Beijing Zoo

Today started out quite normally: yogurt for breakfast, 3 hours of Chinese class (we had an electronic dictation and we had to type in Chinese rather than write), lunch. At lunch, Zhang Laoshi (of the program) informed us that Public Health class was cancelled for the afternoon, so I went to the zoo with four other people.

I'm glad I went to the zoo because if I hadn't, I would have been mad at myself and wondered what it was like, but now that I've gone, I don't feel the need to go back to see the exhibits I missed. The zoo was kind of depressing. It was clearly designed for the humans to enjoy rather than for the animals to be comfortable and to teach about nature, wildlife, and habitats. There were beautiful walking paths, lakes, and green areas. We first saw a large exhibit of pheasants (chickens), followed by a skunk, then a raccoon, and foxes. These were disappointing, since they are the ordinary wildlife in our region of the US.

We weren't sure if we got tickets for a boat tour, so we went to the boat, and found out we didn't get those tickets, but went to see the elephants nearby. It was more fun to climb on the statues of elephants than to see the animals because their pens were about the same size as the foxes'. They looked very sad in such a small space, but were majestic as ever.

Our group really enjoyed the enormous statue of a puma (we think) that we saw as we walked back toward the lions and tigers. Those enclosures were pretty cool, and the animals were out and visible. We then went over to the Australian exhibit where we saw kangaroos, an emu, and another large bird whose name eludes me. Those were pretty cool as well.

We tried to see the tapirs because it's my favorite animal that nobody's heard of and my dad likes them, but the tapirs were not out and I was sad. From there, we went to see the pandas. The panda exhibit is a special ticket you buy before entering and there were two houses that we went into. In the first one, the pandas were visible, but looked tired and were not social at all. I was pretty upset by how dirty they looked and the way visitors were banging on the plexiglass of the enclosure. The pandas have a good amount of space relative to their size, so at least they weren't as cramped as the elephants.

The second house had better lighting, and there were two pandas in the exhibit. One was sitting further back eating a whole stack of bamboo and the other was sitting in a rocking chair. The chair panda got out of the chair, moseyed around a bit, then climbed up and rested on a rock in a very deliberate pose. These were the most adorable animals.

After the zoo, about 20 of us met up to go to dinner for one student's birthday. In addition to the students from our trip, he had three friends from home who are also in Beijing join us. I ran into language partner Eric on the subway, which was the strangest coincidence that we ended up in the same car completely unplanned. We tried to go to a dumpling/dim sum restaurant, but we did not have sufficiently good directions, so we ended up splitting our group and half going to Korean barbeque and the other half eating Sichuan. I was in the Chinese food group with the birthday boy, and we had a great time. Matt is hilarious, and the food was amazing. We had a potato dish, bok choy, noodles, baozi, pork, duck, beef, fish, and another breadlike dish. It was all delicious! They brought the fish to our table while it was still twitching in a plastic bag before cooking it and bringing it back to us, which was a very Chinese experience to have.
One big thing I've learned this week is that to get around in China, you have to be pushy. Nobody just waits in a line; they push to the front and make themselves heard. You can't hang back because people will just cut in front of you. It's a difficult balance to be sufficiently pushy to get what I need without being a rude American, but I think I'm getting there because I was the first one to get a subway ticket the last few times. It's a pretty big culture shift, and we are all wondering what it will be like to go home and have to wait once again in just six weeks.

Today is awesome because I saw a panda in a rocking chair.