Hey Andrew Bird, You're in China

It's Monday morning now, and I'm at my desk looking out over Xidan Square. I'm exhausted. The Pro Bowl's going on back home, but the only signs of the west around me are the occasional Nike - Kobe Bryant commercials that are shown on the big-screen TV across the square.

The last few days have been extremely entertaining.

Friday, after taking my first Chinese quiz of the year, a few of us visited the appropriately named Zoo Market, a 7-story building full of vendors of cheap products. Less touristy than the Silk Market that we visited a few weeks ago, we were the only foreigners in the place; we saw where the real Chinese working class goes to get their 'name-brand' apparel. I was disappointed that I hadn't had the guts to bargain with anyone at the Silk Market, so I was determined to at least play the game at the Zoo Market. I saw a fake Adidas jacket on a mannequin, and walked up to the vendor. I was mainly interested in the sheer entertainment value of bargaining, the acting, the show, the feigning shock when the vendor suggested that I pay 100 kuai ($15) for this coat. $15! Are you nuts! For a coat? You're out of your mind! Make it $10. My basic Chinese, however, was able to pick up on the fact that because there was a large, yellow price tag on that jacket, it was a 'one-price, no bargain' product. I offered 90 kuai, he said no, I pretended to walk away, I realized that it was $15 so I didn't really care, and then went back and bought the coat. Later I saw the same coat at a different vendor and asked how much it was. 290 kuai was the response, so I figure I got an okay deal.

Later that night, we met up once again with the entertaining Professor Michael Chapman (Britain's Anthony Bourdain). A great crew (Eliz, Michael, Morgan, Omar, Emma, Alex, José, Zach) took cabs over to Wudoukou, where we were led down a dark back alleyway (there seem to be so many here) to a Korean Barbecue restaurant, called 'Sang Sang.' There, we grilled about a dozen types of red meat on 2 small table grills.

Afterwards, we (minus Chapman) walked to a small bar called Red House that we've grown fond of, and met up with a huge crew of Beida students. We enjoyed watching José, our Venezuelan friend, perform his normal routine of attempting to talk to Chinese girls with his basic, and heavily Latino-accented Chinese vocab. We ended the night at Propaganda, a mostly ex-pat club down the street that featured an odd man in a Michael Jackson costume standing (not really dancing) on stage.

Saturday was a day I'd waited for all week, as we took our group trip to the Forbidden City. Literally a city in and of itself, the "Palace Museum" is the heart of Beijing. As we passed through gate after intimidating gate, the historic Chinese buildings and walls blocked out Beijing's towers and noise; it was easy to imagine walking into the Forbidden City 5 centuries ago. We noted that in those days, when the emperor's palace was literally the biggest thing around, the place must have really scared the crap out of any commoners or foreign diplomats that somehow found their way in. As we journeyed deeper and deeper into the city, it seemed to stretch onward for miles...at the far end, we could see a large hill with a pagoda-like structure on top. We passed through imperial halls and gardens, and were occasionally filmed for extended periods of time by Chinese locals who seemed to have never seen a large crowd of white and black people.

After leaving the city through its north gate, a small group decided to climb the large hill in front of us, to check out the pagoda on top. After meeting a family from Florida (the first American family we'd seen, they asked 'Will y'all take our picture for us?'...I felt like giving them a high five), we slowly climbed the awkwardly-spaced steps to the top. The view was spectacular. The pagoda commands a surreal view of the Forbidden City and Beijing as a whole, and we stayed for quite some time, just soaking up the scene (and, okay, the smog).

We returned to Beida and were more than happy to cop out and have an American lunch at Kro's Nest, our unquestioned favorite for good western food (we never said Big Pizza was good).

Saturday night, I split off from our normal crew and went with some other fun kids to see a concert across town. Andrew Bird was about as un-Chinese an act as there is (he's from Chicago), but it was a great show. We seemed to find the 'hipster' capital of all Beijing that night... there was lots of American English, lots of plaid, lots of skinny jeans, lots of beards. The small concert venue seemed like something that could be found in Boston or New York, except for at one moment that reminded us all of where we actually were... Andrew Bird is a one-man-band, known for recording bits with different instruments, and then, using foot pedals, mashing them together to make a complete track. His concerts are the same way...he'll start by recording 8 measures of violin, then 8 of guitar, 8 of xylophone, etc., so it sometimes takes a bit of time to work into a song. About 3 minutes into one of these tracks, there was a huge "BOOOOMP" from the speakers. The music stopped, and a large "ohhhhhhhh" came from the crowd, followed by wild cheers because we didn't know what else to do. Bird stood there on stage for about a minute...the instruments didn't make a sound, the mic didn't work, nothing worked. Bird looked very confused, and yelled that everything he'd just recorded had been erased. The crowd cheered wildly, and during a lull, some American guy screamed a simple but somewhat profound statement: "HEY ANDREW BIRD! YOU'RE IN CHINA!" This set of another wild round of celebrations about nothing, and when the sound finally returned and Bird was able to continue his set, the fun and hilarious atmosphere continued. It was a very fun time.

Sunday morning brought another of our weekly excursions with Dr. Chapman, joined once again by the mysterious woman whose name we now know is Xinyuan. Our first stop was an ancient Chinese observatory, part of the former inner city wall. On top, there were a variety of very old astronomer's instruments, where Chinese scientists were some of the first to discover many celestial phenomena. The second part of our trip took us to various 'hutongs' or traditional Chinese neighborhoods. Hutongs (as I understand them) are walled compounds that contain sometimes as many as 10 or 12 small hut-like buildings. Wealthy families often have a whole compound to themselves (picture the Disney movie Mulan), but in cases like where we were, many families share them, each with a small hut to themselves. Xinyuan knocked on the door of one, and we were politely welcomed by an elderly couple to come in, talk and have tea. Through Xinyuan, we learned that the old man was a jade worker, and had his own tiny workshop in the hut next door. He gave us pamphlets about his business, and they kindly posed for pictures afterwards. Though it might have been a bit brash to barge into somebody's home, it was an informative look into how millions of Beijingers live, in one-room homes with communal bathrooms.

Lunch was at a Sichuan restaurant nearby, supposedly the best in the city. The food was spicy and not our favorite, especially Elizabeth, who doesn't handle spicy food very well, and Morgan, who looked like she was going to vomit after accidentally eating a spicy onion. And while I certainly was not pleased by the spiced fish head that the waiters brought out, we were regaled by stories of Chapman's adventures hitchhiking across America in the early 80's, most of which were heavily drug-induced and featured a Tennessee man named Dale Culpepper. Hearing a Brit say that name is, well, hilarious.

Sunday night we booked flights and hotels for Shanghai, which the four of us will visit during the second half of the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival break that is coming up in two weeks.

A Life-Altering Moment

I just purchased every episode of Seinfeld ever for $43 USD.

And the DVD's work.

That is all.

Some midweek observations

I just finished correcting the English in a 165-page Powerpoint presentation here at work, so I thought I'd jot down some of the observations I've made so far this week:

The smog varies hugely from day to day. On Monday, my friend Suzy and I looked out the window by my desk and pointed out the "Dragon" hotel, the one from my pictures that's right next to the Bird's Nest. Right now, I'm looking out the same window and can't even see its outline, despite the blue skies overhead.

Pizza is the safest western food here. Burgers are not.

Yesterday we tried to explain the Super Bowl to some Chinese students, and just when we thought they understood, they all revealed that they thought we were talking about rugby.

This morning, however, Suzy and I saw an ad for the Super Bowl on one of the tv screens in the subway.

We're not proud of it and we certainly don't mean to encourage it, but a very useful development has taken place; we're calling it 'The White Card.' In many places, including the campus gates and the entryway to our building, students are supposed to show ID. Our Asian-American students, when alone, are routinely asked to show ID, and sometimes run into problems if they don't have the bulky, passport-like student cards with them. We white kids, however, have never been asked. Sometimes, the Asian-American kids in our program, even if we don't know them that well, will ask to walk into campus with us so they can be with someone who can "play the white card," because Asian companions of white kids usually aren't asked either.

'The White Card' can go both ways, however. Sometimes, a cab will pull over to pick us up, see who we are, and then zoom off.

The work-day dress code is impossible to figure out. Most of the student interns continue to dress nicely, 'business-casual,' but bosses, on any given day, are varying from sports coats and dress shirts to jeans and plaid button-downs.

My chopsticks skills are slowly improving.

Tomorrow night, as the last hurrah of Michael's birthday celebration, we are going out for Peking Duck at one of the city's most famous restaurants. I'll report back on whether it's worth all the hoopla.

New pics

I added a few new pics from our walk through Songjiazhuang the other day, as well as a short video clip from the Olympic village, seen at the end of my last post before this one.

The pictures can be found at:
http://community.webshots.com/album/576435169EuNxvz

First Weekend

Beijing's strange paradoxes were even more evident this weekend, as within 48 hours we partied and danced with some of China's richest, up-and-coming young people, then walked the impoverished and revealing streets of the city's Songjiazhuang neighborhood. Full of ups and downs, the weekend revealed only one thing for sure: China's going to take a while to figure out.

Friday's 'mixer' at Pyro's was a great success. About 40 kids from our program showed up to have some pizza and hang out. Our Chinese friend Ben, who is a 25-year-old program assistant at PKU, was fun to talk to about Beijingers and life as a real college student in China. Afterwards, Morgan, Elizabeth and I accompanied our friends Zach, Jake, and Jessica (all of whom are in the immersion program and are living with families during the week) to a small ex-pat bar called The Red House. It was good to have some kids with us that could actually speak Chinese and find these off-the-beaten-path locations.

Later that night, Elizabeth, Morgan, Jake and I took a cab across town to a club called Mix. Situated across a massive parking lot from the Beijing Workers' Stadium, Mix was completely alien territory for me. It felt like something out of a movie; extremely dark, extremely loud, extremely smoky, extremely intimidating. Apparently there were 5 floors in the place, but we only made it through the first one, where there were several dancefloors, several bars, and hundreds of strange three-sided booths where Chinese people sat, smoked, drank, and appeared to talk about important things. How they were able to have a conversation with the music that loud, I have no idea. We Americans were quite the curiosity on the dancefloor, but everyone seemed to have a good time. When we left, we noted that the parking lot, not far from some pretty poor looking areas, was packed full of Ferraris, Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, and Mercedes Benzes.

Saturday morning, around 11am, Michael, Morgan, Elizabeth and I headed to the Olympic Village, just a few stops away on the subway. For as many times as it was shown on TV in America during the summer of 2008, the National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, is possibly the most awe-inspiring structure I have ever seen. I probably took about 300 pictures of the building; every angle, every piece, every different way that the light catches its steel exoskeleton seems like a piece of art. We paid to enter the stadium, where the "Beijing Snow Festival" was taking place on the pitch. The same field that 18 months ago had seen Usain Bolt become the fastest human ever now played host to a series of snow-based games and activities. A small band belted out sugar-coated Chinese pop songs, and we enjoyed whipping eachother around in inner-tubes on an ice rink.

Saturday night we went out for Michael's birthday. A great group joined us for karaoke in Wudoukou: Chris, Suzy, José, Sandy, Omar, Emma, Eric, and our normal 4 BC kids. We loved the large, private room they gave us. Singing such classics as Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and several NSync tracks made for a memorable evening. Afterwards we went to a bar/restaurant called Red Rocks for food and drinks.

One of our friends, Eric Nam has been instrumental in showing us how Chinese locals treat waiters and waitresses, which is, in a word, appalling. The waitresses don't come to your table to see if you want anything. Instead, they are summoned with a loud yell of "FUWUYUAN!" "WAITRESS!" If you want the check, you simply scream, whether a waitress is in sight or not: "FUWUYUAN! MAI DAN!" "Waitress! Pay the bill!"

Sunday morning provided one of our most revealing, fascinating looks at Beijing yet. Morgan and Elizabeth are in a class called Beijing's Urban History, taught by an Englishman, Professor Chapman (who, ironically, used to teach at BC). Michael and I asked if we could tag along on the class' once-weekly walking tours of the city, and the girls said we could. When we showed up at the subway at 9am on Sunday, however, the crew was smaller than expected: Morgan, Elizabeth, Michael and I were the only students, to be accompanied by Professor Chapman and a mysterious Chinese woman identified only as something like 'Xuanyue.' We took the subway to the southern edge of the city, Songjiazhuang. Chapman explained that the neighborhood was an interesting case-study in the modern transition period that many Chinese cities are experiencing; it is a neighborhood 'in flux.' Dirty storefronts and homes face massive piles of rubble that look like debris from an earthquake, but are actually giant, state-owned demolition projects. The newly cleared spaces will soon feature the gleaming high-rise apartment buildings that dominate the rest of the city's skyline. We watched as dirty, toothless workers whacked at cement blocks with axes, taking down the older buildings by hand. We walked for about 2 hours, and did not see a single westerner. We passed open-air markets (with every gross food imaginable), barefoot children playing soccer, and massive construction products. We visited Beijing's largest fish market. Professor Chapman, who seems to be England's answer to Anthony Bourdain from the Travel Channel, knows tons of little facts and seems to have contacts everywhere, despite not speaking a word of Chinese. He took us into a strange market where small, family-owned factories produce the wholesale items that go into the production of textiles: zippers, buttons, fabric, thread, etc. We stepped into a small, one-room factory where we spoke with a woman named Agnes, who runs her family's zipper manufacturing business.



Chapman then took us on a 'shortcut' in which we had to duck down and pass underneath a massive, half-finished bridge. The Professor would later reflect on the strange and revealing moment that came next. As we somehow had ended up inside this bridge construction zone, it was surrounded by temporary, 8-foot high walls. And while there was no one at work on Sunday, we scurried up a dirt hill to where the gate and checkpoint appeared to be. I lagged behind with Xuanyue (whose purpose on the trip was still not evident because she spoke no English). An old man in a cheap-looking military outfit and badge opened the gate, and pretended to close me and Xuanyue back inside; he laughed as he reopened the door, a heavy scent of alcohol on his breath. In this new and growing China, millions upon millions of citizens have jobs like his, where their job is to lock and unlock doors, or stand guard at empty construction sites during the night. As the primary reason I'm here is to learn about doing business in China, it's odd and quite sad to put faces to the stats of the impoverished Chinese.

Sunday night was one of my worst lost-in-translation moments yet. After a delicious dinner of dumplings with Zach from American University and the immersion program, I set off on my own to find the bar where I was supposed to meet people to watch the Arsenal soccer game at 9:30pm. I got off at the Weigongcun (way-gong-twen) subway station, and wandered around for 15 minutes, trying to find the address which I had stupidly written in western letters. Eventually I found the right place. I came in, and saw no friendly British faces, no red jerseys, no soccer. Just a bunch of old guys playing cards and smoking. I went to the hostess, who spoke exactly zero (0) English, and stumbled through an embarassing array of broken Mandarin phrases. My best was saying, in Chinese, "I want to look at..." then making a kicking motion and pointing at my Arsenal jersey. She eventually half-understood, and seemed to point for me to go somewhere into the next room. I ignorantly peered around columns and dividers, only to be met with the stares of table after table of Chinese people drinking coffee and tea. There was no other room, I figured out...she was pointing at the big TV that was on the wall, in the off position. She came over and grabbed the remote, and pulled up a TV guide full of Chinese characters. She flipped through the TV guide, and occasionally would stop on a channel and say "okay?" as if I could read the characters. How, after such a miserable display of Mandarin, she could have thought I could read characters is absolutely beyond me. I kept saying "keneng," meaning "maybe," and she would select the channel and some dumb sporting event like golf or billiards or poker would come on the screen. Eventually I saw highlights of the previous night's Wolves v Manchester United game, and thought it might be pre-game or something, so I said okay. I ordered a coke, and the waitress went away. When I realized that the Arsenal game was actually not coming on and that no one was joining me, I started to flip through the channels. I drew a good deal of attention from the locals as I couldn't figure out how to turn down the volume, and channel after channel featured infomercials, music videos, and angry-sounding speeches by communist politicians. Eventually, I gave up and trudged back to campus. It was, as we say, a massive fail.

Check out the video below from the Olympic Village. DISCLAIMER: During this video, I say the phrase "botched it" but it sounds like something else. Sorry.

Photos on Webshots

Okay everybody, I decided to switch photo sharing sites so that I have a higher limit. The trip gallery will now be on Webshots, not Flickr.

The link is below, more pics to come soon. Also, I'll try to write a new blog entry ASAP...going out for Michael's bday tonight, should be a blast.

http://travel.webshots.com/album/576435169EuNxvz?start=0

Photos

I'm not sure what the best way is to share photos with all of you, so I tried uploading some to Flickr. Here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46765472@N07/

Please leave a comment below to let me know if it works/downloads in a reasonable amount of time.

"Wo yao yi bei kafei."

As all of the international students are getting busier and busier during the week, we're eating on campus more often than before. Right now, the deciding factor in whether a specific restaurant or dining hall receives our business or not is if we can point at the food that we want. In a dining hall that we discovered today (we don't know what it's called and haven't made up a landmark-based name for it yet), there are about a dozen windows, behind which you can see what's being cooked. A meal costs 4 kuai, which is somewhere between 60 and 80 American cents. And while I still have to point at the food I want, I'm proud to say that I can order a soda or coffee in a complete Chinese sentence now. Baby steps.

Today in the dining hall we noticed that not a single person in the room except us had a drink with their meal.

Reactions to English and our lack of Mandarin have been very interesting to witness. Nearly every Chinese person we've forced to suffer through our broken Mandarin has been willing to laugh with us. They seem to genuinely respect the effort, hand signals and all. Strangely, we learned today that all Chinese students at Peking University must speak at least some English in order to be admitted. They all seem too shy, however, to try. In countries like Spain and Italy, I've countless times attempted to ask a question in the local tongue only to be met with an English response. That has never happened here, even with those students that I now know must know a little English.

I'm disappointed that I haven't been asked to pose for any pictures with locals yet. They seem to be more fascinated by my blonde and redhead friends, especially the tall ones. I do, however, enjoy it when grown men hustle over towards me (especially on the subway) just to smile, say "hello," wave, then walk away. They seem proud that they successfully identified me as an American.

I'm gradually realizing that there is a pretty intense rivalry between the people of Beijing and Shanghai. Some quotes from Beijing-based professors in the past few days: "Shanghai people are good for one thing, and that's cooking in the home." Said as a compliment to a friendly girl who introduced herself as from Shanghai: "Well, you certainly don't look like you're from Shanghai, so that's good."

Tomorrow (Friday) night, a bar called Pyro's is putting on a 'mixer' with free pizza and drinks for kids in our program. We've visited the bar a few times already; it's owned and operated by Aussies, strangely.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, in college I've falled in love with a London soccer club called Arsenal. Before I started my freshman year at BC, I blindly agreed to meet up with some older students who watched Arsenal games on Saturday and Sunday mornings off-campus. What was at first mostly a way to meet new kids eventually snowballed into a real obsession. Before arriving in Beijing, I contacted one of the heads of Arsenal China, the country's supporter club for the team. Soon, I received an e-mail from a guy ironically named Arsally, who gave me the address of a tea house, oddly translated as "Be For Time," where members gather to watch the games. This Sunday night, I'm going to try to make my Arsenal Beijing debut... Arsenal will play Stoke at 1:30pm in England, which makes for a 9:30pm kickoff here. Arsenal Beijing may be 2 people or 100, I really have no idea...or maybe I won't even find the tea house. I don't think Google Maps will show any results for "Be For Time" in Beijing.

I've signed up for a one-hour, once-weekly Tai Chi class, which starts this coming Tuesday. I believe the meetings take place outside, which will be interesting in the freezing temperatures and with the piles of sooty snow that cover the grass.

In attempting to decorate our bland, white-walled room in Shaoyuan #5, we recently purchased an array of obnoxious Chinese New Year decorations from the supermarket. One features a large, 3D Buddha, and several feature gigantic Chinese characters that we can't read.

Classes & Internships Begin

Classes and internships are underway here in Beijing, and we international students are starting to fall into the daily routine. Tuesday morning I had my first Chinese class (Beginner - 2), and Chinese Art & Culture that night. Chinese class is a brutal 3 hours and 20 minutes, 3 days a week, but I feel like I'll learn a lot. In class I kept thinking 'oh man, that phrase would have been extremely useful when I was in [insert awkward situation here] the other day.'

This morning I started my internship. I'm working for a company called IDC (which I believe is Boston-based), that specializes in something like IT market research. I don't think they were ready for me. I was supposed to report to work at 9am, so just because it was the first day, I came into the office around 8:45. There was no one there. I came back at 9, and there was one person there. I pretended to check my e-mail on the not-functioning WiFi for 45 minutes until my boss showed up. We couldn't find an open desk or computer for me, so he sat me down at a table, connected my laptop to the internet, and said he'd come back in a half hour. An hour later, he came back, we talked for a half hour, and then he told me I was free to go. It was, maybe, the best work day ever.

I'm currently sitting in a cafe nearby, in the large Maoist square called Xidan. I just made one of the more ironic discoveries of my life, when I found the giant Arsenal team store right next door to our office. For those who don't know, Arsenal is the English soccer team that I've become obsessed with over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, the prices inside the store more closely mirrored those of the team store in England than the prices of items in the Beijing Silk Market, but it was fun to browse and speak in broken Mandarin nonetheless.

On Monday night I tried sushi for the first time. I was told after the fact that eating sushi in Beijing (or China in general) is not always a good idea. We went to a small, underground place in the nearest entertainment district, Wudoukou, and my friend Emily and I succumbed to peer pressure and ordered some tuna and cucumber sushi. Although I put on a brave face at the time, I thought it was gross. I kept thinking, 'this tastes like a marina smells.' Emily did not hide her displeasure, and spit out a good deal of the sushi. She's from Wisconsin, which made it even more hilarious (for those of you from Cincinnati, imagine my old impression of Mrs. Humke).

Yesterday, our Chinese professor took our class (6 students) to lunch at a small campus restaurant known affectionately as "the Medicine House." The restaurant consists of just two small rooms and a kitchen, but we had my favorite Chinese meal yet; a series of delicious meats and veggies came out (PF Chang's style, I'll say) and were shared by the group. My professor, "Linda", made fun of me for putting a napkin on my lap, which is apparently not kosher here.

Last night, Michael, Elizabeth, Sandy, Morgan and I had our biggest American cop-out yet. We chose to eat dinner across the street from our campus at a fine establishment called Big Pizza. We were treated to a buffet of American treats, including tater tots, cornballs, brownies, and, of course, big pizzas. I'm not sure I've ever seen my friend Elizabeth so happy. She hadn't been satisfied by anything, she claimed, since 'that sleeve of Ritz she ate at the museum.' We vowed to establish a once-weekly gathering at the now-famous Big Pizza, and plan to invite select individuals that we deem worthy of such an awe-inspiring mecca of western food.

Mysteriously, I've developed a sleep pattern here that is the opposite of at home; I am wide awake at about 7am each morning, and feel like I'm going to die around 10pm each night. Hopefully this weekend I can 'man up' when we go out for Michael's 21st birthday.

First Days in Beijing

I’m sitting in an underground coffee shop and it’s 10:48am. It’s Martin Luther King Day back home, but it’s business as usual here, even though the Peking University students just went on winter break. This café looks a little like a wannabe Starbucks, but the lack of napkins, snacks, and English makes it clear that this is something else.

I’m four days into this trip, and China is slowly coming into focus. So far I’ve sampled some of the tamer local fare, gotten to know the great kids in our 50-person international program, and started to learn the campus. Our dorm, Shaoyuan #5, is nothing fancy but nice enough. Michael and I live on the 5th and top floor.

We arrived around 3pm on Friday the 15th of January, and only had time to settle into the rooms, grab some snacks from the convenience store Wu Mei (which has been our saving grace), and pass out in our rooms. Things got interesting when Michael plugged in an alarm clock and we blew a fuse. Without having met any of our advisors or received our university phones, we spent the rest of the night unpacking by flashlight without phone, hot water (which turns off at 10pm), internet, or anyone that could speak our language. We were slightly panicked.

The next morning, I attempted to ask the housekeeping ladies for help with our electricity, and after following one of the women down a long winding hall and into a back room, I was presented with a stack of towels. Eventually, our third roommate Andrew, who is very good at Chinese, was able to get the power back on. From that point on, things at Peking University have vastly improved.

Campus is full of sleek new architecture as well as eclectic old-school Asian buildings. Things are dirty, as the noticeable smog seems to scatter a layer of black dust over most everything. There are loads of restaurants, convenience stores, and food stands cluttered around the narrow, winding roads of campus, all of which feature large, colorful signs with characters we can’t read. Standard breakfast fare so far has been an on-the-go dumpling, or baozi. The ones filled with pork and celery are my favorites so far.

On Sunday our orientation group trekked into the inner city to visit the Silk Market, a six-story monstrosity filled with hundreds of booths and vendors selling their cheap, knock-off products. Walking down the narrow aisles, the broken English sales pitches come in rapid-fire, as products are dangled in front of you. I was hit in the face with a pair of boxer briefs. As I walked with my friend Chris (who later would accidentally purchase a gong for $51 USD), we realized that we American students were essentially ‘programmed’ in a way the Chinese people around us were not; each of us felt the need to acknowledge and respond to every single salesperson that approached us. I was constantly smiling, shaking my head, and saying ‘no thank you’ or ‘wo bu yao.” The Chinese locals just cruised through, ignoring the would-be salespeople as if nothing were happening. I was too intimidated by the throngs of desperate vendors to buy anything or even take a picture, but I’ll probably try to return sooner or later to pick up a cheap “Columdia” jacket or even a “Red Soe” baseball jersey.

Our first attempt at shopping in a Chinese super-market was a harrowing experience. The “Carrefour” store was, as my friend Elizabeth so aptly put it, “a Wal-Mart blended with a dollar store in Times Square on Black Friday.” One of the most massive stores I’ve ever seen, we were literally the only foreigners in the place, but the Chinese seemed more interested in rushing around to grab the on-sale merchandise than they were in gawking at us. Upon checking out, I charged our purchases to my credit card, and was promptly presented with a keypad. In hindsight, I realized that the cashier probably wanted my PIN number, even though it was a credit card. That thought didn’t cross my mind at the time, however, and the young cashier and I stared at each other until the awkwardness was too much to bear, and she took the keypad away. When I attempted to grab a plastic shopping bag to carry our things in, I was yelled at by an elderly man that I couldn’t understand. When our 7-shopper crew failed to find an open cab on the wild street outside, we decided to make the 20-minute walk back to campus even with our massive plastic bins and storage units. I managed to pull every muscle in my upper body, and my friend Morgan developed her deep-seeded hatred of the mysterious Carrefour.

However, our worst ‘lost-in-translation’ experience yet came last night, Sunday, at dinner. Michael, Sandy and I went out for a late dinner, about 8:30. Most of our normal restaurants were closed, so we ventured outside of our walled campus and onto the hard streets of Beijing. We settled for a place called Xiang Xiang, a third-floor restaurant that appeared to be full of people from our vantage point on the street. We went in, I awkwardly replied “sí” when they asked if we had 3 people, and we sat down at a table with a small stovetop in the middle. A young Chinese man came out and presented us with an English menu that showed many small lists; one of meat, one of vegetables, one of sauces, one of soups, etc. We pointed at one item after another, but the waiter would not leave; we realized that we were actually picking ingredients for a soup/fondue-like concoction that would be made in front of us. Soon, a bowl with two compartments, each filled with a different kind of soup, arrived. Later, the completely random assortment of foods that we had just ordered arrived; several huge stacks of meat, celery, cabbage, potatoes, etc. As the soups began to boil, a confused friend on the phone told us to put all of the ingredients into the pot, to make a stew-like mixture that would cook with time. We piled the ingredients into the pot, as the employees giggled at us. Eventually, the boiling soups began to overflow, and the suddenly not-busy waiters laughed with us as I wildly stabbed at the pot with chopsticks and attempted to remove some of the objects so the water level would go down. We managed to ruin most of the food, even when mixed with the “monkey wrench” packets of peanut paste that we received. We had paid before the meal, so we eventually made a mad dash out of the restaurant and hustled to the KFC next door. Even though we all felt sick immediately after leaving and had managed to pay for two dinners, we were pleased to have paid for the sheer entertainment value of the outing.

Final thoughts before departure...

China has been called the world's most mysterious country. All but closed off to the western world for centuries, even millennia at a time, it is as 'foreign' as it gets for many Americans... "dig a hole deep enough and you'll end up in China," we used to say as kids at the beach.

As the economy becomes more and more global with each passing year, Americans are being forced to take notice of the rising power in the east. Soon to become the world's second largest economy, some experts believe that the 21st century will belong to the Chinese.

Yet as the Chinese GDP swells and its growing cities stretch skyward, China remains a country of paradoxes. It is home to an increasingly affluent, well-educated, and active upper class, and younger generations whose favorite things to do often mirror those of their American counterparts. At the same time, there are vast regions of China that look the same as they did 2,000 years ago, without electricity, without phones, cars, anything. The largest migration in human history is currently underway, as the peasants of rural China flock to the country's over 100 million-citizen cities in search of work.

A "socialist republic" ruled by the Communist party, China has an economy that today is as capitalistic as it gets. Rampant investment and the world's largest workforce are fueling the astounding growth. In yet another paradox of Chinese life, however, the government often seems content to restrict intellectual growth and free thinking if it will help the Communists maintain power. The internet in China is strictly patrolled and censored. Users often cannot access social networks, and any articles or posts that could be seen as critical of the Chinese government are removed. Even as world leaders lobby for the free flow of information all over the globe, China's government is holding firmly to its policies. As a business student in this increasingly digital economy, it makes sense for me to see firsthand what the world's largest national population is up against.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/internet_censorship/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=china%20internet&st=cse

The decision to study abroad in China was, for me, perhaps a cocky one. I've spent time in Mexico, England, France, Austria, pretty much you name it in Europe. My Spanish is pretty good. My first hometown was Rome. 'I'm well-traveled, right? How hard can it be? I want a new challenge,' I thought.

As I write this entry I'm about 60 hours from boarding a jet from Newark to Beijing, and the prospect is, well, horrifying. 我的中文不太好. 'My Chinese isn't very good.' I didn't type that, I googled it. Yikes.

Yet at the same time, I don't think I've ever been so excited for a new semester of school. It's going to be the trip of a lifetime, my most eye-opening experience yet.

Stay tuned, kids, it's going to be interesting. I'm taking on this challenge with an open mind and a hunger for understanding of this culture that is so vastly different than our own. I can't wait to get started.