Hello happy readers, and here is the second installment of life in Beijing.

Living abroad makes you realize how many things you take for granted at home. I naturally miss my friends and family, but I expected that. I also expected to miss American food, which I mentioned in the previous post. But there are some things that you don’t expect to miss, like Discovery Channel, or liquid dish soap. I think it is remarkable that, for someone who didn’t really watch all that much TV while at home, I really miss the ability to just turn on the Discovery Channel or the Science Channel and watch something interesting. I have been watching a lot of CNN International here, which has been nice though the news has been rather dismal.
As far as liquid soap goes, I found some eventually. And maybe it was just my inability to find the stuff, but I’m pretty sure you can pick up a thing of liquid dish soap at a convenience store back home, but here, I could barely find it. Which makes me wonder how folks do their dishes, but I suppose that’s for another day.

Language classes have been very intensive (four hours a day, five days a week) and we have often had an additional lecture (though “often” stretches it, as we’ve not been here that long) for two hours after that. I feel like we’re learning a lot in class (which I’ll get to later) and I know that, while it is a lot to learn, some of it is sinking in. The amount of material that we’re covering though is sometimes overwhelming, but I’m doing my best.
The additional lectures have also been really informative: one professor here lectured twice on recent Chinese history and relations with the United States, so that’s really cool.

The language classes, while difficult, have been helpful in daily life here. At the very least when I buy something I can understand (after a moment or two) what the cashier said the price was. I also recently had an incredibly minuscule “exchange” with a local street vendor, as it could not be called a conversation, that started out pretty well but ended in him saying a number of things I had no hope of understanding. I know learning a language is an incredibly time intensive task, and I know that even after this term I will not know enough Chinese to have anything more in-depth than a child-like conversation, but I was still quite happy that I was able to say and understand anything at all.

Since I wrote last, I’ve been to a number of places, including the Great Wall. I will not make the ‘It’s a good wall, but…’ joke, but rest assured it was pretty spectacular. We were only able to be there for a short time, much of which was consumed by climbing the stairs up the mountainside to get to the Great Wall, but it was still quite a incredible sight.

Many of the people in our group are going to Xi’an this weekend, the city that has (on its outskirts) the site of the famous Terracotta Warriors, and some in our group intend to go to Mongolia for our week vacation, which I hope will be really fun.
When I’m at home, I have a map that has pins for places I’ve been and places I want to go (color-coordinated, because I’m an insufferable nerd), and I’m quite excited to be able to add one in Ulan-bator.

Hopefully everything works out, and I hope you all are doing well back there.

Happy travels,

-chris

P.S. – This picture is actually of me holding up the Great Wall. Seriously. That small section was about to fall, but with my Herculean strength I managed to hold it up and pose for a picture. No, I was not leaning because I was exhausted from forty minutes of essentially non-stop stairs, what are you talking about?

 P.P.S – So I did make the Great Wall joke. Sue me. Actually, don’t.

Well folks, welcome from this from-Beijing version of your friendly NCC blogging experience.

A quick run-through of the past week, as it occurs to me that it’s been an entire week already. Though in truth it feels like it’s been much longer.

• Saturday (August 30^th) – We flew halfway across the world, had a three hour layover in Tokyo’s Narita airport, and were generally exhausted. 14+ hours on planes = not fun.
• Sunday (August 31^st) – We (the group) went to the Summer Palace (beautiful place, by the way) and I believe went somewhere else, though I can’t remember at this time. The Summer Palace was once a place for the emperor to get away from the city (for the summer, as the name might suggest) but the city has grown to surround it now. The grounds are extensive, and I hope to go back before I leave to see some of the things I didn’t get a chance to. Also, we experienced our lovely cafeteria food. People say a lot of things about Kauffman. I recommend they stop. Seriously. Mind you, some of the things in our cafeteria are really delicious, but some are on the stranger side. And not the kind of strange I feel is the perception of China (my father already -jokingly- asked I’d had scorpions on a stick), but just strange as in not like home.

• Monday (September 1^st) – We went to… oh! We went to a place called Houhai (I believe) that is one of the (Professor Moussetis’ guide book claims) places you must go while in Beijing. It was actually very cool, and definitely warrants another visit. It highlighted some of the houtongs (little alleyways) that crisscross Beijing and have mixtures of shops, street vendors, and the like. We broke off into smaller groups and the group I was with found this one street vendor that was selling some gelatinous toy that, when you threw it against a hard surface, would flatten and then re-coalesce into the ball it was originally It was clearly one of those toys that would break in three hours, but the salesman was pretty convincing, and several people in our group bought one. Oh. And the rickshaw drivers will not leave you alone. Arguably because we undoubtedly look like Americans, but it was incredible. Some folks in our larger group were thinking of hiring one (and talking to one of the drivers) and within seconds one became five.
• Tuesday (September 2^nd) – The Forbidden City! So called because within it’s walls things are forbidden Okay seriously it’s because commoners (you know, folks like you and me) were forbidden to go inside for a long time. But now as a museum and World Heritage Site, it’s open to everyone and I really liked it. We only spent a little while there (relatively speaking) but I think it was really cool (though I like old / ruin-like places) and I hope to go back there as well. The main attractions are all well and good, but I think you miss a ton unless you go to the less-visited places, not necessarily off the beaten path – since the entire place is a major tourist attraction – but off the more heavily trafficked areas. My personal philosophy that doesn’t always work but is pretty reliable: the less people there are in the area, the cooler the place probably is. Generally speaking.
• Wednesday (September 3^rd) – Took the written test for Chinese. And I don’t speak a word of Chinese. Which is of course slightly inaccurate. If you’ll pardon me making these atonal, I know xie xie (thank you), bu dui (no – or more accurately, ‘not correct’; there is no way to say ‘no’ in Chinese) and lao jia (excuse me). So I know a few words. And admittedly those can get you pretty far, but yeah. So I wasn’t able to put anything down on my Chinese test – quite a few people in our group were in the same camp as me – and so I will be put in beginning Chinese, which is fine with me. We tried to tell our liaison (Mr. Jiang, who I believe is Beijing Foreign Studies University’s Kimberly Larson) that not many of us speak much Chinese, but he (I guess) was not convinced about how little we knew. Also, I was involved in some exploring (walking around Beijing, starting at the University and seeing where we ended up) and we found this -giant- mall. It was absolutely enormous. And not unlike our malls, really. They even had a Dairy Queen which I still regret not going to. Oh, also, KFCs are big in this town, though I haven’t gone to one yet.
• Thursday (September 4^th) – I can’t say why, but I just typed “September 4st” without realizing it. Which I find unfortunate and hilarious. Anyway, on Thursday we went to the Temple of Heaven, which was pretty cool (in some of the same ways that the Forbidden City was) but didn’t have as much ‘off the trail’ areas. Though it’s function was to allow the emperor to make a sacrifice to heaven once a year, so you really wouldn’t need an extensive complex for that. We also went to the Pearl Market (which sells a whole lot besides pearls) and it was quite the experience. This is one of the places (the Silk Market is the best known place) where you go to buy things and haggle to get the best price. Haggling is, in fact, very much expected: if you just ask for a price, many vendors will type something on a calculator, show it to you, and then motion for you to name your price (so that you can meet in the middle). The goods range from watches to electronics to jewelry to handbags to random knick knacks and art. And some of the vendors will attack you to buy their merchandise (one woman tried to pull me into her store). I feel the trip was a success though, because I haggled something down from 280 yuan (about $40 US) to 28 yuan (about $4 US). The salespeople were furious with me, but someone who has been on this trip before gave me some insightful advice when haggling: people will try to make you feel bad, but remember, if they weren’t making any money, they just wouldn’t sell it to you.
• Today – agh! Finally caught up to today. Which you people are experiencing right now, I note. In any case, wandering was the order of the day, and a park was found! Which actually means that, while wandering, we came upon a place we knew was on the map in the first place. But in any case, the whole place was beautiful, and I (as is a motif, you may note) want to go back as well. Tomorrow is our trip to the great wall, and I’m really excited.

As some side notes, life here is certainly different than home, and in ways you might not expect at first. I mean the Internet was unreliable (until a bunch of our people went and demanded refunds (on the advice of Mr. Jiang)) though it’s been better today. I finally figured out how to do laundry here (please note, I have done my own laundry for as long as I can remember, but I don’t have to buy a magnetic key to use the machine at home). Food is an interesting issue, not because it’s weird or inedible or anything remotely like that. It’s just not home. Someone from the trip last year warned me about this, and I suspect he will be right: by the time I get back, all I’ll want is some bacon, eggs, and toast.

Transportation is difficult, not because there isn’t public transportation or because I’m uncomfortable with public transportation (I took a bus to a train to North Central every day for two years) but because it’s so hard to get a route map that isn’t in Chinese, and while I hear that the taxis are very cheap here, I am not confident enough in my Chinese to be able to get where I want to go (though friends from years past say that you only have to point to a place on the map and say “jar” (here)).

And really, being away from friends and family is tough, but I am really glad I took advantage of this opportunity.

More from me soon, from lovely Beijing.
-me