The Birthday Team

Hello Again!

I want to start off by thanking everyone who sent me birthday wishes, I had a really great day, mostly because so many people were nice enough to go out of their way to say hello! I even got a birthday card from the first level class (merci beaucoup, Marie!).

My day itself was pretty normal, school et al. In the evening, we had a little get-together/impromptou dance party in my room, check out Jake Schickler's facebook in the future if you can, I'll get him to post some of his pics. (He has an SLR camera, which takes amazing photos).

The next day, after sifting through a stack of facebook messages, a group of us went out to see the Go! Team, (for those who don't know, they are a British band with a sort of rock/electronic/hip hop aesthetic) at one of the venues here in Beijing. Not only was it amazingly cheap (less than $10, including free mojitos), but it was also one of the most amazing nights I have ever had. The band put on a phenomenal show, and though I hadn't really listened to their stuff much before, I am now a convert. The crowd was raucus and passionate, and my friends and I all boogied like it was 1956 and The Rat Pack was headlining at the Stardust.

After the show, my friend Charles, who is an avid fan, went up to get his poster signed, and ended up with that and a signed drumstick. On a whim I decided that I would get my shoes, which I had bought here for about $3 US, signed by the band, so I gave them to one of the singers to bring back. I waited around, shoeless for a few minutes, until all of a sudden Ian Parton, the composer and Eddie Van Halen of the band, comes out and offers to buy my shoes from me. I told him I needed to walk home, but I would be happy to point him in the direction of a store at which he could buy them. Turns out they were leaving for Shanghai the next day, so they wouldn't be able to stop in at any WuMei markets to buy a pair. Long story short, he gave me his address in London to mail him a pair when I got back to the states! Talk about good birthday karma! In exchange I got a signed t-shirt, which will give me comfort every time a smug indie kid makes me grind my teeth with exasperation.

After the show got out, we were waiting on the curb for a cab, when my friend Lorelei was invited to a party at the American Ambassador's house-- apparently his son was blacked out and invited basically the entire expat community to go. I declined, feeling tired and dizzy, and also I feel like I can't support one drunkard republican politician without supporting them all.

And look where that got us.


Cheers!

--James

REWARD: LOST BIKE!!!!!!

TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK!!

My beloved bike has been stolen, after only a few minutes outside a mini mart on campus. My heart is broken. It now takes a half an hour to walk to class or to the larger supermarkets.

If found, please contact this blog's owner. Reward is 3 yuan and my undying gratitude.

The Silk Market

Beijing is peppered with a handful of "markets" which aren't markets in the outdoor, casbah sense, but rather large, multistory mall-like buildings constructed on the sites of what were originally commodity-specific trade areas. These markets retain some of their individual characteristics, for instance the Pearl Market has an entire floor of pearls of every quality. The Silk Market has lots of tailors who will make a custom tailored suit for less than 200 dollars American. This market also has tons and tons of knock-off crap and Chinese paraphernalia, and are immensely fun to go to and barter. Stall tenders yell at you, promise the best price, and flatter your Chinese skills and beauty. The most fun is bartering them down to a brutally low price, then walking away and not buying it anyway. I see it as payback for trying to sell me a fake pair of Gucci boxers for 1000% markup. Here's a friend of mine, Olivia, searching for that perfect pair of Beijing Opera-style 6 inch wooden platform shoes.

Me In Heaven

This pic didn't upload to the last post, but I thought it was worth putting up. You can't see in the picture, but God is standing a little to the upper-right.

Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven in Beijing is the former place of worship for the Emperor where, on holy days, he would pray for good harvests. As the father of the nation in an almost literal sense, he was held accountable for any decline in the crops, and could be deposed.

The temple is five times the size of the Forbidden City, but we only had two hours there, which was somewhat disappointing. Its scale is hard to describe, but the main tower has to be as tall as any given church tower, and is opulently decorated. I wish I had had more time there, but since it's pretty expensive to go there, I sadly don't think I'll return. Anyway, here are some photos of some of the lesser pavillions, me and some friends, the Hall for Prayer of Good Harvest, and me at the point considered closest to heaven on earth.

La Vie Quotidien

In response to calls for more information on my personal experiences in Beijing, and less tourist-guide fodder, here is a day in the life of James, Beijing Style:

7:30: Wake up for breakfast. It ends at 8:30, and if I want to get a shower in I have to up myself at this ungodly hour.

9:30 Review Chinese vocab which I will promptly forget as soon as I step out the door. This language is pretty hard....

10-12:00, first class. This is my primary course, which introduces grammatical terms and vocab etc. We've had two teachers so far, I guess our collective beauty blinded the original prof.

12-1:00 Lunch at one of Beida's cafeterias. There are a lot of them, but they all seem to be in the same little alley. If you can make it to the caf, get through the crowds, get your food and eat it before Tutorial starts, you know its an A day.

1-3:00 Tutorial. My T.A., Li Laoshi, is 53 pounds of steely resolve. Also, she has an affinity for Maoist anthems. Solid dame.

3-6:00 any number of activities, ranging from ping pong (ok I only played it once, but I'm not half bad: Thanks Camp Belknap) to hanging out by the lake to exploring the city with friends. This is the Hutong next to our hotel. This part reminds me of the Wild West park at Disney World.

6-8:00 Since we dont have meals provided except breakfast, and since we don't have kitchens, I eat out pretty much every day. Luckily, this rarely puts me back more than 8 dollars US. Here we see Josh and Jill enjoying 40-cent-US-litres (yes litres) of beer. Beer is very popular here, introduced by the Germans in the city of Qingdao. Apparently it takes the edge off of abject poverty.

Weeknights: The best thing about this program is, though it's intensive, it's not particularly hard to keep up with the work when you only have one class. This makes travel really easy, because all you have to do is tell your teacher and take the dictations early. That said, weeknights are pretty exclusively review of vocab. The most difficult thing about Chinese is without a doubt the writing, and unless you use it, you lose it.

Weekend Evenings: When we dont have a scheduled trip planned, we often go out on weekends to local bars etc. to hang out. These photos show a weekend where we went to D-22, a very Montreal-esque rock venue where we saw four very amazing local bands. One had a girl who might have been 15 y.o. and 5 feet flat playing the drums like Sheila E. I wouldn't say Beijing is a party city, certainly it doesn't have the joie de vivre of Montreal. It does, however, have it's persistent pockets of expat-inspired, Chinese-youth-approved coolness that many of us on the trip have come to appreciate.






So there it is, a day in my life, more or less. More to come soon, keep tuned in.

Good fences make good neighbours...

Ahh the Great Wall... What you've all been waiting for. The wall was pretty much everything it's said to be: huge, precipitous, sublime and improbable in its very existence. It was quite a hike up, but it was very worth it. We went to the second-most-popular part of the wall near Beijing, not soaked in tourists like Badaling, but not resting quietly in ruins like Simatai, either. Here are some pictures from my trip, I may go to a more secluded place later on in my trip to go for a nice hike, so expect more to come.


PS sorry for the glare, Beijing is very, very, very hazy. Thanks, General Motors.

This one's for O... my you sure get around!












This is my friend Andrea, who is hanging off the wall hundreds of feet above the jagged rocks below.... Canadians....