learning so much

     Yesterday was technically my first day of classes, but today is my first day of classes with Chinese professors. And I am already learning sooooo much! So I just wanted to share some of the new things I'm learning:
     One thing I learned is that Beibei- the place I am living in- is not a city! It is actually a district in the Chongqing municipality. Since Chongqing is a municipality, I am also not technically in the Sichuan province. In China, there are four municipalities (including Chongqing), five autonomous regions, and 23 provinces. There is also Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, but I am still a little unclear what to consider those places.

     There are 56 different ethnic groups in China, but 92% of the population is Han. At the last census, the population of China was around 1.3 or 1.4 billion. And believe me, the high population is noticeable in everyday life.
     I also learned today that -as of recently- if a husband and wife are both the only children in their family, they are allowed to have more than one child (probably not more than 2 children, but I'm not sure). It seems as though a lot of people will have more than one child (and sometimes more than two), though, and just hide it or pay the fines that go along with having more children than is allowed.
    So those are the highlights of what I learned today (well other than what I learned in my Chinese language class). Hopefully you found that info as interesting as I did!

Beibei!

     I got to Beibei on Monday (9/5) evening. My first impressions of Chongqing/Beibei are that it is beautiful (Chongqing is in the mountains) and that is really hot and humid (it was over 100 degrees Farenheit for a lot of the summer)! I thought we would be staying in dorms, but we are actually staying in a hotel that is on campus. I am really thankful for the rooms that we have, but I also feel really spoiled and kind of guilty because I know the Chinese students' rooms are not as nice. I am rooming with Kia, and our room has two single beds, two desks, a tv, a small fridge, a closet (that we share), two chairs in a small sitting area by the window, and a bathroom (with a western toilet and a bathtub!) We also have AC, which is my favorite thing about our room!
     We got our Chinese language partners yesterday. My partner's (English) name is Olivia, but I really don't know her very well yet at all. We also got access to the internet yesterday, which was an interesting process because we were in a computer lab where very few of the computers actually worked, so we had to take turns. In the evening, we had a banquet with some of the professors and administration at a hotpot restaurant. Chongqing is famous for its spicy hotpot, which is basically a boiling pot of oil with spices in it that you put different kinds of food in (meat, vegetables, dumplings, etc). I was really thankful because they also had a smaller bowl that wasn't spicy. There wasn't room for everyone in one room so we were separated into three. I was in a room with three other students from my trip, the caligraphy teacher, the kung fu teacher (who are both still students), and another Southwest student who is Sam's helper. I thought it was kind of funny because I am not taking the art class (which consists of caligraphy and kung fu), so I won't have either of those guys as teachers.
     After the banquet, Kia and I went to the supermarket near our hotel/dorm (which sells all sorts of things- including clothes and shoes). My dress shoes were making my feet hurt so badly (it turned out that one of my heels was bleeding), so I bought a new pair of shoes/sandals for about 15 US dollars. It actually wasn't too difficult even though the lady helping me spoke only a few words of English. We also bought some fruit for the next day (today).
     Yesterday, I also found out what my schedule looks like:
Monday- Chinese (language) 9:40 - 12:00
Tuesday- Chinese Literature 9:40 - 12:00, Chinese History & Culture 2:30 - 4:50
Wednesday- Study Abroad Seminar 2:30 - 4:50
Thursday- Chinese (language) 10:30 - 12:00, Chinese History & Culture 2:30 - 4:50
Friday- Chinese (language) 9:40 -10:20, Study Abroad Seminar 2:30 - 4:50
Today is our first day of class, but since it is Wednesday, I don't have class until 2:30. After class today, I am going with Kia and her language partner to buy cell phones (because right now, I can't get ahold of my own language partner).
   That's it for now, but I will upload some photos of Beibei as soon as I take some!

Xian

     After Beijing, we took the train to Xian (Xi'an), where we spent about two days. The train station was like nothing I have ever seen before! It was jam-packed; many people were standing or just sitting on the floor because the seats were all taken. It was also interesting because it's socially acceptable to spit pretty much anywhere, so there were a lot of sunflower seed shells spit all over the floor. Also, foreigners rarely take trains in China so we were stared at even more than usual. The train ride was about 12-13 hours, but it was overnight so we were able to sleep.
     On our first day in Xian, we went to see the Big Goose Pagoda, which is essentially a huge Buddhist temple (I think). We also went to the city wall, which is the best preserved city wall in China. We got to go up to the top of the wall and ride bikes. I had my first experience riding a tandem bike (with one of the other girls) and it was sooo much fun! We actually got the hang of it pretty quickly too. The only thing that wasn't as nice about the wall is that it is a bumpy ride!
     On our second day, we went to see the Terracotta Warriors and Huaqing Hot Spring. The Terracotta Warriors were very cool to see. The warriors are from the Qin Dynasty (200s BC); they were made for the burial chamber for the emperor, to protect him in the after life. The Terracotta Warriors were discovered less than 40 years ago by farmers who were digging a well. There are three different pits (that are all still being excavated) that have the warriors in them (and terracotta horses too). I wasn't that impressed by pits 2 and 3, but pit 1 was pretty cool! It's amazing to think how much time and effort it took to create these warriors because each of them is unique and there are so many of them!

(Terracotta Warriors- pit 1)

     The Hotspring was very close to the Terracotta Warriors. It was a very beautiful area, but the spring itself wasn't exactly what I was expecting. They built a few fountains where you could wash you hands and your face, so I did that and I helped Jesse (Sam & Annie's son) to play in the water too. Unfortunately, we then ran into some trouble though... a couple of the people were sitting on a little wall when an older couple put their things down on the wall. One of the guys (Chris) accidentally knocked over their water bottle and they were not happy. Apparently, it's fairly common to demand money after something like that, but it sounds like usually people aren't extremely pushy about it. However, this couple would not leave without money. The old lady grabbed ahold of the Chris' camera (a very high-quality, expensive camera) and wouldn't let go despite our attempts to pull it from her. She just wrapped the strap around her hands tighter. Chris ended up paying her about 20 kuai (~$3.5) so she would let go. The money wasn't that big of a deal, but the principle of the situation made a lot of us angry... Chris didn't knock over the water bottle on purpose and it wasn't even damaged. There have been some situations that have been frustrating or unfamiliar, but that was the only situation (thus far) that felt completely negative for me (including the last day in Beijing where nothing seemed to go right).
  

Days 4-7 in Beijing

Day 4 (Tues. 8/30)

            On Tuesday morning, we had a Tai Chi class which was really fun! It was extremely humid and hot, though, which made it a little more difficult and sweaty. The instructor had us play a game to warm up and then he showed us how to do the Tai Chi and also how Tai Chi can be used for defense or to fight someone. I got my left side and right side mixed up a lot when doing the movements, but once I got that figured out it was really fun!

            Later in the day, we went on a rickshaw ride/hutong tour. Hutongs are basically the type of neighborhoods that Beijing used to have; they are made up of essentially of alleyways instead of streets. Many hutongs were destroyed, but now they are preserved because they have so much historical and cultural significance. We were able to see 2 houses on our hutong tour. The first house had a courtyard and buildings surrounding the courtyard. The second house was smaller and didn’t seem as nice to me, but the man who owned it (Mr. Liu) was very interesting- he is a Kung Fu master! He showed us some Kung Fu moves and a video of his son who teaches Kung Fu in the U.S.

(Mr. Liu in front of his house in the hutong)

           Before dinner we had a little bit of free time, so one of the other girls (Sarita) and I decided to walk around near our restaurant. We found a little beauty shop and decided to buy face masks. It was so interesting though because we had trouble finding a mask that didn’t have whitening ingredients- the Chinese want lighter skin, which is basically the opposite of how we are in the States where everyone wants to be tan. (We decided to use them after leaving Beijing though because the air is so bad there that we didn’t want it to get gross again right away). After that, Sarita and I had our first experience crossing the street without being in a big group. Crossing the street in China is more difficult than it would sound- traffic is crazy and pedestrians don’t necessarily have the right-of-way like we do in the U.S. We watched what the other people were doing though and eventually made it across!

Day 5 (Wed. 8/31)

            Our class on Wednesday morning was learning how to do traditional Chinese painting. I really enjoyed this class! We painted cabbage, fish, shrimp, crabs, and chicks. I really wanted to learn how to paint the goldfish well, but of course my shrimp turned out better than anything else (and shrimp aren’t very pretty). Now that I kind of know how they paint those things though, I think I will try again some other time.

            During the afternoon, we went to see the Olympic Green- the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. Both structures have amazing architecture! When we were in the Bird’s Nest, we were able to rent Segway Scooters (I would suggest googling it if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and go around the race track. I enjoyed it a lot! The Water Cube would have been better, but they were building a stage over the pool when we were there so we didn’t even get to see what it looked like during the Olympics. It was still a cool building to see though.

(Bird's Nest)

(Inside the Water Cube)

            We got money to get dinner on our own that night, so two of the other girls and I ended up trying the food at a restaurant called the Avocado Tree. It was basically like the Chinese equivalent to Chipotle, but it didn’t seem like the Chinese liked the food that much because the only Chinese people that walked in looked at the menu and left. However, we enjoyed the tacos despite their lack of Chinese-ness.

Day 6 (Thurs. 9/1)

            Thursday morning’s class was calligraphy, which turns out to be harder than it looks. I tried to do the strokes just like our teacher, but they never seemed to look the same. I did get fairly good at writing my Chinese name though.

            We visited the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon. The Temple of Heaven was beautiful, but I didn’t like it as much as the Forbidden City or the Summer Palace. It didn’t help that I was also very out-of-it on Thursday because I started to get a cold earlier in the week and it was almost at its worst on Thursday. Getting the cold was kind of funny, though, because it started with a sore throat, which isn’t that uncommon for foreigners to get in Beijing because of the air quality. After dinner, our amazing tour guide, Andy, brought me to a Chinese pharmacy to help me buy cold medicine. I could not have done it without him, so I was very grateful! I bought some pills for the cold and some cough syrup and it only cost about 5 U.S. dollars.

(Temple of Heaven)

Day 7 (Fri. 9/2)

            Friday was our free day and my cold was in full swing, so I honestly didn’t do very much for most of the day. In the morning, I met Sue, a Chinese woman who I have been in touch with to help me with my One Question Project. She met me at our dorms and then we went out to lunch. We spent a few hours talking and it was really fun! It was really nice to finally meet her in person, but I was bummed that I was sick when I met her for the first time.

            The rest of the day didn’t go as smoothly, though… We had checked out of our rooms earlier in the day, but kept one room (one of Sam & Annie’s rooms) to keep our bags in and to hang out in if we were staying at the dorms (one of the other girls and I didn’t feel like going out that day). I had been planning to nap in there because I was sick and really tired. But of course something had to go wrong so when we left the room for a short period of time, we were locked out. The people at the front desk told us we weren’t allowed back in unless we paid 80 kuai (yuan) because we were supposed to check out earlier. They wouldn’t even listen when Kia (the other girl who stayed at the dorms) tried to explain the situation to them. I had reached my breaking point because I was so tired and felt so sick, so I cried for a little while after they wouldn’t let us in. But there really wasn’t anything to do, so I eventually calmed down and just waited. It was really inconvenient though because all I had was my laptop- no tissues to blow my nose or to use in the bathroom (they don’t always have toilet paper in the bathrooms) and no water to drink. When Sam & Annie came back, Annie lent me some money to buy water, but things didn’t even go right then and I accidentally bought some (more expensive) sugar water type stuff. Before leaving, the front desk also claimed that 6 of our 7 rooms hadn’t checked out (which was not even remotely true) and they tried to charge one girl for a whole heating and air conditioning unit even though she didn’t do anything to it. Also, some of the guys in our group got ripped off by a fake (not legal) taxi driver earlier in the day. All in all, it wasn’t one of our best days in China.

Days 1-3 in Beijing

This last week and a half or so has been crazy, so I'm still working on writing up what we did in Beijing and Xian... sorry for the delay! But here it goes for the first few days:

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)