China - An Overview

Yeah... I know... it has been three and a half months since my last post. Blogging can be exhausting sometimes, and the Chinese government blocks all useful websites (like this one), so rather than go through the mildly time consuming process of using a proxy website to illegally access my blog, I took the lazy route and neglected it altogether. I apologize.

So China --

There is no way I can sum up these past three and a half months in one blog post, but I'm going to try because I don't have the patience to tell every story. (Plus - if I told you everything now what stories would I have when I get back home?) So, this post has the potential to be a long one.

--Arrival and First Impressions--

My 48 hour train ride from Hanoi to Beijing was very exciting. Most of the passengers were Vietnamese students heading north for to start their fall classes in Chinese universities, who could speak either English or Chinese -- enough in common to do some basic communicating. I ran into two other Westerners who were very nice to have when crossing the quite intimidating Vietnam-China border. We spent both days on the train talking with people from all over Asia (including the coach of the North Korean Women's Soccer Team), and it was eye opening to say the least.

Our first actual stop in China was a tiny city of 1.5 million people called Nanning, in the Guangxi province. I was helping to interpret Chinese for the two girls I had met, and was very impressed with my ability to find banks, restaurants, and discuss border clearance issues with the Chinese immigration officials. About China though, I was thoroughly impressed. The countryside was VERY "Chinese" looking, which is in contrast to many places in Southeast Asia that seemed either Western influenced, generically simple, or just lacked a respective cultural aesthetic. The city of Nanning was clean and lively. The people were friendly and happy. The language was clear and easy to understand. And best of all, whenever the train stopped at a new station, the Vietnamese kids would pull me off the train with them to grab a quick bowl of noodle soup from the platform vendors, and the food was great!

When we arrived in Beijing, I decided to spend the day with the two girls I had met, find a hostel, and then head off to campus the next day for orientation at my program. While riding from the train station to Tiananmen Square in a taxi, I was blown away by the colossal grandeur of Beijing. The main boulevards were 10 lanes wide, the forbidden city palaces and central government offices were monolithic, the number of cars was incredible but so far efficiently managed, the sidewalks were sparkling clean, the bridges and roads were in pristine condition, and the skyscraper littered cityscape extended far into the horizon (which I had no problem seeing because it was sunny and very clear.. what is this terrible pollution everyone always complains about??) This couldn't be the capital of a third world country! Compared to some of the places I had been in the last two months, I was very excited to call Beijing my new home.

After walking around downtown for a while, I found a hostel in the middle of a hutong - Beijing's one story, traditional , narrow-alleyway neighborhoods (very cool). Inside the hostel was a large courtyard with traditional Chinese layout and decoration. Aesthetics were clearly important, which was overwhelmingly impressive. The neighborhood was teeming with life, and I walked around exploring the alleys and street vendors, noshing on snacks I picked up along the way - a fried pancake for 5 cents here, a lamb kebab for 10 cents there.

Later on, a Chinese guy from the hostel helped me negotiate for a cheap second hand cell phone - about 20 bucks for the phone plus 100 minutes. When choosing your number, there is a book with different pages displaying the numbers under different price categories. If a number has more 4's for example, it will be cheaper because 4 is an unlucky number - 4 is pronounced sì in Chinese, which is almost identical to the word for death - si (with a different tone). Similarly, 514 is a terrible combination. Pronounced wuyaosi, it sounds very close to woyaosi, which means "I will die." Because of the way the Chinese language repeats its limited set of spoken syllables, assigning many meanings to one sound, most phone numbers have hidden messages, making some more desirable than others, and therefore more or less expensive.

-- My Program and Peking University --

I took a cab to the university the next morning to settle into my room for orientation week. I was really enjoying talking to the cab drivers at this point and listening to their strange version of Mandarin which uses the famous Beijing erhua - a fairly obnoxious obsession with adding the -er suffix to every sound possible. For example the sentence "Where do you want to go? Peking University's West Gate?" Normally this would be pronounced - "Qu nali? Beida xi men ma?" However a Beijing cab driver somehow makes this sound like "Qu naerr? Beida xi mrrr ma?"

The campus is fantastic, I have plenty of pictures of it in my albums if you're interested. After moving in to my room and unpacking, I wandered around and met my new dorm mates. I returned to my room later on in the day to find a bald guy in his mid 40s standing at my door, who greeted me with "Hi, I'm you're room mate.." I had no clue what to say, as this was completely unexpected - I was flooded with horrific hypotheticals of 9 o'clock bedtimes, smelly bathrooms, awkward conversation, and a stunted social life. And then he said, "but lucky for you I got myself an apartment down the street, so you have the room to yourself all semester!" Thank god.... Either way, he ended up being pretty cool, and since he had spent time here already over the summer and was familiar with the area, he showed some of us newcomers around and explained the basic routines and necessities of life in Beijing.

My program begins --

CIEE - some love it, most regard it as the hand of Satan. The first few days of orientation were appreciated, but we quickly discovered that our directors and the program layout are very unorganized and arbitrary. We also realized that this is how pretty much everything is in China. They charge us 10 times the regular price for Beida tuition, and do very little to make up for it. We have been on two main group trips to different parts of the country - Henan and Nanjing - and although interesting, I would have gotten way more out of the experiences had I traveled independently.

I have class 5 days a week, anywhere from four to six hours a day (way more than back home, but I'm getting less credits....) Everything is in Chinese, and I'm not sure my professors can speak any English. The classes are very hard, and no - China has not figured out a better way of teaching its language than America has -- it's exactly like back home but more intense.

I live in a dorm with all Americans, and we take classes with all international students -- meaning it is very difficult to meet the Chinese students.

-- The Food --

Chinese food is great, and it is definitely better than the Chinese food back home. Although three food poisonings later, I do miss American Chinese food a little... I can never quite look at lamb intestine shish kabobs the same way again.

After three months, I can definitely say I miss American food. I crave fresh, raw vegetables more than anything else. (As much as you may enjoy that Chinese mandarin orange salad back home, keep in mind that it is an American luxury -- salad does not exist in China.)

I also miss boneless chicken. Fillet is not in the Chinese vocabulary, while unfortunately, "hacked-into-tiny-bony-pieces" definitely is. That goes for fish too, which are cooked and served whole, and somehow have more bones than scales.

The one thing I can't complain about though is the price. You will never find something cheaper than a meal in Beijing. It is easy to go out with a group of ten people and pay no more than 20 US dollars.. TOTAL!

-- The People --

They yell, the spit, they fart, they scratch, they pick, they piss, they smell, they snarl, and they eat babies -- all in public. Period.

-- The City --

No joke, Beijing is the size of Belgium. It takes me an hour to get into the city center with no traffic. -- Public transportation across town? Expect a good two hours of hell and frustration.

I'm sure you've heard about the pollution, and yes it is that bad. It is bad enough to be considered its own category of weather. -- "Tomorrow will be dry and sunny with a change of rain. Wednesday will be polluted and windy." -- When the pollution rolls in and gets caught by the bowl of mountains that surround Beijing, it is probably better not to leave your house. There are days when I literally can't see further than half a city block in front of me. You wouldn't be able to play tennis outside because you wouldn't be able to find your partner unless you had dolphin-like echolocation -- but I'm sure the toxic pollution cloud would interfere with that too, so sorry, forget about outdoor activities.

Beijing does have pretty much everything you would need on a day to day basis, and has plenty of options for amusement and killing the time.

The food options are pretty good, but I wouldn't go into a foreign restaurant with any expectations whatsoever (except for one Indian place we found.. not too shabby.)

-- The Prices --

Beijing is incredibly cheap if you know how to bargain. Some things like food and transportation are cheap no matter what, but the Beijing market is the true test of your haggling skills. The Silk Street Market is no place for the weak. A foreigner here will be approached in his native language, whether it be English, Spanish, Japanese, German, Finnish, or Swahili (these ladies know it all) with a price that he or she would expect to find in his or her own country -- maybe higher. For example, a polo t-shirt could be offered at 280 RMB (about 40 USD) because they know stupid westerners will pay this much. However, after some very hard bargaining, it is not uncommon to end up paying 20 RMB (a little under $3). Not only will they try to rip you off, however, they will also make up the most ridiculous lies to convince you to buy their product. A week ago I was in a market looking for winter coats. I found one that I liked and tried it on, but it was too big and I told the lady trying to sell it to me. She assured me that Beijingers only wear coats 5 times their size because they are warmer and they are much better looking. I told her that I would rather have a coat that fit. She told me that if I were to wear a smaller jacket I would probably freeze to death, and I would also have no friends because small coats are ugly. So - I asked for a smaller size (the tag said XXL) and the lady reluctantly said "fiiinneee, stay here, I'll see if I can find a smaller one". She ran out of the stall with the jacket and came back a few minutes later with another one wrapped in plastic, sized XL. It was still too big when I tried it on, so I asked again for a smaller one. She complained to me that that was the smallest they had, and that it looked soooo good on me the way it was. But I wanted one that fit, so I said smaller or nothing. She took the jacket and yelled to someone in another stall in another dialect that I don't understand, and then tossed the jacket over the separator to him, telling me that he had a smaller one, which he quickly passed back over in a plastic bag. It was size L, but it was exactly the same as the first and second jackets. I looked at the tag and realized that they had been taking the same jacket and cutting X's off the tag so that it went from XXL to XL to L. I called her out on the scam, and she was a little embarrassed, but she promised to give me a pengyou (we're friends!) discount if I bought it. Of course I didn't. --- Such is shopping in Beijing, a long, tedious, frustrating process that leaves most bitter and exhausted. If you call your friend and they say they just got back from the Yaxiu clothing market, it is probably not a good idea to ask them out for drinks -- let them sleep off their hatred for the world.

-- The Tourists --

Simple -- we despise you. Foreigners living in Beijing feel some kind of strange right to the city that does not belong to tourists. Unless you are a family member or friend visiting us personally, and we are showing you around, we will complain about you and how you have no place in our city. We will hypocritically call you a laowai or a waiguoren, which are the discriminatory terms used by the native Beijingers against all foreigners (including us).

I do encourage you to visit Beijing, but please do not go to the hutong or other cultural places and pay 40 dollars for an "authentic" rickshaw ride around the alleyways that lasts 10 minutes. Please do not go to quanjude Peking Duck restaurants and pay 80 dollars for a terrible touristy bastardization of a Beijing delicacy. Please do not go to a market and assume you are getting a good price if you are speaking English -- chances are that you are paying 5x the actual price. And last, but not least, please respect the local culture. I can't tell you how many times I've seen screaming matches between westerners and locals because of cultural differences and ignorant Americans who expect everyone to speak English and give them everything they want.

Sorry for ranting..

-- The Language --

Chinese is a great language that I will never master. I have never heard a foreigner who can fluently speak it like a local, and I have met a lot of foreigners. Learning any European language would sound like a vacation to me compared to Chinese. I have definitely improved since arriving, but I have a LONG way to go.

-- The Conclusion --

Despite my complaints, which I express far more than my compliments, I love China and I love Beijing. This is an adventure for me that I can never replace -- it is a challenge, not a vacation. I enjoy every minute of it, and the difficulties that I encounter only make me appreciate even more what I have back home.