Abroad in Beijing

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Entry 5 - Host Family Visit, Signature Seminar Preparations

Shortly before the new students came to Beijing to start the Spring Seminar, my host mother and host sister from Suzhou came to visit me at Tsinghua University. I remember the weather around that time was beginning to get frigid cold, and I wound up biking throughout campus to meet them but we kept accidentally passing each other. We finally met at Tsinghua University’s famous arch tower at its centrally located park and took some photos together. Unfortunately my host father could not make it, but he sent them with his gifts for me. It was a whole set of HSK preparation books. HSK stands for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi 汉语水平考试, translating directly as "Chinese Standard Exam". It is a nationally recognized language proficiency exam that foreigners take for jobs in China. I was really touched. I was not taking the HSK exam myself but he knew I was very adamant about studying the language, so it was a really thoughtful gift to me. My host sister was in Beijing for a competition while they were visiting me, so they had to be on their way, but before they left, I gave them a large bag of Beijing style treats that I bought in Wangfujing.

Later that evening, I met with my host mother again and a friend she knew from Beijing at a small restaurant that served donkey meat and we ate dinner together. Right after, we watched a play called 朦胧中所见的生活 (Menglong Zhong Suojian De Shenghuo), which Baidu translates as “Life in the Twilight”. It turned out to be kind of strange, as there was not much acting and it was mostly dialogue, but it was still amusing to watch. The mood of the room was mostly solemn, but occasionally people would laugh at a subtle joke the actor made. If you watch any funny shows in China, you can kind of get a sense that Chinese comedy is a little different from American comedy. It's a little difficult to speculate on though. I remember watching a foreigner in an audience of a Chinese comedy show, wondering if he could understand at all what was going on, and I tried to reimagine myself in that same position as I watched the play. Unfortunately, I could only get half of what was going on because it was hard to get a clear sense of the context and due to my limited language skills, but there was one moment I understood something that I thought was kind of funny, and laughed out loud when no one else in the audience did. At another point in the play, I didn’t think something was as funny and yet everyone else thought it was hysterical. I couldn't really wrap my thumb around it. Before my host mother parted that night, I gave her my gift to the family: some souvenirs from Tsinghua University, a stuffed bunny for my host sister, and a red envelope (hongbao 红包 ) filled with 100 kuai to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Years (a traditional gift given around this time period).

When all of the new SU Beijing students came in, we had a busy weekend to prepare for the upcoming Spring seminar trip. We had to get everyone situated with a new cell phone plan and get everything else we needed for the trip, which turned out to be more of a hassle than what you’d expect. It can be such a pain to work out a phone plan here, not because of the Mandarin language, but because it seems like almost every salesman out there is willing to lie his way around to get you to buy something you don’t want. We first met up with some of the Tsinghua University students here who volunteered to help us out this semester, and after heading out to Wudaokou and getting some of the stuff we’d need for our trip, we spent the last part of the evening eating a Chinese style dinner with Peking Duck and, one of my new favorites, pumpkin juice. I was pretty much familiar with all of the places we went to this day, but I had never gone to the restaurant where we had this meal, so it was a pleasant surprise.

Finally, the day of the trip came. We had three cities to travel to; Xi’An, Nanjing, and Shanghai. In the end, this trip turned out to be a lot less hectic than the Fall Seminar because it did not involve as much traveling, which in turn also left us with a little more free time to explore the cities on our own. I took advantage of this in Shanghai in particular, going out to watch the famous Cirque du Soleil show with a new friend. We pretty much had lectures everyday and then site visits to go to, and then most of us would go out to eat dinner together at night. The rooming arrangements were different this time, as there was an odd number of girls, so it worked out that in each city, one girl would get a single room to herself while everyone else paired off into doubles. I was lucky enough in Nanjing to get the single, though at the time I felt it would’ve been nice to pair off with someone for those few days to get to know better some of the people from my group. For more information on what the trip itself was like, please go to the section that describes more fully the activities we had. Once we returned from the seminar, we were worn out but still excited to explore Beijing together, maybe them more so than myself since I had already seen a lot of the city, but we had a nice two weeks off to chill out and get to know more about each other before classes started.

Entry 5 - Photos

HSK Books From Host Father and My Gifts to Host Family

Red Envelopes (Hongbao 红包) Traditionally Given at Chinese New Year's

Location Where We Watched "Life in the Twilight", Right by Wangfujing

Leaving for the Spring Signature Seminar Trip

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Entry 4 - Christmas and New Year's, Nanluoguxiang, Sanlitun

This final month of 2015 was more bittersweet than anything. Most of the month I was hanging out with all of my Syracuse University friends one last time before they had to head back home to the U.S.. I wound up buying some gifts to thank them for all of the time they spent with me and they surprised me with a small gift in return on the last night before they had to take their flight. Ironically, China was issuing it’s second red alert for haze the weekend their planes were supposed to head to the United States, and it was almost going to seem like their flight could be canceled due to how bad the haze has been here in Beijing. I wound up taking some photos of outside my dorm window, comparing a clear day with one that was particularly bad, and the difference was astonishing. Buildings literally disappear in the background, and even in the foreground, it is difficult to see ahead of you. The haze makes me miss the clean air back home in Syracuse, and knowing I still have the spring time to spend here, the chirping of the mopeds’ alarms sounding off when a passerby accidentally nudges them makes me miss the more natural side and calm of a suburban life as well. Frankly, this city atmosphere has made me miss my home more than ever. I miss walking on campus or sitting in my backyard listening to the chirping of real birds when the weather’s nice, and the snow and cold of Syracuse when we experience what a real winter is like.

During my last winter in Syracuse 2014-2015, I was in my black belt cycle for my mixed martial arts school. We experienced severe cold and heavy snow fall, which now looking back, makes me realize how Syracuse had earned its Chinese name of Xuecheng 雪城 (Snow City). I had to run several miles every week to make my timed run for testing, but I couldn’t stand running on a treadmill because it often made me feel dizzy afterwards. I ran up all the hills outside of campus in frigid temperatures and had my roommate with me as my running buddy. When I had to run with my fellow black belt candidates, we all pushed each other to move forward through the snow and in class we pushed ourselves to the limit. It was one of the most bonding and challenging moments in my life, especially because one of the things I hated more than anything was running. Now, I feel deprived of it because of the haze, and it makes me wish I could be back home sparring and running with the people who had just graduated with me. It makes me miss visiting home after class for a home cooked meal, sore and cold and sweaty, and occasionally giving my mom a hug right after just to gross her out. And then going back to my apartment near campus, enjoying a cold beer and watching TV shows with my roommates. It reminds me that I left early for China during the summertime, when I normally would have spent all my nights playing video games, watching horror movies, or going to Denny's with some of my other friends. Anyways, I think I’ve made my point: I’ve hit that stage where I'm starting to feel a little homesick.

Celebrating Christmas and the New Year wasn’t so bad on the other hand. Christmas day, my mom sent me videos and photos of the family celebrating and of the Christmas decor my family normally puts up every year. I got to watch my cat rummaging through the gift paper while my mom wrapped and then watched her bake cookies with my step father. Meanwhile, I stayed home and ate all my favorite fruit snacks and drinks while I doodled and relaxed for the evening. On New Year's, I called my mother a minute before the clock struck midnight, and bragged about how I was about to be a year ahead of her. Turning on the TV, I showed her all the fireworks displays they were being shown on the news while she was still at work. I tried making a New Year's resolution to eat healthier here too, but already failed on the second day. All in all it was pretty uneventful for myself, but it was nice to see what everyone else was doing for the holidays.

Early January, I wound up hanging out with the last SU student who had stayed here for Economics classes. We watched a movie together called Lao Pao'er 老炮儿 (Mr. Six), which she mentioned was set in Beijing and was something she had really wanted to watch before leaving China. The plot was really interesting, having to do with corruption, gang violence, and respecting old values. Another film I'd recommend is Xun Long Jue 寻龙诀 (Mojin- The Lost Legend), which I had watched with another close friend here in Beijing. My friend pointed out that Chinese films have become really good in recent years, with plots and graphics that are on par with what you’d see in Hollywood. Many of them have English subtitles, so watching a film in the theatre becomes a really good way to improve your Chinese listening skills. There is an app that allows you to purchase tickets for really cheap too, called Meituan.

I also visited some new places with the SU student who was leaving soon. The first place we went to was Nanluoguxiang 南锣鼓巷 , a subway station found on line eight. Here, there is a popular outdoor market with many small shops, beautiful trees arching over the main roads, and buildings with a traditional Chinese style. Walking through, you’ll see people all over with fried squid on a stick in their hands, or if you’re looking for something sweet, the caramelized fruit on a stick can be bought here as well. Turns out you can save a few kuai if you walk just outside the main shopping area for them though. There’s also a really good fruit yogurt shop here. From time to time, in these kinds of tourist areas, you can see a trend setting of different kinds of hair accessories for girls (and guys if they're willing). In the summertime, you could find people with fake plant sprouts clipped into their hair on the top of their heads, and it seems like now for the wintertime, the trend is more towards animal ear clips. There was one day I went back here to explore on my own and I got my portrait drawn. It attracted a lot of attention from other people, though some only passed by saying the portait looked nothing like me.

A few days later, I remet with my friend to go visit Sanlitun 三里屯 , a well-known shopping area that is surrounded by a few different embassies and consulates. It attracts a large number of tourists every year. It’s almost like a fancier version of Wangfujin (only lacking in the Snack Street and the Donghuamen Night Market). Here, it’s like one large shopping mall connected by separate buildings and lit up by lights everywhere. There are two main sections to it we explored. One section is next to a popular bar street where people can enjoy the nightlife of the city, the other has a lot of fancy restaurants if you would like to try some different foreign foods. That day we had wandered into a Vietnamese restaurant where there was a group of people celebrating something. We had no clue what though. Our initial assumption was maybe it was a wedding, but then they started putting on masquerade masks and we were lost. Photographers kept trying to film strangers enjoying their meals, including us, literally standing over people's tables with their cameras. At some point I think I got a photobomb in the background of one of their pictures. For those interested, there are also a lot of tattoo shops in this area, some just past the bar street.

Entry 4 - Photos

Comparison of Clear Day and Hazy Day Outside My Window

Wangfujing Christmas and Chinese New Year Decorations

Christmas Decoration in Wangfujing

Wangfujing Chinese New Year Decoration

Christmas Decorations in Wangfujing

Nanluoguxiang

Sanlitun With Extra Security for the Holidays

Sanlitun Around Christmas Time

Sanlitun's Bar Street

Sanlitun

Monday, November 30, 2015

Entry 3 - Cultural Fair, Forbidden City, Wangfujing Snack Street and Donghuamen Night Market, Muslim Temple, Thanksgiving

It has been officially five months since I first arrived in China and for me the time has flown by so quickly. I remember I was talking to someone at the subway for how long I had been staying in the country so far, and I told him “Well I’ve been here for three months since June” and he was quick to point out that my numbers weren’t really adding up. It must have been that a couple of months ago I was telling a lot of people how long I had been studying in China and “three months” just developed into an automatic response.

Sometime during the beginning of the month, Tsinghua University held a multicultural event with students from all over the world setting up booths to display some of the unique aspects of their countries. It was similar to the event that Syracuse University holds each year, where professors set up booths at the center of HBC to give students a taste of foods from various countries, but the major difference between the two events was size. Tsinghua University’s event had booths lined down the street in front of one of its main student centers, what everyone refers to as C-Lou (C 楼.) At the end of the street, people could pick up a paper passport to be stamped at each of the booths representing a country, and if they filled out all 22 visa spaces, they could receive a prize. Interestingly enough, there was no American booth at the event, though honestly it does not seem that there are many American students at the university other than those coming in from Syracuse. Some of the other countries that could be seen represented included Myanmar, Japan, Singapore, Germany, and Indonesia. At the booths you could play games, eat food, and pose with people dressed in traditional style clothing, among other things. I didn't get to stay very long at the event, but before I left, I visited the Mongolian booth and received a special calligraphy painting from a student who was volunteering to make them.

Mid-November, our SU group made its way down to the Forbidden City (Gugong Bowuyuan 故宫博物院). The day was unfortunately terribly hazy, however with that atmosphere combined with the size of the maze-like structure, the enchanting architectural design of the buildings, and the forest garden located towards its center, you could almost feel as though you were walking through a realistic dream. The day felt cut short, as we only had a limited amount of time to explore the city that Friday afternoon. We had just finished taking midterms that week, and I was in the mood to relax and see some more of China outside of the classroom. So, I went with someone else who suggested a visit to Jingshan Park (Jingshan Gongyuan 景山公园) located right next to the Forbidden City. Paying the 2 yuan entrance fee, we made our way up to the top of a hill where a famous religious shrine was located. There inside you could see a giant sitting golden Buddha statue overlooking the city. A young man was playing some traditional Chinese music, chanting towards the statue, and nearby you could see some of the common tourist knickknacks sold at small shops. This was a sight not so atypical with what you would find in most other religious temples in China. Yet, you walk out to the front and you can catch a glimpse of almost the entire layout of the Forbidden City, and it really is an incredible scene to take in. Afterwards, I made my way through a nearby market and strolled along a small river until the sky fell dark, enjoying the colorful lighting that reflected off the water from the clubs and bars keeping the nightlife alive for locals. I even happened to chance upon a documentary filming along an alleyway that night.

This month I have gone out more with friends, discovering other places I was unaware of. As it turns out, near one of the sites where I practice kung fu, there is a lively shopping street that attracts a lot of tourists. Ironically I had walked by it quite a number of times, but I never actually went through it. At Wangfujing 王府井, you can see a sharp contrast between the rich and poor if you do a little exploring. There is a mall that is literally filled with nothing but the most expensive brands of clothing and accessories you could think of, such as Rolex, Prada, and Coach, and if you walk a short distance past that, you will find a small neighborhood filled with people who are scraping by to make a living. It is also at this market area where you will find more beggars and scammers due to the large number of tourists. There was one night I went out to explore the area surrounding Wangfujing when two ladies approached me and invited me to go get tea with them. The first thing I thought was that it had to be the typical scam where two ladies, usually relatives, go up to foreigners and invite them out to go get a drink, and when it comes time to pay for the bill, they will force the foreigner to pay for everything. I decided, “you know what, let’s see where this take me”, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before they said that they were sisters. A coincidence maybe, but as we were walking along, they were talking about how they just finished eating a big meal, so I mentioned that I was looking for a place to eat dinner rather than to go get drinks, and they told me they knew of a spot. We got there and the waitress handed me a menu, and it was filled with almost nothing but expensive teas; single pots costing almost up to 100 kuai (about $16) each. I looked up at them, and these two ladies weren’t even bothering to look through the menu that was already sitting at our table. I told the waitress I was only looking for something to eat, and she looked at me puzzled as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. The two ladies then started pressuring me to pick a tea. So, annoyed, I lied and said all I wanted was Sprite. The waitress told me they didn’t sell any, so I glimpsed through the menu again and asked her why I was able to find it in there. At the end, I told them everything was too expensive for me and that I was just going to eat back home, with the ladies calling after me and claiming that their prices were only steep because they were located in an expensive area like Wangfujing. Within minutes after leaving, I was walking along the main street towards the subway station when I heard a woman screaming loudly at a foreigner to go drink tea with her. The guy repeatedly told her no as she kept insisting, and as he moved himself away from her, she had a fit about it. She made eye contact with me then, and I quickly ran off before she could try to invite me next.

Wangfujing is a nice place to visit though regardless, and when I did go with some friends, we had a great time. We visited a place called the Donghuamen Night Market (Donghuamen 东华门 ) that’s right off the edge of the main plaza where you can find all sorts of unique foods that you wouldn’t typically find back home. When I say unique though, it’s not really the kind of food you’d regularly want to put on your dinner plate, not unless you can stomach cockroach, centipede, pigeon, or tarantula. When I went there with my friends, it was initially a shock because I had never realized something like this was around. One of my friends had wanted to come here to eat a bull’s testicle as a challenge. Frankly I love a good challenge too, so when he offered some to the rest of us, I went in for it as well. I wound up ending the night eating some small scorpions and snake as well, though I didn’t think the snake was as big of a deal because it reminded me of eating eel with my host family in Suzhou for dinner one night. Before China, I think the most unique thing I had eaten was fried alligator at my local state fair, though that is something I look forward to eating every year when it’s available. My first actual eating challenge after arriving here was duck’s tongue at our final reception dinner with CLS in Suzhou, and then in Beijing it was with pig’s foot. I probably shouldn't be using the word “challenge” to describe eating these things though, because in actuality there are a lot of people in the world who eat bugs and other things that Westerners are afraid to try. Typically in China, people do not like to waste food. Having the world’s largest population in a mountainous region where a lot of the land is non-arable though, it should be easy to understand why. However, there are some things at this market that even the Chinese won't touch; things that are more meant for people who like the attention of eating weird stuff. Aside from the food, if you walk towards the center of the plaza in Wangfujing, you’ll find another popular tourist market where you can get more food and all sorts of popular souvenirs to bring home, called the Wangfujing Snack Street (Xiaochi Jie 小吃街 ). The tidbit here though is you’ll have to play your hand at bargaining if you want to avoid being ripped off, however my experience was that it was a little bit easier to haggle here than it was at the Silk Market. The scenery of the market is really cool too, with red lanterns hung everywhere above your head and golden lighting that seems to attract people like moths to a lamp. If you walk in far enough, you’ll also find a small arcade.

One of the last places I visited was the largest mosque in Beijing, Niujie Mosque (Niujie Libaisi 牛街礼拜寺), as part of a field trip with my SU group. We visited different sections, chatting about what we thought of the structure, and ended the evening by going out to eat hot pot together. For me this was an experience I feel was different than what it would have otherwise been due to the timing though, as it was shortly after the attack on Paris and reading about the growing fear of Islam in different countries. Yet, in China, I got the impression that Chinese Muslims were hardly affected by the situation, and there were no outward signs of growing dissent among the people towards their religion. It was very different from what I could see was happening in America, and with elections soon about to take place, it felt weird watching all of this hectic news from outside of the country. I start to wonder more about how culture shock will hit me when I return to the states.

Finally, the majority of us all celebrated Thanksgiving together with our SU professors. Instead of a large carved turkey, however, our main dish was Peking Roasted Duck (with turkey as a side). It was really a Chinese themed dinner, with several dishes I couldn’t name on a rotating platter for everyone to share. I did, of course, miss traditional family Thanksgiving dishes I’d have every year at this time, such as stuffing, squash, and pumpkin pie (but not the canned yams). I had to kick myself for one thing though; the one day we were celebrating the holiday, I forgot one of our school cafeterias served cooked pumpkin everyday as a dish. Besides the food though, it was nice to get together when we couldn’t with our families.