照片 （Pictures)

Hey, so I finally got around to putting up pictures so I have attached them to this post. I am in Xi’an (西安 right now with mom and dad. We have been having a wonderful time in China so far. I will post again with a brief description of what has happened in another post so this one doesn’t get too long. On to the pictures!

内蒙古 (Inner Mongolia)

hey,

I would have posted earlier but the internet in my building has been down all weekend so I couldn’t post when I got home last night. I think it had something to do with the new month and they didn’t realize we all paid for it because everyone in the program couldn’t log on to the internet. On Friday right after I posted I headed over to say hi to my street friends again. I forgot to bring my flash drive with the pictures but I brought it to show them today (Monday).  It was around lunch so they gave me some of their lunch and I couldn’t refuse. Then I went to buy skewers and brought it back to them so I could return the favor. They didn’t seem to want them so I dropped them in their container. They also returned the favor and dropped more of their lunch in mine so in the end we ended up eating half of the other person’s lunch. After that they tried to give me a free shaved ice bowl. I tried to pay but Francis took the fanny pack they use to collect their money and I literally chased him around their stand trying to put my 4 kuai inside it. I finally gave up and waited until they weren’t looking and snuck the money in before he could get the fanny pack back.

After lunch with them I went to the zoo market where you can supposedly get good deals on clothes but I guess I didn’t buy in enough bulk because the clothes were the same price as everywhere else it seemed. I did buy an amazing engrish shirt though. This is what is written on it:

Always buy the branded

LEE

Compleye Une of Western Qarments For The Whore Family

I thought it was hilarious and was literally crying I was laughing so hard as I was bargaining for it. I think I paid too much because he could tell I really liked it but it was worth it for that shirt. Friday night was low key as we had to get up early for Mongolia the next day.

On Saturday I woke up at 4:30 to get ready to catch the bus at 5:30am from the school’s east gate. The bus ride was long and mostly uneventful. We had chinese guides who tried to explain things to us but we didn’t understand so one of the native speakers in our program on the trip translated for them. It was pretty funny because the tour guide was saying ridiculous things such as that human life originated in Mongolia and that Mongolia has a lake that has enough water to support 60 Billion people for 100 years. They also tried to sell us on some very expensive lamb for half an hour. Our translator gave up on translating what he was saying about the lamb and just said “he is still talking about the lamb. if anyone wants it get it but it’s too expensive”. No one ended up buying lamb. It was exciting when we got to Mongolia because in the area near Beijing the signs on the road were in Chinese and English but once we got to Inner Mongolia the signs switched to Chinese and Mongolian. Mongolian looks a lot like arabic except it is written downwards. It looks pretty hard to read. In Mongolia everything is written in both Chinese and Mongolian so that was cool to see a new language written. I tried to learn some Mongolian words but the guides didn’t seem to understand when I asked.

Once we got there we settled into out Yurts. We were at a tourist compound where they have permanent yurts with a canvas top but concrete bottoms. There was also a dining hall and laundry room which had the only running water on site. The bathroom was the worst I have seen in China. When we got off the bus they had people dressed in traditional Mongolian dress greeting us with Mongolian Alcohol which I believe is derived from horse milk. After we got settled in we had lunch and then went horseback riding. it took us a while to get settled because like everything in China we had to bargain down the price. originally they tried to sell it to us got 70 kuai an hour but we got them down to 50. When I first got on the horse it was slightly scary because they just stick you on a horse and give you no instructions on how to control it. They also have mongolian guides riding amongst you and when they think your hose isn’t going fast enough they give it a whip and it takes off. It was pretty scary when the whip people came near your horse because I was not very comfortable riding in the first place. I ended up asking one of them if it we could go slowly and he said it was ok. Everyone else in the group was happy with that as well. I think it was my best usage of chinese to date.

After riding for an hour we ended up at this way station they have set up for the tourist caravans. We got off and for 20 kuai could take pictures in traditional Mongolian costumes and hold baby goats so of course I did it. I got some pretty funny pictures I will post soon. I know I always say that but tonight I don’t have time to post. I will post pictures tomorrow after tutoring. After the pictures I took some pictures with some camels they had there and then went in for free milk tea and samples of dairy products. Mongolia is really big on dairy products so they had a lot of different cheeses and milk tablets. They also have a lot of leather products and things made from horns. After the touristy shop we headed back to our compound. On the way back they made our horses run most of the way but by then I was used to it so it was pretty fun. I am still sore from that though. Walking to class is not fun at all. After we got back they had the local guides race their horses and then we watched mongolian wrestling. They asked for volunteers and I agreed so I wrestled someone else from the program. Unfortunately they won. One of the people from my program is on the wrestling team at UCSD so he wrestled with all the Mongolians and beat them all. It was a proud day for America . After wrestling we had dinner and then hung out before the second worst musical performance I have ever seen. The worst being the one during dinner, which was the exact same food as lunch. Before the show I took a walk with some other people from the program. The Mongolian grassland was really beautiful. I also hadn’t seen the sky that clear in a very long time. The show at night was the same people from dinner but this time they had a  slightly better sound system (the one at dinner had tons of echo and was way too loud). I ended up getting bored and ditched with some people and we went to the neighboring compounds. The area we were in was really touristy and there were three different compounds of yurts. The one next to ours had a lot of stuff so we went there and bought some milk alcohol and skewers. The milk alcohol was pretty nasty and we all made the assumption that it was derived from cows milk. However, I was reading the bottle and it was actually horse milk alcohol so I can now say that I have had alcohol derived from horse milk.

After finishing the horse milk alcohol we went around the compound some more and ended up in some small stores. I bought a few souvenirs and then headed back to my compound. On the way back we saw a fireworks show that was VERY close. Clearly they don’t have very strict safety standards because this show was much closer than the ones in the U.S. After we got back to the tent we ended up talking for a while before going to bed. We learned from that night that you shouldn’t gossip in a canvas building when a little tipsy because apparently we were yelling and the people in the yurt next to us could hear us clearly. They were quoting our conversation the next morning.

The next morning we had a breakfast of rice porridge, mystery meat soup (we called it that because it was random parts of a cow in it, most of which we couldn’t identify) and friend dough. We ate a lot of fried dough and porridge. We packed our stuff on the bus after breakfast and as we were waiting to leave I was talking to the local Mongolian guide from our bus and he was a really strange man. He kept on grabbing my arm and stroking my arm hair and telling me how wonderful it was. Apparently he also did that to at least two other white people and kept on complimenting another whiter person on his beard. After breakfast we headed to a factory to see where they make souvenirs and then were funneled through the gift shop there to look at their incredibly overpriced items. I bought a back scratcher made of a cow’s horn for 15 kuai the previous night but at the factory store they were selling it for 50 and there was no bargaining. I didn’t buy anything from there. After the factory we went on the 9 hour bus ride home. The bus ride back was also uneventful. I slept and then played bus games like Mafia.

Today I had my last calligraphy class which was kind of sad. I thought I had one more next week but I guess I don’t. I had the teacher write my name in a really cool cursive style that is really fast to write. I am going to save it and take it home with me. I am thinking about getting a calligraphy set here but I don’t really think I would ever use it at home. After calligraphy class I went to 金五星 （Golden 5 Star Market) to buy some more souvenirs. It was a very successful shopping day and I got some good presents as well as things for myself. I completed my 喜羊羊 (Xiyangyang, the tv show I like) collection today as well as I bought the last stuffed animal character from the show. I have all 7 main characters now and then I bought two more to be presents for my teachers. I also bought some engrish signs from a booth sold signs for hotels and things. One sigh says: “Look out! Electricity” and the other says “Look Out! Headbang!”

After shopping I dropped my stuff off in my room and then loaded a selection of pictures from my travels onto my flash drive and took it with me to show my street vendor friends. They all really liked them and I stayed there for a few hours talking with them. I am off to bed so I will be posting the pictures tomorrow.

晚安! （Good Night!)

新朋友 （New Friends)

Hey everyone, last night was a lot of fun. We went to vics (which is right across a parking lot from mix) for ladies night so we got free entry and the girls could get us free drinks . The Korean girls also met us there so it was a really fun night. The Korean girl whose phone number I had met us at vics but her friends misheard her and went across the parking lot to mix instead where they had to pay so even when we told them vics was free they didn’t come so it was just us and one of the koreans. After a long time dancing most of the other people ended up going home s it was just me and her and we ended up talking outside the club until 4:30. It was such great chinese practice. B/c she is also learning chinese she is really patient when I don’t know how to say something. She also doesn’t use that hard vocabulary when she speaks as well so I can understand her most of the time. Her other korean friend isn’t very nice and generally doesn’t talk and her chinese friend speaks to me V…E…R…Y  S…L…O…W…L…Y like I don’t know any chinese.I know she means well but it seems a bit condescending. I can understand her just fine it’s just that she used words I don’t know. so out of the three of them the one I talked to at the club (Chanhee) is the best language buddy. She is studying Chinese at Beijing International University and is pretty good. She is also taking english classes as her English is ok but she wants to improve it. I ended up getting back home at 5am this morning and as I had class at 8 I just stayed up all night. Surprisingly I did well on the quiz this morning though getting through the rest of class was really hard. It was worth it though because it was really good chinese practice. I told her I would be leaving in 2.5 weeks so if she is free we should do something else so hopefully she will call me back.

After class today I went to bed and slept for 6 hours and then decided to go get skewers for dinner. I went to a street where I made friends with people who sell flat bread and shaved ice. Every time I pass by I say hi and they all know my name. Today I said hi and normally I keep going by but today I stopped and started talking to them for a while. It came up that one of them didn’t have en English name so she told me her chinese name and I gave her an english name. Then another and another wanted an English name so I ended up naming everyone there. Rachel and her boyfriend Francis work the shaved ice stand. Next to them Jason and his brother Ben make a sort of chinese flat bread and their friends Sam and Shaun sometimes come and help them.

At one point it came up that I had a QQ (chinese AIM) and they all had it so they grabbed me and took me behind their shop where they had a computer in a little shack and signed me on to QQ and went through the process of friending all of them. My friend Malissa from EAP was also with me and she didn’t have a QQ so they helped her set it up and then all friended her as well. After we all got settled with QQ Ben, Sam, and some friends were going swimming in a runoff channel but I didn’t want to go since they are pretty gross and even have signs that say don’t swim. I tried to tell them I didn’t have the right clothes to swim in and they said neither did they. They said they just went in their underwear. I finally told them I had homework to do so they all left to go swim.

I told them I would be leaving china on september 1st and they wanted to know when I was going to be coming back. When I told them I didn’t know they told me that they would miss me but they were excited that they could chat with me on QQ when I was in the U.S. Everyone there was really nice and they even bought me a beer at one point. I meant to have a quick dinner trip but I ended up being there for 4 hours. It was also really good practice because it was me and someone from the class above me  so there were no native speakers to bail us out so we had to work to try to understand what they were saying.

There was lightning in the sky when I was talking to the vendors and right as I started heading home it started to rain cats and dogs so I got soaked on the way back. Also, since I was coming back so late the gate near my dorm was closed so I had to walk a longer distance in the rain. Rachel has a dog and she said she would bring it tomorrow so I am going to go back and see her dog and take pictures with them. She said her dog doesn’t have an english name so I am also going to give her dog an english name. I also told her I liked traveling and taking pictures at places so she wanted to see my pictures.

There was also another guy who was buying bread who we talked to for a while. he gave me the card to the restaurant where he works and his phone number and said for me to come by and eat there so I am going to have to find it some day soon. He was interesting and at some point in our conversation he somehow ended up holding a GIGANTIC grasshopper looking thing. idk where he got it from but it was huge and he kept telling me to eat it but I am pretty sure he was kidding. He ended up walking away still holding the grasshopper.

This weekend I am going to inner Mongolia so I won’t have internet access then but I will post about it when I get back. I am leaving Saturday morning at 5:30am and then I arrive back on Sunday at some point but I am not sure when. I will also post pictures tomorrow.

教英文 (Teaching English)

hey, sorry it’s been so long since I have written a post. Last week was pretty busy because we had our second test so I was busy preparing for that. Last week I bought a new phone since I didn’t like the phone I had. I had a lot of fun bargaining with the people. I only put 250 kuai in my wallet and I pulled the poor college student routine. However, before I went into the store I handed a friend 200 kuai of mine so I could “borrow” it later as I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a phone for 250. I ended up getting a pretty nice one for 360 kuai and it works in the U.S and Europe so I have a travel phone too. It had a touch screen and physical buttons as I find the touch screens not the best for typing on.

This past weekend we went to 泰山 (Mount Tai) in 山东(Shandong) province. We took an overnight train from beijing at 9PM and got in at 6am. Getting off the train was a little stressful because we only had 3 minutes to get off before the train went on to the next stop so the program director woke us all up 30 minutes before. We were on a sleeper train but I am pretty sure I didn’t get any sleep. The bed was really small and uncomfortable so I was really tired when we got to 泰安 (tai’an) which is the city right next to the mountain. We went to a hotel and had breakfast and then met our local tour guides. The mountain was really crowded and it was quite tall so we took a 30 minute bus ride up to the middle gate b/c otherwise the hike would have been 5 hours. The entire “hike” was over stone steps that were built on the mountain. It was really beautiful and on the rocks were sayings that were carved in and then painted red. Some of the calligraphy of the carvings was really nice. Once we got to the top we had 20 minutes since I hiked with a slow group as we took a lot of pictures. On the way down we took a cable car ride which was a lot of fun as it was really steep.

After the mountain we went to see a confucian temple. We were all really tired at that point so it was not the most fun part of the trip. We also came up with a new phrase. Previously people have AFT (another fucking temple) to describe their trips to china but in the confucian temple we had AFG (another fucking gate) as the temple had at least concentric gates. Our tour guide was getting a little frustrated with us as we were all really tired and sleeping through her briefings on the bus. She also had trouble sometimes explaining things in english and we didn’t know of any of the emperor’s or disciples of Confucius she was mentioning. At the temple there was a huge group of children reading confucian sayings and being filmed. In between filming sessions we took pictures with them because they were all waving at our group.

After that we headed to dinner and then the hotel. It was only 3 stars but was really nice. It has nice bathrooms with toilet paper and decently soft beds. They told us to buy dinner for the next night since they wouldn’t have food on the train so at night we went out to the market and on the way we passed a fashion show where 4 models were modeling wedding dressed. It was really random. Surrounding the catwalk were women at tables looking at wedding dresses and the entire area had roses and pink flowers.

The next day we went to the confucian family burial ground which was a huge forest planted in honor of confucious. They also buried all of his descendants there so there. I saw his tomb but he died 2500 years ago so I am not really sure if that was where he was actually buried. All of the buildings there also dated from the 1500′s so it’s doubtful how much of the place was from Confucius’s time but it was still cool.

After the burial ground we went to the confucian mansion where his descendants lived. We were slightly disappointed that he never actually lived there but the place was pretty cool. After that we had a 3 hour bus ride to the city where our train left for. On the bus we had a “party” where the tour guide would bring people up and sing for the bus. half the bus was sleeping so it was hard to bring people up but those of us who were awake had fun. I sang part of 北京欢迎你 (Beijing Welcomes You, the olympic song) and part of jizz in my pants. The train back to beijing was an express train so the ride was only 3 hours.

Yesterday after class I had a really amazing opportunity. I went to a summer camp where they brought kids from inner Mongolia and I helped to teach them english. It was really random how I ended up there. One of my friends happened to befriend a local BNU student in the cafeteria and he said he was involved in this camp and wanted to know if she would get any international students (especially westerners) to come. So I said yes and me and 7 other people took cabs to a school in the far north of Beijing. We got there and it was really creepy because no one was there and the student from BNU who brought us there didn’t speak that great english so we weren’t sure what was going on. He took us to an empty dorm room in one of the school buildings and had us wait there for a while while he went off and did other things. All the while we were wondering what was going on and whether we were lured somewhere because there was no one around. Finally we learned that the kids weren’t coming for a little while. After maybe half an hour we were taken to a cafeteria to eat with the rest of the volunteers.

After we ate we went to meet the kids. As I was walking through a hallway I passed one of the students and she stopped dead in her tracks and watched me go by in awe. It was pretty funny. We were split up into classrooms in pairs and there were about 20 or so students in each classroom. We didn’t teach them anything so much as just talked to them for an hour and a half. The kids ranged from 8-18 and some people had very good english and some people spoke very little english. We tried to involve everyone so we went down the rows asking people their name, age, and a hobby and a follow up question such as why they liked their hobby. It was really funny because we could tell when some people weren’t paying attention when we called on them. I learned what I look like in class when I space out and then am called on. It was really fun teaching them and it was also fun being on the other side of the language instruction. This time I was the one who people were struggling to understand. My partner and I were in the same chinese level so we figured that if we knew ow to say it in chinese they should know how to say it in English. After class we got the contact information from two of the girls who had really good english and were participating a lot. By the end of the class it was us talking to maybe 4 people who had good english and wanted to participate. They wanted international friends with whom to practice english with so we got their contact information and will stay in touch with them. As we were leaving the school two of the students wanted a picture with me and the other white guy there so we obliged. As they were leaving they made heart signs over their head and yelled to us “we love you”. Me and the other white guy were very popular with the students.

Today was another fun day as my friends and I met up with korean girls we met at a club a few weeks ago . one of them called me and asked if we were free for dinner so we went to 五道口 (wudaokou) which is a neighborhood close to school. We met them there and it turned out to be a very korean part of town so we had good korean food and then ended up doing karaoke until midnight. It was really good chinese practice as they didn’t speak much english so the whole night was chinese practice. the karaoke was really fun as well. We did a lot of American songs but also the korean girl and her friend (who I found out is actually chinese) did some chinese songs. I could read along for some of the chinese songs pretty well and it was good reading practice. Tomorrow the floor is going to go out to a club nearby called propaganda for ladies night so we invited them to come with us. I will post pictures from all my adventures tomorrow. Now I need to finish my homework and go to bed.

轻点点 (Softer)

A McDonald’s Delivery Guy

Me at the Temple of Heaven

A band playing western songs on traditional chinese instruments

The Temple of Heaven

Me at the temple of Heaven

Me at the temple of heaven

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor

Me dressed as the Emperor (My Favourite)

People dancing in the temple of heaven park

Hey, so Today I went and got a massage for the first time. I went to a place that specialized in massages given by blind people. It was a lot of fun and pretty cheap (60 kuai) with our student discount. Though, it was a deep tissue massage so they were pretty intense. Luckily I went with a chinese friend who taught me 轻点点 (qing(1)dian(3)dian(3)) which means softer. I made the mistake of telling the masseuse that my legs hurts so he would do my legs and he tore into them. I thought he was going to rip them off. I felt really good afterwards though. Later on in the day I went out to get dumplings on a street that has a lot of street food and little restaurants…I had the most amazing meat that I have had here from a little stand with a grill. It was chicken skin and the sauce he put on it was amazing. I had a plate of dumplings too but the vinegar in the restaurant wasn’t that good so I was slightly disappointed. Afterwards, I went with some friends to a different spot on the street to go get this shaved ice stuff and we ended up talking with the street vendors for an hour. It was a lot of fun. They were all really nice and we ended up getting free ice cream from them. They told us to come back again tomorrow though if I go there every day it would not be good for my weight. After that we went home and bought some fruit from the people who sell it on the street corner near the dorm. We ended up talking with them for a while too. The outing took a long time but it was a lot of good chinese practice and we made a lot of friends.

This past weekend was a lot of fun as well. On Friday night I saw Harry Potter with a  bunch of people form EAP and someone’s tutor who is really nice. The movie was in English with chinese subtitles so I was able to understand it all luckily. On saturday we went out to a club near our dorm called Propaganda (中文: 五星）.

On Saturday I went to the Temple of Heaven (天坛）with some people. It was a lot of fun. At one of the gift shops they had a place where you could take pictures in traditional imperial clothing so I took a few in the yellow Imperial robes and the imperial hat. They also had a huge set with a throne and two different backgrounds that you could be by so it was a lot of fun I have posted a few pictures with the blog. I was very popular with the locals during the whole thing. When I was getting dressed and posed a whole bunch of chinese people were taking pictures of me and apparently one person was video taping me. Maybe it was also because I was making silly poses in between the actual pictures the guy was taking.

We met up with the same tutor who went to the Harry Potter movie with us there and apparently she goes to the club every week so they gave her VIP cards which meant she got us all in for free. It was good because otherwise the cover would have been 100 kuai. The club was pretty good and we ended up in the bar on the top floor at 3am. While we were sitting around a table a random asian girl came up and took a picture with one person from our group and then ran back to her table. We sent one of the native chinese speakers from out group to go talk to them and find out if they wanted a picture with us. Apparently they were playing truth or dare so we went over and dared them to talk to us. We ended up talking with them for an hour and a half. They were koreans who were studying in Beijing and had been here for 4 years apparently. They all spoke really good chinese so we were practicing with them. One of them spoke English but the others didn’t so it was good chinese practice. We got their phone numbers and we are going to try to hang out with them soon so we can practice our Chinese more . I also asked one of the korean girls in the program to teach me a few phrases in Korean since they seemed to find it amusing that I knew how to say hello and goodbye in korean.

Friendship Party

Last night was a friendship party with BNU people. Supposedly they were going to have performances but it ended up just being EAP people giving the performances. It was still a lot of fun because most of the performers were from my floor. I am also posting pictures with this post. I hope you enjoy them. Oh, Mongolia has been canceled for this weekend because of issues getting tickets through the agency. It has somethi

the forbidden city

the forbidden city

the forbidden city

me at the forbidden city

the forbidden city

the forbidden city

Me at the forbidden city

Us at the entrance to the forbidden city after we got soaked in the rain

A squirrel in a cage at a clothing market they were selling for pets

My floor at the teahouse

A shadow play at the teahouse

A longstem tea pourer

A Sichuan face changing opera actor

Girls spinning plates

The Martial arts show at the teahouse

Tiananmen at night

The Beijing Subway

I like bad Grammar :D

People Praying at the Lama Temple

The Bird’s Nest

The Water Cube

The sketchy ride to the wall

The sign says bathroom in chinese

Me on the Great Wall

The Great Wall

Me on the Great wall

ng to do with the authorities being worried about swine flu and not wanting so many americans going but another group of 51 people are going so I don’t know. They also tried to charge us more because they had to “bribe” government officials to get us there so we will be going the first weekend in August. This weekend I am going to try to do the temple of heaven and tiananmen. I want to see Mao in his glass case.

长城 （The Great Wall)

Yesterday (Sunday), I went with my floor to the great wall. It was an early day but a lot of fun. We had hoped to go at 8 but certain slow people delayed our departure until 9. We all took cabs to 德胜门 （de(2)sheng(4)men(2)) which is a large gate from the old city wall where they have a bus stop that takes you directly to the badaling great wall (it’s bus 919 if you are ever interested). It was crowded with chinese tourists (win), all the busses had a/c ( a must) and was pretty cheap (12 kuai each way). The bus ride was a little over an hour though since we got up late we hit a major traffic jam near the wall. At one point a person who worked at the great wall came on the bus and basically told us we came late and we should walk over to the ticket area and buy tickets for the 滑车（sliding car) which takes you up to the wall and buy tickets for the wall itself. She spoke for a really long time about that, most of which I didn’t understand at all. At one point a chinese tourist complained about the added fee for the 滑车 and she laughed at him and said “what? you came to the great wall and expected to not pay any money?”. We all got off the bus and went to the ticket area which was a good hike from the bus since the bus was supposed to drop us off there but the traffic was so bad at 10:45am it would have taken it an hour to go the 1km to the parking lot. After we got our tickets we hiked even more to the 滑车.

The sliding cars (滑车）is by far the sketchiest ride I have ever been on. Basically it is a mini rollercoaster that takes you up to the wall and then you ride back down again. I will post pictures of it but it has these tiny cars on a very small track and the whole way up it feels like you are about to go off the side. It also doesn’t help that half of the time you are 100 feet off the ground on bridges that look like they were welded together from whatever people could find in the junk yard.

Finally we got to the top and fought the throngs of people on the great wall. Now, I had heard from people that they had “climbed” the great wall and I thought it meant they just climbed up on to the wall and looked around. I assumed that, as a wall, it would be mostly flat. Alas, I was mistaken. When people say they climbed the great wall they mean they CLIMBED the wall because it goes up the mountains. I wanted to go to the highest part at badaling so it involved quite a bit of hiking. I was pretty tired from the end of the day.

Also, for something so impressively engineered I thought people would have payed more attention to the steps and try to make them even. The steps going up are really uneven which makes climbing it even higher. I took a ton of pictures but it was fairly foggy so not that many of them came out. I will post them shortly. The wall was really cool though it was soo crowded. A friend and I raced to see who could get through the people faster. I won by following some chinese people and jumping a barrier. hee hee hee. Don’t worry I didn’t do anything unsafe.

Going back down we had to get back on the 滑车（sliding car) and going down was the sketchiest ride I have ever done in my life. They linked all the cars into 15 car trains and they had a driver at the front who had a metal lever on his car to brake. Basically we went careening down the mountain depending on our driver and his level to keep us from flying off the track. The track was surrounded by nets which I am convinced were there in case anyones car came off the track. We ended up being fine but I would definitely prefer 6 flags.

At the bottom we wanted to get “I climbed the Great Wall” T-shirts but we didn’t want to pay that much so we decided to try to buy them in bulk. In the end that didn’t work out very well so a friend and I worked our bargaining and got two of them for 25 Kuai which is a pretty good deal especially for a really touristy area and considering they started at 45 kuai per shirt. I also bought an “I <3 北京” shirt for 15 kuai which I think was also a good price. I took a bit of bargaining and me walking away twice. I also has some good engrish on it. below “I <3 北京” it says “I love Beijing More Then Ever”

After the great wall we headed back and got dinner at a hole in the wall 包子 （steamed bun) place that was really good. We were basically in the kitchen as the steamer was outside and there was a little table where they rolled the dough for the buns and dumplings near us.

Today, I wore the 喜羊羊 (xi(3)yang(2)yang(2) shirt that I bought and my speaking teacher said she liked it. I told her I like 喜羊羊 a while ago so she thought it was funny I had the shirt. Apparently tomorrow we are going to watch it in class so I am excited There was also a huge bug in class today. I think it was a beatle but it was huge and slowly walking around under the desk in front of me so I lost a good 10 minutes of class watching it and hoping it wouldn’t come towards me. I finally told the speaking teacher and someone from the class took it outside. She also didn’t seem to like the huge bug since it was crawling right near her feet.

After class I had lunch and had my second calligraphy class which I am really enjoying. We went over the strokes and then learned basic things about characters (which I already knew). She taught us some basic radicals (parts of characters that have specific meanings, sort of like latin roots for english words). Take 把 (ba(3) for instance. It means a bunch. The left part of the character (扌(shou(3)) means hand and shows the meaning of a number of things you can pick up in your hand. The right side of the character (巴(Ba(1) is the pronunciation side and gives you a hint as to the pronunciation. Contrary to the common belief that all Chinese characters are pictograms, most characters in modern chinese are like 把, with a radical that gives a hint as to the meaning and a radical that gives the phonetics.

After class I took my camera lens to get cleaned so I am just waiting for it to be done. It is only costing me a 100 kuai so I hope the repairman doesn’t break my camera.

Hey, I haven’t blogged in a while since I was preparing for our first test which was on Friday. On Thursday I met with my tutor for the first time for a session and she was really good. We practiced the stuff for my oral test and it was really helpful. I asked her how to say a lot of random words I wanted to be able to say such as verb and peach (I have been buying peaches ever since I got here and I keep forgetting how to say peach). She is a first year grad student in chinese studies. She also helped me with the grammar points in the lesson. She would explain them to me and then make me use the grammar in a sentence.

After I met with her we had an all program meeting to discuss academic units and hear from EAP alumni living in beijing. The whole meeting was pretty boring. The academic stuff was pretty boring and then the alumni spent a long time discussing internships in beijing but basically you needed to be already fluent in chinese and it was for year long people so it was kind of irrelevant for me at the moment. They did have some good advice for if I want to come back and work here though. After the meeting we got a dinner though. Since the welcome dinner was postponed so they rescheduled it for thursday. We had a really nice buffet on the 8th floor of the international studies building. There was so much food and they even had some western food. It was definitely nice that the program paid because it was 80 kuai per person for dinner which is very expensive by our standards here.

On Friday we had the test which I think went well. After the test I decided to go shopping so me and two other friends went to find wu mart. What we didn’t know was that there are two wu marts. One of which is a huge shopping center that has electronics and all kinds of cool stuff. The other is small grocery store really far from campus and has nothing interesting in it. We ended up walking for an hour and a half to the far away grocery store wu mart. After we figured it out we took a cab to 五道口服装市场 (a clothing market). It was ok but it mainly had women’s clothes. It was me, another guy, and a girl and the girl was SOOOOOO slow at shopping. In the time I scoped out the entire first floor she was in one store. In the end the guy and I went off by ourselves to get some clothes and we got some good deals on shirts. I got some shirts including one that had the wolf from 喜羊羊 on it and I bargained them down from 80 kuai per shirt to 30 so I felt it was a successful shopping trip. The girl was still really slow so we ended up lying to her that we were late but she still wouldn’t hurry up so we resorted to competing as to who could buy things the cheapest to entertain ourselves.

Once we finally got her out of the market and back to the dorms and got ready for our group trip to the laoshe tea house. It was a lot of fun, first we had dinner and watched performers play western songs using traditional instruments and an electronic keyboard to make them sound chinese. After the performances we watched some traditional chinese shadow plays. After that we went to the next area for another performance about tea and traditional chinese culture. We all sat down at tables and drank tea and watched a really touristy performance. Some of the highlights were traditional tea preparation, long stem tea pouring which is a combination of tea arts and kung fu, kung fu, peking opera, sichuan face changing opera.

After that we went back to the dorms and then went out for beers at our hole in the wall in front of bank of china. We hung out there for a few hours drinking 3 kuai beers and having skeweres. We even got one of the people who works with the program to come out and hang out with us. Some of the elementary students were being really rude and trying to get her to come drinking with them so we decided to rescue her and take her to the bank place with us.

Today I went out with some friends to the Llame temple which is the only Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing. It was pretty cool. They had a really big Buddha which is carved out of a sandalwood tree that was brought all the way from Tibet. It is in the Guinness book of world records as the largest wooden sculpture in the world I believe. There were a lot of people there today, mainly locals who went there to pray. A lot of people brought incense and were offering them to the Buddhas that were at the temple. The temple was in the style of the Qing dynasty so again it was a lot of similar looking buildings. We were getting strange looks from all the white people we saw because my roommate decided to be chinese today and take a picture of every white person he saw. Some of the pictures are pretty funny. After that we went to the olympic green to look at the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. I don’t have many pictures from all of these since it was really cloudy so they didn’t come out that well. I am also having problems with my camera. There is dust in the lens so my pictures have brown spots on them. I am going to try to find a place where I can get it cleaned here b/c I don’t want to buy a new camera.

At the olympic green we learned that all of the security guards who stand around beijing don’t do anything. There was this woman who was freaking out in front of the water cube and hitting everyone with her purse including the security guards and they just walked away. The excursions took most of the day so by the time we got home it was dinner time. After dinner people just hung around the floor and we invented the 喜羊羊 drinking game. Basically whenever one of the characters said 羊（yang(2), sheep) you take a drink. As the word comes up pretty often it was a fun game. All of the sheep’s names have 羊 in them so that always kept the game interesting. Tomorrow we are going to get up early and go to the great wall so I am going to go to bed.

买东西 （Shopping)

I have been fighting a cold recently so yesterday I slept for a good part of the day and I feel a lot better today. I have had a little bit of a headache today but I think if I get enough sleep tonight I will be back to 100%. Today, after class some friends and I took the subway to the silk market to go try to buy some things. The subway was pretty cool. It wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be and was pretty fast. Our shopping trip on a whole was not very productive. Not many people seemed willing to bargain down to reasonable prices today. I tried to get some more stuffed animals but the same people wouldn’t go below 50 kuai for one so I had to just walk away. I am going to go to the market near us (金五星 5-Star Golden Marketto buy them some time since they gave me reasonable prices. I did get a stamp with my name on it thought for 20 kuai and ink for the stamp for 5 kuai which was a pretty good deal. That was after I went to at least a dozen of the stalls and then had one of my chinese friends from the program help me. We both wanted one so we got 2 for 40. It looks pretty cool I think. I also got some athletic shoes which I think are real nike’s for when I go to touristy areas that involve a lot of walking sine I forgot to bring athletic shoes here. It was a fun trip but people were really tough today in terms of bargaining. The same chinese friend helped another one of the people in our program buy a shirt and the bargaining got pretty intense. By the end the woman was literally hissing at us and he was hissing back. We ended up getting a decent price on the shirt and the woman offered my friend a job at the market for 5,000 kuai a month which are pretty good wages for China.

政治 (Politics)

Yesterday after class me and some of the program participants got lunch in a american style restaurant near the dorms called Hollywood Cafe. While we were there we sat next to an english major and struck up a conversation with him about his views on a whole range of subjects. He said he was typical of the college generation in that he was skeptical of the government and wanted to have more say in the way China was governed. We asked him if he though a younger generation of more liberal people entering the government would help but he seemed ambivalent. He said that the government was such a large bureaucracy that no matter your beliefs coming it it changes you to conform to the status quo. One of the more interesting thins we said was a response to asking him about elections and how the leaders were appointed. He said there were basically no elections and that people aren’t sure how the head of the government is appointed (the current head is hu jintao). He said that people thought that the head was appointed by the outgoing leader but no one was really sure.

We also asked him about Mao and he said that he was more towards the socialist side of things and believed Mao was a good leader. He said he believed that things were advancing too quickly and he wanted to see some policies return more towards what Mao had. In general he said that people here think Mao was on the whole a good leader despite the problems during his regime. He said the chinese have a saying about Mao that 70% of what he did was good and 30% was bad.

He told us his political views were his own but his views on Mao were generally in line with the population. In 2005 all the money was redesigned except for the smallest bills to have mao’s face on them. We also asked him about social issues and in he said that in China there really aren’t any social issues that everyone is talking about. He said they didn’t have a “homosexual problem”. he said that mainly is was economic issues.

We also asked him about whether there were regional politics and explained how in the U.S different regions tend to lean different ways. He said that in China that politics are more divided into class lines where some classes support particular policies and some classes oppose them. In general he said that the rural areas and migrant workers were the least represented classes. He said that despite the government having programs to help the rural poor, rural corrupt officials prevented any measurable aid from reaching villagers.

Finally we asked about grassroots organizations that challenged the government and while he said there were a few, generally there are none that successfully challenge the government. We also asked him whether he was a member of the communist party and he said among the younger generation party membership was unofficially considered a disgrace. That is, no one would come out and say that but that is the general feeling among college students.

We also asked about Obama and what he thought of him and he gave generally equivocal answers. He said that he thought Obama was doing a good job given the tough situation he was in and generally like able but he seemed like he was still waiting for a substantial accomplishment.

Anyway, that is all I can remember but we discussed a lot with him. Our lunch took about 2 hours. I am just about to go shopping for more souvenirs so I will post the pictures from the weekend later. I tried posting them last night but there was an error and they didn’t make it so I will try again.