of Heaven; things just aren't that old at home, and it's really amazing to experience them here.
Part 7: The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan Gongyuan 天坛公园)
Today's excursion took us to the Temple of Heaven. It was where the emperors would go for 20 days of fasting, abstinence, and prayer for a good harvest. The complex is enormous, it is directly off the main road in the south-center of the city in the Xuanwumen District, and is more park than temple. The main building, the famous round one, is where the emperor would pray for a good harvest. The building is beautiful and we took a group photo there.
There is a lot of symbolism at Tiantan. Round and blue represent heaven, and square and green represent earth. The fusion of the two and the characters for "respect heaven" really demonstrate the way the Chinese think about nature, that man and nature, earth and heaven, need to live in balance with one another because taking advantage leads to destruction.
In the park, there were tons of people doing various recreational activities: music, dance, cards, mahjjong. Seeing them made me feel like I was doing something very genuine because those people go to the park just to hang out in their regular lives. They weren't tourists (though there were plenty of those as well), and I really love seeing real people do normal things.
Also in the park, we saw the fasting hall where I learned that the hobbit holes are called moon gates, the music department, the echo wall, and the place where the emperors would talk to heaven. The music part was really interesting. The exhibits had instruments we could touch and information about the philosophy and formation of the Chinese music style. I really liked it, and I know that my mom would have loved that part, too.
The echo wall was pretty neat, but I didn't try the echo. There were a lot of tourists there at that time, and I was quite tired, so I didn't have the energy to compete with them. I saw what I wanted to see, and it was really cool. There were people doing rhythmic gymnastics with ribbon dancers nearby, and there was one young girl who was really good. We all watched for a while because it was awesome.
The place where the emperors would talk to heaven was at the third level of a dais that had nine steps between each of three levels. We all got to stand on the spot and have our picture taken. It was the only orderly line I have seen in China, and even Gu Laoshi made a comment about that.
I got to talk to Gu Laoshi a lot today, and that was pretty neat. He's really into history, so he knows the stories of each place very well, and he doesn't tire of seeing them. He took us to a spot in Tiantan where the Japanese tested bio-weapons when the occupied Beijing during the Second World War. In that place, he told us about what happened there, but he also mentioned that he grew up in that area of the city and his high school class had to clean up Tiantan. He is such an interesting person, and I'm glad to get to talk to him.
Part 8: Pearl Market
After the Temple of Heaven, we went across the street to the Pearl Market. I went into shopping with a list of my ideas for souvenirs that I wanted to buy for friends and family. I completed my list very successfully!! I am actually pretty excited about the things I'm bringing back, and I did a good job of bargaining. For myself, I got two scarves, a silk printed wall scroll with pandas on it, and a head lamp for when I work in the theater.
I don't have any particularly entertaining bargaining stories, but I did get the prices I was aiming for. I think the funniest thing that happened was when one of the salesladies called Professor Carmichael my "Chinese friend" (zhongguo pengyou 中国朋友). She is very much not Chinese, and she couldn't stop laughing after she said that. I carried out most of my transactions in Chinese, and a lot of the time I just made my contemplating a price face when I didn't understand the rapid-fire sentences being thrown my way.
I had a lot of fun today and I really enjoy speaking in Mandarin when I am forced to because it makes me realize how much I actually do know and I can be successful in using it.
Part 9: Peking Opera
After the Pearl Market, I got into a taxi with Andrea, Caleb, and Gu Laoshi to go to the Hugang Huigan Theater for dinner and Peking Opera. We were the first group to leave, so we waited for everyone else in the Opera House's restaurant. Gu Laoshi took care of dinner for us, and we had a number of tasty dishes. I loved the eggplant dish, the shrimp, green beans, both tofus, and the mala tomato, egg, and noodle soup. It was very good, especially because my lunch was rather lacking and I was hungry after a long day.
The opera itself was really awesome!! We saw a singing story and an acrobatic story, which are the two categories of Peking Opera. The theater space was really interesting. It was a procenium set up with musicians stage left. The stage was bare and the lighting instruments were all white light for visibility (really big Fresnels). The first story was about a girl and a boy who want to get married. The boy drops a jade bracelet outside her door so she will find it, and then the girl talks to the matchmaker and they are able to get married. The second story was a battle between air and water faeries.
The most striking thing about Peking Opera is the stylized movement. Steps, hand gestures, head tilts, and posture are all very unnatural in a performative way. I really liked how visual it was, because although I understood some of the lines, the physicality told the story much better. The acrobatics portion was spectacular. The lead woman did amazing tricks with these spears that the armies battled with, twirling, tossing, and juggling them with both her hands and her feet. I would love to see that again.
The music behind Peking Opera is rather dissonant. There is a lot of drumming leading up to a big beat when the actor snaps his/her head to look at the audience. The instruments are traditional Chinese instruments, and some sound good while others are irritating. The actors' voices are affected and the language is hard to understand, even for native speakers. The subtitles were inconsistant.
I really loved the performance and it inspired me to want to do more research on this performance style.
Part 10: Why Today is Awesome
Today is awesome because it didn't rain, and thus we got to have an amazing excursion!!
(My theory is that it didn't rain beacuse (a) it rained hard last night and (b) I carried both my umbrella and a spare pair of shoes all day, so if I hadn't it would have rained because I would have been caught unprepared.)
Part 1: Ping Pong
Friday consisted of my oral exam in Chinese, then we watched Disney's Mulan in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. After lunch and a short break to relax in the afternoon, I met with the group at 4:00 to play ping pong. The ping pong group ended up being me, Matt, Victoria, Jess, and Gu Laoshi. Jess' brother is a serious ping pong player, and Gu Laoshi (unexpectedly yet unsurprisingly) is a really awesome ping pong player. The volleys between Jess and Dr. Gu were competition grade and really amazing to watch.
I was terrible at ping pong, but after yesterday's session, I can no longer identify that way. I got into a really great rhythm and Gu Laoshi gave me some really great pointers. I played against Matt, Jess, and Dr. Gu, and I'd say that final volley with Dr. Gu was the best I have ever played in my life.
The gym at Bei Da is where the 2008 Olympic ping pong matches were played, and we were playing on the Olympic tables, which was amazing in and of itself. The tables are set up in a basement room with posters of the Chinese ping pong players on the walls. The floor is red marley, just like all competition ping pong floors. It was very hot in that room, and I don't think I have ever sweated so much playing a table game. It was really fun, though.
After playing, I freshened up, got dinner with friends, went for ice cream, and went to bed.
Part 2: Beijing Weather
The weather in Beijing has been strange lately. Last Saturday was the worst rain in six decades. The final count was that over 70 people died as a result of the rain. Beijing has bad drainage, so flooding is frequent and rapid. Last night, coming home from ice cream, I got caught in some serious rain and my shoes are still wet because I had no choice but to step in puddles because of the flooding.
The heat in Beijing is very different from where I've lived in the US. At home, summer heat is very burning from the blazing sun beating down on you constantly. Here, you can't really see the sun, but it's very hot and humid. The heat wraps around you like a blanket, so at first you feel fine, but then all of a sudden you realize you've been sweating. People get slick and sticky here very easily.
As I was walking outside in the aftermath of yesterday's rain, I noticed that the snails had come out onto the sidewalk. There were a lot of snails, living and dead, and I didn't realize that they were here until I saw them this morning.
Part 3: Subways
I know Beijing underground better than I know the city itself. The subway system is fantastic, and I know it really well because I use it so much. To buy a ticket, you go to a machine, press 1, pay 2 yuan, and then swipe the card and get on the train. It's very easy, especially for a non-Chinese speaker. I like knowing the stops and what's near them because it gives me some sense of direction and a certain command of my surroundings. I think it surprises my fellow travelers when I just know where things are, though. It surprises me, too, but I like it.
Part 4: Vocabulary
I'm reallizing that when I come home there are certain things I will continue to say in Chinese. "Xie xie," "duibuqi," and "tai____le" are definitely coming home with me. I'll probably use some of the adjectives I've learned, and use Chinese as code with friends. It's kind of cool to realize how much I've learned and I hope that I retain more than the basics.
Part 5: Nature
Despite being in one of the world's biggest cities, I have found that the majority of my 1200 pictures are of nature. A characteristic feature of Beijing is that in the middle of a bustling urban setting, there will be a park or some sort of place to enjoy nature that makes you feel entirely separate from that busy man-made world. Besides being pretty, the things I have photographed have been a little surprising and out of place, and I really like that about this city.
Part 6: History
Today it really hit me that everything here is just way older than the United States itself. Like, I leaned against a 500 year old pillar at the Temple of Heaven; things just aren't that old at home, and it's really amazing to experience them here.
Part 7: The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan Gongyuan 天坛公园)
Today's excursion took us to the Temple of Heaven. It was where the emperors would go for 20 days of fasting, abstinence, and prayer for a good harvest. The complex is enormous, it is directly off the main road in the south-center of the city in the Xuanwumen District, and is more park than temple. The main building, the famous round one, is where the emperor would pray for a good harvest. The building is beautiful and we took a group photo there.
There is a lot of symbolism at Tiantan. Round and blue represent heaven, and square and green represent earth. The fusion of the two and the characters for "respect heaven" really demonstrate the way the Chinese think about nature, that man and nature, earth and heaven, need to live in balance with one another because taking advantage leads to destruction.
In the park, there were tons of people doing various recreational activities: music, dance, cards, mahjjong. Seeing them made me feel like I was doing something very genuine because those people go to the park just to hang out in their regular lives. They weren't tourists (though there were plenty of those as well), and I really love seeing real people do normal things.
Also in the park, we saw the fasting hall where I learned that the hobbit holes are called moon gates, the music department, the echo wall, and the place where the emperors would talk to heaven. The music part was really interesting. The exhibits had instruments we could touch and information about the philosophy and formation of the Chinese music style. I really liked it, and I know that my mom would have loved that part, too.
The echo wall was pretty neat, but I didn't try the echo. There were a lot of tourists there at that time, and I was quite tired, so I didn't have the energy to compete with them. I saw what I wanted to see, and it was really cool. There were people doing rhythmic gymnastics with ribbon dancers nearby, and there was one young girl who was really good. We all watched for a while because it was awesome.
The place where the emperors would talk to heaven was at the third level of a dais that had nine steps between each of three levels. We all got to stand on the spot and have our picture taken. It was the only orderly line I have seen in China, and even Gu Laoshi made a comment about that.
I got to talk to Gu Laoshi a lot today, and that was pretty neat. He's really into history, so he knows the stories of each place very well, and he doesn't tire of seeing them. He took us to a spot in Tiantan where the Japanese tested bio-weapons when the occupied Beijing during the Second World War. In that place, he told us about what happened there, but he also mentioned that he grew up in that area of the city and his high school class had to clean up Tiantan. He is such an interesting person, and I'm glad to get to talk to him.
Part 8: Pearl Market
After the Temple of Heaven, we went across the street to the Pearl Market. I went into shopping with a list of my ideas for souvenirs that I wanted to buy for friends and family. I completed my list very successfully!! I am actually pretty excited about the things I'm bringing back, and I did a good job of bargaining. For myself, I got two scarves, a silk printed wall scroll with pandas on it, and a head lamp for when I work in the theater.
I don't have any particularly entertaining bargaining stories, but I did get the prices I was aiming for. I think the funniest thing that happened was when one of the salesladies called Professor Carmichael my "Chinese friend" (zhongguo pengyou 中国朋友). She is very much not Chinese, and she couldn't stop laughing after she said that. I carried out most of my transactions in Chinese, and a lot of the time I just made my contemplating a price face when I didn't understand the rapid-fire sentences being thrown my way.
I had a lot of fun today and I really enjoy speaking in Mandarin when I am forced to because it makes me realize how much I actually do know and I can be successful in using it.
Part 9: Peking Opera
After the Pearl Market, I got into a taxi with Andrea, Caleb, and Gu Laoshi to go to the Hugang Huigan Theater for dinner and Peking Opera. We were the first group to leave, so we waited for everyone else in the Opera House's restaurant. Gu Laoshi took care of dinner for us, and we had a number of tasty dishes. I loved the eggplant dish, the shrimp, green beans, both tofus, and the mala tomato, egg, and noodle soup. It was very good, especially because my lunch was rather lacking and I was hungry after a long day.
The opera itself was really awesome!! We saw a singing story and an acrobatic story, which are the two categories of Peking Opera. The theater space was really interesting. It was a procenium set up with musicians stage left. The stage was bare and the lighting instruments were all white light for visibility (really big Fresnels). The first story was about a girl and a boy who want to get married. The boy drops a jade bracelet outside her door so she will find it, and then the girl talks to the matchmaker and they are able to get married. The second story was a battle between air and water faeries.
The most striking thing about Peking Opera is the stylized movement. Steps, hand gestures, head tilts, and posture are all very unnatural in a performative way. I really liked how visual it was, because although I understood some of the lines, the physicality told the story much better. The acrobatics portion was spectacular. The lead woman did amazing tricks with these spears that the armies battled with, twirling, tossing, and juggling them with both her hands and her feet. I would love to see that again.
The music behind Peking Opera is rather dissonant. There is a lot of drumming leading up to a big beat when the actor snaps his/her head to look at the audience. The instruments are traditional Chinese instruments, and some sound good while others are irritating. The actors' voices are affected and the language is hard to understand, even for native speakers. The subtitles were inconsistant.
I really loved the performance and it inspired me to want to do more research on this performance style.
Part 10: Why Today is Awesome
Today is awesome because it didn't rain, and thus we got to have an amazing excursion!!
(My theory is that it didn't rain beacuse (a) it rained hard last night and (b) I carried both my umbrella and a spare pair of shoes all day, so if I hadn't it would have rained because I would have been caught unprepared.)
Thursday, July 26, 2012
An Odd Day
Today was a very chill day. I had my test in Chinese first thing this morning, and I think it went well. We spent the rest of class watching video clips about famous places in China while learning vocabulary and fun facts about them. In the middle of Chinese class, we found out that tomorrow's field trip is cancelled, so we made a plan for tomorrow that we would start with our oral test and then watch Mulan in Chinese. I'm pretty pumped for this, but really disappointed about the field trip.
We are currently experiencing some rain in Beijing. Last Saturday was the worst rain Beijing has had in 61 years. There has been immense flooding in the northeast of China, and highways are still closed around the city. Over 60 people died from the rain this past Saturday in Beijing alone. Since rain is predicted with over 50% probability for the next five days, we are playing it safe with our touring.
Tomorrow we were supposed to leave quite early to go to the Great Wall for TCM. The plan was to go with an herbalist to pick herbs and learn what they do at a section of the Great Wall that is closed to tourists. It is a key feature of the TCM portion of this trip, and an overall highlight. I was very excited to be going, and I'm really sad that we are not going tomorrow, but since I'd rather not be there in rain and mudslides, it's a better choice. I just really hope that we can reschedule and that the weather lets up for our final excursions. It had better rain tomorrow just so I don't feel like the trip was cancelled for nothing.
Saturday we have an elaborate plan for the excursion. The ideal plan is that we meet at 8AM to take the subway to the Temple of Heaven, followed by shopping at the Pearl Market, then a trip to the Peking Opera. If the weather is bad, traffic will not allow us to do any of this, and a decision could be made as early as tomorrow at noon or as late as Saturday near 8AM. I really hope the weather forecasts are wrong because I need this excursion to happen. If we have to cancel, I will need to find time to go to the Temple on my own and make a trip back to the Pearl Market so I can finish up my souvenir shopping. I also really want to see Peking Opera, but since I got a taste of it at the Teahouse on Tuesday, I won't be as heartbroken if we miss it.
Basically, I'm kind of depressed about the weather and its effects on our plans. I have been counting on and looking forward to these events and I do not want to be sitting indoors at Bei Da watching it rain instead of having nice weather (or tolerable weather) and doing things. I only have sixteen days left in Beijing, so I want to make sure I see everything I want to see.
That said, I had a very relaxing day after class. I got to work with my photos a bit (I have over 1200), which was deleting blurry duplicates and rotating images for about two hours. I watched some videos online and I did laundry. I think this will be my last time doing laundry here, but I can never say that with certainty. I even cleaned my room, which feels really nice.
I want to take a moment to remark on the fact that I had a successful interaction in Chinese today using the vocabulary I've been learning. I went out in search of Bei Da t-shirts for myself and my mother, and after stopping at four different places, I decided to get the ones I found at a particular stall. The difficulty in the endeavor is that Chinese sizes are significantly smaller than American sizes, so my options were limited by the fact that I was looking for larges. I could only find a suitable design in white, but I wanted the purple one. I asked in Chinese if they had the purple in a large (你又没有紫色？) and I asked for the size (大号) and I asked for two of them (两). Using colors, sizes, and the you meiyou construction, I navigated the interaction. I think I am best at using my Chinese when I am alone and forced to figure out how to say what I need to say. This time it was as if I flipped a switch and just knew what to say. It was really cool, and I left the store with two t-shirts in the proper size having successfully spoken a language that I knew two words of only six weeks ago.
Speaking of six weeks, my friends from the Green Tech program have been in Hangzhou for the past two weeks and are leaving on Saturday. It was sad to separate from them in the first place, but now that they're leaving the country and I won't see them until September, I'm getting a bit nostalgic. Since they're leaving this week, it means I'm leaving soon. And, yes, while I have counted out my contact lenses for the remainder of the trip, I am sad about leaving. I'm also kind of getting ready to see my family again, but it won't be the same kind of cool as China. But, as John Green once wrote, imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, and I'm really trying not to wallow while I'm here.
This has been a really disjointed post, but that's the kind of day I'm having. Just recording my thoughts and the goings on here in Beijing.
It is currently not raining.
Today is awesome because I bought t-shirts by speaking Chinese!
We are currently experiencing some rain in Beijing. Last Saturday was the worst rain Beijing has had in 61 years. There has been immense flooding in the northeast of China, and highways are still closed around the city. Over 60 people died from the rain this past Saturday in Beijing alone. Since rain is predicted with over 50% probability for the next five days, we are playing it safe with our touring.
Tomorrow we were supposed to leave quite early to go to the Great Wall for TCM. The plan was to go with an herbalist to pick herbs and learn what they do at a section of the Great Wall that is closed to tourists. It is a key feature of the TCM portion of this trip, and an overall highlight. I was very excited to be going, and I'm really sad that we are not going tomorrow, but since I'd rather not be there in rain and mudslides, it's a better choice. I just really hope that we can reschedule and that the weather lets up for our final excursions. It had better rain tomorrow just so I don't feel like the trip was cancelled for nothing.
Saturday we have an elaborate plan for the excursion. The ideal plan is that we meet at 8AM to take the subway to the Temple of Heaven, followed by shopping at the Pearl Market, then a trip to the Peking Opera. If the weather is bad, traffic will not allow us to do any of this, and a decision could be made as early as tomorrow at noon or as late as Saturday near 8AM. I really hope the weather forecasts are wrong because I need this excursion to happen. If we have to cancel, I will need to find time to go to the Temple on my own and make a trip back to the Pearl Market so I can finish up my souvenir shopping. I also really want to see Peking Opera, but since I got a taste of it at the Teahouse on Tuesday, I won't be as heartbroken if we miss it.
Basically, I'm kind of depressed about the weather and its effects on our plans. I have been counting on and looking forward to these events and I do not want to be sitting indoors at Bei Da watching it rain instead of having nice weather (or tolerable weather) and doing things. I only have sixteen days left in Beijing, so I want to make sure I see everything I want to see.
That said, I had a very relaxing day after class. I got to work with my photos a bit (I have over 1200), which was deleting blurry duplicates and rotating images for about two hours. I watched some videos online and I did laundry. I think this will be my last time doing laundry here, but I can never say that with certainty. I even cleaned my room, which feels really nice.
I want to take a moment to remark on the fact that I had a successful interaction in Chinese today using the vocabulary I've been learning. I went out in search of Bei Da t-shirts for myself and my mother, and after stopping at four different places, I decided to get the ones I found at a particular stall. The difficulty in the endeavor is that Chinese sizes are significantly smaller than American sizes, so my options were limited by the fact that I was looking for larges. I could only find a suitable design in white, but I wanted the purple one. I asked in Chinese if they had the purple in a large (你又没有紫色？) and I asked for the size (大号) and I asked for two of them (两). Using colors, sizes, and the you meiyou construction, I navigated the interaction. I think I am best at using my Chinese when I am alone and forced to figure out how to say what I need to say. This time it was as if I flipped a switch and just knew what to say. It was really cool, and I left the store with two t-shirts in the proper size having successfully spoken a language that I knew two words of only six weeks ago.
Speaking of six weeks, my friends from the Green Tech program have been in Hangzhou for the past two weeks and are leaving on Saturday. It was sad to separate from them in the first place, but now that they're leaving the country and I won't see them until September, I'm getting a bit nostalgic. Since they're leaving this week, it means I'm leaving soon. And, yes, while I have counted out my contact lenses for the remainder of the trip, I am sad about leaving. I'm also kind of getting ready to see my family again, but it won't be the same kind of cool as China. But, as John Green once wrote, imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, and I'm really trying not to wallow while I'm here.
This has been a really disjointed post, but that's the kind of day I'm having. Just recording my thoughts and the goings on here in Beijing.
It is currently not raining.
Today is awesome because I bought t-shirts by speaking Chinese!
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Panjiayuan Antique Market and Exploring
This morning when I got to Chinese class, we were informed that our TCM field trip had been cancelled, so we had the afternoon off. After an ordinary Chinese class where we went over what to expect on tomorrow's double exam (written then oral), I had a decent lunch at a cafeteria (green beans, cabbage, and rice with Philina and Gu Laoshi). It was pretty cool to get to talk to Gu Laoshi, especially because he's so busy with running the program that I could never tell if he knew who I was beyond a name on his list. For the record, he does, and we talked a bit about the program and what to expect, and he approved of the way I ordered my food without using English.
For the afternoon and evening, I went on an excursion with Maitreyi, Pooja, and Marissa. We started by going to the Panjiayuan Antique Market expecting to shop but actually just looking at the stalls. It was a flea market in the most classic sense of the term, and after a while of walking around, each stall seemed to be selling the exact same collection of stuff that none of us felt the need to buy. I'm definitely glad I saw it because it was very China, but I didn't really see anything I would consider buying except for shadow puppets, which I abstained from purchasing today.
When we were done, around 4:30, we walked back to the subway stop just as it started to rain. We took the subway to the stop with the China World Trade Center in the global business district because there was an Indian restaurant that Pooja had heard of as being the best in Beijing. We got off the subway and explored the World Trade Center for a little while, and then walked over to the building with the restaurant.
The China World Trade Center and surrounding area was basically a high class foreign (European and American) designer shopping mall. The one we walked through was fairly deserted, which was kind of depressing, particularly because of all the employees who looked so bored. We did a lot of poking around in that building, just walking around and looking at things. We ultimately found a bookstore that had books in both English and Chinese, so it was fun to look at the selection there, and I ended up buying a paperback because I have been without a book for two weeks and I really wanted a new one.
Getting to the restaurant was much more difficult than expected. We had to walk straight back from the subway stop, but there was eventually a building in the way, so we walked around it, except we took the long way around, so it was kind of a torturous walk. The restaurant was called The Taj Pavilion, and it was in the China Overseas Plaza which was another shopping mall. Walking around the district, though, let me look at the really cool modern architecture of Beijing's skyscrapers, so that was a plus. There were some really interesting buildings that I took pictures of.
The food at this restaurant was really good. Pooja and Maitreyi took care of the ordering since they were the experts on Indian food, and we ate naan, rice, daal, kofta, and two types of cooked cheese. It was all really delicious, and the restaurant had a nice atmosphere as well. The only strange thing was that it was entirely empty; we were literally the only customers the entire time we were there. The manager was Indian and spoke English, we ate with forks, and the food was wonderful, so we were all very happy.
We read magazines on the subway ride home, I stopped at the C-store, then I went to my dorm for some serious studying for tomorrow's Chinese test. I'm not too worried about it, I just need to go over the words a bunch so I can be functionally literate when he passes out the papers. I honestly believe that our daily vocab quizzes are not helping me learn the vocab because the characters I could write this morning I don't think I could write now. Lots of short term storage, but maybe the reinforcement is helping me move it to long term. I don't know; it's just frustrating to have to memorize so much each night.
Today is awesome because I had a really cool excursion this afternoon.
For the afternoon and evening, I went on an excursion with Maitreyi, Pooja, and Marissa. We started by going to the Panjiayuan Antique Market expecting to shop but actually just looking at the stalls. It was a flea market in the most classic sense of the term, and after a while of walking around, each stall seemed to be selling the exact same collection of stuff that none of us felt the need to buy. I'm definitely glad I saw it because it was very China, but I didn't really see anything I would consider buying except for shadow puppets, which I abstained from purchasing today.
When we were done, around 4:30, we walked back to the subway stop just as it started to rain. We took the subway to the stop with the China World Trade Center in the global business district because there was an Indian restaurant that Pooja had heard of as being the best in Beijing. We got off the subway and explored the World Trade Center for a little while, and then walked over to the building with the restaurant.
The China World Trade Center and surrounding area was basically a high class foreign (European and American) designer shopping mall. The one we walked through was fairly deserted, which was kind of depressing, particularly because of all the employees who looked so bored. We did a lot of poking around in that building, just walking around and looking at things. We ultimately found a bookstore that had books in both English and Chinese, so it was fun to look at the selection there, and I ended up buying a paperback because I have been without a book for two weeks and I really wanted a new one.
Getting to the restaurant was much more difficult than expected. We had to walk straight back from the subway stop, but there was eventually a building in the way, so we walked around it, except we took the long way around, so it was kind of a torturous walk. The restaurant was called The Taj Pavilion, and it was in the China Overseas Plaza which was another shopping mall. Walking around the district, though, let me look at the really cool modern architecture of Beijing's skyscrapers, so that was a plus. There were some really interesting buildings that I took pictures of.
The food at this restaurant was really good. Pooja and Maitreyi took care of the ordering since they were the experts on Indian food, and we ate naan, rice, daal, kofta, and two types of cooked cheese. It was all really delicious, and the restaurant had a nice atmosphere as well. The only strange thing was that it was entirely empty; we were literally the only customers the entire time we were there. The manager was Indian and spoke English, we ate with forks, and the food was wonderful, so we were all very happy.
We read magazines on the subway ride home, I stopped at the C-store, then I went to my dorm for some serious studying for tomorrow's Chinese test. I'm not too worried about it, I just need to go over the words a bunch so I can be functionally literate when he passes out the papers. I honestly believe that our daily vocab quizzes are not helping me learn the vocab because the characters I could write this morning I don't think I could write now. Lots of short term storage, but maybe the reinforcement is helping me move it to long term. I don't know; it's just frustrating to have to memorize so much each night.
Today is awesome because I had a really cool excursion this afternoon.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Lao She Teahouse (for real this time)
Today was a pretty good day (bucuo 不错). I had an ordinary Chinese class in the morning, but lunch was a little different today. Instead of bringing in food for us, the program directors put money on our ID cards and we were sent off to the cafeterias to find our own food that we would enjoy. It was a really nice change of pace, and I had an eggplant and green bean dish with rice. After the midday break, we had a pretty good lecture on herbal medicine in TCM class. Our professor today was a researcher in western medicine who is testing vanadium compounds to reduce insulin resistance in people with diabetes. He will also be giving our lecture on the integration of TCM and Western Medicine. I enjoyed his lecture, his English was very good, and he had a particularly deep voice.
At 6PM, I met with four others to go to the Lao She Teahouse. We took the subway there, and it was the most crowded I have ever seen the subway. I felt pretty claustrophobic by the time we transferred lines. We got to the teahouse with plenty of time, got our tickets, and were seated at our table. There were five of us, and the tables seat eight, so a group of three including an adorable little girl in a pink outfit were also seated with us, but they came late.
Upon sitting down, we were promptly served jasmine tea, sunflower seeds, a pea flour cake, and a sticky rice and red bean paste confection. The show began with a tea ceremony, which was rather short, and then the emcee introduced the next act. We saw singing, acrobatic plate twirling, oral mimicry, Peking Opera, long spout teapot performance, Peking Repartee, face-changing Sichuan opera, and Chinese Kung Fu (zhongwen gong fu 中文功夫). My favorites were the Sichuan opera, kung fu, and long spout teapot performance. The others were a little obscure for me, and since I didn't understand 98% of the Chinese they spoke, the repartee wasn't funny for me.
The Sichuan opera was a routine of stylized movement that emphasized the changing of the design of a mask worn by the performers. It was a quick change trick, and those are always entertaining. The kung fu routine was far more performative than martial, and just as strange an art with its hard-soft fusion as it ever has been to a Tae Kwon Do practitioner, but it was really fun to watch the flipping and wrist flicking and tricks with fans and flags. The long spout teapot performance consisted of a woman and two men doing a tea ceremony, only the hip hop remix. The long spout teapots were twirled and flipped and each segment ended with some fancy way of pouring the tea. It was really cool, especially with the juxtaposition of ancient and modern in the routine.
I really enjoyed watching the audience for parts of the show. I got the sense that being a groundling at the Globe would be somewhat like this experience. The audience does not get quiet, there is constant conversation, much response to the performance including yelling back to the performers, and the constant movement of people struck me as being very zhong guo. I definitely do not want all audience experiences to be full of so much extra noise, but it was fun to be more relaxed than in the US.
After the show, I got a dragon shadow puppet. This one has rods and I got to try it out before I bought it, but this is really the last one. I am kicking the addiction before it forms. They're just so pretty!! The man at the table had a shadow screen and light set up to demonstrate his puppets, and I really like the dragon.
As we were walking home from the subway, I realized a change in my perceptions. I said to my friend, "you know you've been in China too long when you can tell that you're breathing different kinds of secondhand smoke." Indeed, I have reached that point. With the amount of air pollution here, I don't think things will phase me as much when I return. That's not to say that secondhand smoke doesn't bother me anymore; it does, and a lot, too, but I've been exposed to so much that I can tell when people are smoking different things.
Today is awesome because I actually got to see the performance at the Lao She Teahouse.
At 6PM, I met with four others to go to the Lao She Teahouse. We took the subway there, and it was the most crowded I have ever seen the subway. I felt pretty claustrophobic by the time we transferred lines. We got to the teahouse with plenty of time, got our tickets, and were seated at our table. There were five of us, and the tables seat eight, so a group of three including an adorable little girl in a pink outfit were also seated with us, but they came late.
Upon sitting down, we were promptly served jasmine tea, sunflower seeds, a pea flour cake, and a sticky rice and red bean paste confection. The show began with a tea ceremony, which was rather short, and then the emcee introduced the next act. We saw singing, acrobatic plate twirling, oral mimicry, Peking Opera, long spout teapot performance, Peking Repartee, face-changing Sichuan opera, and Chinese Kung Fu (zhongwen gong fu 中文功夫). My favorites were the Sichuan opera, kung fu, and long spout teapot performance. The others were a little obscure for me, and since I didn't understand 98% of the Chinese they spoke, the repartee wasn't funny for me.
The Sichuan opera was a routine of stylized movement that emphasized the changing of the design of a mask worn by the performers. It was a quick change trick, and those are always entertaining. The kung fu routine was far more performative than martial, and just as strange an art with its hard-soft fusion as it ever has been to a Tae Kwon Do practitioner, but it was really fun to watch the flipping and wrist flicking and tricks with fans and flags. The long spout teapot performance consisted of a woman and two men doing a tea ceremony, only the hip hop remix. The long spout teapots were twirled and flipped and each segment ended with some fancy way of pouring the tea. It was really cool, especially with the juxtaposition of ancient and modern in the routine.
I really enjoyed watching the audience for parts of the show. I got the sense that being a groundling at the Globe would be somewhat like this experience. The audience does not get quiet, there is constant conversation, much response to the performance including yelling back to the performers, and the constant movement of people struck me as being very zhong guo. I definitely do not want all audience experiences to be full of so much extra noise, but it was fun to be more relaxed than in the US.
After the show, I got a dragon shadow puppet. This one has rods and I got to try it out before I bought it, but this is really the last one. I am kicking the addiction before it forms. They're just so pretty!! The man at the table had a shadow screen and light set up to demonstrate his puppets, and I really like the dragon.
As we were walking home from the subway, I realized a change in my perceptions. I said to my friend, "you know you've been in China too long when you can tell that you're breathing different kinds of secondhand smoke." Indeed, I have reached that point. With the amount of air pollution here, I don't think things will phase me as much when I return. That's not to say that secondhand smoke doesn't bother me anymore; it does, and a lot, too, but I've been exposed to so much that I can tell when people are smoking different things.
Today is awesome because I actually got to see the performance at the Lao She Teahouse.
Monday, July 23, 2012
It's Only Monday?
Today was the most ordinary of days. I went to Chinese class, had lunch, did my homework, went to TCM class (the lecture was on diagnostic and therapeutic strategies), and then came home. I made a trip to the store to buy more paper for flashcards, and I had some interesting conversations with classmates. I think that's about it; I really needed to take the evening off, so I did. It felt like a Wednesday all day, particularly because we had so many announcements at lunch. There were 7: the rain on Saturday was the heaviest in 61 years, there was enormous flooding and 31 people died; TCM field trip leaves at 1:00 on Wednesday; wear pants to the TCM field trip on Friday; schedule for Saturday's excursion; changing the lunch format, so bring ID cards to get lunch money tomorrow; two others that were more minor and I can't remember off the top of my head. There's nothing really to post about, but I needed to record the day for continuity's sake.
Today is awesome because I got a perfect score on my tingxie (Chinese quiz).
Today is awesome because I got a perfect score on my tingxie (Chinese quiz).
Sunday, July 22, 2012
798 Art District
I FOUND MY SHADOW PUPPETS!!!!! IT'S SO EXCITING!!!!
So, I went to the 798 Art District in Beijing today with eight friends. My roommate organized the trip, and since it rained so much yesterday we weren't planning on going because it was supposed to rain again today, but it didn't so she woke me up and we went.
First of all, yesterday's rain was unbelievably cleansing. When I went outside this morning, the sky was visible and blue, the sun was out and strong, and everything was beautiful. It made me realize that the air had been particularly bad the last few days. I always get so excited when I can see the sky here because quite often it is cloudy or smoggy or some combination of the two. It was a great day to be outside. Oh, and it wasn't terribly hot either, which was even better.
After arriving via two subway lines and a taxi, we started walking around the area. We went into a bunch of galleries and shops, and from what other people have been talking about after they went, I don't think we even saw the same things, which speaks to how extensive the district is. The first gallery we went to was art about contemporary Asia, and I really liked a lot of the paintings. The next gallery had paintings and sculptures reminiscent of an artist whose name eludes me, but he was European and went to the Caribbean and had a very fusion style.
The shops we saw included an ocarina store when the salesperson was playing along with recorded music, a hipster record store, lots of clothing and jewelry stores, and some craft stores with journals, sketchbooks, and other art supplies. I found some painted bookmarks in a shop that I thought were really beautiful. I'm either going to keep them or give them to friends as souvenirs, but either way, they are really pretty. I also found a keychain that replicates the sign for the subway stop near campus, and I got it for myself because it has sentimental value.
I found my first shadow puppet in a shop that also sold things like t-shirts and kaleidoscopes. They had a stack of them sitting on the table and I looked through all of them before choosing. It is a woman with a very detailed headdress and delicate hands. We continued onto a few more places, then walked into a store that had a wall full of shadow puppets. Some were colored and others not, but because the colors of the Chinese puppets are so distinct, that was the kind I wanted to get. I bought a similar package, but this one had a pair of puppets, a man and a woman, equally ornate. I almost got a dragon, but I liked these better. If I see a dragon I might get it, but now I have three shadow puppets, so I probably don't need it. None of them came with rods, so if I do want to use them, I'd have to attach them myself, but all the joints are there. The shadow puppet was a souvenir I really wanted to get for myself because I find the Chinese tradition to be particularly wonderful. I will be going to a puppet show in the next three weeks, and I'm really excited about it. Ok, nerd-out over.
The art we saw was really cool. There were different types of things in different areas. For instance, there was a red-painted sculpture of caged dinosaurs outside one gallery. One space had really cool paintings of images distorted by rain. Another had a truck made out of bone-shaped medium. There were photographs and prints of all kinds. Outside, there were sculptures of soldiers, faces, ordinary people, a fist. I really liked walking around here!
When it got to be dinner time, we went for Korean barbeque. I had never eaten Korean food before, but since three of are party were Korean, I was really excited to try. We ordered a bunch of different meats, and my favorite was the marinated chicken, but I also liked the marinated beef a lot. We had a fermented bean soup and a pumpkin soup that were both extremely delicious. My favorite side dish was a noodle salad, and we also grilled some vegetables that were awesome. The format of Korean barbeque makes for a very social experience. We were at the restaurant for probably two hours, and we were just eating and enjoying being together.
We got home from our day around 9PM, I did my homework, and then went to bed.
Today is awesome because I found meaningful souvenirs for myself while spending time with a really great group of friends!
So, I went to the 798 Art District in Beijing today with eight friends. My roommate organized the trip, and since it rained so much yesterday we weren't planning on going because it was supposed to rain again today, but it didn't so she woke me up and we went.
First of all, yesterday's rain was unbelievably cleansing. When I went outside this morning, the sky was visible and blue, the sun was out and strong, and everything was beautiful. It made me realize that the air had been particularly bad the last few days. I always get so excited when I can see the sky here because quite often it is cloudy or smoggy or some combination of the two. It was a great day to be outside. Oh, and it wasn't terribly hot either, which was even better.
After arriving via two subway lines and a taxi, we started walking around the area. We went into a bunch of galleries and shops, and from what other people have been talking about after they went, I don't think we even saw the same things, which speaks to how extensive the district is. The first gallery we went to was art about contemporary Asia, and I really liked a lot of the paintings. The next gallery had paintings and sculptures reminiscent of an artist whose name eludes me, but he was European and went to the Caribbean and had a very fusion style.
The shops we saw included an ocarina store when the salesperson was playing along with recorded music, a hipster record store, lots of clothing and jewelry stores, and some craft stores with journals, sketchbooks, and other art supplies. I found some painted bookmarks in a shop that I thought were really beautiful. I'm either going to keep them or give them to friends as souvenirs, but either way, they are really pretty. I also found a keychain that replicates the sign for the subway stop near campus, and I got it for myself because it has sentimental value.
I found my first shadow puppet in a shop that also sold things like t-shirts and kaleidoscopes. They had a stack of them sitting on the table and I looked through all of them before choosing. It is a woman with a very detailed headdress and delicate hands. We continued onto a few more places, then walked into a store that had a wall full of shadow puppets. Some were colored and others not, but because the colors of the Chinese puppets are so distinct, that was the kind I wanted to get. I bought a similar package, but this one had a pair of puppets, a man and a woman, equally ornate. I almost got a dragon, but I liked these better. If I see a dragon I might get it, but now I have three shadow puppets, so I probably don't need it. None of them came with rods, so if I do want to use them, I'd have to attach them myself, but all the joints are there. The shadow puppet was a souvenir I really wanted to get for myself because I find the Chinese tradition to be particularly wonderful. I will be going to a puppet show in the next three weeks, and I'm really excited about it. Ok, nerd-out over.
The art we saw was really cool. There were different types of things in different areas. For instance, there was a red-painted sculpture of caged dinosaurs outside one gallery. One space had really cool paintings of images distorted by rain. Another had a truck made out of bone-shaped medium. There were photographs and prints of all kinds. Outside, there were sculptures of soldiers, faces, ordinary people, a fist. I really liked walking around here!
When it got to be dinner time, we went for Korean barbeque. I had never eaten Korean food before, but since three of are party were Korean, I was really excited to try. We ordered a bunch of different meats, and my favorite was the marinated chicken, but I also liked the marinated beef a lot. We had a fermented bean soup and a pumpkin soup that were both extremely delicious. My favorite side dish was a noodle salad, and we also grilled some vegetables that were awesome. The format of Korean barbeque makes for a very social experience. We were at the restaurant for probably two hours, and we were just eating and enjoying being together.
We got home from our day around 9PM, I did my homework, and then went to bed.
Today is awesome because I found meaningful souvenirs for myself while spending time with a really great group of friends!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)