I May Have Gone Too Far This Time

Warning for the faint of heart: one part of this entry may be sort of disturbing to the…less intrepid?...eaters among you. My family members and Abby are particularly advised to proceed with caution. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Except for Wednesday, my day off, this week has thus far been quite boring. I’ve gotten back into the swing of classes, especially Chinese. Having 60 words a night to learn after having no work at all for two weeks was a bit of a rude awakening, but I made it work somehow, and was pleased to see that I have a straight-up A in the course thus far. I’m of course happy about this, but at the same time I feel like by getting a good grade (which requires memorizing all the words and grammar patterns for the daily quizzes and then forgetting them to make room for the next day’s) I’m sacrificing actual learning; I feel like I don’t have the time or the brain space to retain the things that are actually useful to me because I’m too busy frantically learning a twelfth way to say “although”. The other thing that bothers me about the classes is that there’s little focus on listening skills, which is by far the area where I have the most trouble. On the upside, we got a new teacher* who is now back from maternity leave. Her name is Shen Laoshi, and she is the feistiest Chinese person I’ve ever met; she keeps making these really sardonic self-deprecating jokes about how much weight she gained when she was pregnant, and she writes really funny comments on the sample sentences people provide to work on the sentence structures we learn.** I like the small classes: the people in mine are all lovely and wonderful, and include Pei Rei and Michael, who are always a ton of fun. Actually, the entire class is sort of a giant Yunnan Trip reunion.
So yesterday was my day off. I’d told Max about my creepy experience with the dog restaurant, and his response, predictably, was “you should try it.” The more I thought about it, the more I kind of wanted to. I think it’s interesting that Westerners (myself included) have a such a mental block about eating “pet meat”, which is really unreasonable when you think about it (for a very well-reasoned examination of this, here’s a great article from Slate about dog meat). I had the gut reaction that I did because I have a dog, a sweet, wonderful, loving dog who I absolutely adore, and the thought of someone ingesting him is deeply disturbing. However, I love my dog not because he’s a dog, but because he’s my dog. He’s like a sibling to me (a cuter, furrier, generally mute sibling). But if circumstances were different, and I had a pet pig (shown to be smarter than dogs), or sheep, or cow, would I stop eating pork, lamb, or burgers? No. Logically, there is no good reason to have such a kneejerk reaction, so I gritted my teeth, steeled my stomach, and told Max we’d go for lunch on Wednesday. I also picked up Jackie (I told you she was down for anything) who was genuinely psyched about eating Man’s Best Friend.
We set off on a long bus and subway ride. What I’d forgotten was that Wednesday was National Day, which is analogous to July 4 in the US: it commemorates the founding of the modern People’s Republic of China in 1949. The bus wasn’t so bad, but the subway was packed. We couldn’t even get off at the right stop because it was too crowded, so we had to go one stop further and then walk back. Just on the streets, I’ve never seen such a mass of humanity: the sidewalks and the shopping areas we walked through were crammed wall-to-wall with people, and it took us forever to weave our way through the crowds. Eventually, though, we got out of the main touristed area and into a quieter hutong-y neighborhood, and we were able to walk freely again.
The dog restaurant was just where I’d remembered it, and immediately recognizable by the large neon sign with “dog meat” on it in Chinese. We stopped for Max to take a couple pictures and went inside.
We were the only people there. The waiter/owner gave us a laminated English menu which was, perhaps unsurprisingly, completely devoid of dog and had suspiciously high prices. We checked over it quickly and then I asked for the Chinese menu instead. The waiter almost palpably loosened up and brought the much more extensive Chinese menu. Sure enough, upon opening it we were immediately greeted with an entire page of dog preparations: a whole dog, half dog, grilled dog, dog stew, dog stir-fry, you name it. We ended up asking the guy to recommend something and also got some eggplant and a bowl of cold noodles. The waiter seemed pretty surprised that we could a) speak Chinese reasonably well and b) were interested in trying dog, and we chatted a little bit while waiting on the food.
Our main course arrived first. It looked pretty good – pieces of meat cooked until soft and tender and served with green bell peppers. We stuck our chopsticks in the plate, glanced at each other, and then I ate dog meat, the one food I told myself I wouldn’t touch while I was here.
It was actually fairly good. It was cooked quite well and tasted a bit like beef, but gamier. I’d compare it to the beef in my mom’s slow-cooked beef stew. We finished most of it, along with all of the eggplant, which was superb (eggplant is always good in Chinese restaurants) and the cold noodles before wandering back up the street to try and find the Underground City, a network of tunnels built to serve as an emergency hideaway in cases of extreme disagreement with the Soviets. Unfortunately, it was closed for repairs, but Max insists there’s another entrance somewhere else.
Jackie went home to get dinner with her host family, but unencumbered by a Chinese schedule, I went up with Max to his friends’ apartment, where they played poker (I watched, as I didn’t feel like losing all my money for no reason) for a couple hours before heading out to dance. I hadn’t been to Propaganda for almost a month and as soon as I stepped in I remembered how much I love the place. Between the lack of cover (for Westerners), the student-y population, and the awesomely bad booty-grind hip-hop they always play, Propaganda is more or less a giant rager. It was like I’d never left; they were playing the same songs to the same crowd, and the same Korean guy was on the platform at the front tearing it up with his spectacular Korean dance moves.*** If a horrible natural disaster ever befalls Beijing, and then archaeologists unearth the preserved city five hundred or so years later, I am convinced beyond a doubt that the Korean guy will still be there, and he will still be shaking it to “Crazy In Love”. We stayed entirely too late, especially given that I had school the next morning, but I eventually had to head back because of the Fuwuyuan Rebellion.
The fuwuyuans (a general term for someone who works in the service industry, like a waiter or a maid or a receptionist) in the building had gotten tired of being awakened after curfew by night-owl students. Since the curfew is ridiculously early, eleven on weeknights and midnight on weekends, this was a fairly common occurrence. For the past few days it had been rumored that the fuwuyuans had been refusing to let people in if they were later than three hours after curfew, which resulted in people knocking for minutes and still being unable to get into the dorm. I didn’t want the same fate to befall me, so I left. It was confirmed today that the fuwuyuans are definitely not letting latecomers into the dorms anymore, so I have a feeling I’ll either start staying out really late (the dorm opens back up at five) or become acquainted with the local benches. (No, Mom, not really.)
Today was pretty much more of the same in terms of classes, but I did have some amazing street food for dinner tonight: delicious dumplings stuffed with minced pork and duck, scallions, and ginger, with a tiny boiled quail egg in the middle. Then for dessert I grabbed a food I’ve only seen emerge post-Olympics, skewered candied fruit. Tonight’s variation was sweet rice balls sandwiched between slices of small candied sour apples, and it was nothing short of incredible. Unfortunately, on my way back, a small ruckus broke out among the street vendors, who yelled that the police were coming, and they packed up their carts with surprising speed and made themselves scarce as the police van drove slowly down the crowded street. Pei Rei said he thought it was because the vendors were unlicensed, which is probably true, but the whole thing just seems silly to me. The street food is by far the best food in Beijing. It’s not unclean, it’s not of poor quality, and it’s perfectly safe to eat. The idea of the police arresting some middle-aged woman for selling candied fruit is beyond me, but then again, Beijing is a weird, weird place.

Dumpling Tally: 56

*How the teacher setup works: all the students in each level have class together for an hour and a half each day, which is always taught by the same teacher. Then we split into groups of six or so people for conversation practice and activities. Each day of the week, we get a different teacher in our small classes.

**Today I finally achieved my goal of having all my sentences relate to dumplings. For example, “I depend on eating dumplings to live,” “according to my research, dumplings are delicious,” “disliking dumplings goes against the laws of nature,” etc.

***For some reason, the Koreans who go to Propaganda are always far and away the best dancers. I have no idea why this is, but I’d give a limb to be able to throw down like some of the girls I’ve seen there.

There Will Be Stud...ying

The past few days have been pretty uninteresting; I’ve spent most of my time doing homework and catching up on stuff. I did finally get off campus yesterday and visit a neighborhood southwest of Tiananmen Square where, I was told by my guidebook,* there was a large and vibrant Muslim community and excellent shopping.
Other than an abundance of grilled meat restaurants (of which I am still a little leery after my Dai BBQ adventure), there unfortunately wasn’t much that set the Muslim neighborhood apart from its surrounding environs. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting – something more like San Francisco’s Chinatown, perhaps – but the whole place seemed pretty standard, with the same China Unicom storefronts and Han people wandering around that could be found anywhere else in the city. The high point was the Niujie Mosque, built in the 900s (seriously, it blows my mind how old this is) and still the largest mosque in Beijing. Since my guidebook recommended checking it out, and the admission fee was just $1.50, I went in for a look.
The mosque was remarkably quiet inside. I expected it to be a bit more bustling on a Saturday afternoon, but there were just a few older people walking around, and nothing was really going on. A very sweet older man took my ticket, and we had a brief conversation about where I was from. (I pointed out Seattle on a map because I know its Chinese name. The man was excited to learn that I was American and said “My brother lives in New York! Do you know him?” Me: “Probably not.”)
The mosque made for a nice, peaceful twenty-minute stroll. It was completely walled off from the rest of the neighborhood, so there was a definite sense of separation from the Beijing traffic and hustle and bustle. The architecture was a very interesting mix of Chinese and Islamic styles; if it weren’t for the Islamic writing everywhere, it would be easy to mistake the place for a standard-issue Chinese temple. Besides functioning as a hall of worship, the mosque also served as a community hub, and many of the buildings were devoted to teaching, welcoming guests, and other general multi-purpose uses. The biggest building was the prayer hall. I couldn’t go in because I am not Muslim, but I stole a peek through a window on the side, and it was beautiful – huge and very ornately decorated.
I left the neighborhood and headed up to Liulichang and Dazhalan streets, recommended as shopping hubs. Liulichang, well known for its antiques, was a huge disappointment. The whole street was just block after block of the same shops, all with signs promising in broken English to carve your name on a chop in only five minutes, advertising genuine antique ceramics,** and offering free tea tastings (I tried the tea at a couple places and it was very bad). From there, I spent about fifteen minutes wandering through a warrenlike maze of hutongs trying to make my way up to Dazhalan, as well as an extra three or four helping this guy fit a mattress into his car. Once I got on the right street, it was pretty much a straight shot northeast, and I stopped only once.
I’ve heard the rumors about Chinese people eating dog. A couple people asked me about it before I left. I largely wrote these concerns off as xenophobic and ill-informed, and figured that in a city where so many people keep dogs as beloved pets, dog meat wouldn’t be something I’d run into. I even asked one of the Chinese teachers about it, and she totally blew me off. “Only Koreans eat dog,” she told me.
So imagine my surprise when, in this random little hutong, I found myself face-to-face with a restaurant that read “Dog Meat” across the window in big characters. The neon sign above it had a fairly normal name on it, but right next to the restaurant’s name was a giant picture of a Golden Retriever. I was too busy being perturbed to take a picture and walked away slowly after picking my jaw up off the ground. The weird part is, I kind of want to go there, but first I want to make sure they don’t actually serve Golden Retriever.
Dazhalan was a little better in terms of shopping. The touristy stalls that sold Mao t-shirts and posters were still there, but so were more traditional shops filled with actual Chinese people. My favorite store was one that sold beautiful handmade cloth shoes, but there were several that caught my eye, including a pharmacy that had been in existence for 200 years and proudly displayed Chinese remedies in huge glass jars next to boxes of Maalox, and the many silk stores lining the street. At the end of the street was a giant pedestrian-only shopping plaza that had obviously been completed just in time for the Olympics. The buildings were gorgeous and Western-quality, but 95% of them were empty. Nonetheless, this seemed like a hotspot for young Beijingers with money to burn to congregate.
I’d finally decided to go for the knockoff Coach bags at the Silk Market, so I went there next to try my luck again. I decided on one of the most convincing fakes I’ve ever seen, made with real leather and everything. It even had a real Coach price tag on it, although the area where the actual price would have been was left blank, which I thought was kind of funny. This time, the bargaining was even more fun: I knew what to expect, the vendor spoke better English, and I’d memorized several bargaining phrases, which I used to great effect. The vendor insisted that she was giving me a discount because I was a student and not a tourist, and repeatedly showed me the price she’d ostensibly make tourists pay for the bag. Whenever I suggested a price, she would get this hilariously appalled look on her face, say something like “Oh, you’re killing me, honey!” and insist that she couldn’t do business that way. I actually feel like I got a little overcharged anyway, but I really like my bag, and I had fun speaking Chinese with the vendor, who seemed legitimately impressed that I knew so much.
After that I went home, got dinner, went to a bar with Pei Rei and Cody, came home relatively early, and went to bed. Today was spent watching my pirated There Will Be Blood DVD and finishing up work, although I did take a food break to eat possibly the most delicious dessert I’ve had, a blueberry mousse topped with peaches and dragonfruit slices. I’m probably going to go back and get another one within the next hour. I have no idea how the Chinese girls have such thin bodies. I’ve definitely put on a few pounds since arriving here, and with the abundance of good, cheap food, I’m sure there will be more coming.
This entry is not as meaty as my usual ones, so for your viewing pleasure, here’s a list.
UNSUCCESSFUL SELLING TACTICS WITNESSED AT THE SILK MARKET
1. I was walking through the leather-goods area (bags, belts, shoes, etc.) and a vendor stepped in front of me holding a watch exactly like the one I was wearing (Fossil, simple silver face with black leather strap) and asked “Lady, want another watch?” Um, no. I clearly already have one, what do I need another one for?
2. On the first floor, which has the bulk of the clothes for both men and women, a vendor jumped out at me and asked “You need something for your boyfriend?” I don’t know why this struck me as such a weird thing to ask, but I told her “mei you” (“I don’t have one”) with more surprise and force than was probably really necessary and scuttled off quickly into the thickets of fake Ralph Lauren shirts.
3. This wasn’t used on me, thankfully, but I saw a more heavyset Western woman looking at some sweaters as the vendor helpfully told her “This will not make you look fat anymore!” They are not subtle in the Silk Market.
4. Weirdest for last: while I was in the bathroom washing my hands, a vendor approached me (you can tell who they are because they all wear the same red vests) and told me that I was very pretty and if I waited for her to finish in the bathroom, she’d take me to her stall, which had name-brand jeans. I wanted to go into my usual Chinese spiel about how their jeans were too short and too small in the butt for me, but I felt like the situation was just way too strange for that, so I gave her an incredulous “zhende ma?” (“Seriously?”), finished washing my hands, and left.

*Lonely Planet’s Encounters: Beijing. I have never before, and probably never will again, run across such a useful little book. The thing is completely indispensable, and if it only had a subway map it would be literally perfect.

**This is borderline impossible, as it’s illegal to take most things that would qualify as “antique” out of the country.

Yunnan Days 11-14

Day 11: T is for Too Much Tea
We had our final meal at the Aini village, breakfast, at about 7:30 this morning. Nobody had gone into Jinghong for more supplies, so there was about ¼ of a jar of jam and some bread left for breakfast. The people who arrived at breakfast on time, myself included, demolished the jam pretty quickly, and the over-sleepers and hangover-afflicted students who came in late were left with nothing but white bread. This was the cause of much griping among everyone, but none more so than Complainer, who snapped “Shut up!” at some poor, well-intentioned student who suggested that she put ketchup on it to make it a little less bland (for some reason, there were like three unopened bottles of ketchup laying around). I have no idea how someone so inflexible can derive any enjoyment out of travel; I swear I have never seen the girl crack a smile at anything this entire trip, and it seems odd to me that one would willingly come to China and then get all bothered by the constant presence of Chinese food. As I told Jackie, “She could have studied abroad in Omaha instead, you know.”
We left the village with similar fanfare as we’d arrived to. Everyone who could get within touching distance shook our hands, hugged us, and invited us to come back and see them again. Unlike a couple of the places I’ve visited, the invitation seemed genuine. I would be more than happy to come back and see them, but I would have no idea how to get back to their village. The village head told us that aside from maybe twenty people, we were the first foreigners the villagers had seen (I also had the first sunburn the villagers had seen, and was constantly being asked if I was hurt and/or contagious).
We drove back to Jinghong for a lunch at the same delicious place we’d visited a couple days ago, checked into our hotel room for a quick shower, and then set off for a walk in another tea plantation. The Barbies groaned when they heard this, but this time they had a point: we’d visited at least one tea-related attraction every other day, and we were all getting pretty sick of it. However, our teacher chaperone, who we had by this point nicknamed Buzzkill Laoshi, told us all sternly that it would be a nice walk and that there was a 1700-year-old tea tree we could look at, according to Bai Mei.
The tea plantation was a relatively nice, shady walk, but there wasn’t much to see – lots of nondescript tea bushes, but no people. After about an hour, we reached the endpoint of the walk, which had nothing more than a tea bush the size of my family’s camellia plants at home. Buzzkill Laoshi briefly conferenced with Bai Mei, then surfaced and said something like “I’m sorry, she has misunderstood. The 1700-year-old tree died, but this one is still very old. It is 300 years old.” Then, because the group wasn’t quite mutinous enough, Bai Mei got us lost on the way back. Ugh.
We were on our own for dinner, so a big group of us went out for pizza, which we’d been craving since the tea plantation walk. We ended up at a multilingual place called the Mei Mei Café, which could have been torn right out of old-town Dali: barely passable “Chinese” food, menu in four languages, breakfast, internet access, and Western food. To my surprise, the pizza was actually very good. They didn’t skimp on the sauce or the cheese, two common problems plaguing the Chinese pizzas I’ve had thus far.

Day 12: Charlie’s in the Trees
Today we went on another hike, but this one had more of a point – we were traveling along a jungle creek to a waterfall. The trail got pretty ridiculous at some points, and the two guides we went with frequently used their machetes to clear paths out of the overgrown foliage. In multiple places, we had to step on the guides’ hands to clamber up sheer, slick walls of wet dirt, and occasionally the trail would give out when people stepped on it. Nonetheless, we made it to the waterfall in one piece in about an hour and a half, cracking “back in ‘Nam” jokes most of the way there.
The waterfall was indeed worth the hike. The water was cool and clear, and most of the group promptly removed all unnecessary clothes and shoes and jumped into the knee-deep small pool underneath. We all took turns shoving, throwing, and table-topping people under the waterfall, which was very cold, and then some of the guys started playing football with an imaginary ball, which degenerated into more table-topping after multiple arguments over who had the “ball”.
We ate lunch at a local home (delicious, but disappointing because Steve had told me we’d be served pigs’ blood, which seemed like an appropriately Thor-esque thing to eat) and went back to the hotel for free time. Dinner was on our own once again, and a group of about six of us decided to follow Steve’s recommendation and try out Dai* barbeque. There were four or five similar-looking places in a row not far from the hotel, so we picked the busiest one and headed inside.
Dai barbeque is a simple affair – the restaurant had a huge variety of meats, veggies, and other edibles outside. You pick all the stuff you want, put it in a basket, and then they cook it for you and bring it to your table. We tried to get a good cross-section of what the restaurant had to offer: we got some pork, chicken, and beef skewers, a whole game hen, fish, some duck heads, various veggies, pork fat, and tofu stuffed with herbs and chilies. Some of the more questionable things we did not eat included whole sheep brains, grubs (which I had later, and were completely tasteless but delectably crunchy), and a nest of giant, wriggling wasp pupae. We all pointed at this one, especially Becca, who was horrified by one of the pupae hatching. The waitress noticed her distress and nonchalantly plucked out the wasp, which was the size of my thumb, and set it aside, with its new wings twitching peevishly.
Dinner was delicious, and we wandered around town afterward full and happy. The boys went off to get massages (which were apparently not at all sketchy, quite good, and $4.50 for an hour) and Jackie, Becca and I strolled along the main shopping street, stopping in at one of Jinghong’s myriad Burmese-owned jewelry stores so I could get a jade necklace (multiple people have determined that it is real, and it set me back just over $10) while the others chatted in Chinese with the owners about their home in Burma. My new necklace is a nice shade of milky green, tied on a red thread for good luck, and shaped like an eggplant, my favorite Chinese veggie.

Day 13: The War of the Mekong
I woke at about 4 this morning with an awful stomachache. So far on the trip, I had managed to avoid the dreaded laduzi, the Chinese word for an upset stomach, intestinal distress, etc. Most of the group had already had it for a couple days, and it was the “etc” that was the real killer, as many of the places we visited had irregular access to toilets. Morale, and Immodium, was running low. (Fortunately, I’d brought my own.)
I went to the bathroom, threw up, felt miserable, went back to bed, woke up, went to the bathroom, felt miserable…it was a vicious cycle that lasted roughly until our morning wake-up call. As it turned out, Becca was afflicted too, and so I gave Steve a ring:
“Hello, Steve. It’s Thor. I’m calling on behalf of myself and my roommate, as we are both inches from death.”
Steve trotted upstairs, gave us some antiviral/antibacterial cocktail, and told us to take the morning off. However, I decided to double up my dose of Immodium, suck it up, and go to the morning’s activity anyway. We were going to visit Xishuangbanna’s new, huge Buddhist temple, and as a religion major I’d been looking forward to my visit and felt I’d be amiss if I didn’t go. Becca stayed in the room, planning to meet us after lunch.
It was a quick drive to the temple, and we wandered around for about an hour before meeting three monks for a Q&A session about Theravada Buddhism, the type most commonly practiced in Southeast Asia. Since I’d studied this particular variety of Buddhism, most of the information in the talk wasn’t new to me, but I enjoyed it all the same; Buddhist monks everywhere seem to have a calm happiness to them, and I always like hanging out with them and feel a little more serene afterward.
When the talk concluded, Buzzkill Laoshi translated our guide’s brief introduction to the temple, which had apparently been constructed with financial help from the Chinese government. I asked why the government had chosen to help, given that the Communist Party was officially atheist, and was fed in response the least true thing I’ve ever heard: “The Chinese government supports freedom of religion.” There were so many questions I wanted to ask: then why don’t they let religious people become Party members? Why do they keep arresting people who operate unlicensed houses of worship? Why the constant, ostensibly political crackdowns on Tibetan Buddhists? I didn’t press the subject farther, but it was frustrating to know that I’d never have gotten a straight answer.
After a stop at a tea store (the best tea-related place we saw thus far, but by this point even I was burned out on tea) we went back to the same restaurant for lunch, which gave us a stunning array of foods for the third straight time. By this time, my laduzi was more or less in remission, so I ate away happily. We picked up the people who had stayed behind for the morning (apparently Becca and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t mesh well with the local food) and left for our river raft trip down the Mekong river.
The Mekong, which flows through the center of Jinghong, conjured in my imagination visions of jungles, colorful flora and fauna, clear water, and mighty rapids. The jungle part was pretty spot-on, but the rest of it, as I found out, was bunk. The section we were on was pretty slow, and the entire river was opaque brown (because of mud, not pollution, although there was undoubtedly some of that in the mix too). A little dismayed by the lack of whitewater and white water, I disembarked from the minibus and walked to the dock.
The group was divided into three boatfuls, each of which had about eight people plus a driver (the rubber rafts were motorized, so we got to sit back and relax). The first was named the No Fun Boat, and was populated by the people who couldn’t swim and didn’t want to get wet, including, unsurprisingly, Complainer and Buzzkill Laoshi. This was where we put all of our stuff. The other two boats segregated themselves into Kobe Boat (over the course of the trip, Andrew and T had elevated Kobe Bryant to Chuck Norris-like status), captained by Andrew, and Thor Boat, captained by me. Thor Boat had myself, Becca, Steve, Cody, and some other exemplary people. Kobe Boat got the Barbies, Andrew, T, and, mysteriously, Pei Rei, who by all accounts should have been on Thor Boat. Each boat had on it five or six small plastic bowls, officially for bailing out water, but actually used for throwing water at the people on the other boat. This started quite soon after we left, and everyone was thoroughly soaked within minutes. To make matters worse, Andrew had been carrying a pack of water balloons around for literally ten days in anticipation of the raft trip, and during lunch had filled 25 of them with water and lovingly stashed them in a backpack. However, the balloons rarely broke, so they went back and forth between the various boats with great frequency but little success. The raft drivers were totally in on the fun, and frequently bumped into the other boat on purpose so we could dump river water on each other with reckless abandon. Early on, Steve and Cody also boarded the Kobe Boat in true Viking fashion. The raft drivers took issue with this, so they promptly came back and a no-boarding rule was established.
We also ran into another raft full of Chinese tourists. Both boats had agreed that there would be no civilian casualties, but the Chinese boat drove over to us and started flinging water with great zeal. At this point, they ceased to be civilians, and in celebration of their new Enemy Combatant status, the two IES boats started fighting back. Everyone was having a ridiculously good time and getting super wet, except this one woman in the back of the Chinese boat who was around my mom’s age and kept trying to shield herself with her umbrella. As we pulled away, we resolved that we would get Umbrella Lady, and we would get her good.
After a quick stop ashore for the drivers to have a smoke (during which Becca stole about half of Kobe Boat’s bowls) we continued on, getting very damp and trying to deflect attacks from both Kobe Boat and the Chinese boat. As we pulled toward the endpoint of the raft trip, the Chinese boat came in for one more attack. We all tried to dump on Umbrella Lady, but she shielded herself with her parasol until Cody, in a fit of genius, grabbed one of the Kobe Boat’s water balloons and smashed it over her umbrella at point-blank range.
The umbrella, which was meant to protect the carrier from sun or perhaps light drizzle, folded immediately. Defenseless, Umbrella Lady looked on in increasingly soggy horror as seven twentysomething, vengeful Americans came at her from all sides with bowls full of river water. As we pulled up and put the bowls away, several of us heard her mutter (in Chinese) “I don’t like foreigners”. The rest of the boat shook our hands and congratulated us on a good fight. I considered the entire trip a victory for Thor Boat, as we defeated Umbrella lady, had the only boarding of the day, and stole about half of Kobe Boat’s munitions.
There was little time to gloat, because our next stop was at the local tech school for a soccer match against a Jinghong club team. We’d heard the horror stories about the previous year’s match from Steve and fully expected to be steamrollered by the club team. They beat us 6-3, but we definitely held our own thanks to Cody and Andrew, both experienced and talented soccer players, and the Jinghong goalkeeper, who was about as useful as the Swiss navy.

Day 14: Oh, Thank God
This was the day we returned home. It would be a long one, though: our flight was not scheduled to arrive in Beijing until half past midnight.
We started the day off in Jinghong with a visit to a park (not interesting) and the local fruit market, where I sampled delicious, fresh tropical things that I’d never seen before, may never see again, and don’t know the names of because the likes of them have never been seen in the Western hemisphere. I ended up buying several things to take back to Max and a passion fruit** for myself, but my peers got exotic melons, pineapples, everything. I don’t think I tried anything I disliked.
We had our final lunch (excellent, as always) before the short flight from Jinghong to Kunming, where we went to the city’s famous flower market for a few hours. The flowers were gorgeous, and came in every variety you could imagine, but I didn’t get any, as I’m not into things that are decorative rather than useful. We wandered around there for a while and got dinner (the most mediocre dumplings I’ve ever had – not enough meat, not enough sauce) and then went back to the bus for our final journey to the Kunming airport.
Our flight back to Beijing was an hour and a half late due to lightning, so we were all tired and grumpy when we boarded, and most of us slept the whole way through the flight as well as the bus ride back to Bei Wai, where we divided up our fruit and flowers and went back to our own beds.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about the trip. There were some things I really liked (the Aini village, the chat with the monks) that I wouldn’t have done as an independent traveler, and I had huge amounts of fun at times (the river trip). However, those are ultimately outweighed by the tight schedule and the lack of time to explore on our own and interact with the locals. I feel like my Chinese is worse than it was when I left; since we did everything with the group, there was really no time or reason to speak Chinese, and I’m out of practice. Parts of the trip were also really poorly organized – there were several things on the itinerary that we never got to do due to poor planning. I would have preferred a one-week trip with the group and a week later in the semester for us to travel on our own.
I am thrilled, however, to be back in Beijing. Touching down at the airport felt as much like a homecoming as any I’ve ever experienced, on par with my first trip home from college for Thanksgiving or my return to Northwestern at the start of sophomore year. The Paralympics are over now, but I haven’t noticed any significant difference in traffic or air quality (in fact, both today and yesterday were lovely and clear). The only post-Olympics changes I’ve noticed are positive. There are more street food vendors out and about now, people who were previously driven away by Beijing’s special Olympic public health standards, which is always a good thing because Beijing’s best food is street food. The other group now out in full force are the pirated DVD vendors, who are back to selling their wares out in the open. I got off the bus today and almost immediately had copies of Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 shoved into my hands, all movies that aren’t out on actual video yet. The Beijing police are supposedly trying to crack down on this, but I see no signs of that happening. They’re just mad because I got a copy of There Will Be Blood for about eighty cents and they don’t have one. It works, too.
Oh, Beijing. You’re beautiful. You’re amazing. I love you. Don’t ever leave me again.

Dumpling Tally: 47

*The Dai are a Thai minority group living in Xishuangbanna. In Jinghong, and possibly all of Xishuangbanna, they’re actually the most numerous ethnicity, outnumbering Han Chinese.

**Passion fruits are the best fruits. If you disagree with me, you are wrong.

Today was good, today was fun

Apparently a couple people got upset over my last update because I implied that I liked sneakers more than other Meaningful Aspects of Life. This is not actually true. I thought I had made that relatively clear through excessive use of hyperbole and the general knowledge that nobody could actually be that shallow, but I’m sorry if you were offended by it. (The hyperbole will continue, though, so I suggest that literalists look elsewhere.*)
Anyway, today I had no classes – there’s an option to do an internship with a Chinese company, which I think is pretty useless because most of the students here, myself included, don’t know enough to be useful in any significant capacity, and the internships all meet on Wednesday mornings. Neither of my area studies classes met this afternoon, so I had the entire free day to explore. I woke up later than usual (eight) and emerged into the living room to find both my host parents gone and my breakfast on the table. After consulting a guidebook over my favorite sesame seed cakes, I decided I could do with a little inner peace (who couldn’t?) and headed for the Yonghegong Lama Temple, Beijing’s biggest Tibetan Buddhist temple and monastery. Frankly, I’m a little surprised they still let the place exist; if it weren’t such a well-preserved and popular place, they probably would tear it down, because it is a hotbed of Tibetan culture and Tibetan stuff in general, and if there is one thing the Chinese government doesn’t like, it’s Tibetan things.** It didn’t seem to be particularly well-guarded or cracked-down-on, either. In fact, it was quite crowded, more so than I thought it would be on a Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately, the swarming crowds of worshippers and obnoxious people on package tours disrupted my quest for inner peace a bit, not that I would have gotten anywhere close anyway. But it was still a beautiful walk – the entire complex is enclosed with a tall wall, so you feel like you’ve escaped from the Beijing hustle and bustle, even though there are major streets within feet of the boundaries.
I had never been to an active Buddhist center before (the closest I’d been was the annual Enmanji Teriyaki BBQ) and was very surprised at the devoutness of many of the laypeople. I pictured lay Buddhism as a pretty chill religion, with most of the focus on action instead of orthodoxy and ritual. I still think that’s mostly accurate, but the latter definitely have their place too. You had to pay (about $3.50) to get into the temple, and from there you could wander the grounds for free as long as you liked. However, there was an unofficial rule that for each hall in which you wanted to worship, you had to burn three sticks of incense outside before entering. As a result, there was a huge metal basin, sort of like a BBQ pit, outside of each building, and they were all always crowded with people throwing their incense in and bowing and praying. This did little to nothing for the already iffy air quality today, but it did make everything smell really good. Inside each hall there were different altars depicting various aspects of the Buddha and some other bodhisattvas, the most impressive by far of which was a huge standing Buddha statue that was five stories high and carved out of a single piece of sandalwood. Yes, just one. I have no idea where they found a sandalwood tree that big – the statue was probably twenty feet wide and something like sixty feet tall – but the Guinness Book of Records certified it, so I will trust them. The statue was painted gold, and unfortunately I was not allowed to photograph it. The ground in front of this altar, obviously the crown jewel of the complex, was covered in all colors of incense, as the tray that had been provided for them had overflowed a long time ago.
Monks in chocolate-brown robes (which immediately endeared them to me, as chocolate brown is my favorite color and a universally flattering one) and brightly colored sashes strolled around the complex, doing things like cleaning up the altars and chanting, but also stuff like signing for FedEx packages, in an interesting modern twist. Overall, they seemed very happy and easygoing, as do Buddhist monks everywhere, and relatively unconcerned with the wackness surrounding their native home and their adopted (forcibly adopted) government.
I had planned to meet up with Max in the afternoon, but since he was still entrenched in classes I decided to strike out on my own a bit more until I heard from him. I got some shopping done on the streets surrounding Yonghegong (if you’re my little brother, Abby, or Arianne, I got your stuff today!) and headed for a place recommended in my indispensable Lonely Planet: Encounters Beijing guidebook called Plastered T-Shirts that sold its own original designs, on a small street called Nanluogu Hutong. It was a bit far from any subway stop, but I figured I didn’t mind a bit of a walk.
The stroll there was quite nice – I stayed on a major street most of the time, but it had several pretty restaurants, food stands (I had the most delicious sesame-paste bun and it was twelve cents) and, for some reason, shops selling musical instruments. When I finally had to make a turn onto Nanluogu Hutong, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place at first – it just seemed like a run-down alley – but headed forward anyway. About half a block in, I was greeted with the loveliest place I’ve seen here so far, bar none.
Hutongs are a uniquely Beijing design of courtyard houses along small back roads, and the government is demolishing them by the dozens to make room for high-rises and the like. Fortunately, though, Nanluogu was one of the first to be protected, so it will likely be around for a long time. The streets were verboten for cars and unevenly cobbled, and the buildings’ traditional stone walls had not only been preserved but reinforced. The steep, tiled roofs had kept their shape and unmistakable Chineseyness, and the sides of the streets were lined with leafy green trees. It was like I’d entered another world, entirely separate from the Beijing with the traffic jams and the tall Soviet buildings and the crappy air. Many, if not most, of the buildings had traditional hand-carved wooden signs or windows on them, cultivating a very languid, relaxing air throughout the whole street. Off to the sides, even smaller alleys led to people’s homes (despite the development put into this hutong, many of the homes surrounding it lack indoor plumbing, so easy access to the many public toilets is imperative) and into small garden courtyards, usually filled with potted plants and belonging to restaurants or bars that offered outdoor seating.
The vast majority of the spaces with doors actually facing Nanluogu Hutong, though, were stores – not chain stores, but unique tiny spaces selling fabric, hipster-y t-shirts and gifts, and in one case, an entire small gallery filled with little statues made of bent silverware, some of which lit up. The rest were bars and restaurants – some upscale, some cheap, all elegantly located and furnished (for a good example, check out the picture I posted along with this entry of a small café), and many of which had their own inner courtyard, rooftop terrace, or both. If I ever got a date over here, I would take him here to eat dinner; having a second-floor view of everything gently lit at night must be nothing short of magical.
After doing some extensive research on this hutong after getting back home, I’ve heard some internet grumbling that it’s too touristy. I’d beg to differ – there were relatively few people there at all, and there were maybe only three other Westerners that I noticed over the course of my wanderings. A lot of businesses are owned by expats, so the owners will speak English, or the restaurants will have English menus, but this isn’t done in a touristy way like it is in some other parts of town, where people will physically try to pull you into their restaurant or bar. Instead, the option is just there, but the lingua franca is definitely still Chinese. I am surprised that such a peaceful, beautiful street was so quiet, but I guess I’m happy about it too; it should be one of the city’s best-kept secrets instead of being overrun by people trampling on its plants, stubbing out their cigarettes on its walls, and generally wrecking its peacefulness by bringing all the things that large groups of tourists bring with them. This is just why I like exploring cities on my own; when you’re willing to go off the beaten path a little, you find the most wonderful parts all on your own.
I finally did meet up with Max and we headed for Wangfujing, Beijing’s best-known shopping street. I was actually pretty disappointed – the mall was just a mall with luxury brands I could have bought back in the States, and Max even joked that the owners probably had to pay Chinese people to walk around in it. Wangfujing Snack Street, touted as the street food capital of Beijing, had several promising-looking eateries if you wanted to sit down, but most of the street food (actually, most of the restaurants in general) was similar and touristy – stall after stall of weird things like scorpions and grasshoppers on skewers, none of which I saw actual Chinese people eating. Looking at them, I felt myself starting to renege on my promise to eat every weird thing set in front of me (although I still would be willing to try the seahorses), especially when one of the skewered pupae
PLEASE SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU READ THIS. THIS SHOULD NOT BE READ BY THOSE WITH HEART OR NERVOUS CONDITIONS, PREGNANT OR NURSING WOMEN, OR PEOPLE WITH BACK PROBLEMS. CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE READING.
started pulsating and moving around, and one of the scorpions, which really seemed to not want to be there anymore (not that I blame the little dude) followed suit, thrashing its legs around and waving its stinger furiously. It’s good to know that your food is fresh, but I don’t want it to see it still living before I eat it, especially when its movement would cause me to squish it under my foot in a slightly different set of circumstances. I ended up getting an octopus skewer instead (tentacles only, henceforth fully dead).
The rest of my shopping was pretty fruitless, so I headed home to the Zhangs’ after a successful and fully understood (on both sides!) phone call to tell them that I would be late due to being held up in Beijing’s awful rush-hour traffic. The traffic is still halved due to the Olympic/Paralympic policy of only allowing cars with even/odd numbered plates on the streets on alternating days, so that wasn’t the worst part of the traffic. The real reason it takes so long to get anywhere by car or bus here is that for some reason, the lights take FOREVER to change. My record time for waiting at one red light, wanting to go straight ahead, is seven minutes, and that was one cycle of the lights. Beijing must have access to traffic engineers somehow, so why this ridiculousness is allowed is beyond me. At any rate, if you’re stopped at a red light, you’d better hope you like the view out your window, because you’ll be looking at it for a long, long time.
So I arrived home to the family sitting down to dinner with Bin Bin. We chatted a little and I had more of Mr. Zhang’s tasty eggplant dish, which I will be learning how to make before I leave, whenever that may be. Things are going better with them; I can understand them a little more now, and when they sat down to watch TV tonight I was able to make some conversation by asking about what was on (what time period is this set in? Is Character A Character B’s girlfriend? What’s the prize if this person wins this game show?). Best of all, I got them to agree on my set of Epic Weekend Plans to stay out all night dancing and then catch the sun going up in Tiananmen Square. I think they liked that, as they seem like a very patriotic family. They’ve never mentioned it outright, but there are a ton of cultural knickknacks and little flags around their house, and even a couple hammer-and-sickle symbols. However, like everyone else in China, they are really, really into Kentucky Fried Chicken, which reigns supreme as the fast food establishment of choice – not McDonalds, not even street food.

*I promise you’ll be super sad if you don’t click that. Best first result from a Google search EVER.

**And traffic rules, and FDA-like oversight of consumer products, and efficiency, and basic food safety, and the environment, and…

I visit the REAL Temple of Heaven, and other stories

I have something to talk to you about.
Everyone has things that give their lives meaning. Some have religion. (Being a comparative religion major has made me as agnostic as one can possibly be.) Some have family. (I love my family, but I spend ¾ of the year away from them, and I don’t plan on having one of my own.) Still others have their jobs, their communities, their goals for the future, etc.
I have something different.
I have shoes.
I started working in Evanston’s mom-and-pop shoe store last fall. It’s a pretty nice store; they sell Keens, Clarks, Merrells, the works, so my commission is usually quite good. I am good at my job, and like it because I can get up to 75% off shoes that the store sells. However, there is something missing. My shoe store has no adidas. In my mind, this is like operating a package tour to Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower, or making a pizza without the cheese. adidas are the pinnacle of footwear.Consider, for instance, the Samba: its clean lines, its bold contrasts, its gummy sole, perfect for indoor soccer, which I do not play. Or the ZX, which goes flawlessly from the track to the club, if you get it in a good color instead of the pedestrian white and gray ones that boring people wear. Or the Forum, essential for any 80s enthusiast/b-boy or girl/stylin’ person.
The greatest of all these is the Superstar. A true marvel of modern engineering, the possibilities of this flawless shoe are endless: get a sleek black pair and wear them to impress your date! Buy one of the tricolor editions and impress everyone with your laid-back, but still super cool, footwear style. Or be my hero, buy one of the (now sadly out of circulation) Flavors of the World Vin Qing Mings, spend obscene amounts of money on an outfit that goes with orange, burgundy, and pale purple, but damn, rock them with pride, because you know that you have the actual coolest pair of shoes in the entire world.
At least, that’s what I would do.
At any rate, the Superstar is possibly the most classy, versatile shoe on earth, and they are massively comfortable to boot. I am always in search of more adidas, especially since I gravitate towards brightly colored pairs that go with maybe two outfits, and I wanted something a little more matching-y, something I could wear around. I originally had my heart set on a pair of Sambas, but maintained an open mind last night as Max and I set off for…get ready…

THE BIGGEST ADIDAS STORE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD

Four brand-spanking-new floors of sportswear, accessories, designer goods, interactive exhibits, and, of course, the greatest shoes on the globe – all here in Beijing, in a recently built glassy tower that shines from the distance like a beacon of hope, style, and excellence, casting its light on the lesser stores in the shopping mall (Puma, Nike, Mizuno – I’m looking at you) as if to say, “Fear not, friends. There is a better way.”
I walked there from the subway stop and was immediately impressed when I stepped indoors and saw an entire concierge, with a sign to the left listing all the services the store offered: basketball court booking, exercise consultation, design customization. I felt like a pilgrim who had traveled by camel from untold miles away and finally arrived in Mecca. It was all I could do not to drop to my knees right on the spot.
I wandered around in slack-jawed amazement and eventually made my way up to the fourth floor, where, alas, there were no Sambas to be found (I still think this is a glaring omission). I did some seriously strategic, Sun-Tzu-like thinking and eventually decided on a black pair of Superstars with white trim, which were a bit more than I was planning on spending,* but I did really need sneakers, and I considered them my souvenir to myself (the first of many, indubitably). After a little more slack-jawed amazement and a couple vain attempts to explain to Max why “the brand with the three stripes” moved me with such cultish fervor, we left, shopped around briefly at some other places, and went to Sanlitun for a drink.
Sanlitun is one of the three main bar areas in Beijing (the others being Wudaokou, which I was severely unimpressed with, and Houhai, which I have not yet visited). It’s no longer considered the place to be, but there are some fairly legendary clubs nearby, and at night the entire street lights up with what look like neon, extra-strength Christmas lights – the trees and exteriors of the bars are strung with them, and the effect can be pretty magical if you allow yourself to be sort of soft-hearted and mushy about the whole affair. The people-watching is excellent, too; there’s a good mix of Chinese and foreigners, not just Anglophones, but people from all over the world. Max and I had barely ordered our beers when we were approached by two members of the Spanish Paralympic team, wheelchair-bound but definitely ripped enough to take me out without any trouble if need be (I probably do need to be taken out, in every sense of the word). We briefly chatted before they left, no doubt to another bar (on our side of the street there were literally three city blocks of nothing but bars all smashed together) and sat and watched the world go by. Unfortunately, I’d told my host parents I’d be back at eleven, so I finished my beer and hopped a cab home.
I’d told my host mom that I’d be back at eleven (the curfew set by my program for weeknights), and, knowing my new parents’ early sleep habits, assured them that I was comfortable coming home after they went to bed, because I had a key, and that it was really not necessary to wait for me to get back. However, when I opened the door, I was faced with a grumpy-looking host mom, who immediately and incomprehensibly bade me good night as she walked straight to her room.
This turn of events made me even more determined to find a way out of my living situation; I am an American college student, dammit, and I will not be made to feel like an anomaly because I like to stay out late and sometimes have fun. I’d discussed my problems with the program director before, and he encouraged me to “just wait it out,” adding that “the last student who lived there had a really good time.” Awesome for her, but people have different perceptions of fun; what is great for some people is boring for others (this is why the Golf Channel exists). I then vented to a couple more people in charge, who sympathized but told me not to give up just yet, and also talked to one of the RAs here who had lived in a similar situation. She gave me the best advice yet, which was to spend time with them during the afternoon and evening and then peace out at about nine or so, explaining that you’re a night owl, and assure them that they don’t need to wait up for you. She also promised that this would not get me kicked out of the homestay, which, although it would more or less solve my problem, might be a bit of a black mark on my record.
Today went better, though – I told them I was leaving to study, which was actually true this time, was back ten minutes before the promised arrival time (ten), and returned to see them watching TV (quelle surprise). They were watching something really insipid, kind of like the Chinese version of MXC, but they obviously hadn’t stayed up on my behalf, which made me feel better. We “talked” for about fifteen minutes (our “talking” consisted of me using the proper verbs for things that were going on, and my host mom telling me new verbs) and then I went to take a shower**. When I got out, they had gone to bed, but it was one of our better interactions, to be sure. I keep waffling on this, but right now I feel like I could make this a home if I’m not allowed to move out. They seem to let me do whatever I want, although it sometimes comes with caveats, and tonight my host dad made be this really good eggplant dish because I’d said a while back that eggplant was my favorite vegetable, which I thought was really nice***.
When I went out to study after dinner I got sidetracked by a game of badminton (which I am ordinarily mediocre at, and during the twilight when it was hard to see the birdie I was horrible). One of my fellow students, Andrew, was outside practicing his Chinese on a couple local kids who lived close to campus, periodically asking me what words meant or how to say things. After I got sick of swatting halfheartedly at the air with my badminton racket, I walked over to join him and met the kids he was with, who were clearly quite poor but super sweet. The ten-year-old girl was especially beautiful and spoke some English, so I talked to her a little while Andrew asked one of the boys some questions about kung fu and playfully pretended to use martial arts moves on the kids, to their great delight.
Some older people, presumably the kids’ parents or aunts or uncles or something, came over and starting talking to us as well. Their Mandarin was a little hard to understand (then again, everyone’s is because I’m white), but we got out of them that they were from Henan province, what their names were, how old the kids were, and some other basic information. Then they started asking Andrew if I was his girlfriend, at which point I laughed, he looked confused, and the men clarified by saying that I was “feichang piaoliang” (extremely pretty). I kept turning the compliment down, as Chinese culture dictates, but they insisted, so that was a nice boost for my self-esteem. We got some pictures with the girl and one of the men, which I will post once I receive them. All in all, several successful interactions with the locals today, AND I have a new pair of sneakers. Excellent.
I also experienced the other components of my learning schedule for the first time yesterday and today. Yesterday I met my language tutor, a sweet guy who’s studying for his masters at this university and has accepted a small salary from my program to help us speak Chinese. For one hour per student, four days a week, he has to hang out with me and at least one other girl and help us with our Chinese. Judging by the number of times I told him I didn’t understand, this is not a fun or easy job. Nonetheless, he keeps in high spirits and is very kind to me, and his Mandarin is also largely unaccented, which makes him much easier to understand than most of the Beijingers, who sound like they’re talking with a mouthful of really hot oatmeal that they can’t spit out.
Both of my area studies classes started today as well. They’re definitely the ugly stepsister to the language classes, meeting only twice a week for an hour or so, but both of mine will be fun, I think. I am taking one class on Chinese history during the Qing dynasty, the last before Chiang Kai-Shek, when Westerners started laying claim to China and doing whatever they wanted with it. That professor is an American who’s in Beijing working for his Ph.D. He’s probably in his early thirties and has a good sense of humor and a very enjoyable style of lecturing – lots of discussion, lots of helpful explaining. My second class is calligraphy, which I chose mostly because it had no homework, but that professor is one of the best people I’ve met here. He immediately gave off a lively impression – he looks pretty unexceptional, short and of average build, maybe sixty, with a pencil moustache, but his eyes always have a definite hint of sass in them. He speaks no English, so one of the higher-level students translates for him, but his Chinese is very clearly spoken and simple, so many of the people in the class can understand him anyway. As I understand, he’s a Manchurian, one of the 56 recognized ethnic groups in China, and he comes from a very ancient lineage that may or may not have royal blood in it somewhere. He showed us all his calligraphy stuff (including a $160,000 inkstone, which we will not be using, obviously) and talked for a while about why he did what he did, the history of calligraphy, etc. There was a clear rapport between him and the returning students, and he seemed like the kindest, most caring man, encouraging all of us to come to him if we had questions about ancient or “authentic” Beijing. I am really looking forward to that.

*For some reason, all the stuff in the adidas store was more expensive than it was in the US. I have no idea why this is; the average Chinese person is much less likely than the average American to be able to afford such luxuries, and, as Max pointed out, all the stuff is made in China anyway, so if anything they’re saving on shipping costs. What a weird country.

**Even more pernicious than the Zhangs’ habit of staying in is their shower. They have a normal Western toilet and sink, and a tile floor, but the shower is one of those European-style jobs that just consists of a showerhead on a long, flexible hose that you move around and spray yourself with wherever you want. The weird thing here is that there’s nothing on their floor to keep the water in a contained area; the floor is just flat in the entire room, so if you get any water on the floor there’s nothing to keep it from spreading out over the entire room. The bathroom has several Rubbermaid bins, maybe a foot and a half in diameter, apparently used to collect the water and then pour it directly down the drain, but a) it’s really hard to get the water in the bin when you’re spraying it on yourself and b) the drain kind of sucks so when you pour the water out, it usually backs up a bit and then the floor gets all watery anyway and you have to whisk it into the drain with your foot. There’s probably a better way to do this but I have no idea what it is.

***A not-so-nice thing I ate today: blueberry potato chips. I thought it was a mistake or a joke at first, but the little campus convenience store had them right next to the other bags of Lay's in normal flavors. I figured I couldn't not buy them, so I got one and ate about half of it before I just couldn't handle it anymore and threw them out. They tasted exactly like blueberries and potato chips at the same time. Weirdest thing ever.

Meet the parents?

One of the 25098734 Chinese words I had to learn today meant “succeed at a test or trial”. How timely.
Friday was a fun day – we did another “mystery Beijing” trip, except this one was sort of modeled after The Amazing Race. In teams of four, we were given clues that led us to different places in Beijing, where IES staff would give us the next clue, etc. The first one to return from all the stops won. We lost despite having taken a cab everywhere. Fortunately, everything is super cheap. After that we had a fancy dinner to celebrate our last day of orientation (HUZZAH) and then I met up with my friend Max (those of you who don’t know him from school will recognize him as either my BFF Arianne’s boyfriend or the kid who’s obsessed with looking up islands on Google Earth) who is also spending the semester here but at a different school. After some fruitless walking around we decided to cab it over to a club in another part of town with some of his eight-hour-old British friends from school. The club was amazing – it was the archetypal fancy-bordering-on-ridiculous expatriate-ish club – not least because ladies did not have to pay a cover charge (although the ridiculous phenomenon of seven-dollar-drinks was alive and well – why places charge that much for something I could make is beyond me). I danced my little heart out until about 3 a.m. and then headed back for the last night in my hotel-dorm.
In the morning I packed, absconded with the hotel-dorm’s shampoo, body wash, toothbrush, comb, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down, took a walk, and fairly promptly got lost along a back road. I’ve heard people (in my textbooks…) say that Beijing is laid out very practically, but I assure you that in my part of town nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve found it nearly impossible to do things like walk a block over – the streets aren’t laid out in a grid, and they frequently dead-end or turn or don’t intersect with the other streets like they should – which has led me to some interesting places. For example, yesterday I just wanted to buy a peach to eat, so I went to get one from my fruit-vending lady* and then decided to just walk south a block and go back to school down the next street over. However, this proved impossible, and I found myself wandering about two bus stops’ worth of distance farther than I’d intended to go. (Buses don’t stop every five feet here like they do in the US, so this is a pretty significant distance, probably a couple miles or so.) I finally found a street that led back the way I wanted to go, which to my pleasant surprise ran along between a canal and a pretty park area. However, on the same walk I saw probably the most severe poverty I’ve encountered here thus far: houses with plywood sides and tin roofs, ragpickers whose “yards” are filled with junk that they sell for however much is possible, etc. I know that it’s hugely clichéd to say that “Beijing is a city of contrasts” (special thanks to Gawker for calling out every stupid journalist who says that) so I won’t say it, but the gaps here between rich and poor are probably the biggest I’ve ever seen. As I walked past the ramshackle houses, I invariably thought back to the night before at the club, where people who wanted to sit at a table in the room with the dance floor had to order a minimum of RMB 2000 (about $300) worth of drinks. The tables were all in use, and about half of the occupants were Chinese. The reason I know this is because Max and the Brit Squad and I unceremoniously got kicked off of a table because we didn’t want to order the equivalent of a bottle of Special Stoli each just for the sake of resting our feet.
At any rate, I eventually did find my way back to school, headed to the supermarket** to buy a notebook, and made another excellent discovery, this time food-related. I’ve been eating street food with great frequency because I usually don’t have the time to sit down at a restaurant, and when I do I can’t read most of the menu. With street food, though, you just point and pay, and it’s always good. This time I stopped at a small stand that that sold chuanr (pronounced chu-ar, or churrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr if you’re in Beijing), skewers of mutton developed by the Uighur people, a minority group native to the westernmost part of China, north of Tibet. The Uighurs are ethnically Kazakh/Kyrgysz (OH SPELLING, CHECK IT)/Uzbek/etc, and they are Muslim so they don’t eat pork, which is the default meat for most Chinese. So instead, they take skewers of seasoned lamb and quickly cook them in hot oil, as the woman running my lunch stall did today. It was delicious – hot and greasy, and the pieces were pretty small, so it was easy to eat and all you got was flavor, instead of eating big chunks resulting in an uninteresting wad of meat in your mouth at the end. I got two normal chuanr (the skewers were pencil-length) and a chicken one that also looked really good. It had this white stuff in between the chicken pieces, which I thought was fat (the Chinese eat a lot of fat by itself – it’s in chunks on most of the chuanr I’ve seen and has even been the “meat” in one dish I ordered at a restaurant. Thing is, though, it’s always been really good. Yes, I am disgusting.) but I am now about 99% sure was cartilage. I ate it anyway, because the seasoning was superb and I didn’t want to waste my delicious chuanr, putting cartilage in first place for Weirdest Food Eaten Thus Far. I would not recommend it.
I hurried back to the hotel-dorm to pack my things and prepare to meet my host family. They ended up living in an apartment complex literally right next door to my school, which is super convenient. The Zhang family has two parents, probably about my parents’ age, but retired – the mother was a doctor, and the father owned his own company – and a 28-year-old daughter named Bin Bin, who is super cute and speaks English quite well. However, Bin Bin doesn’t live here, and only comes over a couple times a week at most. The Zhang parents are both very kind, but they don’t speak a word of English, and they don’t seem to understand my Chinese that well, which is probably because it’s not very good. I have trouble understanding them too, frequently, and without Bin Bin around to help out it’s been difficult making conversation; my confidence in my Chinese has gone down since I’ve started talking to them and realizing they didn’t understand a lot of what I was trying to say. However, they are obviously very caring (right off Mrs. Zhang offered to help me with my homework), sweet as pie, and Mr. Zhang is a good cook. (They also have this adorable Pekingesey-looking dog who they are constantly feeding meat to. As a result, the dog is massively fat and waddles around a lot, but he’s cute as the dickens and very friendly). I felt bad for these people and quite uncomfortable myself; I didn’t want to seem unfriendly, aloof, or ungrateful, but it’s hard to have a conversation when people don’t really understand each other.
This morning I woke up, had some of the worst pastries ever for breakfast with a warm bowl of powdered milk and felt sorry for myself until Max called and asked if I wanted to go to the Summer Palace that afternoon. I immediately took him up on it; the Zhangs were spending their day watching TV, and I wanted to get out and explore. After a subway/bus/cab ride there, we spent a few hours walking around the giant park, which was built as a playground for some of the last emperors (and Dowager Empress Cixi, who is pretty much the same person as Austria’s Empress Sisi and pronounced more or less the same too) during the very hot summers. It was a gorgeous day – the sky was clear and blue, with very little trace of the pollution that has plagued the city for the past couple of days – and we had an excellent time fooling around with three kinds of popsicles in our hands (including a corn-flavored one, which was far and away the best) and seeing the beautifully restored temples and halls, which all had names that followed the pattern of “Hall of [overly romanticized adjective] [prissy noun]”. The most impressive, though, was Cixi’s marble boat, ostensibly commissioned with the Chinese navy’s money and very lavishly painted. The boat is about as long as two semis and has a lower floor and a balcony, and was apparently the place to party if you were in the good graces of the Qing royalty.
We went back to the area around my campus and hunted for street food, which consisted of three kinds of dumplings, chuanr, little egg-custard tarts that were ridiculously flaky and delicious, and bottled rose-flavored tea, which is possibly the most delicious and refreshing beverage I’ve found for the hot days here. We took our haul and sat on the steps of a restaurant and talked about various things, including me telling him the Cheerio joke, which he did not find that funny. I had been asked to be home by five for dinner, which was served promptly at five. I wondered why it was so early, and after the second night in a row that the Zhangs went to bed at 8:30, I understood.
When I was trying to decide between staying with a family and living in a dorm with a Chinese roommate (my other option) my BFF Abby, who had stayed with a family during her tenure in Aix-en-Provence, told me that the most important thing was to be sure that I was happy with the family, and to speak up if I didn’t feel like it was a good environment for me. I feel bad because I had really wanted a homestay, and had told the director that, but I feel like it’s too much freedom to give up. The returning students I’ve talked to from this program all listed their favorite things – going out for karaoke with their Chinese friends, dancing on the weekends, taking nighttime walks in the parks and people-watching – as things that would be impossible for me to do when my host parents go to bed an hour after sunset. I want the freedom to live in a dorm on my schedule, study late at night if necessary (and it will be, since I have more words to learn than you can shake a stick at), and go out with friends if the situation calls for it. Since both the Zhangs are retired, they stay in most of the time, and I don’t want to spend my evenings watching Mr. Zhang change the channels in his boxers and then have the apartment to myself starting at 8:30. When I signed up to live with a host family, I envisioned a family who had the hobbies the program director assured me were common: going out to eat, making new friends, touring Beijing. I don’t like to be alone, and I’d like someone to go out to eat with, someone who could be a friend. Having a Chinese roommate, who is more flexible and possibly knows some English, is sounding better and better. I would love to make some Chinese friends who are around my age, and even Bin Bin is pretty well out of that age group. I came to Beijing to see how Chinese people lived, but I’d intended to live the life of a Chinese student, someone whose lifestyle I could identify with. The Zhangs don’t seem like they’re very well-off, either (host families get a stipend from the program for letting a student stay with them), so I feel weird asking them to go out for dinner or go sightseeing somewhere that’s within my reach, but may be financially difficult for them. I tried to break the ice by asking what their favorite places in Beijing were, to see if there was somewhere cheap or free that we could go, but after asking four or five times and not being understood I gave up.
This is by far the bigger problem - I am basically incommunicado with my family. The fault for this definitely mostly lies with me, but I’m a little confused since many of the other Chinese people I’ve talked to, be they at the supermarket showing me where the towels are, telling me what’s in the dish I just ate, or making conversation with me while they drove me to the club, have seemed to understand me pretty well. With my new family, though, I can count the number of sentences I’ve understood on one hand. A day and a half spent with them doesn’t sound like a lot, but imagine living in your own parents’ house and understanding three things they’ve said over the course of 36 hours. I have tried everything in my admittedly small arsenal: asking them to say things again, speak slower, use simpler words, etc. I’ve even resorted to writing things down on a couple of occasions, because we do not understand what the other person is saying. Most of the time I can tell if what they’re trying to say is a question or a statement; if it’s a statement I smile and nod, but if it’s a question I try to see if I can get by with the Chinese equivalent of “uh-huh”. When I ask them something, or try to talk to them, the same thing happens: they usually look confusedly at me, and I generally end up telling them that I’m sorry and not to worry about it. I feel trapped here. There is a waiting list for people who would like to live in homestays but whom the program director wasn’t able to fit in. I know a couple of those kids speak better Chinese than I do and don’t want to go out frequently, if at all, and I think they would fit in here better than me. The Zhangs are very kind, and from what I can deduce from their demeanor, very friendly. They are sweet people and they deserve to live with a student who can talk to them and who can fit into their lifestyle. I don’t want to live under a dusk-to-dawn house arrest for a semester, especially not when there are other students who would likely be a good fit for this homestay but aren’t able to live with any family. I think tomorrow I’ll ask the designated homestay RA if there’s still time to switch; when I moved out yesterday the students who weren’t in homestays were still in their dorm, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable or a lost cause. I hope not. I feel deeply embarrassed that I’m so unhappy here, in large part because I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those obnoxious American students who only cared about going out all the time, and I can see how someone might perceive me that way now. I absolutely didn’t come here to have that be my focus in any significant amount, but I’m not sure I can have a good experience here living the lifestyle of someone fifty years my senior, and spending time in China is too precious an experience to spend it being upset, bored, and unable to talk.
(I’m not actually as depressed as I sound; I had a great time at the Summer Palace eating the Cornsicle today, and I’ve met some friendly, funny, and kind people from my program as well. I’m just unsure and uncomfortable about the living situation.)

Dumpling tally: 23

*A uniquely Chinese quirk I’ve noticed is the fruit stand: my neighborhood has a TON (like, two or three on every small block) of fruit vendors, all selling more or less the same selection of fruit for almost identical prices. Most of these people have small storefronts, but quite a few operate out of their vans or even on a big blanket set out on a street corner. I am quite sure the latter two are illegal. By far the most omnipresent and popular fruit is watermelon, but I’m not entirely sure why this is; it’s not especially cheap compared to the other fruits for sale, but every vendor always has a ton in stock and most of the people I see shopping for fruit check out the watermelons.

**The supermarket is also sort of different from those in the US. The produce section is virtually nonexistent, as the overwhelming presence of fruit vendors like the ones mentioned above renders it unnecessary. At the supermarket nearest to me, the top floor is pretty normal-looking and has most of your standard-issue food,*** tweaked a bit for Chinese tastes (for example, live seafood). The bottom floor, though, has weird things like towels, shoes, and ready-to-hang art. The really cracked-out part is that despite the bottom floor being patrolled by no less than four police officers (not rent-a-cops, but actual police officers), the store sells a lot of obviously fake designer stuff, like the Fuma bag I saw the other day. After witnessing the Great Fake Fuwa Raid of ’08, I thought that knockoffs would have all but disappeared due to the Olympic-induced increased police presence, but none of the officers seemed to care.

***At the seafood counter, I saw a flat metal tray full of egg-sized live brown pupae. I was looking at them wriggling around in this really perturbing way AND THEN I SAW THIS LADY GIVE THE SEAFOOD GUY 2 RMB AND SHE JUST ATE IT, LIVE, LIKE YOU WOULD EAT A CARROT STICK OR PERHAPS A COOL RANCH DORITO. EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately, I promised myself before I left that I’d tried every weird food offered to me except dog meat (which is apparently only served in Korean restaurants anyway), so if someone asks if I want a live pupa I’ll have to take them up on it. Evidently, though, the more common method of preparation is to stir-fry them, which kills them. I’m not sure which is worse: having that kind of blood on my hands, or eating a live pupa.