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....

BEIJING BICYCLE!

One of the most amazing things about Beijing is how everyone famously uses bicycles. Everywhere. The street, the highway, the sidewalk, the overpasses, the hotel lobby.... and even though the horseless carriage is the wave of the future, I decided that getting a bike would be a better investment in the long run.

So here it is, my beautiful, blue, 20 dollar, brand-new, falls apart every week BIKE!!



I think I'll call her Samantha....

Maybe now my Canadian Friends will Hush up about Americans...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/weekinreview/27vite.html


Here's a great little postmoderny article on tourism in the globalized economy. It seems that Chinese people are the worst tourists and that Americans have lost their mantle as the most obnoxious foreigners. Being in Beijing I can definitely back this up: educated or worldly Chinese aside, most people here are pushy and loud, and a lot of things that are taboo in the West (spitting loudly, burping, public drunkenness) are commonplace here. Furthermore its still provincial enough here that I can see many Chinese not really caring about trying to do as the Romans do.

Weekly Weird Translation #2

This is my class notebook. You can't read it in the picture, but on the cover it says: "All mothers want their sons to grow up to be persident [sic], but they don't want them to become politicians in the process." Inspirational.


So Polite!

The Summer Palace: the Studio 54 of Late Imperial China

Here are some photos of my trip to the Summer Palace. It was originally built by an early Qing
emperor with a Jesuit architect, meant to emulate Versailles and such. Even the Chinese got a case of francophilia back in the day. Anyway the British (of course) burned it down, and its reconstruction costs bankrupted the Chinese economy and led to the revolutions of the early 20th century, then later Maoism and much of the civil strife from which this nation still suffers today. That said, its got a really nice pond. I recommend going here over the Forbidden City, the crowds are a bit more dissipated, and you have more freedom to wander and exlpore. I also definitely recommend renting a boat and tooling around the lake with a picnic and a few beers.

enjoy!


The picture to the left is of the Emperor's personal theatre. I thought it was cool because it is layed out almost exactly like the Globe in London, thrust stage and all.

Why Use Aspirin when You Have Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Heres an interesting photo from a trip my friends Josh and Isabelle took around her grandparent's neighborhood. This lovely "wine" as they call it is used for stomachaches and head pain. Among the ingredients: dried lizard, snake, ginger, and wood. The helpful 'pharmacist' told us it was delicious, so I bought a gallon, drank it all, and promptly went blind.

Weekly Weird Translation #1

Every week I'll post some funny chinese mistranslations for you to munch on. Just one for now, but_Enjoy!


This one incorporates EVERY possible form of enterntainment: Raves, Pubs, AND Discos!

Why Do all my Posts End With Exclaimation Points!

Ni Hao all. It's been a week since I went to Tian'anmen, but since I'm so far behind youll have to contend with the lag. Pretend you're an anxious Dutch merchant who has to wait weeks to see if his order of tea made it out of Shanghai, except youre probably not Dutch nor am I tea.

The square is, for anyone who hasn't been, absurdly large: more of a paved park, really. It was here that I had my first real encounter with chinese hawkers-of-wares. I discovered that my new favorite game is to get them down to a really low price, then say "nevermind" and walk away. Just so you know, never pay more than five kuai for a kitsch Mao watch.

The Forbidden City was undergoing restoration for the Olympics, so the main pavillions were clad in scaffolding that was covered with a big picture of whatever building was being fixed up. Other than that, I found the place to be a little bit of a let-down. It's huge, no doubt, but not impossibly so. It's stripped of all it's ornamentation, so its a bit drab, and it was ridiculously packed with annoying tourists of all national persuasions. That said, I'm glad I did go, I only hope that EVERY sojourn in China won't be so blah. We did make it to the famously innapropriate Starbucks in the palace, and got drinks that would be more than a days salary for most Chinese workers. The old guard is finished, folks, and capitalism tastes deeeelicious. (ed. note: to chinese censors, I promise that that was a joke)

After the palace a group of us went to a Hutong, a traditional Beijing urban neighbourhood with winding alleys for streets and no amenities to speak of. We ate at a really local restuarant and saw our first mao-suited man. Josh was absent -mindedly playing with his chopsticks when a man walked by and laughed at him for not knowing how to use them. Josh's dad owns a Japanese restaurant, for the record, and I think that hurt his pride a little. The hutong opened up into a really fun little market with mostly local people shopping, and we got to hone our bargaining skills some more. I swear, when I come home, I'll never pay sticker price again. We weaved through different clothing shops and knick-knack depots, astounded at the brutally huge amounts of crap there are in China. Want a jadeite foot massager? Howabout three different kinds? A nesting doll with Sadaam Hussein? Go to, my friend, but don't pay more than 10. Josh even made friends with a local, who was more than happy to relieve him of some of his money for very real-looking Ray-bans.

This is turning into a really long post, but it was a really long day. Take a break for snacks, and we'll finish up, sound good? Good.

The most famous shopping street in Beijing is Wangfujing. If you are ever in China, skip it. Its basically a big mall with all western shops and a lot of fat ugly westerners. We then hopped in a cab (5 dollars for cross town? I love this place.) and went to the ex-pat part of town and hit up a bar. We were with our exceedingly tall friend Ben who was enough of a sideshow attraction that we not only got in for free, (common for white people--makes the bar look cooler) but we also got VIP cards to boot. As the night wore on I came to realize more and more how freaking huge Beijing is. There is no downtown, its all just one big calamitous cacophany of chinaness. Everywhere is city, there is no charming west-village type area, or a sparkling business district. It's not quite intimidating, the people are friendly enough that as long as youre not stupid youre pretty guaranteed to be safe. Daunting is a better word: there is no way 11 weeks is enough to really know this city, even if you really wanted to. The best I can do for now I think is to learn and do as much as I can and try to have the best time possible.


Next Time: Summer Palace, Classes start, and I post some pics of the Campus (finally)

The Internet is working!

Hey all! I've finally figured out my internet situation and will hopefully be posting a lot more from now on.

My first few days at Beijing U were pretty frenzied: lots of people speaking strange languages and zipping around on bicycles. First we had to take a test to see what level we would be placed at. This was a very useful test, as it had in actuality no bearing on what class we were put in. The kid next to me was quite cocky about how well he'd do, then got a bloody nose. Aftewards, we met our "chinese language partners." They are students at the university who have nothing better to do than to help obnoxious american students feel at home in their country. Mine is named Jasmine: she wears a hat and is pretty cool. Our parters took us on a tour of the campus, which was built on the site of a mandarin official's summer retreat, only a few minutes from the summer palace proper. I would like to thank said Mandarin official for dying so conveniently and losing all of his property rights, so American missionaries could build a colonialist university upon his home. Anyway if anyone is familiar with Blogger, I would love to post some pictures for you all, and you can enjoy the beautiful scenery of BeiDa as I have. If not, I'm afraid "think pagodas and lots of trees" will have to do until then.

Tomorrow: Trip to Tian'anmen, The Forbidden City, and the projects, Chinese style.

Greetings from Sunny Beijing!

Sorry about the delay in posts, I've been busy getting myself situated, and my computer's internet is not working etc etc. Also, I promise to have pictures soon, im still trying to figure out the best way to get them online (I'm as of now using my roommates computer).

Anyway, to business. My flight was long and arduous, but I got to see some of Siberia and Kamchatka, which I discovered ha no redeeming qualities besides lots and lots of snow. The man next to me (on top of me? Air China is a sardine can.) was eating fish jerky. I did not appreciate this man. The lady in front of me had a loud child. I did not appreciate this lady. At the airport the customs officials were very nice, and they had little electronic meters that you could rate their performance with. I guess with 1.3 billion people in the job market, you have to be extra nice to keep your cushy service job.

The first cab I tried to take wanted to charge me 300 RMB, (roughly 50 dollars) to get to the hotel. I, however, am one canny/worldly/cosmopolitan dude, and knew that was far too much. I told him off, then promptly fell up the escalator as he laughed at me.

When I finally got a decent cab, the driver took me past the Olympic village. It's as big as Montreal, and pretty hideous. You have to wonder how they can build a project so big but still have unsafe drinking water. I dont think that the Swiss fencing team will appreciate getting Mao Zedong's Revenge.

About the time when I got to the University, I realized I had absolutely no idea where the hotel was. Apparently, neither did anyone else. Seeing as how it was getting dark, and starting to rain heavily, I thought it would be a good time to get out of the cab and wander around until I found it. As the streetlights grew brighter and the sidewalk petered away into highway, I came to find out that this was not such a good plan. Just as I was mentally preparing myself to spend the night in the park, I bumped into an anglophone who knew the hotel. I'll post pictures later, it looks like an embassy. The roommates got all mixed up, so I didnt end up being with my friend Josh, (who is tall and torontonian), but out of complete coincidence ended up with another friend, Jake (who is less tall and american).

Theres more to say, but right now I have to go study. Next Post: first day of classes, chinese language partners, and apples with a banana taste.

Welcome!

Hello all, and welcome to my first attempt at blogging.

Though I have long been reluctant (recalcitrant?) to/about starting one of these, my upcoming trip to China for 11 weeks changed my mind. It's not that I think a blog on a study abroad is particularly original, or that I will do a remarkably great job at writing one, its just laziness. Yes folks, while i like and in some cases love all of you, I frankly cannot write all of you emails detailing my daily life. So here it is, friends and family, a convenient way to avoid awkward conversations about what I did all summer, and hopefully a way I can share a little of what I hope will be a most excellent summer with all of you.


Posts coming soon!