It's been almost a month since I last posted, and what a crazy month it's been! I've come home from China, spent four whirlwind days in Boston, travelled in Jordan and Egypt with my family for sixteen days, spent another eight days in Boston, and now I'm in Vermont. I have so much to write about--leftover stories and thoughts from leaving China, impressions and experiences in Jordan and Egypt, feelings about being home in Boston, and hopes for the next seven weeks, which I will spend living up in Craftsbury, Vermont, where I am right now!
Let's start by travelling through time and space (oooh trippy) back to a month ago in Shanghai. My last week in Shanghai was so busy that it's basically a blur at this point. Predictably, I spent a lot of it rushing around saying goodbye to different people and to the city. CIEE did a great job facilitating discussions about re-entry and things to keep in mind when processing our experiences abroad. My goodbye weekend was dampened substantially by the sudden death of my host mom's grandmother; my fancy "goodbye lunch" at a nice restaurant ended up being just me and Judy, my ten year-old host sister, as my host parents both spent much of the weekend with my host mom's family. So that was a slightly different goodbye than I expected, and I was sad to have to say goodbye to my host mom at a time when she was clearly very upset. However, one highlight of those final days was my afternoon-long endeavor to bake a cake in our rice cooker, something I had promised Judy I would do at some point in my final month in Shanghai. I purchased Betty Crocker cake mix and frosting at Carrefour, the Western supermarket; with Judy's "help" I mixed up the cake mix, and poured it into the non-stick insert of our rice cooker. The struggle came when we (me, Judy, and my friend Katherine) couldn't figure out how to get the rice cooker on a high enough setting, so....cooking the cake took seven hours. Really, the cake only started cooking in the final hour, after my host dad came home and adjusted the setting for us. But once (finally) finished, the cake slid out of the rice cooker beautifully, I frosted it, and my host mom, my host dad, Judy, Katherine and I stood around our kitchen eating it. Afterwards, hopped up on sugar, Judy insisted we do a prolonged photo shoot, and I was happy enough to oblige, because now I have tons (read: literally hundreds) of really cute pictures of Judy. A wonderful way to spend my final evening in China!
Coming home to Boston wasn't really the jolting experience I thought it would be. In fact, I felt almost as though I had never left, which, while cliche, is really how I felt. I think this feeling might just be part of being on a gap year, as I left under much the same circumstances as I came back: I didn't come back to jump into classes or some other sort of intense experience, but instead resumed my schedule of cleaning my room, seeing friends, doing laundry, and packing, which had characterized my final days in Boston in August. Plus those four days at home (and in this case "at home" is merely a technical term, as I spent most of those four days running around Boston, Cambridge, and Milton....) were so incredibly crazy that I didn't really have time to feel anything except for exhaustion and happiness at being home and back with my friends and family.
And then, four days after coming home from Asia, I was off to the Middle East and Africa (Jordan and Egypt, to be specific) with my family! What a life I lead. There's obviously so much I could say about Jordan and Egypt, as it was a two week trip, and each day was packed with activities, ancient site visits, and opportunities for observations and learning moments. BUT I really don't have the energy or will to go through Jordan and Egypt in great detail. Or at least not as much detail as the trip deserves. Here are some choice thoughts/observations:
- Jordan is an absolutely beautiful and fascinating country. I really didn't expect to love Jordan as much as I did, thinking instead that it would be a sort of get in, see Petra, get out experience. In reality, we were only in the country for three days, but those three days were enough for me to know that I want to go back. The desert landscape is stunning, the ancient sites are fascinating and wonderfully preserved (specifically, we went to Jerash, an AMAZING Greek/Roman/Byzantine city that is probably the best preserved, most multi-faceted, most interesting Roman ruin I've ever seen, as well as Petra, the deservedly iconic necropolis and city carved into stone cliffs), the people are friendly, it's bustling but not chaotic (at least by Shanghai standards), the food is delicious. Of course, it helped that we stayed in jaw-dropping hotels and certainly didn't suffer (particularly during our day at a Dead Sea resort, probably the most luxurious hotel I've ever stayed in), but I would say that the good impression I got from Jordan wasn't just from the tourist stuff. It just seemed like an interesting, beautiful country, if complex and with its own problems, of course.
- Stuff is really old in Egypt. Duh, you say? Yes, of course I'm stating the obvious. But it's true! And it's incredible to see it, even if it's a fact that you've been aware of since first grade. 5000 year old wooden boats! 5000 year old pyramids! 3000 year old temple complexes! 3000 year old tombs! Those numbers are CRAZY. And it's crazy to be standing inside a temple or pyramid or looking at a perfectly preserved 5000 year-old wooden boat and think about HOW MANY YEARS THAT IS. AH.
- Fun story: After climbing inside the biggest of the Great Pyramids on Christmas Day (a difficult and athletic feat, let me add), my siblings, cousins and I found ourselves, eventually, in the chamber that at one point held the pharaoh's sarcophagus. It's now empty, and very dark, and very tall, and very echo-y, located as it is in the center of a massive pyramid. Inside this room, we found not only ourselves and the stone box that once held the sarcophagus, but a friendly middle-aged Egyptian man who I can confidently label insane. In the best possible way of course. Upon entering the center chamber of the pyramid, I, obviously, began acting like a zombie-mummy, lifting my arms out in front of me and making moaning sounds, which, obviously, echoed quite satisfactorily. Our new pyramid-dwelling Egyptian friend got very excited when I started doing this, and began doing the same bizarre motion and sound. Then, he changed to different fun Egyptian-inspired dance moves (classics such as Walk Like an Egyptian, as well as the Egyptian Shuffle--a sort of mummy bunny hop, an original creation, I'm sure--the Egyptian Congo Line, and the Egyptian Macarana--think the Macarena, but mummified) and very explicitly encouraged us to copy him. We did this for about two minutes, even joining him in his congo line, until we decided it was time to go. But even as we left, our Egyptian friend persisted, running in front of us and showing us even cooler dance moves he had up his sleeve. Such a nice man. Such a nice, pyramid-dwelling insane man. My guess is that the insane asylum from which he most certainly escaped doesn't think to look for him there. But they should. He's nutso.
- Columns are cool. The Greeks and Romans are known for their columns, but the Egyptians should get some credit, too. I loved taking pictures of all the beautiful, massive, carved columns in the ancient temples we visited.
- Ancient Egypt is incredibly removed from Modern Egypt. In China, Ancient and Modern still feel incredibly connected, and even with all the upheaval of the last two hundred years, you can still feel the weight of thousands of years of cultural heritage in modern Chinese culture and life. In Egypt, on the other hand, Ancient Egypt feels much more like part of European history--as its story, as it's told in museums, seems to be peopled as much by characters with names like Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut as it is by characters with names like Jean, John, and Johann--than Egyptian history. Maybe because the ancient sites have become almost entirely tourist attractions, with very few native Egyptians visitors (in contrast to ancient sites in China, which often have many Chinese tourists there as well as foreigners), and maybe because Egypt feels like such a Muslim/Coptic/Arab/Turk-formed country at this point, but it doesn't feel when you're there like Ancient Egypt bears any connection at all with Modern Egypt. This cultural/historic separation also emphasized how isolated we were as tourists from Modern Egypt; unlike my incredibly immersive experience in China, I don't feel like I got much of a glimpse at all of everyday life in Egypt, nor could I tell you any more now about how Egyptians feel/look at the world than I could before I went there. Example: I didn't realize Cairo had a metro until we were driving in our private van to the airport to fly home.
- I love hummus. And baba ganoush. We knew these things before we went, but still. Worth noting?
- Religion is obviously really important in both Jordan and Egypt, but it was by no means as omnipresent/overpowering as I expected (re: being more immersed in ancient Egypt than modern Egypt). I learned more about what roles Amun, Osiris, Isis, etc, played in people's lives/psyches than the role Allah plays today...but all the more reason to go back, right? And I don't want this to come across as grousing, because it's not. I LOVED learning about Ancient Egypt. It was just a huge departure from my experience in China.
OK I think that's enough about that, for now. SO, what am I up to now, you might be wondering? Well, I'm currently happily settled into my grandmother's house in Vermont, where I'll be cross-country skiing and waitressing (the official activities) as well as sleeping, reading, watching movies, photography-ing, cooking, and doing yoga (unofficial activities) through February. I've been up here for four days and I'm SO HAPPY to be surrounded by nature and outside. It's beautiful up here, and I really missed it this fall so it's lovely to be back. I will certainly keep updating, never fear! Because even though I'm back in Eastern Standard Time, the gap year adventures never end! Muahhaha.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Some Final Adventures
Hi! Sorry it's been so ridiculously long since I've posted. I am now back in Boston, but I'm definitely not done talking about China! I started writing the post below a week ago, but got too busy/lazy to finish it and post it. It's about my second to last weekend in China. Enjoy...
That title is rather dramatic, but I guess things are getting a little dramatic here, in terms of how quickly time has flown past, and how much I have had to do before leaving. For example: I started writing this post Tuesday, but now it’s Sunday, and I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight to Toronto. For the sake of having some semblance of focus, this post is going to be about last weekend. Then, once I return to Boston (AH!), I’ll post about what it was like saying goodbye here and sort of try to wrap up my China experience. If that’s even possible. But first, let’s rewind a bit to the weekend, because it was absolutely marvelous (and adventure-filled).
Saturday morning I got up early to go meet up with my friend Douglon Tse (fellow member of the Milton Class of ’09, currently a student at the University of Hong Kong), who was in town for the weekend to see his dad, who works in Shanghai. Douglon had invited me (because he’s absolutely crazy awesome) to go along on a private, very very special tour his dad had arranged of the Shanghai World Expo site. The Expo, in case you don’t know, is the current incarnation of the World’s Fair; it happens every 10 years, and features pavilions from most countries, and provides a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous amount of prestige (and responsibility/expense) for the host country. Kind of like the Olympics. Except the Expo is even bigger because it runs for 6 months, and involves building basically an entire city, not just an Olympic village. So the Chinese government has set aside (read: seized and razed?) a huge piece of land on the eastern side of the Huangpu River (aka Pudong) and has been busily transforming it into a sort of ideal “world city” filled with futuristic buildings, examples of urban best practices, pavilions, and a whole infrastructure of its own. It’s just an incredibly enormous project. China is also busily rebuilding Shanghai in preparation for the millions and millions of visitors they’re expecting to get. The Expo doesn’t open until May, so I was a little bummed that I was going to miss out on seeing it, since it’s such a big deal. And Douglon, per usual, came to the rescue! I got to spend a morning touring the Expo site, and it was amazing, for many reasons. The most obviously striking part of the tour was how completely un-ready the site is. It’s a massive construction site, filled with debris, scaffolding, construction equipment, construction workers, piles of dirt, cement, steel, etc etc. Certainly not a place ready to be descended upon by tourists anytime soon…and yet May 1 is not that far away. Getting an inside look at a Chinese construction site was really cool in and of itself; tens of thousands of workers from all over China have migrated to work on the site, and seeing them and their temporary housing was interesting (overwhelmingly men, but I did see a couple female construction workers interestingly enough). The other highlight was, somewhat obviously, seeing the pavilions. The Chinese pavilion has become something of a national icon, much like the Birds Nest, as its image appears everywhere—posters, advertisements, TV, etc. I think it’s a really striking, beautiful building that deserves to become a classic. Built to look like a modern pagoda, it’s bright red and absolutely massive. The other iconic building that we saw was the flying-saucer-like performance stadium. I have a feeling that that one’s aesthetic might be a little more short lived than the China pavilion. My other favorite pavilions were the Scandinavian countries’; they’re all well thought-out, interesting buildings, that show a commitment both to showcasing the country, and to adhering to the spirit of the Expo and highlighting some sort of “best practice.” The American pavilion, on the other hand, does not yet exist…uhoh. In our defense, the recession hit, and our government decided it wasn’t going to spend any money on the pavilion which I think was a good choice. But we have failed at finding private or corporate donors, so we have yet to start to build our pavilion. I think we should just set up a hot dog stand. Or maybe put some voting booths out on display that people can go into to practice voting. The Chinese government would love that!
After our tour of the Expo, we went to look at Douglon’s dad’s latest development project, which is renovating the former headquarters of Justine Matheson (the largest opium importing firm) on the Bund. It’s an absolutely INCREDIBLE building, with beautiful detailing and a breathtaking view. I can’t wait to go back when the project is finished, because it blew me away in its unfinished state. So cool, particularly for a history buff like me. At this point, that building basically embodies the historical irony of the Bund—former center of commerce in Asia, now completely irrelevant, supplanted by its new neighbor, Pudong, across the river. After an amazing (lots of superlatives when it comes to describing this whole morning…but it was really superlative) lunch, I made my way to the train station, where I caught a train to Nanjing for a 24 hour solo excursion.
I’d been looking forward to getting to travel on my own for a long time, and the trip was a wonderful chance to just hang out with myself. My hostel in Nanjing was well-located, right in the middle of the Confucian Temple District, which is a mostly pedestrian area that was lit up and bustling on the Saturday night I spent wandering around. Sunday, I first went to the Taiping Rebellion (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the Chinese still call it) Museum. This museum was remarkable, not because it was particularly good, but because it sort of (accidentally) summed up all of the Chinese neuroses about the 19th century. For instance, the plaques in the museum implied that the Taiping were practicing communism even before Communism existed, while at the same time they laid the foundations for modern commerce in China. What?!? My other favorite quirk was that the museum never once mentioned Christianity or the Taiping’s pseudo-Christian basis (the founder claimed to be Jesus’ younger brother). Not once. According to the museum, the Taiping were just another righteous peasant rebellion against corrupt masters and a broken system…not slightly crazed messianic cult-members genuinely inspired by Christianity. Ah well. They were both, so I guess the museum gets a 50%. From this perplexing (but slightly funny) museum, I went to the very thought-provoking, very disturbing, very emotionally involved Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. The Nanjing Massacre took place during 6 weeks in December 1937 and January 1938. When the Japanese army invaded China and finally captured Nanjing (then the capital), they went on a raping, killing and burning spree that left 300,000 people dead, and many hundreds of thousands more scarred and scattered. The Nanjing Massacre was a horrible, violent act—one that still exacerbates Japanese/Chinese animosity, especially since members of Japan’s Right Wing claim that it never happened. Ugh. The museum is incredibly detailed, filled with artifacts, interviews with survivors, photographs (of executions, dead bodies, a ravaged city, etc…), and even a viewing platform over a mass grave site. Most of the time, this heavy-handedness feels appropriate, or if not appropriate, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far over the line. However, I definitely experienced moments of intense discomfort with how the museum was handled, in particular with how it often seemed to be egging on anti-Japanese Chinese nationalism (if that term makes any sense…). For instance, upon leaving the main exhibit halls, you walk through this area that’s all about “Peace” and how we must all never forget the past so that it can never be repeated, and how every one on earth should join together to forge world peace. Good stuff, right? And then in order to exit you have to go through this “separate” exhibit about the “glorious” victory over the Japanese and how the Chinese triumphed in the war even though the Japanese were incredibly savage, etc. And it goes military victory by military victory, up until the Japanese unconditional surrender…without once mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaka. Again: What?!? This unnecessary, untruthful aggrandizing of Chinese military “might” left a bad taste in my mouth, and reminded me why the animosity between China and Japan is one of the potentially most explosive nationalism-fueled feuds of the 21st century.
After leaving the museum, I spent about an hour or so figuring out how to navigate Nanjing by bus to go across the city to the other major site, Purple Gold Mountain. The mountain dominates the eastern part of the city, and is the site of Sun Yatsen’s tomb, the tomb of the first Ming emperor, and a beautiful scenic park. Sun Yatsen’s tomb is incredibly grandiose, and I don’t think he would be particularly happy with it if he knew, as it was built by the Nationalists in the style of a Ming Emperor’s tomb. Hmm. Maybe not appropriate for someone trying to start a republic. But you have to walk up like 400 steps or something to get to the tomb, and the view is beautiful. The Ming tomb is also really cool (it’s a World Heritage Site), and in the late afternoon light, it felt melancholy and abandoned and beautiful. The mountain is just gorgeous in general, and, with the autumn leaves (a soft yellow) but dark branches (purple) it really lives up to its name, as it looks purple from far away but yellow when you’re there. From Purple Gold Mountain, I then took the bus back into the center of the city to see Nanjing’s ancient city wall and the city’s largest gate, Zhonghuamen. By this time, dusk had set in, and wandering around this ancient city wall (wide enough at the top for 3 horses to walk abreast, and four layers deep, it’s more like a castle in the middle of the city than a gate) in the dark with the city lights twinkling below was a little creepy, but also striking and beautiful. It was such a moment of feeling the intersection of ancient and modern in China.
After that, I hopped on the metro and caught my train back to Shanghai. It was an amazing weekend!
That title is rather dramatic, but I guess things are getting a little dramatic here, in terms of how quickly time has flown past, and how much I have had to do before leaving. For example: I started writing this post Tuesday, but now it’s Sunday, and I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight to Toronto. For the sake of having some semblance of focus, this post is going to be about last weekend. Then, once I return to Boston (AH!), I’ll post about what it was like saying goodbye here and sort of try to wrap up my China experience. If that’s even possible. But first, let’s rewind a bit to the weekend, because it was absolutely marvelous (and adventure-filled).
Saturday morning I got up early to go meet up with my friend Douglon Tse (fellow member of the Milton Class of ’09, currently a student at the University of Hong Kong), who was in town for the weekend to see his dad, who works in Shanghai. Douglon had invited me (because he’s absolutely crazy awesome) to go along on a private, very very special tour his dad had arranged of the Shanghai World Expo site. The Expo, in case you don’t know, is the current incarnation of the World’s Fair; it happens every 10 years, and features pavilions from most countries, and provides a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous amount of prestige (and responsibility/expense) for the host country. Kind of like the Olympics. Except the Expo is even bigger because it runs for 6 months, and involves building basically an entire city, not just an Olympic village. So the Chinese government has set aside (read: seized and razed?) a huge piece of land on the eastern side of the Huangpu River (aka Pudong) and has been busily transforming it into a sort of ideal “world city” filled with futuristic buildings, examples of urban best practices, pavilions, and a whole infrastructure of its own. It’s just an incredibly enormous project. China is also busily rebuilding Shanghai in preparation for the millions and millions of visitors they’re expecting to get. The Expo doesn’t open until May, so I was a little bummed that I was going to miss out on seeing it, since it’s such a big deal. And Douglon, per usual, came to the rescue! I got to spend a morning touring the Expo site, and it was amazing, for many reasons. The most obviously striking part of the tour was how completely un-ready the site is. It’s a massive construction site, filled with debris, scaffolding, construction equipment, construction workers, piles of dirt, cement, steel, etc etc. Certainly not a place ready to be descended upon by tourists anytime soon…and yet May 1 is not that far away. Getting an inside look at a Chinese construction site was really cool in and of itself; tens of thousands of workers from all over China have migrated to work on the site, and seeing them and their temporary housing was interesting (overwhelmingly men, but I did see a couple female construction workers interestingly enough). The other highlight was, somewhat obviously, seeing the pavilions. The Chinese pavilion has become something of a national icon, much like the Birds Nest, as its image appears everywhere—posters, advertisements, TV, etc. I think it’s a really striking, beautiful building that deserves to become a classic. Built to look like a modern pagoda, it’s bright red and absolutely massive. The other iconic building that we saw was the flying-saucer-like performance stadium. I have a feeling that that one’s aesthetic might be a little more short lived than the China pavilion. My other favorite pavilions were the Scandinavian countries’; they’re all well thought-out, interesting buildings, that show a commitment both to showcasing the country, and to adhering to the spirit of the Expo and highlighting some sort of “best practice.” The American pavilion, on the other hand, does not yet exist…uhoh. In our defense, the recession hit, and our government decided it wasn’t going to spend any money on the pavilion which I think was a good choice. But we have failed at finding private or corporate donors, so we have yet to start to build our pavilion. I think we should just set up a hot dog stand. Or maybe put some voting booths out on display that people can go into to practice voting. The Chinese government would love that!
After our tour of the Expo, we went to look at Douglon’s dad’s latest development project, which is renovating the former headquarters of Justine Matheson (the largest opium importing firm) on the Bund. It’s an absolutely INCREDIBLE building, with beautiful detailing and a breathtaking view. I can’t wait to go back when the project is finished, because it blew me away in its unfinished state. So cool, particularly for a history buff like me. At this point, that building basically embodies the historical irony of the Bund—former center of commerce in Asia, now completely irrelevant, supplanted by its new neighbor, Pudong, across the river. After an amazing (lots of superlatives when it comes to describing this whole morning…but it was really superlative) lunch, I made my way to the train station, where I caught a train to Nanjing for a 24 hour solo excursion.
I’d been looking forward to getting to travel on my own for a long time, and the trip was a wonderful chance to just hang out with myself. My hostel in Nanjing was well-located, right in the middle of the Confucian Temple District, which is a mostly pedestrian area that was lit up and bustling on the Saturday night I spent wandering around. Sunday, I first went to the Taiping Rebellion (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the Chinese still call it) Museum. This museum was remarkable, not because it was particularly good, but because it sort of (accidentally) summed up all of the Chinese neuroses about the 19th century. For instance, the plaques in the museum implied that the Taiping were practicing communism even before Communism existed, while at the same time they laid the foundations for modern commerce in China. What?!? My other favorite quirk was that the museum never once mentioned Christianity or the Taiping’s pseudo-Christian basis (the founder claimed to be Jesus’ younger brother). Not once. According to the museum, the Taiping were just another righteous peasant rebellion against corrupt masters and a broken system…not slightly crazed messianic cult-members genuinely inspired by Christianity. Ah well. They were both, so I guess the museum gets a 50%. From this perplexing (but slightly funny) museum, I went to the very thought-provoking, very disturbing, very emotionally involved Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. The Nanjing Massacre took place during 6 weeks in December 1937 and January 1938. When the Japanese army invaded China and finally captured Nanjing (then the capital), they went on a raping, killing and burning spree that left 300,000 people dead, and many hundreds of thousands more scarred and scattered. The Nanjing Massacre was a horrible, violent act—one that still exacerbates Japanese/Chinese animosity, especially since members of Japan’s Right Wing claim that it never happened. Ugh. The museum is incredibly detailed, filled with artifacts, interviews with survivors, photographs (of executions, dead bodies, a ravaged city, etc…), and even a viewing platform over a mass grave site. Most of the time, this heavy-handedness feels appropriate, or if not appropriate, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far over the line. However, I definitely experienced moments of intense discomfort with how the museum was handled, in particular with how it often seemed to be egging on anti-Japanese Chinese nationalism (if that term makes any sense…). For instance, upon leaving the main exhibit halls, you walk through this area that’s all about “Peace” and how we must all never forget the past so that it can never be repeated, and how every one on earth should join together to forge world peace. Good stuff, right? And then in order to exit you have to go through this “separate” exhibit about the “glorious” victory over the Japanese and how the Chinese triumphed in the war even though the Japanese were incredibly savage, etc. And it goes military victory by military victory, up until the Japanese unconditional surrender…without once mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaka. Again: What?!? This unnecessary, untruthful aggrandizing of Chinese military “might” left a bad taste in my mouth, and reminded me why the animosity between China and Japan is one of the potentially most explosive nationalism-fueled feuds of the 21st century.
After leaving the museum, I spent about an hour or so figuring out how to navigate Nanjing by bus to go across the city to the other major site, Purple Gold Mountain. The mountain dominates the eastern part of the city, and is the site of Sun Yatsen’s tomb, the tomb of the first Ming emperor, and a beautiful scenic park. Sun Yatsen’s tomb is incredibly grandiose, and I don’t think he would be particularly happy with it if he knew, as it was built by the Nationalists in the style of a Ming Emperor’s tomb. Hmm. Maybe not appropriate for someone trying to start a republic. But you have to walk up like 400 steps or something to get to the tomb, and the view is beautiful. The Ming tomb is also really cool (it’s a World Heritage Site), and in the late afternoon light, it felt melancholy and abandoned and beautiful. The mountain is just gorgeous in general, and, with the autumn leaves (a soft yellow) but dark branches (purple) it really lives up to its name, as it looks purple from far away but yellow when you’re there. From Purple Gold Mountain, I then took the bus back into the center of the city to see Nanjing’s ancient city wall and the city’s largest gate, Zhonghuamen. By this time, dusk had set in, and wandering around this ancient city wall (wide enough at the top for 3 horses to walk abreast, and four layers deep, it’s more like a castle in the middle of the city than a gate) in the dark with the city lights twinkling below was a little creepy, but also striking and beautiful. It was such a moment of feeling the intersection of ancient and modern in China.
After that, I hopped on the metro and caught my train back to Shanghai. It was an amazing weekend!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Random PS to Best Week Ever
Things that I just thought of that I can't BELIEVE I forgot to mention that contributed to making this the Best Week Ever:
- I sent in my absentee ballot and VOTED in the MA Special Election! For Alan Khazei, of course (endorsed by The Boston Globe, The Worcester Telegraph, General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg....alanforsenate.com...GO ALAN!).
- A letter arrived, snail mail, from my friend Sarah Diamond, meaning that I exchanged letters with someone from China! The process just took almost 3 months, no big deal...I sent her a letter in the beginning of September, it got to her at the end of October, she sent her reply then, it got to me at the end of November. I sent her a reply, we'll see how long that takes. I thought that was pretty nifty, so I'm sharing
- I had a CRAZY conversation with my tutor, and I don't want to repeat it here because, you know, I'm still in China and she's still going to be here when I leave. If you're a Chinese official and you're reading this, Hi! Let's just say it was really sensitive and interesting and her family has definitely been caught up in China's turbulent recent history, and she's definitely NOT the Western media assumption of a brain-washed, disengaged Chinese upper middle class young person. Nope. Not at all. I'm obsessed with her a little bit (which is good, it's probably a good thing she has a friend outside of China, just in case...or whatever).
OK. Now I'm seriously done. This has officially been the longest update ever. Goodnight!
- I sent in my absentee ballot and VOTED in the MA Special Election! For Alan Khazei, of course (endorsed by The Boston Globe, The Worcester Telegraph, General Wesley Clark, Mayor Bloomberg....alanforsenate.com...GO ALAN!).
- A letter arrived, snail mail, from my friend Sarah Diamond, meaning that I exchanged letters with someone from China! The process just took almost 3 months, no big deal...I sent her a letter in the beginning of September, it got to her at the end of October, she sent her reply then, it got to me at the end of November. I sent her a reply, we'll see how long that takes. I thought that was pretty nifty, so I'm sharing
- I had a CRAZY conversation with my tutor, and I don't want to repeat it here because, you know, I'm still in China and she's still going to be here when I leave. If you're a Chinese official and you're reading this, Hi! Let's just say it was really sensitive and interesting and her family has definitely been caught up in China's turbulent recent history, and she's definitely NOT the Western media assumption of a brain-washed, disengaged Chinese upper middle class young person. Nope. Not at all. I'm obsessed with her a little bit (which is good, it's probably a good thing she has a friend outside of China, just in case...or whatever).
OK. Now I'm seriously done. This has officially been the longest update ever. Goodnight!
Best Week Ever?
It’s now December, and I can’t believe I go home so soon—10 days! The past week has maybe been my best week yet in China; before I get into the details, I think the overarching reasons for this week’s awesomeness are that I actively sought out adventures/awesome experiences, plus I sort of sensed my Chinese coming into its own, in terms of my being able to communicate and understand what’s going on around me. Ok, so the details: why was this the best week ever?
For starters, Thanksgiving was great—not the homesickness fest I sort of expected it to be. I definitely missed seeing my family and being in Vermont, but the more than sufficient Thanksgiving festivities here definitely took the edge off. Thanksgiving day itself, I skipped class. I went to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, which I had not yet been to, and walked around Renmin Square and East Nanjing Road, taking pictures and enjoying a lovely warm and sunny day. The art museum is housed in a really cool building (it used to be a greenhouse), and while the art wasn’t so great (Chinese contemporary art is still sort of coming into its own) it was definitely worth going, and it was nice to get out into the central city again with my camera. It was cool to feel at once awed by Shanghai (Nanjing East Road is a pedestrian only shopping street and it’s crazy…even at lunch time on a weekday it was absolutely packed with people), and like an old hand, as I could make my way around with ease.
Later that afternoon, I met up with my friend Katherine, and we went to Zhongshan Park, which, even though it’s near my house, I had never been to. After wandering through the park for a little while, we eventually found our way to this big center grassy area. This place was bustling; there was a ballroom dancing class going on, tons of old people standing or sitting and enjoying the day, and a bunch of old men flying kites. Old men really like flying kites in China; in fact, I have yet to see a child flying a kite, but every day see old men flying hawk-shaped kites on the field outside our classrooms. I think they may actually be hired to fly kites to keep sparrows/other birds off the field (a strategy I think Milton should definitely incorporate into its anti-goose efforts…just make flying kites part of health class or force kids in detention to do it or something…or offer boarders yummy food in return for their kite flying efforts…). We eventually find the field’s kite seller guy, and buy a small kite off him for an exorbitant price. There were so many people crowding around watching the young laowai girls buying kites that we kind of just wanted to get out of there, so we didn’t really bargain that much. BUT we did get an absolutely excellent kite, not in terms of its flying ability, but in terms of its design. Our kite was adorned with three images of Haibao, the blue toothpaste smudge (slash wave, which is what he’s supposed to be) mascot of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Beside a large central Haibao, two smaller Haibaos frolicked, dressed in Santa Claus suits. Perfection. The large grassy area was actually blocked off (TIC?), so we wandered for a bit trying to find a place to fly our kite before giving up and deciding to walk back to ECNU, which we know (from watching every day) has a couple good kite-flying places. This was a good choice, and we spent a lovely 90 minutes or so flying our kite, watched by a couple wide-eyed toddlers and the students walking by. It was a great way to spend any sunny, warm day outside—but especially Thanksgiving Day.
That evening we went to Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the gap year students, our teachers Huang Laoshi and Yang Laoshi, Lynn the student intern who has taken us on excursions, and four UPenn students whom we didn’t know who are also in Shanghai with CIEE. The hotel we went to had an endless and varied Thanksgiving buffet. No stuffing (I know, what’s up with that?), but the turkey was INCREDIBLE. I guess in China because labor is so cheap they could probably pay someone just to be in charge of basting the turkey, because that bird (or birds, I guess, since there were definitely multiple) was moist and perfect. Yum. We all seriously over-ate, but that’s necessary for Thanksgiving, right? After dinner, it was go home, food coma, bed.
Friday afternoon I went to my second Thanksgiving, which was definitely even better than the first. I had been generously invited by Dru, my friend/former youth mentor Judith’s cousin, to their home in Pudong for their Thanksgiving party. It was SO delicious, and really interesting and fun to get to talk to a varied group of American expats. Everyone was super welcoming, especially considering that I was so young, and didn’t know anyone there. We watched the Pats/Colts game from the Monday before, which at first I was really excited about…until I remembered that it was a spectacular loss on the Pats part. Blergh. Oh well.
Saturday was another adventure day, as Ben, Katherine, Cindy and I, and Katherine’s super cool friend Olivia who is also going to Stanford after a gap year and is in Beijing for the semester (she was in Shanghai spending Thanksgiving with her brother who works here), went to Suzhou. Suzhou is a small city a half hour by train outside Shanghai, famous for its canals, historic city center, and gardens. Here’s what I would say about Suzhou: I’m glad I went, but it is definitely overrated. There isn’t too much to do, and the city center, while definitely different looking and vaguely old, is still very much a city center (traffic, modern shops, plenty of nondescript buildings, etc). The canals were sort of hard to find and not particularly easy to enjoy as they are usually just the median between two lanes of traffic, and the gardens, while beautiful and peaceful, are very constructed and in a certain style that’s very different from what I expected. All that being said, it was still a very enjoyable day—I’m just glad I didn’t decide to go for a weekend or anything. I think the most interesting aspect of the day trip for me was getting to see another example of what urban China can look like; this semester, I’ve now been to the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen, Hangzhou, and Shaoxing, and Suzhou, and they’ve all been completely different. Just another example of how China is most definitely not monochromatic, in any respect. Next time you hear the phrase “urban China,” keep in mind that it can mean an infinite number of things; it’s not all white tiled highrises, or old whitewashed buildings with tiled roofs, or rundown hutongs, or Pudong modernity.
Sunday. Sunday was epic. Sunday was the day of my special secret activity. What was this secret activity? Well. Elizabeth Campbell (JUCCCE star, Milton ’05, Yale ’09, and my mentor/friend while I’ve been here, in case you’ve forgotten) and I went on a photo tour of Shanghai. But not just any photo tour. A photo tour of us, decked out in Yale gear, with Elizabeth’s “For God, For Country, and For Yale” banner. You can check out the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028885&id=1237920519&l=abcc6e47c4
Other than being an amazingly silly/ridiculous/fun afternoon, it was also a great way to say goodbye to Shanghai (*sniff sniff*). Interesting insights/ experiences: going to the “Meat Market” in Renmin Square where parents/grandparents with grown children meet up to do some old-fashioned match-making and set up their single children; feathers+fans+Yale=crazy fun (see the pictures); if you hold a banner with English words up in a public place in China, people will try to read it, and will ask you what any words they don’t know mean, specifically what “Yale” means, and then when they find out that it’s the famous university in America, they are really surprised that these crazy laowai are associated with such a place; you can buy a hat shaped like a panda head on the promenade by the Bund for 10 RMB, instead of the original price of 30 RMB, if you try it on and giggle a lot and then walk away (that being said, we didn’t actually end up buying the hat, don’t worry); spending hours being utterly ridiculous is super tiring. Other than that, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves….
After the photo tour, I went to Shanghai’s “fake market,” located in the bottom of a metro stop. There I bought myself a (highly necessary) pair of fake Uggs, so now my feet are warm, and a fake Longchamp bag (not at all necessary), so now I can feel like a tool, but at least a frugal one. I spent about $30 total, so if you consider that a real pair of Uggs and a real Longchamp bag all together would be like $250 (ish? right?), then I really “saved” a lot of money, right? But I actually feel a little accomplished, as I did some hard bargaining and got both of my items for about 1/4 – 1/3 of the original asking price. Sunday morning (pre-photo tour) I also picked up the blue dress coat I had made (the dream was realized!) at Shanghai’s fabric market. It’s beautiful, I’m obsessed. When I first showed my host family what it looked like, my host dad tried for like 5 minutes to communicate something to me that I could not understand at all, until, through a series of charades-like guesses and motions, I figured out that he was trying to say that my coat makes me look like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Win.
Sunday evening (it was a very busy day…I wasn’t really home at all between 8:30 am and 10 pm), Katherine and I and Huang Laoshi went to a modern dance called “Unbound,” an interpretive dance about foot-binding. Interesting, but also appropriately short (at just 70 minutes, one could even say that it was appropriately stunted in length…hmmm insensitive much…).
Tuesday, we had our last class teaching English at the migrant school. The kids were SO CUTE when we said goodbye and took some pictures, it made me so sad to be leaving. Even though we only spent an hour a week there, and we missed a bunch of weeks because of scheduling conflicts (on our end and their end), it was still sad to think that I was never going to see any of those kids again…I’m endlessly curious to know where they’ll all end up. This is really the first big generation to grow up with migrant worker parents, as the numbers of migrant workers really exploded in the last 15 years, and I’d be interested to see how successful the government is at helping these kids overcome some of the obstacles/inequality facing them, and whether they end up being migrants themselves, or settling in cities, or what. Teaching these kids has definitely meant that I’ll always have faces in mind when I think of Chinese roughly my own age (well, 8 years younger), and we’ll always have in the back of my mind a sense of the challenges (and opportunities and social upheaval) that are part of living in China today.
Wednesday was another epic day. Our “core class” on current issues in China was a lecture on China and the Environment, my favorite topic. The readings we did to prepare I had actually all done before in my Topics in Modern World History class with Ms. Wade last fall, a funny coincidence, but a cool one, as I got to re-read them thinking about how my impressions had changed over the course of a year. I would say that reading them now, I had less of a sense of panic and unease about how China is going to deal with its environmental challenges, but also more of a sense of the realities (and the enormity of those realities) here in China. My sense of hope stems from what I’ve seen first hand of how quickly China has changed, and how amazing that change has been—in 30 years, China has had more success in pulling people out of poverty and improving living standards/quality of life than any effort by anyone in history. It’s transformed itself at an incredible pace. So my hope comes from the knowledge that China can do basically anything if it focuses on it, and that environmental awareness is increasing at an incredibly rapid pace, and hopefully China will over the course of the next 30 years apply its energy and abilities to increasing efficiency, cutting emissions/rate of emissions, and eliminating pollution. All my fingers and toes are crossed. And will remain so for the next 30 years. So yeah…the lecture was very interesting, as our speaker, Matt Koon, focused on coal in China, which is so important but I had never really heard comprehensive facts about. Scary stuff (but the hope…the hope must remain…).
Wednesday night. Oh, Wednesday night. Wednesday night I almost died, multiple times, but it was so totally worth it: Katherine and I went on a nighttime guided tour of Shanghai, on bicycle. 14 km in 3 hours, through the French Concession, Old Shanghai, and Pudong. Definitely in the top 5 of most fun things I’ve done in China, and definitely a very memorable experience. Our guide, Patrick, was amazing—I think he found us very amusing, as we conversed with him in Chinglish, freaked out as we biked through intersections, obsessively rang our bell (well, Katherine did…), bought ice cream, sang Christmas carols, raced, and basically had a marvelous time. I HIGHLY recommend doing this tour or another bike tour of Shanghai or anywhere…go to chinacycletours.com if you happen to be in China or if you will be ever. Totally worth the money (150 RMB). Just totally awesome in general. Like riding a roller coaster, except more dangerous, and we weren’t ever hanging upside down (luckily). Katherine definitely thinks I have a death wish now, as I convinced her to come with me, and apparently I’m “fearless” (she was riding behind me the whole time, as I dodged cars/motorcycles/pedestrians…). We got to see Yu Gardens lit up at night, navigate the narrow alleyways of Old Shanghai, cross the Huangpu River on the ferry, bike around Pudong…SO FUN. AH.
Today, Thursday, Katherine and I had lunch with Jenny, my Chinese friend, and then we watched a Chinese romantic comedy. Very interesting…completely unsexual romantic comedy, supposedly “comedy” but yet someone tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, almost entirely consists of people talking to each other in coffee shops (pacing is definitely different for Chinese v.s. American movies). Also very hard to understand, haha. But good for my Chinese, and fun to see a glimpse of Chinese pop culture. Will definitely have to seek out more Chinese movies this winter so I can keep practicing my Chinese.
Alright. If you’ve gotten to the end of this epic post, you know why this was an epic week. The best week ever. Now I head into the home stretch—AH—and I have some awesome stuff planned, which I will definitely post about here. But for now, I will sign off and go to bed. Peace.
For starters, Thanksgiving was great—not the homesickness fest I sort of expected it to be. I definitely missed seeing my family and being in Vermont, but the more than sufficient Thanksgiving festivities here definitely took the edge off. Thanksgiving day itself, I skipped class. I went to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, which I had not yet been to, and walked around Renmin Square and East Nanjing Road, taking pictures and enjoying a lovely warm and sunny day. The art museum is housed in a really cool building (it used to be a greenhouse), and while the art wasn’t so great (Chinese contemporary art is still sort of coming into its own) it was definitely worth going, and it was nice to get out into the central city again with my camera. It was cool to feel at once awed by Shanghai (Nanjing East Road is a pedestrian only shopping street and it’s crazy…even at lunch time on a weekday it was absolutely packed with people), and like an old hand, as I could make my way around with ease.
Later that afternoon, I met up with my friend Katherine, and we went to Zhongshan Park, which, even though it’s near my house, I had never been to. After wandering through the park for a little while, we eventually found our way to this big center grassy area. This place was bustling; there was a ballroom dancing class going on, tons of old people standing or sitting and enjoying the day, and a bunch of old men flying kites. Old men really like flying kites in China; in fact, I have yet to see a child flying a kite, but every day see old men flying hawk-shaped kites on the field outside our classrooms. I think they may actually be hired to fly kites to keep sparrows/other birds off the field (a strategy I think Milton should definitely incorporate into its anti-goose efforts…just make flying kites part of health class or force kids in detention to do it or something…or offer boarders yummy food in return for their kite flying efforts…). We eventually find the field’s kite seller guy, and buy a small kite off him for an exorbitant price. There were so many people crowding around watching the young laowai girls buying kites that we kind of just wanted to get out of there, so we didn’t really bargain that much. BUT we did get an absolutely excellent kite, not in terms of its flying ability, but in terms of its design. Our kite was adorned with three images of Haibao, the blue toothpaste smudge (slash wave, which is what he’s supposed to be) mascot of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Beside a large central Haibao, two smaller Haibaos frolicked, dressed in Santa Claus suits. Perfection. The large grassy area was actually blocked off (TIC?), so we wandered for a bit trying to find a place to fly our kite before giving up and deciding to walk back to ECNU, which we know (from watching every day) has a couple good kite-flying places. This was a good choice, and we spent a lovely 90 minutes or so flying our kite, watched by a couple wide-eyed toddlers and the students walking by. It was a great way to spend any sunny, warm day outside—but especially Thanksgiving Day.
That evening we went to Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the gap year students, our teachers Huang Laoshi and Yang Laoshi, Lynn the student intern who has taken us on excursions, and four UPenn students whom we didn’t know who are also in Shanghai with CIEE. The hotel we went to had an endless and varied Thanksgiving buffet. No stuffing (I know, what’s up with that?), but the turkey was INCREDIBLE. I guess in China because labor is so cheap they could probably pay someone just to be in charge of basting the turkey, because that bird (or birds, I guess, since there were definitely multiple) was moist and perfect. Yum. We all seriously over-ate, but that’s necessary for Thanksgiving, right? After dinner, it was go home, food coma, bed.
Friday afternoon I went to my second Thanksgiving, which was definitely even better than the first. I had been generously invited by Dru, my friend/former youth mentor Judith’s cousin, to their home in Pudong for their Thanksgiving party. It was SO delicious, and really interesting and fun to get to talk to a varied group of American expats. Everyone was super welcoming, especially considering that I was so young, and didn’t know anyone there. We watched the Pats/Colts game from the Monday before, which at first I was really excited about…until I remembered that it was a spectacular loss on the Pats part. Blergh. Oh well.
Saturday was another adventure day, as Ben, Katherine, Cindy and I, and Katherine’s super cool friend Olivia who is also going to Stanford after a gap year and is in Beijing for the semester (she was in Shanghai spending Thanksgiving with her brother who works here), went to Suzhou. Suzhou is a small city a half hour by train outside Shanghai, famous for its canals, historic city center, and gardens. Here’s what I would say about Suzhou: I’m glad I went, but it is definitely overrated. There isn’t too much to do, and the city center, while definitely different looking and vaguely old, is still very much a city center (traffic, modern shops, plenty of nondescript buildings, etc). The canals were sort of hard to find and not particularly easy to enjoy as they are usually just the median between two lanes of traffic, and the gardens, while beautiful and peaceful, are very constructed and in a certain style that’s very different from what I expected. All that being said, it was still a very enjoyable day—I’m just glad I didn’t decide to go for a weekend or anything. I think the most interesting aspect of the day trip for me was getting to see another example of what urban China can look like; this semester, I’ve now been to the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen, Hangzhou, and Shaoxing, and Suzhou, and they’ve all been completely different. Just another example of how China is most definitely not monochromatic, in any respect. Next time you hear the phrase “urban China,” keep in mind that it can mean an infinite number of things; it’s not all white tiled highrises, or old whitewashed buildings with tiled roofs, or rundown hutongs, or Pudong modernity.
Sunday. Sunday was epic. Sunday was the day of my special secret activity. What was this secret activity? Well. Elizabeth Campbell (JUCCCE star, Milton ’05, Yale ’09, and my mentor/friend while I’ve been here, in case you’ve forgotten) and I went on a photo tour of Shanghai. But not just any photo tour. A photo tour of us, decked out in Yale gear, with Elizabeth’s “For God, For Country, and For Yale” banner. You can check out the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028885&id=1237920519&l=abcc6e47c4
Other than being an amazingly silly/ridiculous/fun afternoon, it was also a great way to say goodbye to Shanghai (*sniff sniff*). Interesting insights/ experiences: going to the “Meat Market” in Renmin Square where parents/grandparents with grown children meet up to do some old-fashioned match-making and set up their single children; feathers+fans+Yale=crazy fun (see the pictures); if you hold a banner with English words up in a public place in China, people will try to read it, and will ask you what any words they don’t know mean, specifically what “Yale” means, and then when they find out that it’s the famous university in America, they are really surprised that these crazy laowai are associated with such a place; you can buy a hat shaped like a panda head on the promenade by the Bund for 10 RMB, instead of the original price of 30 RMB, if you try it on and giggle a lot and then walk away (that being said, we didn’t actually end up buying the hat, don’t worry); spending hours being utterly ridiculous is super tiring. Other than that, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves….
After the photo tour, I went to Shanghai’s “fake market,” located in the bottom of a metro stop. There I bought myself a (highly necessary) pair of fake Uggs, so now my feet are warm, and a fake Longchamp bag (not at all necessary), so now I can feel like a tool, but at least a frugal one. I spent about $30 total, so if you consider that a real pair of Uggs and a real Longchamp bag all together would be like $250 (ish? right?), then I really “saved” a lot of money, right? But I actually feel a little accomplished, as I did some hard bargaining and got both of my items for about 1/4 – 1/3 of the original asking price. Sunday morning (pre-photo tour) I also picked up the blue dress coat I had made (the dream was realized!) at Shanghai’s fabric market. It’s beautiful, I’m obsessed. When I first showed my host family what it looked like, my host dad tried for like 5 minutes to communicate something to me that I could not understand at all, until, through a series of charades-like guesses and motions, I figured out that he was trying to say that my coat makes me look like Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Win.
Sunday evening (it was a very busy day…I wasn’t really home at all between 8:30 am and 10 pm), Katherine and I and Huang Laoshi went to a modern dance called “Unbound,” an interpretive dance about foot-binding. Interesting, but also appropriately short (at just 70 minutes, one could even say that it was appropriately stunted in length…hmmm insensitive much…).
Tuesday, we had our last class teaching English at the migrant school. The kids were SO CUTE when we said goodbye and took some pictures, it made me so sad to be leaving. Even though we only spent an hour a week there, and we missed a bunch of weeks because of scheduling conflicts (on our end and their end), it was still sad to think that I was never going to see any of those kids again…I’m endlessly curious to know where they’ll all end up. This is really the first big generation to grow up with migrant worker parents, as the numbers of migrant workers really exploded in the last 15 years, and I’d be interested to see how successful the government is at helping these kids overcome some of the obstacles/inequality facing them, and whether they end up being migrants themselves, or settling in cities, or what. Teaching these kids has definitely meant that I’ll always have faces in mind when I think of Chinese roughly my own age (well, 8 years younger), and we’ll always have in the back of my mind a sense of the challenges (and opportunities and social upheaval) that are part of living in China today.
Wednesday was another epic day. Our “core class” on current issues in China was a lecture on China and the Environment, my favorite topic. The readings we did to prepare I had actually all done before in my Topics in Modern World History class with Ms. Wade last fall, a funny coincidence, but a cool one, as I got to re-read them thinking about how my impressions had changed over the course of a year. I would say that reading them now, I had less of a sense of panic and unease about how China is going to deal with its environmental challenges, but also more of a sense of the realities (and the enormity of those realities) here in China. My sense of hope stems from what I’ve seen first hand of how quickly China has changed, and how amazing that change has been—in 30 years, China has had more success in pulling people out of poverty and improving living standards/quality of life than any effort by anyone in history. It’s transformed itself at an incredible pace. So my hope comes from the knowledge that China can do basically anything if it focuses on it, and that environmental awareness is increasing at an incredibly rapid pace, and hopefully China will over the course of the next 30 years apply its energy and abilities to increasing efficiency, cutting emissions/rate of emissions, and eliminating pollution. All my fingers and toes are crossed. And will remain so for the next 30 years. So yeah…the lecture was very interesting, as our speaker, Matt Koon, focused on coal in China, which is so important but I had never really heard comprehensive facts about. Scary stuff (but the hope…the hope must remain…).
Wednesday night. Oh, Wednesday night. Wednesday night I almost died, multiple times, but it was so totally worth it: Katherine and I went on a nighttime guided tour of Shanghai, on bicycle. 14 km in 3 hours, through the French Concession, Old Shanghai, and Pudong. Definitely in the top 5 of most fun things I’ve done in China, and definitely a very memorable experience. Our guide, Patrick, was amazing—I think he found us very amusing, as we conversed with him in Chinglish, freaked out as we biked through intersections, obsessively rang our bell (well, Katherine did…), bought ice cream, sang Christmas carols, raced, and basically had a marvelous time. I HIGHLY recommend doing this tour or another bike tour of Shanghai or anywhere…go to chinacycletours.com if you happen to be in China or if you will be ever. Totally worth the money (150 RMB). Just totally awesome in general. Like riding a roller coaster, except more dangerous, and we weren’t ever hanging upside down (luckily). Katherine definitely thinks I have a death wish now, as I convinced her to come with me, and apparently I’m “fearless” (she was riding behind me the whole time, as I dodged cars/motorcycles/pedestrians…). We got to see Yu Gardens lit up at night, navigate the narrow alleyways of Old Shanghai, cross the Huangpu River on the ferry, bike around Pudong…SO FUN. AH.
Today, Thursday, Katherine and I had lunch with Jenny, my Chinese friend, and then we watched a Chinese romantic comedy. Very interesting…completely unsexual romantic comedy, supposedly “comedy” but yet someone tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff, almost entirely consists of people talking to each other in coffee shops (pacing is definitely different for Chinese v.s. American movies). Also very hard to understand, haha. But good for my Chinese, and fun to see a glimpse of Chinese pop culture. Will definitely have to seek out more Chinese movies this winter so I can keep practicing my Chinese.
Alright. If you’ve gotten to the end of this epic post, you know why this was an epic week. The best week ever. Now I head into the home stretch—AH—and I have some awesome stuff planned, which I will definitely post about here. But for now, I will sign off and go to bed. Peace.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thanksgiving!
I hope you all are enjoying a restful Thanksgiving Day/break! I am excited for my Thanksgiving-in-China festivities. Tomorrow (Thanksgiving) I will fly kites with my friend Katherine and spend some time gallivanting around Zhongshan Park, a large park close to where we live. In the evening, we have a Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant, sponsored by CIEE. Yum! Then, Friday I’m going to a “traditional Southern Thanksgiving” feast at the home of my friend Judith’s cousin Dru (who lives in Shanghai). This, too, will be super yummy. Double yum! Saturday I’m heading to Suzhou, a famously picturesque city about an hour outside Shanghai by train, for the day. And then Sunday I have a super exciting activity planned which I will keep secret until after the fact—get excited, it’s going to be amazing. Hint: Boola! Boola!
This week I’ve had midterms, my one and only official evaluation while in China. I think my tests—speaking, listening, and grammar—actually went OK, except for maybe the grammar portion. We’ll see!
Since my last post I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about Obama’s visit. The reason I didn’t mention it at all on the blog is that it was literally a non-event here. People barely knew that it was happening, and if they did, it wasn’t important to them. In fact, my host family took more notice of the fact that Hillary Clinton was in Shanghai than they did that President Obama was here. Part of this lack of reaction is that the Chinese are pretty ambivalent about Obama. My three data points on direct conversations about Obama’s visit were with my host mom, my tutor, and my Chinese friend Jenny. All of them had absolutely nothing substantive to say about Obama, but they all remarked that Obama is very handsome/cool. I think a visit to China is going to be inherently different from a visit to say, Europe, because people can’t congregate in large numbers/ there isn’t a culture of gathering to cheer or protest public figures (obviously). And being involved with or interested in politics in China usually means you are super Communist and a fount of Communist ideology/propaganda (according to my tutor), so most people choose apathy (as being the opposite of “political” ie protesting isn’t really an option). Haha “choose apathy” is a funny phrase. So I’m not sure people would have seen the point in reacting strongly to Obama’s visit, even if they did (or do) feel strongly. So sorry to disappoint, but….nothing to see here. Plus I was in Hangzhou on the actual day Obama was in Shanghai, so I couldn’t have gone to hold a sign and cheer or anything, although that was my original hope. Ah, well.
It being Thanksgiving, the other thing I wanted to write about was what I’m thankful for. This seemed like a particularly appropriate topic this year, since I feel like I have so so incredibly much to be thankful for right now—I’m living the dream, right? So obviously I can’t hope to encompass everything I want to give thanks for here; there is simply too much. **Beware: if you don’t like sappy and overly earnest attempts at sincerity and thanks, skip this entire section. The cynic within me cringes as I re-read it, so I feel obligated to warn my readers.**
As a start, I am thankful for my family. I particularly want to thank my parents, for letting me take a gap year, and for making it possible. I try to remind myself every day that I am not at all entitled to be here; that I have done nothing to earn this amazing experience and education that I’m getting by being here, and that I am incredibly, incredibly indebted to the generosity of my parents. They’re amazing—I can’t believe I have such awesome parents who really do see this experience as important and valuable and are backing me so fully and generously. So thank you, Mom and Dad! I love you! I’m also thankful for my grandmother, Joan Bok. She’s been an incredible inspiration and teacher my entire life (as well as an amazing person to have a conversation with, or watch a movie with, or, say, go to Anthropologie with, hehe), and definitely both inspires and enables my love of travel. Without her, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I am so blessed to have such an amazing family, and I hope they enjoy their Thanksgiving up in Vermont. I will be thinking of them!
I am thankful for my education. Even though I’m not writing papers (except for this blog and the weekly journal entries I have to give CIEE) or taking tests (except for today) while in China, I’m still thankful each and every day for the amazing education I’ve received, because I feel like I know how to think the thoughts, how to make the connections and observations, that really make this experience valuable.
I am thankful for free time, and for literacy, and for reading material. I spend a good chunk of my time reading, which, while maybe not the best way to engage with China, is still incredibly satisfying (don’t worry, it’s not too excessive). I read newspaper articles (nyt.com and boston.com = my BFFLs), books (10, I think, while I’ve been here), China Daily, blogs…you name it. And it’s like a dream come true. Not since probably 6th grade have I had a Fall so saturated with the written word. And the glut will only continue over the next 10 months! And probably at an accelerated rate once I return from my adventures here!
I am thankful for the 3 kuai espresso machine in the CIEE office. For 50 cents I can get a decent cappuccino or latte. It’s delightful and has saved me a ton of money. In case you didn’t know, we’ve officially entered the sillier section of my Thanks Givings.
I am thankful for blue sky and warming temperatures—it’s been a solid 55-60 degrees for the past couple of days. Thank goodness!
I am thankful for street food. It’s yummy and cheap and filling and varied.
I am thankful for the people I’ve met here, and how friendly they’ve been. Like John, for instance, who is in my Chinese class and whose wife baked Thanksgiving cookies for all the Americans in the class. A lovely random act of Thanksgiving cheer!
I am thankful for the hospitality of my host family. I totally lucked out with them, and I’m glad to know them!
I am thankful for bubble tea! Yum!
I am thankful for the Shanghai metro system. It is beautiful and efficient and fast and wonderful.
I am thankful for the Internet. I have not been too homesick, and my bouts of missing friends/family/home have been greatly alleviated by this nifty (read: world-changing) tool.
I am thankful for wool ski socks and my sheepskin slippers.
I am thankful to be heading to Yale next year. It may sound trite, because it should be obvious, but it’s true. Plus, at home it’s sort of hard to express that sentiment without seeming self-aggrandizing/insensitive to those who were disappointed by the college process. But I think it would be stupid and wrong not to mention it: I am incredibly excited about my future university, and still can’t believe my good fortune.
And, finally, but most importantly, I am thankful for God, and for the blessings and love He constantly rains down on me, even when I don’t deserve it, even when I’m selfish and oblivious. To be honest, I think one of the toughest parts about being in China has been the feeling of being totally removed from a Judeo-Christian society. It can be really lonely to realize that everyone around you either doesn’t believe in God or has a completely and totally different concept of the divine, and, furthermore, lives according to a value system/moral code that isn’t based around the Golden Rule (or, at least, not as explicitly as Western culture, even secular Western culture). Definitely interesting, but also a little bit of a downer, at least for me, after years of being immersed in church and youth group and a society that, while certainly full of infinite definitions of divinity and morality, still has this central Judeo-Christian-based moral code/philosophy. So, a shout out to the One who is Love, to whom all of these Thanksgivings go—You are the best! It is right to give you thanks and praise (It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth...oh man do I miss the liturgy!). Thanks for always being there for me, more than I can ever imagine, more than I can ever express.
And on that note, I, thankfully, am ending this post and going to bed.
This week I’ve had midterms, my one and only official evaluation while in China. I think my tests—speaking, listening, and grammar—actually went OK, except for maybe the grammar portion. We’ll see!
Since my last post I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about Obama’s visit. The reason I didn’t mention it at all on the blog is that it was literally a non-event here. People barely knew that it was happening, and if they did, it wasn’t important to them. In fact, my host family took more notice of the fact that Hillary Clinton was in Shanghai than they did that President Obama was here. Part of this lack of reaction is that the Chinese are pretty ambivalent about Obama. My three data points on direct conversations about Obama’s visit were with my host mom, my tutor, and my Chinese friend Jenny. All of them had absolutely nothing substantive to say about Obama, but they all remarked that Obama is very handsome/cool. I think a visit to China is going to be inherently different from a visit to say, Europe, because people can’t congregate in large numbers/ there isn’t a culture of gathering to cheer or protest public figures (obviously). And being involved with or interested in politics in China usually means you are super Communist and a fount of Communist ideology/propaganda (according to my tutor), so most people choose apathy (as being the opposite of “political” ie protesting isn’t really an option). Haha “choose apathy” is a funny phrase. So I’m not sure people would have seen the point in reacting strongly to Obama’s visit, even if they did (or do) feel strongly. So sorry to disappoint, but….nothing to see here. Plus I was in Hangzhou on the actual day Obama was in Shanghai, so I couldn’t have gone to hold a sign and cheer or anything, although that was my original hope. Ah, well.
It being Thanksgiving, the other thing I wanted to write about was what I’m thankful for. This seemed like a particularly appropriate topic this year, since I feel like I have so so incredibly much to be thankful for right now—I’m living the dream, right? So obviously I can’t hope to encompass everything I want to give thanks for here; there is simply too much. **Beware: if you don’t like sappy and overly earnest attempts at sincerity and thanks, skip this entire section. The cynic within me cringes as I re-read it, so I feel obligated to warn my readers.**
As a start, I am thankful for my family. I particularly want to thank my parents, for letting me take a gap year, and for making it possible. I try to remind myself every day that I am not at all entitled to be here; that I have done nothing to earn this amazing experience and education that I’m getting by being here, and that I am incredibly, incredibly indebted to the generosity of my parents. They’re amazing—I can’t believe I have such awesome parents who really do see this experience as important and valuable and are backing me so fully and generously. So thank you, Mom and Dad! I love you! I’m also thankful for my grandmother, Joan Bok. She’s been an incredible inspiration and teacher my entire life (as well as an amazing person to have a conversation with, or watch a movie with, or, say, go to Anthropologie with, hehe), and definitely both inspires and enables my love of travel. Without her, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I am so blessed to have such an amazing family, and I hope they enjoy their Thanksgiving up in Vermont. I will be thinking of them!
I am thankful for my education. Even though I’m not writing papers (except for this blog and the weekly journal entries I have to give CIEE) or taking tests (except for today) while in China, I’m still thankful each and every day for the amazing education I’ve received, because I feel like I know how to think the thoughts, how to make the connections and observations, that really make this experience valuable.
I am thankful for free time, and for literacy, and for reading material. I spend a good chunk of my time reading, which, while maybe not the best way to engage with China, is still incredibly satisfying (don’t worry, it’s not too excessive). I read newspaper articles (nyt.com and boston.com = my BFFLs), books (10, I think, while I’ve been here), China Daily, blogs…you name it. And it’s like a dream come true. Not since probably 6th grade have I had a Fall so saturated with the written word. And the glut will only continue over the next 10 months! And probably at an accelerated rate once I return from my adventures here!
I am thankful for the 3 kuai espresso machine in the CIEE office. For 50 cents I can get a decent cappuccino or latte. It’s delightful and has saved me a ton of money. In case you didn’t know, we’ve officially entered the sillier section of my Thanks Givings.
I am thankful for blue sky and warming temperatures—it’s been a solid 55-60 degrees for the past couple of days. Thank goodness!
I am thankful for street food. It’s yummy and cheap and filling and varied.
I am thankful for the people I’ve met here, and how friendly they’ve been. Like John, for instance, who is in my Chinese class and whose wife baked Thanksgiving cookies for all the Americans in the class. A lovely random act of Thanksgiving cheer!
I am thankful for the hospitality of my host family. I totally lucked out with them, and I’m glad to know them!
I am thankful for bubble tea! Yum!
I am thankful for the Shanghai metro system. It is beautiful and efficient and fast and wonderful.
I am thankful for the Internet. I have not been too homesick, and my bouts of missing friends/family/home have been greatly alleviated by this nifty (read: world-changing) tool.
I am thankful for wool ski socks and my sheepskin slippers.
I am thankful to be heading to Yale next year. It may sound trite, because it should be obvious, but it’s true. Plus, at home it’s sort of hard to express that sentiment without seeming self-aggrandizing/insensitive to those who were disappointed by the college process. But I think it would be stupid and wrong not to mention it: I am incredibly excited about my future university, and still can’t believe my good fortune.
And, finally, but most importantly, I am thankful for God, and for the blessings and love He constantly rains down on me, even when I don’t deserve it, even when I’m selfish and oblivious. To be honest, I think one of the toughest parts about being in China has been the feeling of being totally removed from a Judeo-Christian society. It can be really lonely to realize that everyone around you either doesn’t believe in God or has a completely and totally different concept of the divine, and, furthermore, lives according to a value system/moral code that isn’t based around the Golden Rule (or, at least, not as explicitly as Western culture, even secular Western culture). Definitely interesting, but also a little bit of a downer, at least for me, after years of being immersed in church and youth group and a society that, while certainly full of infinite definitions of divinity and morality, still has this central Judeo-Christian-based moral code/philosophy. So, a shout out to the One who is Love, to whom all of these Thanksgivings go—You are the best! It is right to give you thanks and praise (It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth...oh man do I miss the liturgy!). Thanks for always being there for me, more than I can ever imagine, more than I can ever express.
And on that note, I, thankfully, am ending this post and going to bed.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Let's Talk About the Weather...and some other stuff too
Sorry about the long gap between updates! I have two excuses: I’ve been pretty busy, and it’s been too cold to update. The latter excuse is no joke...all of a sudden, it’s become super cold here (think low 40s-30s, and raining), and my house doesn’t have heat, so typing is no fun. I keep doing typos because my fingers are so stiff and then I have to go back and fix them…yuck. So I kept waiting for the cold to go away, and then it didn’t, and it got worse, so now I’m just going to go for it, frostbite be damned.
So, what has been going on in my life since I last wrote on this fine blog of mine? Well, lots. First of all, last week my dad was here! It was so great to see him, however briefly. I took him to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, which I think was cool for him to see (amazing model of the whole of Shanghai which takes up an entire floor, plus a whole floor on the famous Shanghai Expo, May-October 2010, Better City, Better Life). We also went for a lovely dinner in Xintiandi, this Quincy Market type area filled with super swanky restaurants and shops…not a place I could eat on my own, but since Dad was here…just had to try it. Then, last Wednesday, was the big day: dinner with my host family. Well, first I took Dad to see ECNU in all it’s glory (giant Mao statue, the CIEE building, meet our program director, etc, etc), and then we took my host family out to dinner. My original idea was to take them to a non-Chinese restaurant from a cuisine that would be sort of familiar, like Thai or Vietnamese food, where there would hopefully be an English menu and my dad and I would know what was good. When I floated this idea to my host family, however, they looked at me like I had ten heads. So I told them to pick their favorite restaurant (and insisted, about a gazillion times, that WE were hosting THEM, even though they did not seem to like that idea one bit). We ended up going to this really nice Chinese restaurant close by…my host dad ordered (and did a great job, too, successfully avoiding anything too weird). My host mom was feeling ill so she didn’t come, but afterwards we all went back to the apartment and looked at Judy’s baby pictures and she and my dad got to talk which was nice. How did we come to be looking at Judy’s baby pictures? Well, my host dad was convinced that my dad was the spitting image of his former boss at Nestle, and instructed Judy to go find a picture from his Nestle days in the family photo boxes. Judy, being Judy, instead picked out all of the cute pictures of herself, dumped them on me (we were picking through the pictures together) and told me to bring them out to the living room so she could keep looking for more cute pictures. So my host mom and my dad looked at Judy’s baby pictures while I acted as ferry, and Judy stood in my room singing to herself (in English) “This is me, this is me, this is me, this is me” as she sorted through pictures…oh, Judy. The cutest, most low-maintenance spoiled child I know haha.
And then my dad went back to Boston, and it became COLD. SO COLD. And RAINY. Luckily he had brought me some of my winter gear (essentials, such as a fleece, a pair of sweatpants and my slippers...such a good call), so I’ve survived, but there have been some close calls, I swear. Besides the weather, other news is that I’ve been volunteering more with JUCCCE, which has been fun. Friday afternoon we went to this massive fabric market where they can make you ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE out of ANYTHING you can imagine. Am currently drooling over the prospect of getting a cashmere dress coat handmade for like $75…will probably remain fantasy, but it’s a nice fantasy. A warm, fashionable, tailored fantasy…
Sunday evening I had dinner in the ECNU cafeteria and watched “Love Actually” with my one Chinese friend, Jenny (her English name…embarrassingly enough I don’t know her Chinese name…I don’t think she’s ever told me…). This came about because we were chatting on Skype and she mentioned that she was watching “High School Musical” and she asked me what kind of movies I like to watch. I said that I like all types, but listed some of my favorites, including “Love Actually”. She wanted to know if she could find “Love Actually” in Chinese, and I said I didn’t know but I had an English version (I brought DVDs of “Love Actually” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” to watch whenever I feel down…haven’t had to do so yet, so it was nice to have a more cheerful use for the movie). And then she suggested that we watch it together. So that’s what we did! I had forgotten about some of the more raunchy parts of the movie, but we fast-forwarded through those (I felt sooo bad that I forgot about a couple scenes…it’s kind of a jump from “High School Musical” to “Love Actually”…). But all in all she seemed to really enjoy the movie! We had the English subtitles up and I stopped it every so often to explain, but I was super impressed by how much she understood. Her English is really good, and she’s really patient with my Chinese. Jenny is studying to teach Chinese to foreigners, and she’s going to be super good at it, because she’s incredibly nice and patient and chill.
Monday and Tuesday were spent on an ECNU-organized trip to Hangzhou, a city about 3 hours away from Shanghai by bus. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake (Xihu), which is considered the most beautiful lake in China. Marco Polo said that Hangzhou was the most beautiful city in the world. I can’t really vouch for the city, but the lake was indeed very beautiful. Monday was cold and raining, and a sort of maddening day. We drove in the rain from stop to stop in Shaoxing, a small city about an hour from Hangzhou, and we kept being dropped in the rain to go look at things without any explanation really except a time when we had to be back on the bus. Hmmm. But we saw this massive Buddha that was carved out of this ginormous rock about 1300 years ago, so that was definitely worth seeing. It was probably my favorite Buddhist site I’ve visited, in terms of being incredibly simple and majestic and basic and awesome…definitely inspired a sense of the holy. The park, called Keyan, was very striking (even in the rain). Think flat landscape, with tiny hills randomly rising out of the flatness, and then in one place a massive rock cliff with a small lake in front of it. Monday night Katherine and I went on an excursion to find this restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet for it’s clay pot chicken, a Hangzhou specialty. Oh my god. This chicken. It was unbelievable. A full spring chicken, roasted in a clay pot…the best roast chicken I’ve ever had. When we were done, all that was left was the head and a large pile of bones.
Tuesday we spent three hours at West Lake. It was COLD COLD COLD but not raining, luckily. Katherine and I walked briskly until we came to a place where we could rent bikes, and then we biked, and then we found Starbucks (by chance…it was like magic…we had talked about how cool it would be to find Starbucks since hot chocolate would be perfect on a day like Tuesday, and then, BAM, there was Starbucks, on the shore of the lake…). The lake was breathtakingly beautiful, I think even more beautiful than it would have been on a sunny day…mists and clouds shrouded the mountains that rose from one side of the lake, the water and the sky were both a beautiful light grey, the hills were dark blue, the dark green willows bent over the water, water rippled, I shivered, I marveled, it was restful to have the leisure to just glory in this natural place. PLUS it was so cold that there were very few other people there.
Today, Wednesday, back in Shanghai, we had a very enjoyable cooking class…yum. Which was good, since for dinner tonight we had dog meat stew. Yuck times a gazillion. At one point my host dad pulled the head out to show to me/offer to one of his friends who was eating with him…it had teeth. My host mom wasn’t home, and she doesn’t eat dog, and my host dad was eating with two of his friends, so I guess that’s why we had such a gross dinner. Luckily I wasn’t hungry, and there were other things to eat (like egg and tomato soup…so good), but it was still pretty traumatic. Blarrgh.
And on that note, off I go to snuggle down deep under my covers. Peace!
So, what has been going on in my life since I last wrote on this fine blog of mine? Well, lots. First of all, last week my dad was here! It was so great to see him, however briefly. I took him to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, which I think was cool for him to see (amazing model of the whole of Shanghai which takes up an entire floor, plus a whole floor on the famous Shanghai Expo, May-October 2010, Better City, Better Life). We also went for a lovely dinner in Xintiandi, this Quincy Market type area filled with super swanky restaurants and shops…not a place I could eat on my own, but since Dad was here…just had to try it. Then, last Wednesday, was the big day: dinner with my host family. Well, first I took Dad to see ECNU in all it’s glory (giant Mao statue, the CIEE building, meet our program director, etc, etc), and then we took my host family out to dinner. My original idea was to take them to a non-Chinese restaurant from a cuisine that would be sort of familiar, like Thai or Vietnamese food, where there would hopefully be an English menu and my dad and I would know what was good. When I floated this idea to my host family, however, they looked at me like I had ten heads. So I told them to pick their favorite restaurant (and insisted, about a gazillion times, that WE were hosting THEM, even though they did not seem to like that idea one bit). We ended up going to this really nice Chinese restaurant close by…my host dad ordered (and did a great job, too, successfully avoiding anything too weird). My host mom was feeling ill so she didn’t come, but afterwards we all went back to the apartment and looked at Judy’s baby pictures and she and my dad got to talk which was nice. How did we come to be looking at Judy’s baby pictures? Well, my host dad was convinced that my dad was the spitting image of his former boss at Nestle, and instructed Judy to go find a picture from his Nestle days in the family photo boxes. Judy, being Judy, instead picked out all of the cute pictures of herself, dumped them on me (we were picking through the pictures together) and told me to bring them out to the living room so she could keep looking for more cute pictures. So my host mom and my dad looked at Judy’s baby pictures while I acted as ferry, and Judy stood in my room singing to herself (in English) “This is me, this is me, this is me, this is me” as she sorted through pictures…oh, Judy. The cutest, most low-maintenance spoiled child I know haha.
And then my dad went back to Boston, and it became COLD. SO COLD. And RAINY. Luckily he had brought me some of my winter gear (essentials, such as a fleece, a pair of sweatpants and my slippers...such a good call), so I’ve survived, but there have been some close calls, I swear. Besides the weather, other news is that I’ve been volunteering more with JUCCCE, which has been fun. Friday afternoon we went to this massive fabric market where they can make you ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE out of ANYTHING you can imagine. Am currently drooling over the prospect of getting a cashmere dress coat handmade for like $75…will probably remain fantasy, but it’s a nice fantasy. A warm, fashionable, tailored fantasy…
Sunday evening I had dinner in the ECNU cafeteria and watched “Love Actually” with my one Chinese friend, Jenny (her English name…embarrassingly enough I don’t know her Chinese name…I don’t think she’s ever told me…). This came about because we were chatting on Skype and she mentioned that she was watching “High School Musical” and she asked me what kind of movies I like to watch. I said that I like all types, but listed some of my favorites, including “Love Actually”. She wanted to know if she could find “Love Actually” in Chinese, and I said I didn’t know but I had an English version (I brought DVDs of “Love Actually” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” to watch whenever I feel down…haven’t had to do so yet, so it was nice to have a more cheerful use for the movie). And then she suggested that we watch it together. So that’s what we did! I had forgotten about some of the more raunchy parts of the movie, but we fast-forwarded through those (I felt sooo bad that I forgot about a couple scenes…it’s kind of a jump from “High School Musical” to “Love Actually”…). But all in all she seemed to really enjoy the movie! We had the English subtitles up and I stopped it every so often to explain, but I was super impressed by how much she understood. Her English is really good, and she’s really patient with my Chinese. Jenny is studying to teach Chinese to foreigners, and she’s going to be super good at it, because she’s incredibly nice and patient and chill.
Monday and Tuesday were spent on an ECNU-organized trip to Hangzhou, a city about 3 hours away from Shanghai by bus. Hangzhou is famous for its West Lake (Xihu), which is considered the most beautiful lake in China. Marco Polo said that Hangzhou was the most beautiful city in the world. I can’t really vouch for the city, but the lake was indeed very beautiful. Monday was cold and raining, and a sort of maddening day. We drove in the rain from stop to stop in Shaoxing, a small city about an hour from Hangzhou, and we kept being dropped in the rain to go look at things without any explanation really except a time when we had to be back on the bus. Hmmm. But we saw this massive Buddha that was carved out of this ginormous rock about 1300 years ago, so that was definitely worth seeing. It was probably my favorite Buddhist site I’ve visited, in terms of being incredibly simple and majestic and basic and awesome…definitely inspired a sense of the holy. The park, called Keyan, was very striking (even in the rain). Think flat landscape, with tiny hills randomly rising out of the flatness, and then in one place a massive rock cliff with a small lake in front of it. Monday night Katherine and I went on an excursion to find this restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet for it’s clay pot chicken, a Hangzhou specialty. Oh my god. This chicken. It was unbelievable. A full spring chicken, roasted in a clay pot…the best roast chicken I’ve ever had. When we were done, all that was left was the head and a large pile of bones.
Tuesday we spent three hours at West Lake. It was COLD COLD COLD but not raining, luckily. Katherine and I walked briskly until we came to a place where we could rent bikes, and then we biked, and then we found Starbucks (by chance…it was like magic…we had talked about how cool it would be to find Starbucks since hot chocolate would be perfect on a day like Tuesday, and then, BAM, there was Starbucks, on the shore of the lake…). The lake was breathtakingly beautiful, I think even more beautiful than it would have been on a sunny day…mists and clouds shrouded the mountains that rose from one side of the lake, the water and the sky were both a beautiful light grey, the hills were dark blue, the dark green willows bent over the water, water rippled, I shivered, I marveled, it was restful to have the leisure to just glory in this natural place. PLUS it was so cold that there were very few other people there.
Today, Wednesday, back in Shanghai, we had a very enjoyable cooking class…yum. Which was good, since for dinner tonight we had dog meat stew. Yuck times a gazillion. At one point my host dad pulled the head out to show to me/offer to one of his friends who was eating with him…it had teeth. My host mom wasn’t home, and she doesn’t eat dog, and my host dad was eating with two of his friends, so I guess that’s why we had such a gross dinner. Luckily I wasn’t hungry, and there were other things to eat (like egg and tomato soup…so good), but it was still pretty traumatic. Blarrgh.
And on that note, off I go to snuggle down deep under my covers. Peace!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Fujian/Xiamen Trip, and Other Doings
Hello! This is the first time while I’ve been in China that I’ve felt that I have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, so I’m going to keep this update really short. I have a dictation on Monday, a paper/project due next week about our trip to Xiamen that I haven’t started yet, about 100 pages of reading to do for our “Core Class” on Wednesday, and this entry to write—a lot to do by the standards of the past 7 weeks. And tomorrow almost the whole day will be spent volunteering at a charity carnival benefiting kids with heart disease, followed by dinner with my friend Katherine and her grandparents who are visiting Shanghai…then Monday – Thursday, MY DAD WILL BE HERE! I am very excited to see him, of course, especially since it’s a surprise (for him, too, as he only found out he was coming to China on Wednesday/Thursday, and he’s leaving 7 AM Saturday morning Boston time). Meaning this will be a fun but crazy week! Then a week from this Monday/Tuesday I’ll go Hangzhou with all the other international students at ECNU (we number in the hundreds, so this should be interesting….). And then when we get back we have like a week before our midterm…and then Thanksgiving…and then November is basically over and I have like 2 weeks left, during which I want to go to Nanjing at some point….Basically, with 5 weeks left, December 13 looms large.
So, by update, I meant “you get to listen to me stress about how much fun stuff I have to do.” Sorry.
The original purpose of this post was to write about what I did/saw in Xiamen, not make a to-do list/schedule. So back to last weekend and our trip to Xiamen…
Xiamen was warm, sunny, small, clean, and beautiful. We spent our first day on the island of Gulangyu, where the foreign embassies/rich people’s villas were located when Xiamen was known as Amoy, and was an important treaty port. Gulangyu was definitely the cutest place I’ve been to in China yet; it felt a lot like Bermuda with Chinese characteristics. The streets are narrow, and no cars or motorbikes or even bicycles are allowed on the island. It was quiet. The buildings were a medley of different Western styles, surrounded by palm trees and gardens. There were tons of tourists, but it didn’t even matter because there was a beach and freshly squeezed orange juice stands and warm sunshine (I got a bit of color…perfection) and delicious food and I bought a very colorful summery skirt…clearly, contemplating Gulangyu has robbed me of any ability to write or think coherently. Suffice to say, it was a very pleasant night/day.
On Saturday, we hopped in a van and, along with our incredibly Zen, nice driver and our sweet guide Ann, made our way out into the countryside of Fujian Province. Our destination was Yongding, a village known for its tulou (“earthen buildings”). The tulou come in three varieties, either round, square, or “five phoenix” which is like square but different (hard to explain). They were built by the Hakka people, ethnically Han (according to the Chinese government), but with their own culture and history. The Hakka have been migrating around China since about 200 AD, purportedly from the north-central region (around Xi’an, in the area known as the cradle of Chinese civilization) to the southeast…they’re sometimes referred to as “the Jews of China” because of their extended migrations and encounters with persecution. Their history is disputed; some call them the descendants of the Han Dynasty, the “true Han.” From what I can gather, all people know for sure is that in around the 13th-14th century the Hakka arrived in the Fujian Province region and began to build their massive tulou dwellings. The tulou are fortified, massive dwellings, designed to house hundreds of members of one family group/clan. They have thick outer walls (up to 2 m thick at the base) that are reinforced to protect against tunneling under or attempts to burn them. Inside each tulou are a series of smaller inner rings, built as more housing was needed. At the center is the ancestral temple. The tulou are striking because they’re a lot like castles, as their purpose is to protect the occupants from attack from bandits or violent enemies of any type. However, the tulou are for families, and show none of the class differentiations of a castle. There is no keep. There are just hundreds of rooms arranged in 4-story tall rings, allotted to clan members according to their needs/status (young couples got one room, old people lived lower down so they wouldn’t have to climb so many stairs, etc.). I definitely had fun exploring them and taking pictures, even if there were a TON of tourists (the tulou were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008).
Even more than seeing the tulou, however, my favorite part of Saturday and Sunday was getting to see some of rural China. Fujian is 82% mountains, according to our guide, and the drive to Yongding was absolutely stunning—terraced fields, winding mountain roads, small villages. It was also very refreshing and relaxing just to get away for a bit from the hustle and bustle (and bad air) of urban China. One of my favorite moments was buying pomelos (if you’ve never tried one, try one soon, because they’re amazing) from a guy sitting along the side of the road that ran through the middle of the pomelo tree orchard (field?) where the fruit had grown. It just felt so natural. And the pomelo was delicious (once I finally cut it open).
After a fun evening of karaoke with our teacher Huang Laoshi on Sunday, on Monday we had a chill day in Xiamen. Ben, Katherine, Erika and I went on a very leisurely scavenger hunt (no one else wanted to do it, so we weren’t competing against anyone) in the morning, after which Huang Laoshi treated us to dim sum (yum!) for lunch. After lunch, Erika, Katherine and I rented bicycles and biked along with beach for a little while before we had to go back to our hostel and go to the airport. All in all, it was the perfect “vacation from vacation” as I dubbed the trip…not at all intellectually taxing—in fact, not taxing in any way—but just very relaxing and pleasant.
The rest of this week was very routine. Two highlights: Thursday, my tutor and I went on a walk instead of having normal tutoring, and during our walk my tutor started talking about how awful the current system is in China, and how stifled she feels by the Communist Party. Basically, she said, getting ahead in China requires everyone to fake enthusiasm for the Party, even though everyone knows that Marxist ideology doesn’t apply to modern China anymore. It was an incredibly, incredibly interesting and intense conversation. She wasn’t talking about these things from a theoretical standpoint; she was speaking through her own emotions, from her own experience.
Friday night I went out for Italian food with some CIEE friends, as well as this group of Italian girls my friend Erika knows (Erika is Italian but living in the US). It was SO fun! The Italians were incredibly friendly and fun, and the food was amazing (homemade pasta…mmmmm).
That’s all folks. Back to studying for my dictation…
So, by update, I meant “you get to listen to me stress about how much fun stuff I have to do.” Sorry.
The original purpose of this post was to write about what I did/saw in Xiamen, not make a to-do list/schedule. So back to last weekend and our trip to Xiamen…
Xiamen was warm, sunny, small, clean, and beautiful. We spent our first day on the island of Gulangyu, where the foreign embassies/rich people’s villas were located when Xiamen was known as Amoy, and was an important treaty port. Gulangyu was definitely the cutest place I’ve been to in China yet; it felt a lot like Bermuda with Chinese characteristics. The streets are narrow, and no cars or motorbikes or even bicycles are allowed on the island. It was quiet. The buildings were a medley of different Western styles, surrounded by palm trees and gardens. There were tons of tourists, but it didn’t even matter because there was a beach and freshly squeezed orange juice stands and warm sunshine (I got a bit of color…perfection) and delicious food and I bought a very colorful summery skirt…clearly, contemplating Gulangyu has robbed me of any ability to write or think coherently. Suffice to say, it was a very pleasant night/day.
On Saturday, we hopped in a van and, along with our incredibly Zen, nice driver and our sweet guide Ann, made our way out into the countryside of Fujian Province. Our destination was Yongding, a village known for its tulou (“earthen buildings”). The tulou come in three varieties, either round, square, or “five phoenix” which is like square but different (hard to explain). They were built by the Hakka people, ethnically Han (according to the Chinese government), but with their own culture and history. The Hakka have been migrating around China since about 200 AD, purportedly from the north-central region (around Xi’an, in the area known as the cradle of Chinese civilization) to the southeast…they’re sometimes referred to as “the Jews of China” because of their extended migrations and encounters with persecution. Their history is disputed; some call them the descendants of the Han Dynasty, the “true Han.” From what I can gather, all people know for sure is that in around the 13th-14th century the Hakka arrived in the Fujian Province region and began to build their massive tulou dwellings. The tulou are fortified, massive dwellings, designed to house hundreds of members of one family group/clan. They have thick outer walls (up to 2 m thick at the base) that are reinforced to protect against tunneling under or attempts to burn them. Inside each tulou are a series of smaller inner rings, built as more housing was needed. At the center is the ancestral temple. The tulou are striking because they’re a lot like castles, as their purpose is to protect the occupants from attack from bandits or violent enemies of any type. However, the tulou are for families, and show none of the class differentiations of a castle. There is no keep. There are just hundreds of rooms arranged in 4-story tall rings, allotted to clan members according to their needs/status (young couples got one room, old people lived lower down so they wouldn’t have to climb so many stairs, etc.). I definitely had fun exploring them and taking pictures, even if there were a TON of tourists (the tulou were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008).
Even more than seeing the tulou, however, my favorite part of Saturday and Sunday was getting to see some of rural China. Fujian is 82% mountains, according to our guide, and the drive to Yongding was absolutely stunning—terraced fields, winding mountain roads, small villages. It was also very refreshing and relaxing just to get away for a bit from the hustle and bustle (and bad air) of urban China. One of my favorite moments was buying pomelos (if you’ve never tried one, try one soon, because they’re amazing) from a guy sitting along the side of the road that ran through the middle of the pomelo tree orchard (field?) where the fruit had grown. It just felt so natural. And the pomelo was delicious (once I finally cut it open).
After a fun evening of karaoke with our teacher Huang Laoshi on Sunday, on Monday we had a chill day in Xiamen. Ben, Katherine, Erika and I went on a very leisurely scavenger hunt (no one else wanted to do it, so we weren’t competing against anyone) in the morning, after which Huang Laoshi treated us to dim sum (yum!) for lunch. After lunch, Erika, Katherine and I rented bicycles and biked along with beach for a little while before we had to go back to our hostel and go to the airport. All in all, it was the perfect “vacation from vacation” as I dubbed the trip…not at all intellectually taxing—in fact, not taxing in any way—but just very relaxing and pleasant.
The rest of this week was very routine. Two highlights: Thursday, my tutor and I went on a walk instead of having normal tutoring, and during our walk my tutor started talking about how awful the current system is in China, and how stifled she feels by the Communist Party. Basically, she said, getting ahead in China requires everyone to fake enthusiasm for the Party, even though everyone knows that Marxist ideology doesn’t apply to modern China anymore. It was an incredibly, incredibly interesting and intense conversation. She wasn’t talking about these things from a theoretical standpoint; she was speaking through her own emotions, from her own experience.
Friday night I went out for Italian food with some CIEE friends, as well as this group of Italian girls my friend Erika knows (Erika is Italian but living in the US). It was SO fun! The Italians were incredibly friendly and fun, and the food was amazing (homemade pasta…mmmmm).
That’s all folks. Back to studying for my dictation…
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