Hao jiu bu jian! In Chinese, this means “long time no see.” I
apologize for not keeping up-to-date on this blog. I have had a lot of
wonderful experiences in the recent weeks and I haven’t had as much downtime as
I would have liked. Nonetheless, I am experiencing
China everyday and LOVING it! Let me share what’s been going on since my last
post. Sorry that this post isn’t bite size!
Golden Week has long since been over (Oct. 1 was the
beginning of Golden Week). It was a great, relaxing time for me. I was able to
visit the zoo with my Chinese Teacher’s nephew and his friends. They are only
14 years old, but they all aspired to speak English and maybe studying the
United States one day. I had to ask them many times what they wanted to do when
they grew up because in Chinese culture it is common to keep your dreams to
yourself. The reason is because in the past it wasn’t uncommon for other
individuals to try and ruin your plans, even if they had nothing to gain from
it. At the zoo, one of the xiao pengyou,
literally ‘small friend’ used to refer to people much younger than you, told me
that the Panda exhibit would be especially busy due to it being National Week
(Golden Week is just another name for National Week) and the panda being a
national treasure of China. I was able
to see a live panda for the first time, but the xiao pengyou was right, there were tons of people! I got a lot of pictures of the five pandas and
some pictures of the people trying to catch a glimpse of the pandas eating
bamboo. I have perfected my “push n sidestep forward” technique to get through
the crowds because, like mastery of chopsticks, there are just some skills you
must learn in order to survive in China. I must admit that it also helps being
slightly taller than the average Chinese person.
After the zoo, we all went to a Beijing Small Eats
restaurant. The American equivalent of this would be an a la carte restaurant.
There were at least 40 different stalls, all offering different, odd foods. My
friends made me try so many different dishes. For the weirdest dish award, it
was a toss up between the scorpions or what I was told was raw donkey meat. And
no, the scorpion didn’t sting me. It was actually pretty good, I ate the whole
stick of scorpions instead of just eating the one shown in the video (working
on getting this uploaded). Overall my day with my xiao pengyous was full of adventure and language
practice, both Chinese and English! The rest of my Golden Week was filled with
hanging out with friends and doing homework, nothing special but exactly what I
needed!
After a week of
midterms, I was given a week off for fall break, which I spent in Shanghai
(Oct. 25-31st). Often, the
important question posed to all expats in China is whether to live in Shanghai
or Beijing. Interestingly enough, I would choose Shanghai. It is such a
wonderful place. The best comparison to understand the difference between
Beijing and Shanghai that I have heard is that Beijing is to Washington DC as
Shanghai is to New York City. Sadly, I have not yet been to New York City, but
if it is like Shanghai, then I want to go (but first I need to visit Chicago
because I miss it a lot). There are two major districts of Shanghai: Puxi and
Pudong. The apartment that we rented was in Puxi, only about 15 minutes from
the Bund. The buildings in Shanghai were massive and the architecture was
magnificent. The friends that I went with and I went on a walking tour of the
city’s diverse architecture. The Bund area has a good variety of modern
architecture and old architecture. I have never been to France, but the French
Concession’s buildings made me feel like I was in a different country (which my
friends said felt like France, imagine that). We only took a cab and subway a
few times, so I got to experience the buildings and get to know the streets of
Shanghai quite well.
Architecture aside,
the historical aspect was also impressive. Many great leaders lived in Shanghai
at some point in their lives. I visited many different sites: Zhou Enlai’s
house (First Premier of the PRC), Sun Yat-sen’s house (Leader of the Revolution
of 1911, which ended the rule of dynasties and established the ROC), the place
of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the Shanghai
Museum (contained exhibits on currency, clothing, and calligraphy), and the
Urban and City Planning Museum. I enjoyed all of the places, but my favorites
were the urban planning museum and the place of the First National Congress. I
liked the urban planning museum because it showed how the city was constructed
(with a scaled model of the whole city) and had a special exhibit on the song,
“The East is Red.” It was interesting to go through the exhibit because it was
mostly in Chinese, but my rudimentary skills still allowed me (along with a few
references to my Chinese dictionary) to read the propaganda as individuals did
when it was released. The song was performed almost like a musical, with
dancing and many different individuals involved. As I listened to one of the
other propaganda songs, I understood what they were singing (I can’t remember
completely, but it was something along the lines of how they would beat down
the Americans) and my face must have showed disapproval because one of the
guards started walking towards me. I quickly moved to the next part of the
exhibit to avoid confrontation.
The food in
Shanghai was delicious. If you don’t know already, Shanghai is made up of two
characters: 上 (Shàng) 海(hǎi), which together roughly mean “on the sea.” As you can imagine the
seafood was quite prevalent. I had it through interesting mediums though, such
as crab dumplings! I think one of my favorite meals was the last one I had,
which was sushi in an upscale designer mall. The sushi was extremely fresh and
proved to be a great capstone to the trip.
After returning to
Beijing, classes resumed and I was able to visit the Great Wall! This is a place that my dad has long talked about visiting. Now I can bring back my stories and pictures to get my mother and him excited for their trip to see me next semester and of course, see the Great Wall. I visited the Mutianyu section of the wall. It was very scenic and surprisingly. not that crowded. The weather was nice and I was able to get some nice photos. I rode a ski lift to the top of the wall and later tobogganed down. There were a lot of steps and I was only able to visit 3 of the watchtowers, but the fact I was on the wall was more than enough to awe me. My estimations of the wall's size is about 20 feet high and 12 feet wide. It wasn't as big as I expected, but nonetheless impressive.
Besides seeing the Great Wall, I had another funny experience happen to me while walking up to the ski lift. I saw many stalls filled with crap souvenirs that tourists get conned into buy for exorbitant prices. One stall in particular had a painting that caught my eye. I walked on knowing that I wouldn't want to carry said painting over the Great Wall, so I would bargain on it once before we left. When the time came that I returned to the stall, I brought my friend Scott along to experience what I knew would make a great story (I just didn't know how great until afterwards). The painting was of 8 abstractly drawn humans in Mao suits mooning the viewer of the painting. I didn't actually think of the political significance until after I wrote down this story in my journal, but it was the fact that I wanted to bargain on a butt painting with a Chinese merchant. I approached the merchant and said in Chinese, "Yo, how much for that butt painting?" To which he replied, "Depends, what butt painting are you talking about?" I turn to look, the stall had some how gained at least 6 more butt paintings since I had last seen it. Two of them were the exact one I wanted only smaller, and then there were four other new ones. Trying to not laugh, I answered, "The top one with all of the butts." Since this guy deals butt paintings everyday, it isn't hard for him to keep a straight face, "Ah, 400 kuai ($67 USD)." I tried bringing him down to $16USD, but his wife wouldn't have any of it because they were "quality paintings." Scott and I walked away as the woman shouted and kept lowering the price eventually coming within mere cents of my original offer. In the end, I butted out of that deal because what does one do with a butt painting anyways?
About a week and a half ago, a friend and I started to plan the Beijing
Center’s talent show. The event took place this past Friday, and turned out to be a lot of fun with talents varying from
guitar players, singers, and dancers to calligraphy artists, comedy acts, and
fast dumpling eaters! I performed alongside some of my friends in our group
called, Gaofushuai (高富帅). In Chinese, this is
the equivalent to tall, dark, and handsome; however, the direct translation is
tall, rich, and handsome. Having three members in the group and three Chinese
characters, we assigned one to each of us. Benton, the tallest in the group is
naturally called Gao. As for me, I am Fu, or rich (which doesn’t make sense
because my bank account says otherwise). And Scott, the sole Canadian, is
Shuai, or handsome. The group was founded one day after we created our original
single, 冰茶or iced tea. We didn’t sing our original hit, but we performed one of my
personal favorites, Edelweiss. I am trying to locate a video of our
performance, but until then you’ll have to wait. In the end, we came in third
place! The night went off without a hitch and my roommate, Mike, played a wonderful
traditional guitar piece that stole the show!
As for goals
between now and the end of the semester, I am starting to become more
comfortable in the language and I am trying to experience it in new ways. My
goal for now is to read 魔戒 (Mó jiè), The Lord of the Rings. It is
pretty hard, but I enjoy it so I will stick with it. There is a lot of
vocabulary that I am able to make flashcards out of, but the downside is that
it takes about 30 minutes to read a page! As they say in Chinese, 加油 (jiā yóu, to add oil
meaning step up your efforts or cheer on)!
Until next time,
张睿杰
(I have a lot of
pictures and I will work on uploading them all into a new album!)
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