Bag Fulla Puppies

I didn’t just make the title “Bag Fulla Puppies” to draw people in. There is actually a Bag Fulla Puppies in this installment, but it doesn’t come until later. Until then you’ll just have to look at how cute the picture is and wonder.
I’m pretty sure I did nothing on Monday, so I’ll use the allotted Monday space to talk about my roommate some more. She’s very good about correcting my Chinese and asking me for help with her English homework. I looked through the textbook she’s currently using and it’s ridiculous. They’re teaching her words and phrases like “attitudinal” and “takes the cake,” neither of which I can remember anyone saying in real life, ever. I feel bad telling her that they’re useless because she obviously has to learn them, but I wish I could politely get across to her that “terrific” is not something she needs to put a whole lot of effort into remembering after that chapter’s test. Then I realized how ridiculous the textbook I have must seem – I know the phrase for “to die of a massive hemorrhage” and “socialist canteen” but I’m still not entirely sure how the future tense works. I blame the teachers, who wrote the textbook we’re using.*
My first impression was right; Zhang Ran is indeed very busy. Although I am not always around to observe in person, I would estimate that she is busy with classes and extracurricular stuff for eight to ten hours every weekday. She doesn’t usually settle in for the night until about nine. Since I hate procrastinating, I have invariably finished all my work by then, so I think I’ve given her the impression that I never do anything. In fact, I know I have given her this impression, because when she stopped in yesterday afternoon and caught me going over my vocab words, she smiled and said “Not too common!” I got kind of pissed off about it, actually, and said something along the lines of “You can’t see me work when you have classes all the time.” We both laughed about it, and it wasn’t an argument or anything, but it pisses me off that I’m giving her the impression that Americans (and me specifically as well) are lazy. I see her watching Korean TV shows online, though, so the street goes both ways.
Another interesting fact about Chinese college students: because of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square in which college students caused all sorts of problems for law enforcement, the Chinese government has decided to…teach all the college students to use firearms! This seems counterintuitive to me, but apparently all students must complete two weeks of military training at some point. One of Zhang Ran’s friends made a video of it, and, although I’m sure it wasn’t fun, he made it look kind of like summer camp, albeit a summer camp where you woke up at 5:30 every morning and then ate crappy steamed buns for breakfast. Some of the things depicted in the video were standing still for half an hour to test one’s discipline, a “long march” (the actual Long March before the Communists came into power took months, while this one was roughly four miles – I have Marched Longer around the giant malls in Wangfujing) and the gun training, which only lasted a couple hours. Although they were very good at marching in unison, suffice it to say that I am no more terrified of Chinese undergrads than I was before viewing the video, although the production values were excellent.
On Tuesday, I went to this…thing…that Max invited me to. Called “Green Drinks,” its purpose was ostensibly to allow members of environment-related NGOs in Beijing to network with each other, but it ended up being a bunch of white people of all stripes, at least 75% of whom were native English speakers. In fact, I did not meet one environmentalist the whole night. Max traded a lot of business cards with people, but networking and mingling in general make me horribly uncomfortable, as I am very shy and ill at ease among new people and in new situations. I did meet a couple really sweet French students near the end of the night, though, and made tentative plans to meet with one of them to practice my French, which has gone the way of [choose one: the Backstreet Boys, anyone on VH1, the American economy]. Something I have heard about the expat community here is how small it is, and it often sounds like everyone knows everyone. This should be comforting to me, as a potential Beijing expat, but I feel like if, in a city of 17 million, you either know everyone or know someone who does, something is wrong and you’re a little too insulated. As much as I dislike changes in my broad life circumstances, I also get bored really easily, and if you stay in the Foreigner Hotspots you’re missing out on a bunch of other rad places where you could be talking to real people and doing real things instead of staying in pretend America with stores containing merchandise priced in dollars (seen it in Sanlitun, got so annoyed that I left) and other people you can speak English to. You don’t grow that way.
Anyway, after leaving the Green Drinks thing we wandered around looking for TGI Friday’s until we found a Western supermarket named Jenny Lou’s.** It had the most wonderful things inside (Pop Tarts, juice, normal bread, Italian pasta), none more wonderful than the Drinks Aisle, which not only had non-Nescafe coffee, but also nine kinds of Swiss Miss, including “Marshmallow Lover’s,” which is of course the best kind. I got some, and will undoubtedly be back for more next time I’m in the area, which is right by the Silk Market.
Wednesday was a day without class, but I spent most of it catching up on work. However, in the afternoon I went exploring with Pei Rei to a large bookstore and then to Tibetan food on Nanluogu Hutong. The cheap, $1.25-per-plate Chinese food sold at the restaurants I usually eat at had started to get a little old, so I dropped $6 on potato samosas, tomato soup, and lamb curry. ($6 is a huge amount to drop for dinner.) It was delicious and completely worth it. I love Tibetan food, and am excited to try more of it here, as the places in the US usually serve it in an Indian and Nepalese context.
While on our way to the bookstore, Pei Rei and I got off one bus stop too early and had to walk past a place he told me was called the Zoo Market (thus called because it’s across the street from the Beijing Zoo). The Zoo Market, I was told, was similar to the Silk Market, but with no white people, vastly lower prices, and less bargaining. I had some free time after class today, so I decided to go check it out.
If anything, the place is more hectic than the Silk Market – I was the only white person I saw in there the whole time, and there are more stores with less room to maneuver, which makes it kind of a hassle to get around. That said, the prices are amazing. I wanted to get a pair of tights, so I found some I liked and asked the vendor how much they were. She quoted me $4.50, I asked for $1.50, and she gave me $2. I was so dumbstruck that I just bought them. (However, bargaining is not always okay here. I got a palette of about ten eyeshadow colors for about $2, which was the price the vendor gave me and refused to bargain down from. But dude, $2.) The Zoo Market also seems much more authentic than the Silk Market; the clothes they sell there look like the clothes that actual Chinese people wear, with the Chinglish pasted on the front*** or the reckless copyright infringement. The variety, and the number of things that I would want to wear, definitely doesn’t measure up to the Silk Market, but I’m already planning a trip back there.
On the way out, I saw a group of girls clustered around a woman with a big bag on the ground. I couldn’t see what was in the bag, but I assumed it was probably pirated DVDs, so I went in for a quick look. It was not DVDs. Rather, it was puppies. Three puppies, to be exact, about five weeks old and cuter than the dickens. I cooed over them for a couple eons and then bent down to pet one, because they were the fuzziest little fellows I have ever seen. The woman selling them immediately shouted “No money, no touch!” at me in Chinese and then snapped the bag shut, causing one of the puppies to bark a couple times before she opened it back up, patted the offending puppy on the head, and fed them a little bit. Nobody, not even the Mean Zoo Market Lady, is immune to puppies.
Last thing: I wrote a column in the Daily Northwestern, our campus’ official paper, about being a foreign student in Beijing. It’s a pretty cursory look at my whole deal, and it probably won’t be anything new if you’ve been keeping up with this, but I am putting it out here because it’s my baby. It is also worth noting that the managing editor of the Weekly section, who I imagine looking more or less like Kif from Futurama, completely enervated any sense of Emily from the piece, including what I thought was an excellent story about me saying “chest hair” instead of “panda” because I got the tones wrong, so it reads kind of bland. The worst part is, the guy I worked with on the story, who was very nice, encouraged me to add more examples, and they all ended up getting taken out. I knew it.

*The textbook, by the way, is hilarious. Roughly two-thirds of the lessons are normal, and the others are just cracked out beyond belief. The lessons usually take the form of a dialogue between two people, and the two most notable ones were an argument over whether or not people should give money to beggars (one person said “Encouraging people to reap without sowing is harmful to society. They could get jobs if they wanted. If you disagree, you are doubting Deng Xiaopeng’s Reform and Opening Policy.”) and a discussion on the American legal system, which, apparently, is ridiculous because you can sue someone who you feel has done you wrong. I will be the first to admit that our society’s litigiousness has gone too far, but the lesson made it sound like it was some awful offense to be able to sue your employer. Whatever, China.

**The only thing that would make this segue awesomer is if I knew the Chinese word for “hypocrite.”

***One sweatshirt said “Heineken: Stupid Division” on the front in big, Times New Roman letters

Exclusive Interview Inside

Today was pretty uneventful, which was actually sort of a nice break after wandering around a lot for the past few days. I woke up and went to Chinese and then spent my hour with my language tutor. He’s nice and very helpful when I ask him questions about some of the little grammar things we learn, but I feel like I generally have a decent grasp on the material so I’m usually hard-pressed to find things to talk to him about. What I’d really like to do is work on my listening skills, which are nothing short of atrocious, but I’m not really sure how to bring that up or even how to work on it, short of just listening to people speak Chinese. I’m picking up more and more of what people say the more I’m here, but people speak so quickly and kind of jumble up the four tones used in Chinese, so it can be a little difficult to tell what words they’re trying to use. Beijingers are also notorious throughout China for their accent: they tend heavily toward replacing the –n sounds on the ends of their words with –r sounds, and they don’t enunciate very clearly either. The cab drivers are particularly problematic in this area. Blessedly, my tutor is from a province in central China and speaks lovely Mandarin, the way the people in my textbook talk.
After that I headed off to history class. After adjusting to all the weirdness here - Chinese classes taught without a word of English, store signs and menus I can’t read, the weird fusion of old and new – it’s really comforting in a weird way to have a seminar-style class, taught in English, where you take notes off the board. We are starting at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, which began with the Manchus invading from the north and instituting a Confucian-style government based on ethnic sovereignty while integrating both Han Chinese (the majority) and other minorities. It’s relatively interesting, but I am most looking forward to learning about how things got messed up over there, because at this point it’s looking pretty solid.
I went back to the student lounge on our floor of the foreign students’ building, which is a wonderful place because you can speak English in it,* to study for my first weekly test tomorrow and then attended a brief informational meeting about the long trip we’re going on next week. I got my wish and am going to Yunnan province, a tropical place without malaria. We’re mostly staying in hotels and are doing fun things like touring a tea plantation, taking an 80-mile bike ride around a lake (the path is flat and paved and we’re breaking it up into two days, but the bike butt will still be very intense), and going whitewater rafting. Listening to the packing list and warnings for some of the other trips, I feel very confident in my decision to visit the south. (For example, on the Tibetan backpacking trip: “Every year at least one person passes out due to altitude sickness. If you feel like you’re going to be that person, talk to one of the trip leaders immediately.”) The worst I have to worry about, it seems, is a sunburn, and the temperature never drops below sixty. I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t moved down there yet, now that I think about it. Anyway, I’m kind of looking forward to it, because it means a respite from the 245290873 new Chinese words I have to learn every night.
Since today wasn’t that interesting or meaty, I’m going to field some questions people have asked me. These aren’t really frequently asked, since I’ve heard most of them from only one person, so instead of FAQs they’re just going to be AQs instead.

Q: How are you?
A: I’m fine. Like, if something happened, I’d definitely tell you about it.

Q: No, really. How’s Beijing?
A: Beijing (or, as a couple of people and I have started calling it, “the Beezh”) is an interesting place. You’ve no doubt seen all the pictures of people in shanties with new multimillion-dollar-a-unit condos going up in the background, but it’s still much, much weirder to see them out your window on the train ride into town. I also feel like my impression isn’t super accurate yet, because the city is still in full Olympics/Paralympics mode, so it’s extra clean, extra uncrowded, etc. Apparently there are a lot of street food vendors that will come back once we stop being under so much scrutiny, which I am looking forward to. Another weird thing I’ve noticed is that, at least around my part of town, there is a very, very faint smell of rotting fruit. I don’t notice it anymore except when I walk around certain areas where it’s particularly strong, but it took a few days to get used to. Also, most of the city doesn’t have much personality on face value. If you chose a random, major road, you’d probably find some restaurants and clothing stores on it, but nothing particularly culturally significant. What there is, though, is very well-preserved and seems quite well-integrated into the city (the constantly-being-demolished hutongs aside).

Q: How bad is the air quality? What is the weather like?
A: This is actually a Q A’ed with great F. I have a hard time commenting since I got here after the Olympics, but thus far it has been…middling. Most days are moderately “hazy” (to use the government’s line) but there have been great variations in both directions. For example, last Friday was awful. I couldn’t see the sun all day, the sky had literally no color in it, and the sunset wasn’t colors like it is in most places. Instead, it was just a faint orange circle that kept getting lower and lower until it disappeared. That Sunday, by contrast (the day I went to the Summer Palace) was as lovely and clear a day as you’d see in any major city in the US, with a brilliant blue sky and languidly drifting white clouds. So it comes and goes. The weather itself is mostly hot and humid this time of year; it actually reminds me a fair amount of Chicago.

Q: Have you met any cool people yet?
A: Yes! Most Beijingers are very friendly, albeit a touch incomprehensible. My favorite is the lady who runs a little kiosk across the street from my campus. The kiosk is open at seemingly all hours, selling bottled drinks and cigarettes, but until about ten or eleven in the morning she also has her husband there making jianbing,** the greatest breakfast ever. I come by there so often (for forty cents they’re hard to pass up) that she knows me, and greets me by my Chinese name (Lei Li) and knows how I like my jianbing – not too spicy, with extra cilantro – without having to ask, which is sort of the Beijing equivalent of your barista knowing how you want your latte made every morning. What a sweetie. A close second are the meek but super-sweet women who work at the bakery next door to campus, which is sadly closed for the next two days for remodeling. A closer third is one of my Chinese teachers, a chubby woman in her early twenties named Yu Laoshi*** who must have been a children’s TV show host in a previous life, because she uses this insanely high tone of voice and is very congratulatory. She kind of has to be seen to be believed, but she’s crazy happy and everyone I know loves her.

Q: What’s the best thing you’ve eaten?
A: I don’t know – I wish my host family went out to eat more, because I haven’t gone out to eat a lot (Chinese food is served family-style, so it’s no fun unless you’re with a group). I’ve had some excellent gong bao chicken, which is allegedly the basis for kung pao chicken in the US but tastes nothing like it – here, they use delicious fresh veggies, and the sauce is light and tangy instead of gloppy and overly sweet. I’ve also had delicious versions of pretty much everything I’ve eaten for Dim Sum. In fact, the only things I’ve had that I didn’t like were overly spicy things, which is a matter of personal taste. My host dad’s cooking is hit and miss: some things are really good, like the eggplant dish I love and this delicious thing he makes with bitter cucumbers and vinegar,**** but some of it’s really bland.

Q: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?
A: Still the blueberry potato chips, but here’s a thing that happened to me last night: I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed when the light bulb went out. I explained it to my mom, who said that she didn’t have the right kind of bulb but would get one in the morning. I rooted around in my bag in the faint light coming from under the door, grabbed an appropriately-sized tube, squirted the blue paste onto my toothbrush, and started going for it. I was so tired I didn’t notice the taste was a little off, and it took me about a minute and a half to realize I’d been brushing my teeth with Lanacane. However, you’re only supposed to call Poison Control if you ingest it, and since I hadn’t swallowed any I just chalked it up to me not being super smart and brushed my teeth very carefully with real toothpaste for an extra long time.

Q: Wait, so if you don’t read the menus how do you feed yourself?
A: When you get street food, which is what I do most of the time, it’s all right there, so you just point at it if it looks good (it all looks good) and then pay about twenty cents for it. Out at restaurants, I’ve had the most success with identifying what the group wants (for example, a spicy dish, something with cold noodles, something with beef, and a soup) and then asking what the waitperson recommends in those various categories. This has never turned me wrong and it probably never will.

Q: What do you do for fun?
A: I eat street food, I explore places (such as the area behind the supermarket, or Nanluogu Hutong, to which I am already planning a return trip) (also the picture at the top is another NLGHT picture), and I go out some nights. If you go to a good place and stake out an outdoor table with a friend or two, grabbing a beer and watching the world go by is a killer way to spend some time. I’m also really excited because I can get into clubs now, which are ridiculously fun. I’m going to try and drag some people to a hip-hop one this weekend.

Q: How touristy is it?
A: Depends. The major sites – the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, etc. – have all their stuff in English as well, but I’m sure that was going on well before the Olympics. There are a few official “Olympic designated” restaurants which have menus in English, but for some reason these have never seemed that good. As a rule, any restaurant that advertises an “English menu” is going to suck, especially if it’s in a touristy area. A lot of the Nanluogu Hutong ones do this too, but they cater more to expats than foreigners, so it’s cool. That street can do no wrong, I swear.

Q: Do you feel like your Chinese is getting better?
A: Yes. Being around Chinese people (and, at home, Chinese television) does really help get your ears acclimated to the sounds of the language, which is what I was having the most trouble with. The great thing about Chinese TV, too, is that it has little subtitles at the bottom of the screen, because different dialects use the same characters to mean the same things but assign them different sounds, and this way people from all over China can tell what’s going on. Reading is often easier for me to understand than trying to listen to people’s Beijing accents, so with this way I’ve managed to pick up some of the major plot points of my host family’s favorite soap opera (the guy and the girl are engaged, but there’s this shadowy “other woman” in the background and the girl is freaking out over it).

Q: What’s the coolest word you’ve learned?
A: It’s actually a phrase: bu san, bu si, which literally means “not three, not four” but is used to describe sketchy or creepy people or things. Many things in Beijing are bu san, bu si, so I’ve had ample opportunity to use this one. Most of the Chinese swears are not that interesting, and the one that I particularly like I will not elaborate on as it is moderately appalling.

If you write and ask me more questions, I will answer them, at some point! Tomorrow will likely be pretty quiet too, but Saturday…yikes.

*Like many other language-intensive programs, IES instituted a pledge that requires students to speak Mandarin exclusively except if they’re talking to one of the program directors, it’s an emergency (“How do you say ‘my dorm is on fire?’ Wo de…um, wo de sushe…AAAAGHGHGH”), or you’re in the student lounge, which is heavily frequented for this reason. However, almost nobody I know takes the pledge seriously anywhere outside the building or after the initial thirty seconds of a conversation. Most of us just don’t have the vocabulary to keep it going.

**Jianbing are a very common breakfast food in the Beijing area. They start their (short, if I’m eating them) lives as crepes, but then a cracked egg is poured over the top and spread out thinly over the crepe, which is then sprinkled with green onions and cilantro and flipped over to cook the egg part. Meanwhile, the other side is brushed lightly with hoisin sauce, soy paste, and, if you want, some chili paste. Finally, this thing that looks like a really thin, crisp-fried wonton skin is put into the middle, and the jianbing is folded up and eaten. They are so good.

***In many cases, Chinese people are addressed not by Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. but by their job titles, so Yu Laoshi literally means Teacher Yu. Similarly, your doctor would be called Li Yisheng, or Doctor Li (but this signifies the profession, not the degree of higher learning), and your mechanic would be Chen Shifu, or Master Worker Chen. Of course, there are also instances when you would call someone Mr. Yang or Ms. Liu. I should have taken Spanish.

****Chinese cuisine has four main flavors: salty, spicy, sweet, and sour. It took me about a day and a half to discover that I love sour more than all the others put together.

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.

Mystery Beijing Superquest Funventure

Orientation is starting to wind down. I’m getting a little bored with meetings that essentially say “other cultures are weird, give yourself time to get used to it, be polite to Chinese people, they are different than us” but take an hour to do it. Fortunately, I think the last of the meetings are tomorrow. I meet my homestay family the day after tomorrow, probably. Some interesting things happened, though, like:

1. I started the intensive Chinese classes today. Damn straight they’re intensive – I had to learn forty words last night and forty tonight. This is ridiculous. I haven’t had a problem retaining them in the short term but I have no idea how many I can hold onto for any meaningful period of time. Oy gevalt. The format of the classes is nice, though; for the first hour and twenty minutes all the students on the same level (I tested into third year Chinese, right where I should be, with about 20 others) go over that day’s words and grammar. Then we split into classes of five or six, and spend the first hour of that class reviewing the grammar again, then the final time doing activities based on the theme of the words. All in all, it’s four hours of Chinese, starting at 8 a.m., which is actually ok for me because I’ve been waking up at about six since I got here so I don’t know the difference.

2. I am starting to notice that China has a lot of Chinese people, and Chinese writing, in it. I don’t mean this in a “stupid Emily” way (although, let’s face it, it probably is that way no matter how I mean it), but rather I mean that for such a big city so much on the world stage, there are surprisingly few foreigners here, and not a lot of effort has been made to cater to them. The restaurants I’ve seen rarely have English menus, people don’t know that much English, signs and businesses aren’t in English, etc. I don’t really have a problem with it, but I am pretty surprised, especially after traveling in the European Union where everyone speaks English better than I do. When there is English, it’s usually okay but sometimes not. Examples include a bubble tea place that sold “smoothles” (I thought this was so cute that I bought one), an excellent knockoff Puma bag that actually said “Fuma” on it instead (and the little puma silhouette was smoking a cigar, which you could only see if you looked really closely, but I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE CHINA), and, my favorite so far, a Chinese guy I saw wearing a shirt that said “I love Chna”. Awesome, dude, I’m sure you do.

3. As a corollary to 2, I’ve been the subject of a couple interesting experiences. A couple days ago on campus, a guy, maybe thirty years old, comes up to me and asks me if his English grammar is right on a couple sentences. No big deal, I help him and go to one of my stupid cultural awareness meetings. But today I went to Tiananmen Square (see below), and this guy asked if my white friends and I would have our picture taken with his little daughter. We obliged, and since she was super cute I got one of us with her too. Then later we were in a park and a toddler got visibly frightened of us and ran and hid behind his mom’s legs. It was funny at the time, but you sort of take it for granted in America that no matter what you look like, no matter what your ethnicity, you can go pretty much anywhere in the country, certainly in big cities, and people won’t think anything of it except “oh, an asian/black/latino/etc.” person and will probably assume you live there unless you reveal otherwise. My three white companions and I were the only Anglos in Tiananmen.

4. Why were we in Tiananmen square in the first place, you ask? In the only worthwhile activity we’ve done thus far, we were told to get into pairs and were then given a business card-sized piece of paper with the name of a Beijing landmark or sight on it (the Chinese name, not the English one). We had four hours to get there (it started at 2 p.m.), get something to prove we were there – an entrance ticket, a picture, whatever – and get back. We were assigned a park just north of the Forbidden City, which is just north of Tiananmen square, so we relished the chance to get out of our neighborhood (which, let’s face it, is not full of sightseeing) and see some famous things. I figured out how to take the bus to the subway to the other subway to the other bus using my handy Lonely Planet China guidebook and one of the 345029873254 maps of Beijing my mom gave me before I left, and we set off, getting there with only a minor hitch when we couldn’t find the subway station from the bus stop and had to ask an actual Chinese person, who we could not understand. Once on the subway, we ran into my friend Michael (from my school) and his partner, who were looking for the same park, and became a quartet of stupid Americans on the subway. We got off and walked around the Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese equivalent of the Senate is held, the Mao mausoleum (we didn’t go in), the new symphony hall/opera house, and then Tiananmen square. It wasn’t as busy as I’d expected – no mobs of people, but quite a few were out milling around and taking pictures. There’s not a whole bunch to do there, other than briefly look at some nice Olympic-themed topiaries and escape from people trying to sell you souvenir junk. We then hopped our fourth bus (meeting up with a group of three with the same destination on our way) and finally found the park with about an hour and fifteen minutes left. We paid 2 yuan to get in (I felt ripped off at having to pay to get in even though it was less than thirty cents), and then stepped through the gate. It became clear why I had paid to get in – this was nothing like an American city park, but more of a botanical garden, with a few pagodas up on a hill. We climbed up a dirt path on the side of the hill (there were perfectly nice steps, but we didn’t know that until we were up there) and were immediately treated to an awe-inspiring view of the Forbidden City sprawled out to our south. The pagoda had ostensibly held the remains of a Buddha until the British stole them around 1900, and had a plaque commemorating Anglo imperialism on the base where the remains used to be held. Farther up was another pagoda, this one bigger with an even better view and a Buddha and some incense inside. After looking around a bit, we climbed down and walked through a series of lovely gardens and brightly painted gates, stopping in a bamboo grove to do our best panda impressions (see the picture higher up). After wandering and being upset over the squat toilets, which were the only ones available, we parted ways and Michael and I headed back to campus for another thrilling meeting about being culturally sensitive.

5. While in Tiananmen square, I saw a police officer arresting a guy for selling unlicensed stuffed fuwa (the Olympic mascots). He had handcuffs and everything, and I couldn’t help but thinking, dude, he’s selling stuffed animals, there is no need for this kind of seriousness. But still, smackdown!

6. Unfortunately, I have to take a twelve-day journey to somewhere in remote China in mid-September. My choices are backpacking and camping in Tibet (obviously not, I’d actually sledgehammer my kneecaps to get out of that, and anyone who thinks I’m bluffing doesn’t know me well at all), hiking along the Silk Road (not as bad, would only use a regular hammer), and rafting down the Mekong river to the Burmese/Thai border. This involves NO backpacking and is the one I’ll try for, but unfortunately I’ll be stuck in an indigenous village for three days and it will almost certainly not have plumbing. These trips are ostensibly about experiential learning and self-discovery; I will doubtless learn that if allowed to go for four days without showering I will have even fewer boyfriends than I do now (0, for those of you playing along at home). It’s not all bad though: we get to visit the provincial capital of Kunming, which has six million people and a similar number of flushing toilets, and walk in a tea plantation! And go rafting! Yay! Regardless, I would like to propose another trip for the prissier among us:
SHANGHAI TRIP
Objectives: This trip emphasizes experiential learning in the area of China’s emergent economy. Participants will travel to Shanghai, China’s financial capital, and partake in a homestay with an obscenely wealthy nouveau-riche family, who will treat them right, serve them weird and possibly endangered seafood, and provide them with a valuable glimpse of life as one of China’s newest cultural groups. Activities include meeting with local businesspeople over dim sum and a visit to the Shanghai municipal water center, which is responsible for overseeing all of the awesome, readily accessible Western-style plumbing in the area.
Yeah, that sounds better.

7. I ate dumplings again for lunch today, so time to up the Dumpling Tally!

Dumpling tally: 14

"Our phrasebooks give you a comprehensive mix of practical and social words."

I got a Mandarin phrasebook yesterday (mostly useful for its fairly exhaustive listing of potential menu items). It's a little bit cracked out, though - it lists all the standard phrases like "when is the next train to Shanghai?" and "do you take travelers' checks?" but some of the stuff in it seems...odd.
Examples:
rat-infested (laoshu wo)
My stomach is very happy. (Chide zhen bao.)
How can I explain this to my parents? (Wo zenme gen fumu jiaodai?) [The really weird part is that this is under the "hairdressing" section.]
My hobby is drinking. (Wo aihao shi hejiu.)
What should be done about irrigation? (Nongye shuili yinggai zenme chuli?)
Sorry, I can't dance. (Bu haoyisi, wo bu hui tiaowu.) [I firmly believe this phrase should never be used unless the speaker is completely paralyzed.]
I'm high. (Qifei le.) [People have been put to death for less in China, so it seems a little dumb to have an admission of capital crimes in the phrasebook.]
You look like a cousin of mine. (Ni zhangde xiang wo de biao mei.) [This, inexplicably, was under the "pickup lines" section, which presents two problems: firstly, the book is presumably being used by clueless white people, so it strikes me as a bit odd that a Chinese person would remind one of a blood relative in any meaningful way. Secondly, if someone tried to come onto me by saying that I resembled someone they were related to, I'd be a little weirded out. Perhaps this was intended for inclusion in the "West Virginia" phrasebook and found its way here through an editing error.]
Don't worry, I'll do it myself. (Meishi, wo ziji lai.) [This was under the "romance" section. Ouch.]
Will you live with me? (Ni neng tong wo yiqi zhuxialai ma?) [If you need a phrasebook to ask someone to move in with you, the relationship is doomed.]
football (ganlanqiu) [This term is for American football and literally means "olive-ball" because of the ball's shape. For some reason I think this is at least as cute as the dickens and possibly cuter.]
"family happiness seafood spectacular" (quanjiafu)
panda meat (xiongmao rou) [ D: D: D: ]
You're charged with assault. (Ni beizhi fan le renshen qinfan.)
My dentures are broken. (Wo de jiaya huai le.)