Achievements

1. Consuming one grasshopper and one scorpion. The grasshopper was much better.

2. Being able to say "cancer cell" and "immune system" and "carbohydrate" in Chinese, among other things.

3. Taking a one-hour long bus ride (with my tutor) to a Chinese Medicine hospital and talked to a really friendly and intelligent doctor. He told us to read the Yi Jing and explained some of the philosophy behind Chinese medicine, as well as more medical things. 80% of the cancer patients in their ward were diagnosed by Western doctors - either the patients elected to use fusion or pure TCM, or their doctors suggested it! He pressed that patients have a lot more choice in their treatment schema, which is awesome.

4. Buttoning my coat one-handed in the stairwell while holding my bookbag and tea mug, before I get to the ground floor of my dorm.

5. Talking about cockroaches and the Empress Dowager Cixi in varying levels of bad Chinese.

6. Discussing life choices with my roommate, in bed, in the dark, at 1am (in a mixture of Chinese and English), when I have an 8am class I haven't yet studied for.

Oh and this one is Qiuhong's: Telling me the Chinese word for "bacteriophage," AND writing it! Way to remember it from high school bio :P I would have forgotten the character years ago.

For a change of pace (har), here are some beautiful Summer Palace pictures.

These used to have religious paintings, but got whitewashed during the Cultural Revolution.

The last emperor was held under house arrest here by Cixi.

Help protect the ancient relics, help protect the railings.

Does it look fiendishly cold? Cuz it WAS.

Changeable

These are the pictures I used for my Beida photo essay. The text is too embarassing to post up here, but here's a quick rundown: established in 1898, evacuated to Kunming in 2nd world war, frigid during the cultural revolution (and Mao worked in the library before he got famous!), and now it's internationally acclaimed.

Woo Beida. You're awesome. And beautiful.

Now I need to go back to class. We had an exam today, which I finished an hour early, but our "debate" is during the last 10 minutes of class so I have to go back!! Kinda frustrating. And this afternoon we're going to a famous teahouse where we'll learn traditional Chinese games. Hmm. This could be interesting or painfully touristy...

Indoor internet!

Last-minute as usual, I'm finishing up my "letter home" assignment for the Pitzer fieldbook.
I was going to post my photo essay about Beida, but it's really not that interesting - it's just four photos of different manifestations of the view outside my window, and various cheesy captions to them (think "dawn", "winter" and "night", as well as "daylight"). And it's REALLY windy outside, and so cold the wind whips your breath away in the darkness! A mianbaoche - loaf-of-bread van - almost ran me over today. Not cool.

A white mianbaoche lurking on the bottom right.

Anyway. I need to finish my essay. Oh yeah and: THE INTERNET SITUATION GOT RECTIFIED. Thank you Wang laoshi, Mike Donahue, Pitzer, and whatever kind internet deity made this happen, but I am NOT crouching in a hallway or losing my fingers outside to upload this. I don't think I'll ever get over the luxury of internet in my room now.

(PS: please don't tell Stazi she can even get internet in her bed if she really wants to cuz then she'll never leave it.)

Internet Drama, and other things.

Internet isn't included in our neat little Taiji-research-Chinese package; we're in charge of getting it ourselves. At first, that didn't sound like a big deal - just a minor glitch in the system, since we had to wait until school began, two weeks into our stay, to sign up for an account. There's a "90 kuai" foreign option and a 10 kuai internal option, and the price is per month.
But wait; foreign students can only get the foreign option, and it's 120 kuai per calendar month, hello!

There was a surge of seething frustration at the IT office, a tense discussion with our assistant program director, and a carefully worded (but forceful) email to the Pitzer representative.
In return we got a flippant reply that we were warned of this, and that $58 dollars isn't a big deal for students, tee hee bye!

I guess we got up in arms over something that was in the handbook, but I really think it could have been handled more maturely on the Pitzer side, too. And to be honest, it is 30 kuai/month more expensive than the handbook said.

Anyway. This is frustrating. Perhaps we can take this money out of our research fund...

Apart from this, I have a few ideas for my photo essay - on the One Child policy. I saw some crazy artwork at 798 and they had some really creepy paintings of little girls, as well as a huge photo collage of 3-person families. I've also noticed exactly how much careful attention small kids are given and how their grandparents - and parents, although I rarely see them with parents since they work - are constantly teaching them. Advice and tai ji and English and what's that? and how to read... it's intense. I don't think I could handle this sort of pressure.

Actually I think this photo essay is supposed to be about Beida, so I don't know what to do at all, but at least I can start working on a later photo essay on the One Child policy! Maybe for now I'll just do a collage of surprised faces and call it "People's Reactions To Me When I Say I'm Studying At Beida", because it would be very accurate, and it would depict how highly regarded the institution is. Whenever we whip out the red IDs, we get some pretty incredulous - and admiring - stares. Waa!

And to wrap this up - I woke up at 7:30 this morning, and upon peeking out the crack between the curtain and the window thought, "The light is so white! Ha, I thought it had snowed for a second!"
And then I actually pulled back the blinds and a gentle, dainty snow was falling, tiny little flakes. It only really stuck to the trees and the ice - it melted on the roads...

Outside my window.

Above, the building in which I have my Chinese class (on the 3rd floor).

The road which runs past lots of shi tang - dining halls.

My dorm! Shao Yuan 5.

It's cold!

I'm finally lining my jeans with long underwear, and it's still pretty chilly. But at least it's not raining! It was quite a beautiful morning outside my window today:

Compare to a week ago, when it was still iced over:

It's so cheerful now! But much too cold to use the Pitzer wifi from the office, since you need to go outside for it. I skyped last night nevertheless, at 1am, and in the middle of talking to Connor - I was shivering so badly I couldn't type - two Beida cops came by and tried to get me to tell them why I was using my computer outside and not in my room. I didn't remember how to say "wireless" so I think they left almost as confused as they'd started, but they did get that I didn't have internet in my room and that I was somehow using my program office's internet. Outside. At 1am.

We've also started dressing up in mittens and layers for tai ji, because our badass master isn't going to cut us any slack in the case of freezing weather.

Sniped while he was demonstrating "Right Heel Kick"

Last night was Luisa's birthday! We had a delicious fruity cake in the office at noon, and went out to an awesome Sichuan restaurant for dinner.

Kearney applied her Chinese-class learning and told us not to open the 1 kuai chopsticks, and we asked for the free chopsticks instead.

Baijiu shots, in honor of Luisa's 21st.

The food was full of fiery red peppers, but delicious! That's lotus root above, and fish below. It was so fresh that Abi made friends with it before they dispatched it.

For Valentine's, they had ridiculous numbers of rose-vendors, extremely pushy rose-vendors. They followed us until Luisa caved and bought a rose for 5 kuai.

The sketchy bar we ended up at after bar-hopping and bargaining for ages. Yasi bargained like a champ, but they were determined to rip us off, and did. Assholes.

Whatever. It was fun anyway :) And happy birthday, Luisa! I guess it was one type of a 21st experience.

First rain

Before today, Beijing didn't have any precipitation for four months. Isn't that ridiculous? A snow-free winter... no rain... a freezing drought. Anyway, today decided to begin making up for it.

The day dawned exceptionally dreary, with heavy low clouds, so I slept in until eight and then read about Qi and Essence still in bed, chatting with my roommate, until nine. (Yes, I know, 8am is SLEEPING IN now. My roommate is impressed with how early of a riser I am. Perhaps I've turned over a new leaf? I kind of like the fact that 7am actually exists in my world.)

When I ventured outside it felt like England - chilly, damp, heavily overcast, depressing. But then I got a jian bing, and my day got better, at least for the 10 or so minutes it took to consume the warm, squishy thingy-in-a-bag.

First, it's a pancake. Then the lady cracks an egg over it and attacks it with the crepe-turner, and flips the pancake over onto the griddle. Then she brushes three different sauces over it, the combination of which tastes vaguely like spicy seaweed, and adds cilantro, green onions, and a crispy deep-fried sheet that softens from the pancake's warm heat and becomes pleasantly chewy.

Do not be confused by the sign, it's for something else; the jian bing actually only costs 3 kuai.

The Chinese class that followed was intense - at least the second hour - because both our program director and one of the other Chinese professors sat in on our class! Because our classroom is tiny - meant for three students and the professor - the addition of two extra, important people felt uncomfortable, especially since they were taking notes.

The program director took a look at my notebook, informed me that I had lots of mistakes and should speak to the tutor, and then made fun of my (translated) sentences! Not of my translation, but of the CONTENT, which is from the freaking text.
So that was that.

In the afternoon we had a two-hour class about Chinese history through the lens of Peking University. It was actually fascinating - the lecturer was a Beida professor that helped start the International Studies and Journalism departments, and he was brilliant - and I learned a lot about the early 1900s, which I'd never really studied.
I didn't realize that the Paris treaty after WWI tried to screw China by giving the German holdings to Japan... or that the May 4 protests were about that, and so very strongly anti-Japanese... or that they were successful!
I guess the later fiasco makes a lot more sense in light of the May 4 protest, since they were successful the first time and had hopes of success the second time. But of course, the government was so much more paranoid and suppressive by then...

We also talked a lot about Confucius, and about the Chinese mode of learning through imitation (of classics) versus the Western mode of learning through invention and creativity. It's so true... and it's so woven into the culture, down to the writing system and art and music and everything.

Since it was raining, our Tai Ji class was indoors. Today I realized I'd be dead scared of our professor if I met him in a dark alley. He could be a total badass thug in a kung-fu movie; he has the face, the physique, the skillz dat killz... but he's very nice.
I was right in front of the windows of our building, and I saw a lot of people stop (in the rain) and point and laugh at us whiteys trying to Grasp the Sparrow's Tail...

a tour of my room!

I don't really have anything interesting to say today, except that I really love Chinese class and gel pens and pink Miffy highlighters that smell like strawberries, so I'll just show you where I live.

So this is the double. Abi has a miniature version as a single, and her room has the fridge and an actual cupboard for stuff. My bed's the one by the window! I just stuck all my stuff behind it because I don't have a cupboard or closet or anything. My desk end is the window-end too.

Our re shui ping, the hot water thermoses supplied by the dorm. They're refilled every morning :) And there's the ashtray, and my breakfast-cup. And the sparklers that are now illegal :(

The bathroom; we technically have 24-hour hot water from the underground hot springs under the campus! Pretty badass, even if it's cold sometimes.

The fridge, with various important edibles. I had the yoghurt with raw instant oatmeal this morning, in my BREAKFAST CUP. It's pretty awesome.

And the view out of my window! I'm pretty lucky. It's Wei Ming Hu (Wei Ming lake), still kinda iced over, but it's melting fast.

I love China, but I'm kinda starting to miss home a little, too. That's healthy though, right?

a quick thought

Today in tai ji class we learned three more "dong zuo" to add to our previous three, and quite a few of the movements were the same as ones we'd already learned - just in a different order, and in different combinations. This is pretty similar to Chinese characters - you have radicals, and they're put together in different orders and combinations, and you get different words...

Firework Storm

Yesterday was the last legal day for fireworks. For two weeks of the Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year, as we Westerners tend to call it - fireworks are allowed anywhere and everywhere. And they're cheap, too! So every evening since we arrived on Wednesday, we were treated to a distant rumble of pyrotechnics, which sometimes escalated to serious explosions.

But yesterday, the last day, was unexpectedly wild. The fireworks began before dusk, while we were straining to achieve the White Crane Spreads its Wings pose in Tai Ji class. Our master (he's a legit kung-fu master, and looks it) was telling us to listen to the birds and "fang song", relax, but it was kind of difficult with the sudden rash of explosions that punctuated his words. The cranes faltered in light of the fireworks; the evening had begun.

Our Chinese roommates took us out to tang yuar, which are the traditional rice dumplings with sweet innards that one eats on Lantern Festival day - for last night was the Lantern Festival, officially. You light a candle in the thin red paper lanterns, and send it, hot-air-balloon-style, to the heavens; it's a quiet, thoughtful enterprise. But we only saw two lanterns in the air last night!! All the rest was fireworks, fireworks, firecrackers, fireworks...

At one point, we were surrounded on five sides by amateur firework shows. They set them off from what looked like parking lots, shooting them up between buildings; piles of firecrackers were lit in the middle of the street, and taxis navigated around the still smoldering pieces of cardboard. The firework display that we watched seemed to be headed by this (crazy) old man:

Yes, that's a cardboard tube with fireworks coming out of it that he's holding. Seriously, that thing could be a weapon! It was pretty scary; but that's not all that he set off.

Yeah, he's running around firecrackers with a flaming tail.

Like Hook said, for most of the year, the Chinese follow the law, and I imagine there is a LOT of law to follow. But for these two weeks, craziness is allowed, is expected. A cop was standing right next to this dude, smoking a cigarette, and watching the fireworks from FAR TOO CLOSE, for me, at least. I kept running away! And a roommate's brother kept telling me that I was a scaredy cat, "bu yong hai pa, mei shir!"

There was a fireworks show right outside my window at 10:15pm, but I was so fireworked out I didn't even move to the window to look. I could see most of it from my bed, anyway.