More Harbin Pics, Yunan Tomorrow

So I'm starting to pack for our 10-day Yunan trip which starts tomorrow. I'm going in a group that's heading to the southern ends of the province. I cannot wait to experience warm weather and fresh air. I know very little about the itinerary but I do know we're doing some homestays with villagers and one of the villages we go to is right on the China-Vietnam border. A major part of the trip is experiencing the rural side of China and getting to spend a good amount of time with China's ethnic minorities. My Chinese sociology teacher has talked about some extremely odd traditions held by some of these groups so I should come back with some interesting stories and great pictures.

I'm having trouble loading pics but I'll get new ones up as soon as possible. I will take notes while I'm gone so I don't forget to let you know about anything.

Another Chinese lesson:
When leaving a restaurant, a 服务员（foo-woo-yuan = waitress/hostess) will often say:
“慢走” (man2zou3 - MAN-ZO'OW) which literally means "go slowly". It's sort of the chinese version of "take care".

Harbin, Tiger Park, Ice Festival, Silk Market Bargaining

ok so it's been too long and i regret not writing sooner. I have a lot to share. I hope I don't forget anything.

So I left off last weekend just before I took a weekend trip to Harbin with almost 30 people from my program. The train ride was an 8-hour overnight, "hard-sleeper" train. The beds were stacked three high and we managed to get just about everyone from our group into our car by exchanging beds with some chinese people. I doubt they would've wanted to be bunked between two of us anyways. Everyone was dreading the hard-sleeper beds (they're about 3 inches think and only slightly softer than ply-wood) but it actually ended up being a great ride down. It was kind of a big train slumber party where we played catch phrase and chatted with a few of the chinese riders.

I woke up early the next morning and when I noticed that icicles had formed all along the windows, I knew we were close.

As soon as we stepped off the train we felt the blast of Harbin winter. Harbin is located in the northwest corner of China just south of Russian Siberia. You can imagine how cold it gets.. One of the guys on our trip was chatting with his taxi driver on the way from the train station to the hotel and we managed to set up a little bus and guide for the weekend that actually would save us from spending a lot on taxis. Once we checked in, I went to my room and threw on every piece of clothing I had to keep me from freezing. After that we all got on the bus and went to the tiger park.

The tiger park in Harbin was the most unique "zoo-like" experience I've ever had. There were over 800 tigers, lions, and ligers in the park. We all boarded a small armored bus and got a tour of the whole park.

Something special about the park... You get to watch the lions eat live animals. Some of the students who were in Beijing last semester told us to pool our money and buy a donkey but the driver advised against it saying its too slow and gets boring after a while. He pointed out that we could get two lambs and five chickens for the same price so we took his advice. This probably sounds really weird and disgusting... I can't explain it and its weird talking about now but as soon as we stepped on the bus ALL of us were ready to have a live animal planet experience. There's no need to go into detail. The pictures speak for themselves.

Afterwards we headed back towards downtown Harbin and got dinner. We waited until evening set in to see the Harbin International Ice Festival. I have some pictures above of the park. Absolutely everything was build with ice. It was really cool because they put all these colored lights in them and created a city of ice. A lot of the structures were replicas of real chinese monuments and buddhist temples. The best part was that they built ice slides into some of the structures that you could go down. Lots of fun despite freezing temperatures. My group of friends rented a slay that took us around the whole park.

Later that night after we had gotten back from the ice festival a bunch of us went into downtown Harbin.

The next day I grabbed breakfast with some friends and walked around the city a little more. Apparently Harbin used to have the largest Jewish community in China and there is a Jewish museum there that a bunch of us wanted to check out but we couldn't find it or get any information on it. I was getting restless and wanted to do something worthwhile to finish up the Harbin trip so about 10 of us decided to check out this Chinese bathhouse in Harbin. For under 30 dollars we got to spend around and hour chilling in the bathhouse and getting 45-minute massages. None of us knew the chinese word for massage, steam room, bath, or anything so it took a little while to actually get in. There's a famous chinese movie called "shower" that I watched in a Chinese culture through film class. It was pretty much exactly like that. You walk into a room about the size of a gymnasium and there are steam rooms and saunas lining the walls. In the middle is a circular pool that's divided into quarters, one cold, one hot mineral, one hot, and one with these reclining chairs in the water. It was a very chinese experience.

The next week of school went by pretty smoothly. Lots of chinese work. We also got assigned tutors. Mine's english name is Kimi. She's my age and studying at Bei Wai to become a chinese teacher for english speakers. We meet with them for one hour four times a week. It brings the language intensity up even more but it's really great to just be able to spend an hour talking to someone one on one in chinese, practicing new material, and getting help on homework.

Also, the Bei Wai chinese roommates living in our dorms are finally starting to get back from break. They don't start classes until the beginning of March so they've just kind of been hanging out. My roommate is not here yet but I've gone out to eat with some of the other chinese guys in the dorm. All of them are also studying to teach chinese to english speakers. Their being around now will just be more chances to practice chinese and talk to people more casually. Also, they're quick references when you're not sure if what you're saying is right or if you want to know how to say something.

This past weekend I went to the silk market to do some shopping. The silk market is floor after floor of little stands selling knock offs of brand name shoes, wallets, clothes, suits, jackets, toys, mp3 players, etc. A lot of them look very very real too so its worth checking out. I've done some shopping with my friend Bo, a chinese-born American kid in our program who goes to Tulane, so I've learned a lot about bargaining with chinese people. When they see Americans they see an opportunity to rip you off for cheap stuff so you really have to be stubborn. I successfully bargained for 2 pairs of shoes, one fake pair of new balances and diesel shoes.

1 Bargaining in Silk Market Story

First off, they show a little more respect to you if you speak Chinese. At this point I've become confident enough in my skills to do that so that helped a lot in bargaining. The first price they give you is a complete joke. I dont know how they keep a straight face when they show it to you. Good tactics I learned from Bo include starting with an extreme low-ball price. This girl tried to convince me to spend 500 yuan on this pair of shoes. I told her 60 (a very low price, especially considering I'm obviously not chinese). They usually get all offended and cut it town to 320 which is still a joke. My friend Liz is with me holding her pair of converse shoes she just bought. The woman asks me how much she spent on the converse shoes... I say 30 (she really paid 60... it was a mistake on my part that paid off). The woman freezes for a second, lowers the price a good amount but still at "rip-off the foreigner" rates. I say "no, too expensive, I can look somewhere else" and start walking away. She stops me and lowers it to 100, I say 80. She whines and whines and I say forget it I'll look somewhere else...she caves. It was my first time really bargaining and it was a RUSH.

After I paid the attendant told me I did a good job and that I sounded like a Beijinger. Bo taught me well. Even though the whole bargaining process is exhausting and you and the sales person get really aggressive with each other, when it's over they're very light-hearted about it. I walked by the store again later on and the sales lady smiled and waved and asked if I wanted anything else for a deal. I felt accomplished not only with the price but also because I was using a lot of Chinese during the process.

After a successful run in the silk market my friends and I found the DVD salesman outside our campus bookstore. This guy frequently comes by and lays out a collection of bootleg DVDs. some of them have just come out in theaters. I bought 4 for under $10. I don't really know how it works or how he gets the "for screening use only" DVDs but they're great quality.

I have to start working on some homework but I'll write again tomorrow to add some pictures and talk about pre-Yunnan trip stuff. I'm very excited to see some of rural China, spend time in minority ethnic group villages, get some much-needed fresh air and warm weather.

I leave you with a chinese lesson:

不三不四 － Bu4San3Bu4Si4 (BOO-San-BOO-SI) - means literally "not three, not four" but is a common slang used to describe someone or something that's a little sketchy or suspicious.

Chinese New Year ends, Harbin Tomorrow

Hello All,

This week started off with BANG. As soon as I finished writing the last post, fireworks started going off more and more rapidly as the Chinese new year (春节 - Chun Jie) came to close. It was like a 4th of July on steroids. My classes were interrupted by intermittent KABOOOMS and POPs and people would sort of flinch walking down the street every time someone lit off a cherry bomb. All the fireworks in the middle of the day kind of makes me think that Chinese people never really get through that pyromaniac phase that a lot of American boys between the ages of 10-13 go through (guilty).

That night we all went downtown to celebrate the Lantern Festival (I'm not really sure why... I didn't see any extra special lanterns around). It was packed with people from all over walking around and lighting firecrackers, roman candles, etc. wherever they were. I've never seen more kids under the age of 7 playing with fireworks. Two kids starting throwing M80s at our feet as we walked down an ally way... they got a good laugh out of it. It was a pretty fun experience for a good hour but then the noise and the smell of magnesium became a little much. I think I'm over fireworks for a while.

This week has been my first full week of classes. I'm really getting a lot out of my chinese language classes even though they get pretty long. We go at a pretty fast pace so I'm always having to memorize new words. My first test is tomorrow over three chapters but i think all the practice is helping me retain a lot of the information. The hard part is bringing new words into conversation outside of class.

After the test tomorrow I have to get ready to go to Harbin. About 20 of us are going together on an 8 hour overnight train ride north. We are getting "hard sleeper" cars which makes coach on Southwest look like air force one. I've heard a lot of things about the hard sleeper cars but I'll save that for my post when I get back. We'll arrive in Harbin in the morning, check into the hotel, and head over to the ice festival which should be amazing. I've refused to look at any pictures of the festival online because I want to be suprised. It's going to be a really cold weekend; temperatures could go below zero (ouch). I'm layering up. On Sunday we're going to a lion/tiger/liger zoo. We're flying back that night and will hopefully be back by midnight. It's going to be a long weekend and I'll hopefully have some great pics and stories in the next post.

Acrobats, and temples

Acrobats

Last night a bunch of us went to Beijing acrobats performance. It was unbelievable. There was trippy music, a laser show and a bunch of Chinese people bending themselves in half, riding bikes with 12 people on them, and doing a lot of other really crazy balancing, bending, and jumping stunts. The acrobats are trained from a very early age and during parts of the show some of the younger acrobats were brought out. At one point this girl who must have been about 8 came out and started doing free standing flips over and over again. It was a very cool show.

Sanlituan

Afterwards a bunch of us grabbed some 饺子 (jiaozi) for dinner. From there we went out to some bars in Sanlituan, an ex-pat area that has a lot of night life spots. I played some pool, chatted with some Brits, and had a few drinks. I had my first Tiger beer, a beer brewed in Singapore that's pretty popular in Asia. Despite the fact that food has been extremely cheap, the cost of drinking here is pretty similar to that in the US.

Buddha in the morning

This morning I went with a few people to check out the 八大处 (BaDaQu) temples. Its a complex of a bunch of buddhist temples and natural scenes located in a mountainous area of Beijing. The temples were really colorful and detailed. There was incense being burned everywhere and there was some really cool architecture but it wasn't exactly the most serene environment. It was pretty crowded and kind of touristy. People were selling little things everywhere and there were carnival game booths set up along the trails as well as an inflatable moonwalk castle and some carousels. I can definitely appreciate the architecture and the importance of the temples but I hope the next temples I see have little less of a commercial vibe.

春天 －Chuntian - Chinese New Year

After I got back from the temples I took a long nap and memorized 80 new characters for my quiz tomorrow. There have been more students coming back to campus at Bei Wai (Beijing Foreing Studies University - the school that my program is located in) as the Chinese new year is coming to an end. Fireworks are HUGE in China (they invented them) and ever since we arrived in Beijing there have been fireworks going off at all hours of the day in the spirit of the New Year. There aren't really any laws about fireworks or anything so kids and adults will buy loads of cherry bombs and firecrackers and set them off all over the place. It sounds like the country is at war. From what I've heard people are really optimistic about this year since it is 牛年 (niunian - year of the bull). The bull is supposed to be a very promising strong symbol of a prosperous new year...I hope they're optimism proves true.

Tomorrow will be a long day since I have language classes and two area studies classes (8AM - 5:45 PM). I need some sleep.

1st post...欢迎到北京来

你好美国, Hello America

So I've been in 北京 (Beijing) for about a week now and I thought it was about time to get this thing started. In my posts I'm going to try to incorporate both things about daily life in Beijing and also tell some stories of stuff that's happened so far. The first week has been really eye opening. We did a lot of orientation stuff for the first few days - getting to know each other, the area of the city, and the FOOD.

Some notes on Chinese dining 中国菜

- Dinners and sit-down meals tend to be BIG shared entrees. They're big on using the lazy susan.

-I haven't seen a fork yet. My chopstick skills are pretty good and I think I've gotten better. Some people came here not knowing how to use them at all and I feel really bad sitting stuffed with rice while they dig around struggling to hang onto a pea.

-Vegetables are amazing. They cook or steam or whatever everything with different sauces and seasoning... I've never been so excited to eat eggplant and snow peas.

-Knuckles? Besides the normal chicken wings and cubes of beef and whatever, they also serve chicken feet, knuckles, and other parts that don't really have much meat on them at all. I've made some mistakes ordering some of these things at restaurants based on the pictures. Even though some of the food is odd it makes sense that they utilize every single type of meat and part of the animal considering the history of famines in China.

-CHEAP! The other day I went to a Ughyer restaurant with some friends where we ordered several entrees, tons of chuanr (think kebobs) and two large beers and I think we ended up spending around 6 or 7 bucks each.

Last night 12 of us went out to an all you can eat hot-pot place. These are pretty common places that are like melting pot but distinctly Chinese. For 58 Kuai (about $8.50) we got as much food as we want to cook in our hot pots and as much beer and 白酒 (baijiu) as we wanted. We also all took shots of snake wine (White wine with a snake in some form or another in it. Supposedly it has some healing properties...I still woke up with a hangover). Baijiu is this very common rice wine/vodka that a lot of people drink with dinner. It's everywhere and pretty potent.

-Yes, I have seen dog on a menu.

Classes! 课

I'm in the language intensive program with around 50 other people. We have Chinese class from 8AM to 12:15PM every day and we have to learn I think around 70-80 characters a day in addition to doing whatever written homework we have, which is pretty intense. We have 听写 (tingxie - dictations) everyday and have to be prepared to know any character from the vocab lists. Everyone has tingxies in college Chinese classes but these are harder because we have to learn a whole new list of vocab words every day.

I'm also taking two area studies classes: Sociology and Marketing in China. Neither of them have started yet but they both sound cool. In sociology on Wednesdays we get to go on a lot of field trips around Beijing.

Beijingers 北京人

All the Chinese people we've met so far have been extremely warm and nice to us. They are really big on hospitality and they've been extremely helpful as we try to figure out our way around the city. They seem to really be willing to bend over backwards to make sure you're ok especially when you speak Chinese to them. I don't think a Chinese person coming to America would find people as willing to help them as we have here.

THE Square

Today we went to Tian'anmen square and the forbidden city on a group trip. It was really cool to see all of the extremely detailed architecture that went into the emperor's palace. It was packed with thousands of people. A lot of the Chinese tourists were from outside provinces and haven't seen too many non-asians before and they wanted to take pictures with us, particularly the blondes. It was pretty funny. See Picture.

What's that kid doing? 那个小子做着什么？

Toddlers in China where these pants with flaps that open when they have to go to the bathroom. No diapers. When the kids gotta take a piss the parents undo the flap and the kid just goes where he's standing. No one even flinches when it happens in huge crowds and the kids don't even try to go for a corner or behind a tree, trashcan, or wall. As we were walking around Tiananmen square and the forbidden city I had to avoid a few puddles.

End of post 1

I'm gonna wrap up this post by saying that so far I'm really loving Beijing and I can feel my Chinese getting much better already. Tonight we're going to a Beijing Acrobats performance and Monday we take a language pledge where we are not supposed to speak english around campus AT ALL. The rule is that if we want to speak english we need to be in our dorms with the doors closed. It's pretty serious but I think it's going to be extremely beneficial for my Chinese so I'm kind of excited for it. Also next weekend a bunch of us are taking a train to Harbin to see a yearly ice festival with massive ice sculptures. We're also going to check out this tiger/lion/liger zoo. More posts to come...