Day 1 (late Fri. night to Sat. 8/27)
After the very long and mostly sleepless flight to China, the first night in China did not fail to surprise me: my roommate and I found out that we couldn’t turn on the lights without sticking our hotel key into a slot in the wall and keeping it in there as long as we wanted the lights on. We also found out what Chinese beds are like: hard! The mattresses are basically are only about two inches deep at most. But even that felt good after not sleeping on the flight from the US. For whatever reason, though, I still wasn’t able to sleep very much on the first night.
(the "mattress" with my thumb for scale)
The next morning, I had my first taste of real Chinese food. Unfortunately, the first thing that I tried had a texture and taste that I hated. But I did honestly try to eat it… until someone told me that I was eating pig stomach.
After breakfast, we went to our Chinese language class at the Beijing Language and Culture University (which turned out to be our home for the rest of our stay in Beijing). Class was good, but fast-paced, so it was a bit overwhelming.
In the afternoon, we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. In Tiananmen Square, we got our first taste of what it’s like to be laowai (foreigners) in China. We had many people either ask to take pictures with us, jump into pictures we were already taking, or take pictures with us (deliberately) in the background.
(Tiananmen Square with a man who jumped into our photo)
The Forbidden City is where the emperor used to live. It was a lot bigger than I expected, but the architecture was beautiful! Although, I have to admit that I probably didn’t appreciate it enough because I was sleep-deprived and a little crabby.
Day 2 (Sun. 8/28)
On day 2 in Chinese class, those of us who didn’t already have Chinese names got ours. My Chinese name is ān nà. I like it because it is not only similar to my English name, but also because it isn’t hard to pronounce. I also like it because the first character means calm or peaceful (the second character is just part of a woman’s name).
The best part of the day, though, was going to the Great Wall of China. Climbing the Great Wall is one of the most (if not the most) amazing things I have ever done! One of the interesting things about the Great Wall is that the phrase “climbing the Great Wall” is very accurate- at least in the section of wall that we were at. It is very, very steep in some parts because it is in the mountains. The view is absolutely phenomenal! There is something really surreal about climbing and standing on a structure that is that old (over 2000 years)! There really is no way for me to describe it that does it justice, so I honestly don’t even want to try to describe it any more than I have. We also took a toboggan ride back down the mountain, which was a lot of fun! Unfortunately, we had to keep stopping because a woman a few people ahead of me was going really slowly.
(view of a section of the Great Wall from a window in one of the towers)
Sunday night was also really interesting… We’ve been staying in International Student Dorms and there is no wireless in our dorms, so we have to go down to the lobby of our building (which is always very busy). Sunday night was the first time I checked my e-mail since getting here. So most of my group and I were sitting in a row on our computers and I was wearing a green “Bennies” shirt when a girl came up to us pointing at her shirt, which was the exact same shirt as mine! It turns out that a couple years ago this girl had come to St. Ben’s for a couple of weeks as an exchange student from Japan and now she is studying in China. Most of our group was planning to go out to karaoke that night, so we also invited the Japanese girl (Mai) and two of her friends to go with us. The karaoke place was crazy, but we all had a lot of fun!
Day 3 (Mon. 8/29)
Day 3 was our last day of Chinese language class. Although I really want to learn Mandarin, I have to admit that I was really glad it was our last day because for me, the class was really intensive.
In the afternoon, we went to the Summer Palace- which was the summer home for the emperor and empress. I enjoyed the Summer Palace more than the Forbidden City because it has greenery (the Forbidden City doesn’t have any). The Summer Palace is also on a lake. The lake is supposedly peach shaped, but I looked at a map and I just don’t see it. There was also a really long outdoor corridor- the longest in the world- which had beautiful paintings all along it; it was really amazing! We also got to ride a dragon boat across the lake, where we got an even better view of the palace. At one point, we ended up causing a bit of a commotion just by taking a group picture. Other people kept popping into our picture (wanting to be in it) so we had to stand there for a while. We were also wearing matching shirts for a group picture we had to take earlier in the day, so we stood out even more than usual. (And of course that wasn’t the only time people wanted to take pictures with us).
(dragon boat at the Summer Palace)
Later, we went to the Pearl Market which was a little overwhelming for me. The vendors were shouting to try to get our attention and they would grab us or our bags to keep us from walking away. I did buy a couple things there (I’m not going to say what though because they’re presents for people who might read this), but I definitely tried to stay away from the areas where the vendors were really crowding around people. Later in the week, we also went to the Silk Market (which was very similar to the Pearl Market).
In the evening, we went to a traditional Peking Opera, which I really enjoyed. The singing and speaking style is very distinctive, and I probably would have thought that it was really strange if I hadn’t known what to expect. It’s really hard to explain though, but I took videos of it on my camera so I can show people when I get home (because it takes too long to upload them to my blog).
(Peking Opera)
