Simatai Great Wall, and such

We're already a quarter done with the program. How ridiculous is that?

Anyway... One of the awesome things about DSICP is that the teachers take us on a trip every weekend to explore the sights of Beijing/China. It's a great way to alleviate the stress of having to study one lesson per day during the week, not to mention take cool photos and get to know my fellow students better. This weekend, we went to Simatai Great Wall to spend the night and then "watch the sunset" from the wall in the morning. I know it's more interesting to view photos from the experience than to read about it, but just to mention some highlights...

• Sleeping for the entire three-hour-long bus ride to Simatai
• Going on a mini hike after dinner on Friday
• Almost stepping on a centipede while showering (obviously, I use the word "highlight" loosely)
• Starting the trek up the wall at 3:00 am
• Struggling up what felt like a million steps, though in reality it was probably only a few hundred
• Finding a quiet rest stop ahead of everyone else and being able to listen to the sounds of nature for a while
• Millipedes... everywhere
• Crazy Chinese children's TV show about colors, numbers, and nonsensical English
• Five hour nap after returning to our rooms
  

Well, that's enough of that. Please enjoy the photos. I made sure to upload the correct ones this time.


Our hotel looked really ancient, but I don't think it actually was.


My two roommates. So sensitive and in tune with nature.


Water droplets on the table at the restaurant we went to. The food was mediocre, unfortunately.


This one is particularly intense. I'm going to try to document all the different faces he makes in pictures.


I like how everyone is looking in a different direction. Sai Laoshi wins for looking at my camera.


Scenic view.


Behold, the reason why "watch the sunset" is in quotes. The fog made for some pretty photos though.

The internet is not being my friend today, so I'll have to cut this entry short. Before I go, I just want to mention two China-related articles (by the same author) that I find particularly interesting. One, which my friend Ricky mentioned in his latest blog post, is about the legendary "Great Firewall of China," how easy it is to bypass, and why it's effective anyway. The other looks at the opportunity for improvement inherent within the environmental crisis in China, without being naively optimistic. They're a little long, but definitely worth the read if you have some free time.

Bedtime for me. 晚安！

The post you've all been waiting for

I'm currently at Yolanda Coffee, which is about a five minute walk from the CNU campus. I found out today that they offer "free" wireless internet, though it's not really free since you have to buy something from the relatively overpriced menu first. Anyway, the connection seems pretty fast and reliable, so I'm going to attempt to upload some of the photos I've taken so far.


A lovely way to start off: the pollution in Beijing is so bad that you can literally look at the sun (though you probably shouldn't). This is the sun as seen from the main entrance of our dormitory/classroom building.


My room when I first arrived. My side currently looks more or less the same as it did then, which is surprising, considering how cluttered my room at Yale was.


Some friends I met during the tour on the first day.


A transaction taking place in Hypermarket. That's right, it's not just a supermarket, it's Hypermarket.


A bicycle cart thingy outside the Thai restaurant I went to on the first weekend.


Yummyyy.


Yay for new friends!


My roommate, David. I'm pretty sure he's incapable of keeping a straight face on camera.


Awesome calligrapher in Gugong.


Another photo of Gugong.


Yet another photo of Gugong. I like the colors in this one.


Zhao Laoshi! The only male teacher for second year.


Roland, or as everyone here calls him, Ro Ro.


Mmm cheap, delicious jiaozi. You know you want some.


There he goes again.


Apparently KFC is a delicacy in China. We did not treat it as such, as you can see.

I'm about to run out of battery, so I'll upload more photos later. We're going to the Great Wall tomorrow and spending the night there, as long as the weather holds--pretty exciting stuff. But for now, I have to 好好(儿)学习 for my exam tomorrow. Until next time!

Edit
Back in my room, where the internet is spotty and the air is stale. Sigh.

So I was wondering why all my photos were the same size and looked underexposed/desaturated... Then I realized that I had uploaded the raw image files rather than the touched-up photos, which are in a different folder in my hard drive. (For any photography enthusiasts out there, I use Aperture v1.5.6.) Talk about 麻烦... Two hours of uploading--that is, two fewer hours of studying for my exam--and all I have to show for it are a bunch of washed out, 很难看 photos. Oh well. I hope you enjoy them anyway.

Week one, check

This entry may be a little long. Just a warning.

Where to start, where to start... I finally got some exercise on Thursday playing soccer with some DSIC and CNU students. I was exhausted after playing for just half an hour, though I'm not sure how much of that was because I'm out of shape and how much was because of the air pollution and lack of sufficient oxygen in my muscles. It was definitely fun though, especially getting to know the local students.

We had our first exam on Friday, and it was about as difficult as I expected it to be. The last question was an essay in which we had to use several of the grammar structures we had learned during the week. The prompt asked for 100 characters, which I thought was a lot at first, but after writing for a bit I realized that 100 characters wasn't even close to enough to express what I wanted to say. I guess I need to learn how to make my writing more concise. Afterwards, we had an oral exam during which we had to talk about our interview with a CNU student. We had all written a 200+ character essay about the interview, but many of us (including myself) didn't realize that we weren't supposed to look at the essay during the oral exam. I suppose it was silly of me to expect that we'd simply reading our essays aloud--it is an oral exam, not a reading exam, after all. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have very nice teachers grading me, and they let me take a peek at my essay from time to time. I think I'll be more prepared next week.

That evening, the teachers treated us out to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant for our weekly "中文桌子," or "Chinese table." I got to sit with my two favorite teachers, which was pretty awesome. Amusingly enough, one of them ordered suanlatang and made the Yalies eat it. It wasn't as delicious as I expected, but I ate my fair share anyway. (For those of you who haven't taken Chinese 115, suanlatang is hot and sour soup, and it was in one of our dialogue about ordering food.)

Some fellow Yalies (but not DSICPers) were meeting up that night at Huixinqiaobeikou for karaoke, so after dinner, Lei Laoshi took us to the Chegongzhuang subway station on her way home, and we slowly worked our way to Huixinqiaobeikou from there. The Chinese subway system is surprisingly clean, modern, and convenient (and cheap of course), so I'll probably be taking it again in the future. Our friend Carol met us in the lobby of Partyworld, the karaoke place, and we spent a good couple hours singing and dancing and being silly in general. One thing I noticed was that all the Chinese songs at KTV are in traditional characters, but that's okay since people who sing those songs usually know the lyrics already (e.g. me singing Tong Hua). Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and took a taxi home, since the subway station was already closed.

Saturday was also a lot of fun. The teachers took us on a winding tour through Gugong, ending at Tiananmen. There was a lot of construction and repair work going on, which I can only surmise was because the upcoming Olympics. Fortunately, there were still many opportunities to take pretty photos, so my camera saw a lot of action. I really wish CNU's internet would stop being so slow and unreliable--at this rate, I'm not going to be able to upload pictures until I get to Korea in August. Anyway, after Gugong and Tiananmen, several students went to Xidan to eat and shop. I almost didn't go, but it's a good thing I did. Not only did I get to know my teachers better, but I also got to buy some good Chinese books (especially one called I Am Your Friend of Panda, whatever that means) at the huge Xidan bookstore, and really cheap clothes in the nearby shopping center. The title of master shopper goes to my friend Arjan though--he managed to buy a pair of shorts that were originally 400 yuan (~$60) for 100 yuan (~15). China is awesome like that.

After returning to CNU, my roommate and I watched 200 Pounds Beauty. Yes, that is the Korean movie about plastic surgery. No, I did not have to force him. I was actually pretty amused because he was able to guess a lot of the things that happen in the movie before they actually happened. His Korean movie watching skills are already well-developed, it appears. I wish I had Korean movies dubbed, or at least subbed, in Chinese, but I guess I'll have to satisfy myself with the two Chinese movies in my hard drive for now.

Today was my first time doing laundry at CNU. I had to search for fifteen minutes before even finding a machine that was free, after which I spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to put in detergent (Yale spoils us) and make the machine start. Actually, I should probably go get my laundry soon. I had to wash my whites with my colors, so I really hope the whites don't turn... not white. That would be very unfortunate. Wish me luck.

Edit
My socks and white shirts are now light sky blue. Fantastic. I suppose it could have been worse--at least they didn't turn pink.

因为语言誓约的关系，我不能说英文

The dreaded language pledge has begun. They passed around little sheets for us to sign before the 听写 (dictation) today. Somehow, giving up the ability to speak English (and Korean, I suppose) felt like giving up a part of my identity, or even my existence. Surprisingly, though, getting by with just Chinese hasn't been too bad so far. It's remarkable how much more useful hand gestures and body language seem can be they're used deliberately.

But anyway, going back to where I left off in the last entry... I did quite a bit of traveling by taxi during the first weekend. A bunch of us went to a Thai restaurant on Saturday--the food was pretty good, but a little on the expensive side. On Sunday, after meeting with our language partners (more on that later), three of my friends and I took a taxi into the heart of Beijing and checked out a very modernized shopping center/department store. The prices there were sort of ridiculous, even by American standards. I had heard a lot about the huge disparity between the wealthy and the poor in China, but seeing the difference for myself was pretty shocking. Also (not nearly as surprising but worth mentioning), I discovered that I'm starting to get used to drinking hot tea with my meals instead of ice water. This is a very good thing. Some people I know, after drinking restaurant water, have had 拉肚子, which literally means "pull stomach." The English meaning of that idiom is pretty clear.

Monday was the first day of classes, and thus Monday was the day I realized how sad my Chinese skills really are. This is how DSICP works: the first hour is 大班, which has about ten students per teacher and is mainly used to introduce the lesson's new grammar structures; the second and third hours are 小班, which has about four students per teacher and is more for practicing the new material; finally, twenty minutes are dedicated to each student for 1-对-1, or 1-on-1 conversation. I felt pretty good during 大班 and 小班, but once I got to 1-对-1, I promptly forgot everything I had ever learned and had to ask my teacher to repeat everything three or four times. I've never been a fan of "hot seat" activities, even in English, so 1-对-1 scares me to the extreme. I hope I can get used to it eventually.

Monday was also the first day my language partner and I really got to hang out. I'm still in the process of getting to know her, but I do know that her name is Ma Jing and that she's a first year English Lit major studying at Shou Shi Da (DSICP's host institution). She's also extremely patient and doesn't get an annoyed look on her face whenever I say "什么“ （what?) or "请再说一次" (please repeat that again) like a couple of the teachers in the program. Anyway, on Monday she took me to a nearby electronics store to buy a cell phone. I won't repeat the procedure here, since it's sort of complicated--suffice it to say that I was very glad I had someone who could speak Chinese to help me.

One of the interesting aspects of DSICP is that we have a weekly language practicum during which we're supposed to use the week's lesson material to interview a Chinese person. Today, I spoke to a Shou Shi Da student about the differences between college life in America and in China, and some pretty interesting topics came up. For example, when I asked her what her impression of American students was, she said that she felt like American students are all "slaves to time" without offering further explanation, yet her description of an average day for a Chinese college student seemed much stricter and bound to time constraints than what I'm used to at Yale. I guess it's something to keep in mind as I become more familiar with the Chinese lifestyle and the things Chinese students value most.

And here I am again at the end of another picture-less entry. I'll have to post a monster entry with many many pictures one of these days, once I get used to the daily schedule and have enough free time to go out and find faster internet. Bye bye for now!

First impressions

The past thirty-six hours have been a crazy blur of traveling, meeting new people, seeing new things, and getting oriented and disoriented (simultaneously). I guess it would make sense to start with my exciting, thirteen hour red-eye flight over to Beijing:

I slept. The person next to me also slept.

I know, my life is wild. Here's how it went down: I was in the window seat, a young Chinese lady was in the aisle seat, and the middle seat was empty. As soon as the plane took off, she lifted up the middle armrest and proceeded to lie across the two seats with her feet toward the aisle and her head resting on my own armrest. I stayed awake long enough to be mystified by this behavior, and then I knocked out as well until we landed thirteen hours later. My camera was in the overhead compartment, so no pictures unfortunately. Just use your imagination.

It turns out several DSIC people were on my plane, and several others arrived in the wee hours of the morning like I did, so there was an early pickup for us at Beijing airport. While we were waiting for the teacher to arrive, I reviewed Colloquial Chinese. Fun times.

The bus ride to Capital Normal University was slow and uneventful (Chinese rush hour, anyone?). Once we got there, we paid a deposit fee of 300 yuan (about 45 USD) and received our room assignments and keys. I didn't know it at the time, but the program never assigned me a roommate, so I'm living alone in a double right now, and it's pretty sweet. It remains to be seen if they'll move someone else living alone into my room. Anyway, I forgot to bring a towel from home, so after getting settled in, I went down to the convenience store with a couple other Yalies and bought a towel, then took a nice, hot shower. One major difference between showering in China and showering in America is that there's no such thing as a "stall" in China--there's just a section of the bathroom with a drain, curtain, and showerhead. I quickly learned that this means the entire bathroom floods if the water is on full-blast. Good thing I brought slippers.

Everyone who arrived early ate lunch with the teachers in the restaurant/cafeteria downstairs, and then we went on a quick tour around campus. Afterwards, a few of us ventured off on our own and did some cell phone searching/grocery shopping. I bought water, another towel, and a delicious pound cake. Dinner was Peking Duck (北京烤鸭), and it was as delicious as everyone had led me to believe. Hooray. After returning to campus, I was pretty jet-lagged and tired, so I pretty much went straight to bed. (But not before helping Peter Lu set up his blog--check out the link in the sidebar!)

Then today, I woke up at 6:30 am (jet lag helped), showered, and grabbed breakfast downstairs before heading over to the language labs to take the placement exam. It was hard. Like, really really hard. I felt like I deserved to be placed into first year after finishing it. Fortunately, the program only offers second year and above, so I should be okay. It actually made me sort of excited, since I saw how much I'd be able to improve in the span of two months. After the exam was the program orientation, which honestly didn't give us any new information (except maybe that the weekly food allowance would be 350 yuan, though I still have no idea if that's a lot or a little). We ate a pretty tasty lunch at a nearby restaurant, then most of the students went on the tour that I had gone on yesterday. I'll be going to "check" my placement result in about half an hour, after which I'll probably head out to find dinner with friends somewhere. I hope we don't get lost in the streets of Beijing.

So, going back to the title of this entry. The first thing that I noticed about Beijing was definitely the air pollution. As a native of Los Angeles, I'm not unfamiliar with smog--in fact, just before I left, the smog got particularly thick for unknown reasons. However, the pollution here is on a whole different level. The sky is literally not visible, and even nearby campus buildings are often obscured. It's hard to believe that the people who live here have to breathe this air their entire lives.

Another thing I've noticed is the rain. I don't know if it's natural or if it's the government seeding the clouds with silver iodide, but it rains frequently and heavily here. I normally don't mind rain too much, but because I brought my huge DSLR, I can't really take photos outdoors unless there's a pause in the downpour. (Though that's not why this entry has no pictures--the internet here is currently just too slow to upload anything.)

Finally, there is an incredible number of Korean nationals at CNU, doing either DSIC or whatever other programs there are here. It's a very strange feeling being in the elevator with people who are speaking what I think is Chinese, and then realizing that I understand what they're saying because they're actually speaking Korean. I guess that'll be happening a lot less often once the language pledge begins.

Anyway, sorry about having so much text with no pictures. I'll upload them as soon as I find a better connection. Wish me luck exploring the city tonight!

Edit
Interestingly enough, it appears as though sometime between last night and this afternoon, the "*.blogspot.com" domain was blocked by whoever does that stuff around here. Posting and editing are still not a problem, since they're done through "blogger.com"; on the other hand, I now have to use a proxy to actually view blogs (Yale VPN would be preferable, but I can't connect to it for some reason, so I use CoDeeN). I wonder what's going on.

Predeparture tribulations

Okay, so I lied. I'm still in America, but something happened today that merited another entry, and I wanted to get it all down before I forget the details.

It began at 4:40 pm, exactly nine hours before my scheduled departure to Beijing. I opened my confirmation email from Vayama Travel Agency to print out my itinerary just in case, and I happened to read this line for the first time ever: "A separate email will be sent shortly containing the Federal Express Tracking number which will allow you to track the shipment of your Paper Tickets." Fedex? Paper ticket?? What?? I never received anything. After a momentary freakout, I went to both the Vayama and Air China websites to see if I could print something out that could serve as a replacement ticket. Nothing. (For future reference, don't try to do anything useful on Air China's website: it has enough broken links to make you cry tears of web design agony.) At the suggestion of my dear friend Wen, I called Vayama customer service, expecting to hear the worst. After holding for about five minutes, I got to speak with a real human being, who, with some searching, discovered that either Vayama or Air China had changed my paper ticket to an electronic ticket without telling me. I said thanks, hung up the phone, and decided that I was more relieved about having a way to get to China than I was annoyed about not being told that I'd be able to pick up my ticket at the airport.

I learned a few important lessons from this experience. First, read the emails that I get from airlines and travel agencies thoroughly and ahead of time, or risk not knowing about something crucial until it's too late. Secondly, not everything can be resolved through email or the internet; sometimes it takes real human interaction to make things happen. Finally, customer service doesn't always have to be painful (although it often is).

Anyway, I'm finally all packed up and, largely due to my mom's insistence, done reviewing the past two semesters of Chinese. My excitement is building by the minute, so I better stop writing before I explode. See you from China!