New Year's Trip to Shanxi Province

First of all, I would like to apologize for taking so long to update my blog…I know you were all waiting for the next entry with bated breath, but I’ve been extremely busy lately, and most recently, our group ventured west to Shanxi province for a long weekend to celebrate China’s high holidays. Details coming later in the entry…

Secondly, 新年快乐! 春节快乐! For those of you unable to read Chinese characters, that reads “Xinnian kuaile!” (Happy New Year!) and “Chunjie kuaile!” (Happy Spring Festival!), respectively. Right now we are in the midst of China’s holiday season, which means I’m now on spring break.

Now for trip details: this past weekend we took a group trip to the cities of Taiyuan and Pingyao, both of which are in Shanxi province. Shanxi province is where much of China’s coal is mined, so needless to say, it was difficult to avoid the dust that seemed to cover everything. We spent the first night (New Year’s Eve!) in Taiyuan, which is the capital of Shanxi province. The next two nights were spent in the ancient city of Pingyao, which remains enclosed by an extensive wall and contains streets so narrow that we had to get off the bus in order take what looked like extended golf carts to our hotel.

The trip to Taiyuan took about eight hours, which included several rest stops. As long as I’m relatively comfortable, I don’t usually mind long car or bus trips because it’s during such trips that I am able to sit back and observe the world around me. This trip was a chance for me to see China for the first time outside of Beijing. It was the first time I was able to observe the way of life of most Chinese. Sometimes if you spend too much time in the cities you start to neglect to keep in mind the fact that there is so much more to China than what exists in the urban areas.

We left Beida (Peking University, in case you forgot) bright and early Saturday morning. As usual, the air was thick with smog. Sometimes it’s so smoggy here that you can almost taste it in the air – especially when you run, as I often do. As we drove further and further from the city, I expected the air to become clearer, but it didn’t. It was smoggy almost all the way to Taiyuan. I tried to pretend it was fog, but it looks different, and when you step outside, the air is very dry and smells strange. We would pass signs that mentioned various mountains that we couldn’t see because of the smog. In actuality, despite the heavy amounts of smog we encountered that day, there are some days, usually when it’s windy, where the smog is not as terrible. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any of those days this weekend. It was funny, actually, because during the bus ride I was listening to my iPod, and at one point, as I was observing the smog, that song by the Who, “I Can See for Miles” came on. How ironic!

Most of what we drove through as we made our way across the Chinese countryside was farmland. Despite the lingering smog, driving through the hills was very beautiful. That particular region of China is very hilly, and as we reached some of the higher elevations it became easier to see the mountains. It reminded me of the hills around the San Fernando Valley near LA. The land is very arid and brown, and the villages we passed that were essentially built into the hills consisted of small, unassuming homes made of what I think was rammed earth with brick and stone. The residents of these villages had decorated their homes for New Year’s with red lanterns and door decorations that consist of poetic couplets proclaiming happy wishes on red paper, and I thought the bits of red against such a barren backdrop was beautiful. One of the things that I found interesting, if not somewhat amusing, about these little villages was that a lot of the homes had satellite dishes which looked very odd in places that probably haven’t changed much since they were built so long ago. I wonder if they get HBO?

Here are some of the hills with terraces for farming (photo courtesy of Katie Stone):

This how all the doorways were decorated:

As we drove through this more mountainous region of China, I would see people walking through the hills, some of them guiding small flocks of sheep, and they looked so tiny compared to the landscape behind them. If we hadn’t driven past them so fast, I would have taken a picture because it reminded me of the ancient Chinese landscape paintings I studied in school. Many of these landscape paintings would feature amazing scenes of mountains and rivers and exotic plants, and against these sweeping backdrops there would be a lone, diminutive person, painted so small as to further emphasize the vastness of the land around them. It really was amazing to see for myself what had probably inspired these Chinese landscape artists. I also couldn’t help but imagine what these places must have looked like during various periods of Chinese history, like during Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution.

As much as I enjoyed the bus ride itself, the rest stops were another story. We would typically stop for a short break every two hours or so. I always dread using public restrooms in China because most of the time, they really are quite disgusting. The toilets basically consist of holes in the floor or ground, and using them requires some uncomfortable squatting. The whole time you’re trying to balance yourself over the hole, you’re simultaneously trying to take as few breaths as possible because the place usually reeks and you get the sense that you’re probably inhaling some nasty bacteria. Also, you are rarely provided with toilet paper, so when traveling in China, it is a good idea to always carry some with you. Every time I have an encounter with one of the more unpleasant sides of Chinese culture, like the restrooms, I have to keep reminding myself that I did not come to study in China because it’s one of these glamorous vacation destinations where many students study abroad. I came to China to experience life in one of the world’s most important emerging powers, a country Stephen Colbert has aptly referred to as our “frenemy”. For those of you who haven’t heard this term before or who have not seen Mean Girls, when you ask yourself if someone is your friend or enemy, they are your frenemy. I think it’s a term that pretty much sums up the current Sino-American relationship.

Anyway, enough about the bus ride. We finally arrived in Taiyuan at around four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m pretty sure the entire city of Taiyuan is under construction. It seemed like literally every building had a crane on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many construction cranes concentrated in one place. It was unreal. I think if I went back to Taiyuan in six months or a year, it would look much, much different from when I saw it this weekend.

The evening we spent in Taiyuan was New Year’s Eve. Our main group broke up into smaller groups of two or three students that were dispersed to different Chinese families for New Year’s Eve dinner. My friend Gretchen and I spent New Year’s Eve with a wonderful family that has a son our age who is studying science and technology and wants to go to graduate school in the US. Guess what one of the schools on his list is? None other than the University of Maryland! Needless to say, I was quite excited when I found out. Some of his friends came over, and before dinner, we all visited a small temple near their apartment where Gretchen and I took part in some traditional prayer and lit incense. It was pretty cool. Back at the apartment, we helped them decorate their door for the New Year. We then entered the kitchen to make one of New Year’s most traditional dishes: dumplings (or jiaozi in Chinese)! As many of you probably know, my cooking skills are virtually nonexistent, and as a result, my dumplings were pretty dreadful. My ugly jiaozi did manage to provide some comic relief, however. Dinner was delicious and mainly consisted of traditional Chinese dishes. It was so great to have a home-cooked meal for once. After dinner, we set of some fireworks, which I further describe in the next paragraph. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed spending New Year’s Eve in the home of a Chinese family. It was a great opportunity to compare Chinese holiday traditions to traditions in the US. Actually, their traditions reminded me a lot of Christmas traditions in the US, especially my family’s traditions. It was interesting.

Here Gretchen and I are with our new Chinese friends with whom we spent New Year's Eve:

Now onto Chinese fireworks: basically, I’ve seen and heard more fireworks and firecrackers and sparklers during these past few days than I’ve probably seen in my entire life. During the evening it sounds like we’re in a war zone and they even set them off during the day. The Chinese are pretty crazy when it comes to fireworks. In fact, as I write this, I can hear them going off in Beijing and it's 9:30am on Friday morning! Apparently fireworks will be going off for the next couple of weeks until Spring Festival ends with the Lantern festival.

Early the next morning, looking out the window of my hotel room:

This is after one night of firecrackers...yeah, there were a lot:
We spent the rest of our trip in a city called Pingyao, which is an ancient city built in Ming/Qing dynasty tradition. The city consists of buildings constructed hundreds of years ago using traditional Chinese dynastic period architecture and is completely surrounded by a tall, thick wall. The streets are so narrow that we had to get off the bus at the entrance and ride golf cart-type vehicles to our hotel. It’s a very enchanting city, especially at night when all of the red lanterns are lit.

Scenes from Pingyao:

My friends and I spent most of our time walking around the city, visiting shops and seeing some of the historical sites. There were some carnival-type games on the sidewalks, and of course we had to compete to try to win some prizes. We drew a crowd of Chinese people, mainly children, who wanted to make fun of the funny looking waiguoren (foreigners) trying to win prizes! We draw stares wherever we go in China, even in Beijing, but it was especially noticeable in Pingyao. In fact, people we passed in the streets would often shout out “hello!” and would be absolutely delighted when we responded. One afternoon my friends and I were eating lunch at a local hostel, and those of us who know some Chinese ended up having a long conversation with one of the waitresses. One of my friends was adopted from South Korea when he was a baby, but many people, including the waitress, assume that he’s Chinese and try talking to him. She looked absolutely bewildered when he had two white girls use Chinese to explain to her the fact that he was adopted. I wish I could have captured it somehow because my description doesn’t do any justice to the absurdity of the situation!

Here I am attempting to win something:

Our hotel was really cool. It was very traditionally Chinese. All of our rooms opened out into a courtyard where we lit off fireworks one of the nights. The architecture, in addition to being very intricate, was also very colorful, as it had been painted with various scenes. The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that the shower was a showerhead coming out of the wall and a drain in the middle of the floor, so almost the entire bathroom gets a shower in addition to you. Other than that, I liked it a lot.

Ok, so one more story: I was walking along the top of the wall of Pingyao with a few of my friends when we came upon a Chinese family, also walking along the wall. We started talking to them, and this older guy, who didn’t speak much English at all, asked us where we were from. I told him I’m from the Northeast of the United States, and he suddenly says, in clear English, “Maine!” I was shocked. Most people in China have never heard of Maine – I usually hold up my arm and pretend it’s the Northeast and then point to my hand and tell them that’s Maine. I still don’t really know why he knew about Maine, of all places, but it was one of the funnier things that’s happened to me on this trip.

Here I am on Pingyao's Wall:

Whew! That was quite a post, but it was also quite a trip. I had a great time, but it was nice to get back to Beida and rinse off all the dust that I had accumulated all over myself and my stuff. I have a few days left of break before it’s back to school and work – unfortunately we have our midterm papers and projects coming up. I also have to do some research for Model UN. In a few weeks I’ll be representing South Africa on the Security Council at the Asian International Model United Nations Conference here at Beida. It should be interesting, and I can’t wait to write all about it!

In the meantime, I hope all’s well with everyone, and I’ll try to update this blog soon with more frequent, shorter posts!

Internship

I completely forgot to mention this in my last post, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I recently started an internship at the Beijing bureau of the LA Times! My first day was last Thursday, so I'm still not sure what exactly I will be doing, but I'll definitely make sure to keep you all posted!

Superbowl in Beijing!

Finally – the Superbowl post!

Watching the Superbowl in China was probably one of the stranger experiences I’ve had (and it’s not just because it involved watching Peyton Manning avoid choking in a big game). A lot of people from our group spent the preceding night (did I say night? I meant to say the entire weekend!) celebrating the 21^st birthday of one of our friends (you can only imagine what that entailed) and decided to stay out all night until the Superbowl, which aired at 7am Beijing time. Unfortunately, I, on the other hand, had to pull an all-nighter with the massive amounts of homework I had acquired and somehow neglected to do until late Sunday night (anyone surprised? That’s what I thought). Needless to say, we all finally rendezvoused at a place that claims to be Beijing’s best sport’s bar, a British bar called Goose & Duck.

Here's Goose & Duck upon our arrival at around 6am:

We arrived at Goose & Duck at around 6am, thinking we might perhaps be able to see some of the pre-game show, but alas, we were subjected to what appeared to be NFL Films-type coverage of highlights of past and present glories of the Colts and Bears (though mostly Colts). It was certainly not what I had expected or wanted to see, but I was happy to at least see some good ole’ American football. I was psyched for the game itself. Thanks to the people who stayed out all night and arrived at the bar at around 3 or 4am, we had seats that were front and center to the big screen set up for the game. The bar slowly became more crowded with ex-pats (expatriates) as game time approached. That was the largest number of Americans I’ve been amongst in Beijing so far. A lot of them were wearing suits, and my hypothesis that they might be businessmen proved to be correct when, much to their chagrin, they had to leave at halftime in order to make it to their respective meetings on time. There were also some random British guys pulling for the Colts. I saw a lot of Bears fans, but my favorite was a guy wearing a Red Sox sweatshirt. I was wearing a Patriots shirt, marking myself as an obvious New Englander, and there ensued an instant bond that only two displaced citizens of Red Sox nation can understand.

Here are some of the people watching the Superbowl:

Anyway, everyone who cares about football knows what happened during the game, so I’ll spare you the play-by-play. One of the strangest things about watching the Superbowl in China was that because it was broadcast on ESPN International, we didn’t get the commercials or funky graphics that are critical parts of Superbowl coverage in the US. I didn’t mind the lack of unnecessary graphics, but I would have liked to have seen some good commercials. Maybe I’ll YouTube them when I get the time. In any case, watching the Superbowl this way made it seem much less significant. There wasn’t much hype leading up to it, and there really wasn’t anything that would distinguish this game from any other regular season game. The fact that it was raining in Miami didn’t help. During commercial breaks we saw the same three commercials about a million times. However, there was a cool feature during the ad breaks on ESPN International called “Amazing Games”. This consisted of a brief introduction to and footage of some of the world’s strangest games, which included bull running, Mongolian wrestling, and some type of stick-beating game from somewhere in South America, among other sports. My favorite was the unicycle segment, which featured in its final clip a man hurling his unicycle at a trash can after a devastating loss in a unicycle race. It was hilarious.

I’m assuming most of you saw Prince’s halftime show, which I thought was a little crazy but altogether one of the best halftime shows I’ve ever seen. The greatest part, however, was when the show’s final song, the ever-famous “Purple Rain”, ended, and one of the random sportscasters covering the game goes, “that….was….AMAZING.” This prompted a great deal of laughter from everyone in the bar.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Goose & Duck provided all of the Superbowl watchers with free breakfast! It was pretty good, although initially a little different because apparently it was a more traditional English breakfast. I was glad to use a fork and knife, which doesn’t happen very often here.

So the game went on, and we all know how it ended (sigh). I wasn’t as anti-Colts as I thought I would be, although I’m sure it’s because I was spared the sight of them manhandling the Pats in the AFC championship game (how the Pats managed to blow such a huge lead is beyond me). Also, I probably would have despised Peyton Manning more if I were subjected to what I’ve heard was relentless Peyton Manning-centered coverage leading up to the Superbowl. At any rate, though I know I would have enjoyed the game much more immensely had it featured Brady and the Pats, it was still fun to watch my favorite game after a football dry spell.

It was a little surreal to watch the game and see early morning sunlight start to stream through the windows. When we left the bar at the end of the game, the brightness was a little overwhelming. Some of the people from the program won footballs, so we proceeded to take a bunch of Heisman trophy-inspired photos outside the bar before groggily heading back to campus.

The entrance to Goose & Duck right after the Superbowl (this must have been at around 11am or noon):

The ubiquitous Heisman pose:

All in all, I had a great time. There were a few instances during the game when I became kind of nostalgic and wanted more than anything to be watching it back in the States, but then I looked around and appreciated the fact that I was in such good company. I know I wasn’t the only one in the room experiencing brief waves of wistfulness, and I took comfort in the undeclared bond that existed between all of us at the bar who were there to enjoy such an American tradition thousands of miles from home.

Part of the Superbowl group (photo courtesy of Jenny Lu):

FYI – In case you didn’t already know, this summer, the NFL is coming to China! Even better, one of the teams is none other than our amazing New England Patriots! They’ll be playing the Seattle Seahawks in Beijing in August. Too bad I won’t be here to see it live! Hmmm…maybe I can convince them they need my help…

Soon it'll be time to listen to MARYLAND play duke in THE basketball game of the season! GO TERPS!!

Coffeeshop Randomness

I actually wrote this post a few days ago but was unable to put it up because of internet issues, surprise, surprise. Also, COMING SOON - my Beijing Superbowl experience...get psyched!

February 3, 2007

As I was walking back to the dorm today from a study session at the campus coffee shop, I came up with a really great idea I was planning on describing in my blog upon my return, but since then I’ve been distracted and, unfortunately, the astute piece of insight I once had has been forgotten.

However, I do have an interesting story to share (it’s good, I promise!). So today I spent my afternoon at the campus coffee shop, Paradiso, trying to make a dent in the massive amounts of reading I was assigned this week. I really like Paradiso – it has a very cozy atmosphere, they play great music, and the coffee is pretty good and pretty cheap. Right now it’s a great place to study, but I’m sure things will change once the majority of the campus returns from winter break at the end of February. Anyway, I had just plunged into my reading when a random Chinese guy walks up to me and goes, “you’re a foreigner! Where are you from?” When I replied that I was American, he goes, “fascinating!” and proceeds to pull up a chair and plops down at my table. The ensuing conversation was kind of interesting and definitely amusing, to say the least. I spent most of the time entertained by the fact that this guy simply decided to interrupt my studying to pull up a chair, uninvited, and start talking to me about America. I didn’t mind it too much because it’s a great opportunity to practice my Chinese and learn some things about life in China. Actually, this isn’t the first time a random Chinese person has approached me to talk about America; a few days ago a girl came up to me to ask me how her friend could get an American passport (trust me, trying to explain things of that nature to someone in Chinese is incredibly difficult!), but this was the first time someone decided to interrupt me when I was clearly already absorbed by something else.

So whoever this guy was sits down and immediately opens the book I was reading (Governing China: From Revolution through Reform) and starts reading aloud from it. After reading several passages, he starts talking very loudly and enthusiastically about Chinese government. It turns out he’s a constitutional law major at PKU, so he started asking me about the US Constitution. At one point he said very loudly, “the US Constitution is based on the LURE OF LAW, the LURE OF LAW!” I was kind of confused, thinking, “‘lure of law’? What is that?” Then I realized that he, like many Chinese people, was pronouncing his Ls like Rs, and vice versa, so he really meant to say “rule of law”. I don’t mean to sound like I’m making fun of him because Lord knows my Chinese probably sounds hilarious to most native speakers, but it was very amusing because he was being so loud! Needless to say, it was an all-around odd experience.

UPDATE (one day later): My friends and I went back to Paradiso to study. You can probably guess what happens next…yes, our friend (whose English name is apparently Richard) came back again to grace us with his presence. About fifteen minutes into the conversation, some other Chinese people at a nearby table decided to pull up their chairs as well and join in. I don’t know that we’ll be making many more study trips to Paradiso, seeing as we can’t seem to get any work done without being interrupted!