Yunnan Days 9-10

Day 9: Village People
We left Pu-Erh in the morning for a drive to a region of Yunnan called Xishuangbanna, where we’d be spending the rest of our trip. This drive took us through a protected nature reserve called Elephant Valley, where, our guide told us, 300 Asian elephants roamed wild and free. Despite her repeated insistences that if we were lucky, we might see an elephant, the creatures were nowhere to be seen, although we were all temporarily fooled by a statue near the visitor center.
After we made it out the other side, it was a short hop to the regional capital of Jinghong, where we dropped our big luggage off (once again, we were instructed to pack only what we needed for two nights) and ate the most delicious lunch yet. Xishuangbanna is known for its tropical fruits, and it became clear why: we were served delicious grilled skewers of pineapple, slices of watermelon, tiny bananas called bajiao, and juicy papayas to start the lunch off. Since the area is so close to Laos, the food is quite influenced by that country’s cuisine, and we had maybe ten or twelve delicious, tropical courses served to us, the best being a delicious Thai-ish cucumber salad.
We finished lunch and then went to one of Xishuangbanna’s two protected cultural sites, an 800-year-old Buddhist temple. (The other was about a two-hour drive away, near the Myanmar border, so we didn’t get to see it.) The temple itself was a pleasant, overgrown diversion, but the tropical heat was stifling and nobody was happy about climbing up the roughly 23409587342 steps to the top. Xishuangbanna was the first outright tropical place we’d been: the heat and humidity were oppressive, and greenery erupted from every available patch of dirt. Everywhere we went, even the streets of Jinghong, was green, lined with banana trees with six-foot leaves, tropical flowers, ferns, the works. The Chinese government is making a huge effort to develop Xishuangbanna as a tourist destination comparable to those in Thailand, and although the region definitely still needs work (people were still living in shanties on the outskirts of Jinghong, and outside the main highways the roads are very poorly developed) it’s coming along quite nicely. I’d be interested to see what the place is like in ten years.
Our final resting point for the day was a traditional village populated by the Aini minority group, where we’d be living for two nights with an Aini family. We were told ahead of time that showers, electricity and running water were not guaranteed (the Barbies and Complainer complained, predictably), so we knew this would not be a touristy place, but everyone in the tiny minibus I took to the village was still impressed by its remoteness. Although it was quite close to Jinghong distance-wise, about half of the drive was on a one-lane, red dirt road rivaling some of the gnarliest I’d seen on my bike ride. As we wound our way through deeper and deeper jungles, you could all but see the thought bubbles popping up over everyone’s heads: “Where are we?”
After roughly an hour and a half, our vans finally pulled up to a wooden gate where we were greeted by about thirty or so Aini villagers in traditional dress. This was actual traditional dress, too, not the fake stuff we’d been assaulted with over the past week. I later learned that the Aini women wove, dyed, and embroidered the clothes themselves, albeit with supplies they’d purchased from the next town over. The cloth was all black, but the embroidery on it was in every color imaginable, patterned with squares, simple shapes, and flowers.
The villagers sang to us and welcomed us into one of the village’s larger homes, where we were served piping hot cups of local tea and offered one of the weirder Yunnan traditions: a cigarette bong.* After being greeted and tea’d for about forty-five minutes, we met the families we’d be living with for the next two nights. I was staying in a group with Becca, Jackie, and Complainer, and to my great joy, our house not only had a TV (with a DVD player), but a fully functioning, clean hot shower. The toilet was basically a ceramic hole in the ground, but it had running water under it to wash everything away. All in all, the house was much better than I’d been led to expect, although ours was one of the nicer ones in the village (a few people did indeed get houses without plumbing, although the villagers were really chill about sharing their toilets and showers). Like all the Aini houses, ours had two stories. The first was open-air and was where the residents kept their stuff – motorbikes, cars (a couple families had them), work equipment, and livestock – and had their toilets. The second floor was where the family actually lived, and contained the bedroom, living room (where we slept on mattresses pushed together), kitchen, and shower. We put our things down and left for dinner in the communal house. The food was more simply spiced than what we’d been eating, but it was also deliciously hearty, and I ate and ate (including another chicken head and something that I found out after the fact was pig skin, but it was really good). Afterward, the Aini women tried performed a drinking song for us, and we responded in kind with a couple American classics: “Don’t Stop Believing” and the theme song from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Day 10: Aini, Wo Ai Ni
We were rudely awakened much earlier than necessary by the crowing of chickens and the honking of geese. (I couldn’t help hoping that one particularly loud rooster would end up on my dinner plate.) After a breakfast imported from Jinghong (toast and jam) we left for the Aini tea fields, a ten-minute walk outside the center of the village, to learn how to pick tea. This wasn’t very hard, and most of the bushes had been pretty well picked over, so after about fifteen minutes the entire affair degenerated into people wandering off and eating tropical fruit. And oh, the fruit. I ate things I don’t even know the names of: a giant grapefruit-esque thing the size of a basketball, miniature sour red berries, and a tiny variety of guava that had the unmistakable hint of cilantro underneath the sweet, juicy guava taste. It was all so good, and we munched our way back to the village, plucking fruit off every tree we passed.
We ate a delicious lunch similar to the previous night’s dinner (although I noticed with dismay that the offending rooster was still alive and honking). During lunch, a change of plans was announced. We were supposed to learn to tap the rubber trees near the village, an important source of income for these people, but the villagers were concerned that our delicate Caucasian constitutions wouldn’t be able to handle the heat, and insisted that we have free time until dinner. This went over quite well with most of the group, and about half of them went back to sleep the heat off.
The rest of us went off with various groups of villagers to learn about Aini stuff: there were toys and games, including a top that none of us could work successfully and a game similar to lawn bowling, and traditional weaving and something similar to (but much harder than) crocheting, both of which I tried and summarily failed at. Afterward, I spent time with Steve and Jackie in front of the village’s only store (which, blessedly, sold popsicles), talking to some of the villagers, including the village head, a man around forty who spoke very good Mandarin.** We learned that the village had 600 people, all Aini (although there were no restrictions on who could live there, the Aini are pretty low on the ethnic minority totem pole so most people don’t want to be involved with them) and that the average income had doubled in the last five years, from about US$100 to $220. However, each family had just received 200 rubber trees, which upon reaching maturity in 7 years could be tapped every day. Each would produce 2 kuai worth of rubber a day, so when the trees mature fully each family will make more in a reasonable week’s work than they used to in an entire year. And while their income doesn’t sound like much, where they live it’s enough to live quite comfortably. The majority of homes had satellite TV, everyone had electricity, and because they raise their own plants and animals, there is always enough to eat. Frankly, I was quite surprised that their standard of living was so high – their clothes may be grubby, and the toilet facilities were sketchy in a couple places, but they definitely have everything they need. In fact, my family’s house was built just last year, and many other villagers are planning upgrades as well.
In the middle of the conversation, a girl with a nice haircut and dye job, about my age, rode by on a motorbike with her boyfriend. “Does she live here?” Steve asked, impressed, as we all were, by her trendy clothes and haircut. “Yes,” said the village head. “They go to Jinghong for college, and they come back dressed so differently.” I couldn’t help but think of my own newly found affinity for $100+ jeans when he said that. In this area, the generation gap is especially large: most residents over 40 have never been to Jinghong.
After our chat, we moseyed over to the village’s newly poured concrete basketball court for an impromptu match between five IES guys and some Aini students. We beat them, but it was a close game – the village guys were quick on their feet, even those playing barefoot, and the competition got intense, with Americans and Ainis screaming happily at each other by the end. (We also taught the villagers some showboating victory dance techniques.) When the game was finished, we ate another dinner (and I ate another chicken head, because by this point it was just expected) and went back to the basketball court for a “dance party”.
Things started off simply enough: the village women dressed in their traditional clothes again and performed some Aini dances for us. The whole village had turned out to see us, and eventually they clamored for some American songs, which Andrew and T fulfilled by doing an a cappella version of “99 Problems”. Then the private party began: most of the villagers left, and we were all seated around low tables and given barbeque and pineapple. The women came around and gave all the guys extensive massages, which was awkward because about half of them were people’s host moms. The men got out their cigarette bongs and gave each table a homemade bottle of baijiu, the infamous Chinese moonshine. The teacher accompanying us promptly took them away and scolded both us and the givers, which I thought was pretty rude (and many other students took issue with this, though not for the same reason). Music was pumped over the tinny stereo, and as the villagers and many of the students got progressively more inebriated, dancing began. Oddly enough, the town’s police chief was among the drunkest, and he asked me to dance no less than three times, each less coordinated than the last. Around midnight, the village head broke the party off, and we headed back home for a good night’s sleep with these kind, giving people.
I’ll finish writing about the trip (and post pictures) tomorrow – I have a fair amount of work to make up tomorrow, and, more importantly, today is a criminally nice day and I want to go exploring outside.

*This is exactly like it sounds. You put water in the bong, take the filter out of the cigarette, put it in the small tube outside, and inhale massive amounts of smoke. The villagers were very good at it. The few students who tried were not.

**Most of the people under forty in the village spoke Mandarin, albeit with a weird accent that made them kind of hard to understand. The older people spoke an Aini language that nobody could understand a word of.

Dinner of Champions

Moving out was interesting. The Zhangs were pretty chill about it the night before and the morning of, but when I came back at three to get my stuff they flipped out. I have no idea why, but they both started shouting at me in Chinese the moment I walked in the door, saying different things and speaking really quickly. All I could do was look at them helplessly and say “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” repeatedly. Eventually they realized we were at an impasse and called Bin Bin, who sweetly and apologetically told me that I “must give them their keys back and leave immediately” while both parents continued to shout in the background. (They also gave me my unopened jam back, but I noticed they kept the bottle of wine in its usual spot behind the TV.) In the middle of all the ruckus, Max, who had told me he’d help me move out, called saying he’d arrived, so I excused myself amidst more shouting and took Zen breaths all the way to the gate.
We made quick work of the suitcases despite having to carry them down six flights of stairs and walked the two minutes or so to the international students’ dorm. The IES literature claimed it was the “nicest dorm on campus”. That may well be true, but I’d hate to see the other dorms. It’s pretty average – small rooms, crappy lighting, communal bathrooms (albeit with Western plumbing). We do get close to 70 channels of TV though. The Chinese roommates aren’t here yet. They will arrive after we get back from our long trips.
Max took a nap on my bed while I went to my final class of the day, calligraphy. For the first time, we got to use the brushes and write. I actually use the term “write” pretty loosely, since we only made single horizontal and vertical strokes. I knew calligraphy wasn’t something you could pick up in half an hour, but it’s way more difficult than I expected. Fang Laoshi’s strokes are so straight and even, and mine are invariably wavy, blobby, and malformed, although I did get a couple nice ones in, probably through sheer beginner’s luck.
I returned to the room and Max and I decided to go out for hotpot, a uniquely Beijing style of eating. Allegedly brought here by the invading Mongol hordes sometime before I was born, hotpot involves taking a sizzling kettle of broth or oil and dipping various meats and veggies in it to cook them. It’s very popular here (as the first volume of my Chinese textbook series explained, “Beijingers just love to eat hotpot!”) and restaurants are common. I vaguely remembered seeing one further up the street from my bus rides, so we set off not really knowing what we were looking for.
The place I’d thought sold hotpot turned out to be a standard-issue noodle place. By this point I had my heart set on hotpot dinner, so we continued up and about a block further discovered a relatively upscale-looking place packed with Gen-X Chinese. We were seated, provided with aprons with the restaurant’s logo (so dorky, so cool) and given picture menus that explained exactly what we could order.
How it worked was like this.
1. Pick a style of broth that you want to cook your stuff in. We chose the fairly standard half-mild, half-spicy broth. Half our hotpot arrived with clear, lemongrassy chicken broth, and the other half had a mouthnumbingly hot mix of chili oil, Sichuan peppercorns, dried hot peppers, and the like. The spicy half was further divided into halves – one with all the fixings, and another that was strained so that only the oil could get through and it was less spicy.
2. Pick things you want to dip in the hotpot. The options ranged from the bizarre (duck heads, baby bullfrogs) to the relatively mundane (beef, carrots, tiny steamed buns). We got plates of thinly sliced mutton, tofu, dumplings, mushrooms, and yams.
3. If you ordered a spicy hotpot, get a beer, because water alone is NOT going to make the burning in your mouth go away.
Once the food came in, we took turns randomly cooking it in the different sections of the pot and making fun of our aprons. This is an incredibly fun way to eat, and I imagine it would be even better with a big group. Dipping foods are surprisingly rare in the world’s cultures, which I don’t understand because the potential for playing with your food and laughing about it is really high.* It was by far the best meal I’ve had here, and we left very full but having eaten almost everything set before us. The cost? $7 each, AND I got a coupon for about $4 off next time I come in, which will undoubtedly be very soon.
Then, this morning, I woke up with an insatiable craving for the fried sesame-paste balls I’ve fallen in love with here. (This happens every morning, actually.) I knew of a stall conveniently located near ______________** but decided I wanted to do some shopping first. However, as a budget-minded student, I wanted to go somewhere cheap, so I decided to set off to what may well be the bargaining capital of Beijing, if not all of China: the Silk Market.
The name is a bit of a misnomer. This enormous, six-floor plaza does have some silk for sale, but the vast majority of it is taken up by knockoff designer goods. Want a D&G top? Some Calvin Klein jeans? A Prada bag? You’ll find a fake version of it here, and dear God, do the people who work in the stalls there ever want to sell it to you. Going in is pretty overwhelming, because the salespeople are hyperattentive and if you walk within a half-mile radius of their stall, they’ll try their best to suck you in, sometimes even stepping in front of you to make you stop walking, all the while saying things like “Lady, want pants, want a belt?” and “We have cheapest jacket, cheapest Armani, Gucci, lady, jackets for you.” I wasn’t prepared for the level of sensory overload I got going in, but acclimated pretty quickly and learned to deflect everyone’s propositions with a quick “bu yao” (I don’t want it) and keep walking. The stuff there was all right, but the atmosphere was much more interesting, so I resolved to walk around and see what all there was to see.
If there’s one thing I’m bad at, though, it’s “just looking” when I go shopping, and I soon found myself drawn to a gray flannel trenchcoat. The girl running the stall, who was maybe 25 or so, immediately noticed that I was looking at one of her things and shoved her way over to me through the masses.
“You like jacket, lady?” she asked.
I responded in Chinese that I thought it was pretty. She seemed happy that I could speak Chinese, and we chatted in that language for a while about where I was from, how long I was in China, and how old I was (and if I had a boyfriend, weirdly). The whole time, she was pulling various sizes of the coat off of hangers. The biggest size – an XXL – ended up fitting. (I’m a pretty standard width for China, but I’m tall and have long arms and legs for the clothes here.) “You’re so tall!” the girl exclaimed, using English now. “Very tall, very sexy. Beautiful. Ok, let’s speak English.”
Here is where the bargain part comes in. The stalls in the Silk Market aren’t like clothes in boutiques or department stores, where the prices are posted and you pay them. In the Silk Market, there are no prices, nothing is nailed down, and you have to work it out with the person at the stall. Our exchange went like this (prices converted to USD):
Her: It’s $140.
Me: I can’t pay that. I’ll give you $20.***
Her: You’re so pretty. It will look so nice on you. It’s Max Mara [it obviously was not actually], it’s an American brand. $90, because it will look so nice on you. You’re American, you’re rich.
Me: I’m American, but I’m a student and I don’t have much money. I’ll give you $30.
Her: You’re clever, you speak Chinese really well. Since you’re a clever girl, $70.
Me: $70? Too expensive.
Her: Shh! Don’t let other people hear! They can’t know I’m giving you that price. They’ll all want that price. This is a special price, special for you.
Me: I’ll pay $40.
Her: I can’t make money like that! How about $60?
Me: $45.
Her: $50. What is the most you’ll pay?
Me: $45.
Her: Not $50?
Me: $45.
Her: Okay, you can have it! But you can’t tell anyone else you paid that little. They’ll all want it that cheap. This is special price, special only for you. Give me a kiss. [She turns her cheek up toward me and I give her a peck.]
She bagged my coat up (“You want a bag? I’ll give you one, only for you!”) and I walked off, happy with my success. The knockoff Coach bags looked nice, so I’ll probably end up going back, with a couple pointers in mind.
Tip 1: Know exactly what you want to buy. I looked at the coat on a whim, not realizing that at places like this, once the salesperson gets it on you, you’re never going to escape without it. (I’m happy with my coat, though – I didn’t bring a warm one here with me, and it can replace my heinous, unfitted Old Navy one that makes me look like a man. See how I rationalized this to myself?) Here, even walking away is a bargaining method – more than once, I saw sellers chasing prospective buyers down the aisles, offering them ever-lower prices. Anyway, if you’re not entirely sure you’re interested in something, don’t pick it up or try it on.
Tip 2: Know exactly what you want to pay. Before buying my coat, I watched some other people bargain and got a sense for what was a decent starting price to offer and what the average prices people actually paid were. In this way, the Silk Market is great, because if you go in saying “I want a handbag for no more than $30” you can refuse to pay more than that. From the little that I saw, the salespeople usually came around, and the final price was much closer to the buyer’s first offer than the seller’s.
Coat in tow, I subwayed it over to sesame balls and then Nanluogu, where I did some gift shopping for various family members and tried a couple interesting street foods I’d seen around.
The first thing I tried is called suannai, which means “sour milk” in Chinese. It’s essentially a really liquid version of plain yogurt, about the consistency of a smoothie. Although you can get it prepackaged at some supermarkets, the best ones are also the sketchiest: at the omnipresent neighborhood stores that sell cartons of cigarettes, liquor, and bottled drinks, neighborhood suannai vendors come around every morning and fill up the store’s little ceramic jars, a bit smaller than a soda can, with fresh suannai. The jars are then covered with a paper lid and a rubber band. When you buy one, you drink it and just return the jar to anywhere that sells suannai when you’re done. They’re very good, especially in the mornings.
The other thing I ate is a mystery to me. While walking on NLG the first day I was there, I saw a giant line outside a small mom-and-pop storefront. I couldn’t even see what was for sale inside, but since Chinese people are willing to actually line up for only two things (good food and permits for something or other) I figured I might have hit on something great and decided to line up with them.
A couple minutes into the line, I noticed that many people coming out the door were carrying with them cups of frozen yogurt, suannai, or smoothies. When I finally got to the front, I couldn’t read the menu, so I tried my luck and asked for what the person in front of me had ordered. The woman at the counter handed me a half-pint cup of…something white, with sugared red beans on top. I took it outside with a spoon and ate tentatively.
The Chinese don’t do dessert well. They make killer pastries, but dessert as a concept is relatively new to them. This, though, was amazing. It was the consistency of a very liquid pudding, but less sweet, lighter, and milkier. It wasn’t too sugary – the dominant flavor was definitely light, fresh milk, which nicely contrasted with the sweet, slightly nutty red beans sprinkled on top. I could not believe how good it was. I’ve seen it a couple other places since then, but I got another one today for the first time since I’d first tried it, and I couldn’t believe how good it was this time either. The store where I got it just calls it hongdou de, but that just refers to the beans on top of it, so I have no idea what its actual name is. I will find out someday, and then…oh man.
I'll be traveling around the south for the next couple weeks, so don't expect any significant updates until after the 24, when I get back.

Dumpling Tally: 30

*An example: Max started pretending his little foods were political prisoners undergoing interrogation when he was dipping them in the hot oil. (“I’ll never tell you where the tofu treasure is hidden! Not the oil! NOT THE OIL! NOOOOOOOOO glub glub glub…”)

**Shame on you if you weren’t able to fill in the blank with “Nanluogu Hutong”.

***This seems like an almost insulting discrepancy, but it’s not. The expectation with bargaining is that the seller starts way higher than they’re willing to accept, and the buyer starts with way less than they’re willing to pay, with both parties gradually working their way toward the middle. If anyone ever accepted the other person’s initial offer they’d be a huge chump – it’s just unheard of.

Picture post, mostly

I went back to Nanluogu Hutong today to try and fall in love with it again after my crappy experience on Saturday night. It worked. Here's proof.























The big news today is that as of tomorrow, I am no longer living at the Zhangs’ apartment. When I was taking the bus to Nanluogu today I got a call from the homestay RA, who I’d talked to last Friday about being unhappy here, and she just flat-out told me that I’d be moving out tomorrow. Well, then.
The Zhangs haven’t been awkward about it at all, thankfully; in fact, they hardly seem to have noticed, since they’ve thus far only mentioned it in passing once.* I’ll be living in the international student dorm starting tomorrow, and when I get back from my trip to Yunnan (I leave very early Thursday morning and get back sometime on the 24th) I’ll have a new Chinese roommate, fresh from Paralympic volunteerdom, and hopefully someone I can talk to and make friends with. I’m a little nervous, given that my first living situation sounded so cool but then didn’t work out, but I’m happy to have more freedom and live close to people I know. The Chinese students I’ve met here seem very cool, especially my student tutor, who is the most patient and friendly person in possibly the entire world. I swear my listening skills have doubled since I started talking to him last week. At any rate, I move out tomorrow afternoon after I finish classes, and hopefully will be moving on to a better living situation.

*Another odd quirk: last week I brought home this snack bag of delicious shrimp-flavored crackers and left it in my room about half-full to eat later. I went to my afternoon class and came back to find my host mom feeding the crackers to the dog. I must have had a really befuddled look on my face, because all she said was “He likes to eat them.” I have figured out why the dog is as pudgy and waddle-y as he is. It is because his diet consists half of various table scraps and half of Slim Jims. In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up. I’m not mad about it or anything, and I pretty much laughed it off and went to study, but it was definitely a bit out of the ordinary.

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.