过中秋节 celebrating mid-autumn festival

So today was the Mid-Autumn Festival here in China. The festival can most easily be compared to America’s Thanksgiving (both take place in the fall, most everyone returns home) but the reasons behind celebrating the  Mid-Autumn Festival are wrapped in folk lore and legend which is a little bit more interesting than a big meal between the Native Americans and Pilgrims.

The legend (as my roommate explained to me) is about the 10 suns that the Earth used to have. They would all take turns each day going around the Earth and warming it up. One day all ten suns came at once and burned all the crops and loads of other stuff on Earth. The emperor at that time asked an archer to shoot down all but one of the suns to save Earth from being completely torched. After that, he gave him a pill that could make him into a god. Instead of eating the pill the archer hid it away. After that his wife ends up swallowing the pill and flying off to the moon (where she coughed it back up). The hare that lives on the moon will try to make her more medicine so that she can go home. But that really doesn’t happen I guess… Anyways, the archer builds himself a house on the sun (or something) in direct contrast to his wife living on the moon and the Mid-Autumn Festival is the day when the archer from the sun visits his wife on the moon and the moon gets very full and beautiful.

While today, I really didn’t run into anything that resembled or reflected this story (other than the many tasty mooncakes that I ate), its still pretty interesting stuff that you don’t get the opportunity to hear everyday. Mooncakes, little pastries that are sold EVERYWHERE have sort of transformed into this massive consumer trend where everyone buys a lot of mooncakes and sends them to relatives, co-workers, and bosses. My roommate was telling me that he knows some people who send out more than 1000 a year. They might just be the Christmas cards from hell.

Today was an absolutely perfect day for this holiday as we didn’t have classes and the weather was pristine. Beijing is starting to get that chilly fall “crisp” even though the leaves have not started changing yet. My roommate invited me out to lunch with his family which ended up being a great way to spend the sunny afternoon.

We rode a crowded bus for 45 minutes which isn’t that horrible of a commute time considering how big Beijing is and how congested the streets can become. We arrived at the restaurant where we ate a feast all sorts of meat, fish, vegetables, and desserts. This is where the comparisons with Thanksgiving are appropriate, there was a TON of food. I kept having to take short breaks while stuffing it all in while making sure to eat at a quick enough pace to appease my roommates mother and grandmother who constantly urged me to try this dish or keep eating more of that dish. When I left the table they even gave me a bottle of 白酒 (Chinese Hard Alcohol) to bring back with me to the dorm. I kept telling them that I didn’t want such an expensive gift but they didn’t allow me to refuse.

After lunch, Wangdaihui and I headed to this very close street that used to be populated with ancient colleges and universities. He had lived in this area his entire life so it was interesting to hear him compare his experiences freely playing around all through all these old buildings, ruins, and courtyards with the present mass tour groups, blocked off areas, and museums that have completely changed the area in the last 15 years. It was interesting, however, to trace the historical development of the intense tests that all men had to take previously, in order to establish or improve their rank in society. The coolest thing of the day was checking out this temple and huge complex built and devoted to Confucius.

Here are some pictures!

cubicle that men had to stay in for 3 days while taking the mandatory tests

center of the confucian temple

cool sheets of paper you could hand up with different sayings on them

After we checked out temple we hopped on the subway and returned to campus. However, my day of fun was not at all over as a bunch of the American students went out at night to take a stroll around a park and check things out. Once again the weather was perfect for this and we hit the park at the perfect time and got to watch day slowly turn into night. The park is really close to the CCTV (Central China Television) broadcasting tower and it was really cool to see it all lit up at night. Check out the pictures below. The CCTV is the tallest building in Beijing!

CCTV tower as the sun goes down

moon appears during the day !

traffic outside of the park

lake in the park

tower at night…pretty!

So that was my day!

我登伤了长城 i climbed the great wall

Today my classmates and I took a trip to a section of the Great Wall of China about an hour and a half away from the city of Beijing. The section of the wall we went to was at 慕田峪 (Mutianyu), a city about 60km from the center of Beijing.

The day started off with my cellphone alarm clock rudely interrupting my sleep at rather early 7AM. Anyways, I ran outside to grab some food off the streets. The main gate of this campus, at all times of day, has 3 or 4 little food and snack carts (fruit too!) waiting to fry you up some cheap and tasty food (cleanliness of these carts is arguable). This morning I had my favorite snack of thin fried bread with egg in the middle with some spicy meat and pieces of lettuce. I still have not figured out exactly what kind of meat is inside (chicken, pork?) and am too lazy to ask but it tastes delicious every time.

After eating breakfast, we hopped on the bus and started our journey. On the bus I first did some class readings and then quickly fell asleep. I was awoken when we finally arrived at the Great Wall by a tap on my side. The girl sitting next to me also felt it necessary to tell me, “You were completely out the entire time and your mouth was wide open”.

Now worrying at the possibility of someone having took a few “Chris is sleeping and looks foolish” type photographs (has already happened a few times in China), I climbed off the bus and entered the concentrated alley of people aggressively hawking goods. Everyone made a concentrated effort to dodge the people selling t-shirts, fruit, drinks, necklaces, scarves, wall hangings and all other sorts of merchandise at startlingly inflated prices.  Our big group met by the bathrooms for one second and then our Resident Director handed us our tickets and we took off in smaller groups to climb the trail through the forest to actually get to the wall.

We hiked up these stairs through the forest for about a half an hour.

Forest Path

Finally the trees began thinning out and the trail started running parallel to a section of the wall. We kept walking and ended up taking some stone steps and then abruptly popped out right on top a section of the wall. The first impression of the wall that I had was that it was thinner than I initially expected. Maybe its the “urban legend” that the Great Wall is identifiable from space and the moon that made me think it would be this hulking wide structure. While the wall cuts a giant path straight through trees and mountains and winds itself over the terrain, it just wasn’t as wide as I expected.   That fact that the wall winds up the sharp face of mountains is extremely impressive in itself when thinking of demands of engineeering and construction over such difficult terrain. However, I was led, perhaps, to believe it would this incomprehensible wide, hulking structure.

Here is the view from the highest point that we climbed to.

View From the Top

It took some serious work to get to this point. We walked on the wall for an hour and a half, up steep stairs and rickety ladders all under the continuously pulsing afternoon sun (yes I am sunburned). The views of the surrounding mountains were fantastic and the day was very clear with no clouds in sight.

Jagged Mountains in the Distance

It was amazing to be able to climb the wall and see the surrounding area but I sort of came away wanting to understand why so much effort was put into creating this structure meant primarily to keep people out of China. The wall is actually a collection of many smaller walls that began being constructed in the 5th century BC. It was expanded and maintained until 16th century AD. The wall’s purpose was to keep various nomadic groups and tribes, most notably the Mongols out of China. The Great Wall which is so firmly embedded in Chinese culture sort of laid the foundation for many xenophobic thoughts and movements that continue to this day. During Mao’s era and even today China works very hard (using internet filtering for example) to contain the people and “harmony” within China while not allowing outside forces to enter and affect the country and its people. I couldn’t help being awed by the size and scope of this object which kept people out of China which definitely contributed to the historic evolution of “Chinese” thought. For me the wall is an important historic structure which really shaped the course of Imperial and Modern China. It was truly amazing to see it in person.

After we hung out on the wall for around 3 hours, we made it back to the bus and drove to a restaurant (we were all STARVING at this point) and then back to school. We got a firsthand experience of how horrible Beijing rush hour traffic is but ended up making it back in one piece. Today was a very enjoyable day learning more about Chinese history while exploring, having great conversations, and just having fun with classmates on the Great Wall.

Going Up?

Great Wall Below

开学 Starting Classes

This week was the start of classes which means goodbye to free time as I am already floundering in tons of homework and readings. The CET Beijing program is structured so that I have 2 hours of Chinese classes in the morning with English content courses in the afternoon. I really enjoy this schedule as it allows me to concentrate on Chinese (being in class more than double the amount of time than when I am in America) while the English coursed help me filter and comprehend my daily expericences.

My Chinese course primarily deals with learning and discussing social issues and historical events in Chinese. Our first lesson was pretty interesting as we discussed changes in family  makeup over time (divorce rate in Chinese anyone?). We only have 5 students in the course so the class is very personal and has a relatively quick pace which is great to help improve my Chinese.

The English courses I have elected to take this semester are 21st Century Beijing, a course looking at the Economic, Political, and Social forces that have created modern Beijing and in turn heavily influenced modern China, Chinese Politics, which is centered on what our professor has repeatedly named, “the furniture in the room of Chinese politics”, and Gender and Family in China covering issues of Gender and Sexuality  which interestingly enough is taught by a Bowdoin professor. What I hope these content courses can do is connect the things I see everyday or the experiences I have and help me make sense of what modern China really is.

For example, I go places all the time and completely do not understand what people are saying to me because China has a ton of different dialects that are utterly incomprehensible to a student who is only studying Mandarin. Therefore a lot of effort and time is placed on educational policy right now that mandates schools instruct in Mandarin. While that might be necessary to create a country unified under one language, that sort of top-down pressure threatens to destroy much culture connected to the spoken languages of distinct dialects. I remember asking my teacher in Hangzhou if she would choose to teach her children Wenzhou dialect which is primarily useful only in that one city. She told me that she absolutely would as that spoken language connects the Wenzhou people to their ancestors and is an invaluable part of their culture.

I think that my classes will help me discover and reflect on problems like these which I am constantly bumping into on a daily basis. I also hope to more fully understand  governmental policies and what exactly constitues modern Chinese society and the government. It will be interesting to see how everyday experiences and my perception of Chinese people’s lives relate to the theoretical ideas I learn in class.

到了北京！Made it to Beijing!

Finally the endless amount of traveling (3 weeks) is over and I have arrived in the big city of Beijing. While I absolutely loved all my (mis)adventures hopping from city to city, I am really excited to settle into my new home for the next 3.5 months and get a routine going. Sometimes the activity of moving from place to place and constantly readjusting to new surroundings can be a little overbearing; it will be nice to have a single “home” for the next semester.

I arrived in Beijing two days before my semester orientation program actually began so I stayed in a hostel at first. I stayed in the Qianmen hostel which has an amazing location. I was literally a five minute walk from Tiananmen square and 15 minutes from the forbidden city. The hostel is wedged in this neighborhood of crowded alleys and  side streets filled with lots of cramped restaurants, people hawking the usual assortment of knock-off shoes and Mao memorabilia, and lots of small cigarette shops.

Although the area was overflowing with interesting places we really didn’t explore that much because we were all wiped out from traveling so much. Just resting in one place was a great change of pace from the constant movement of our traveling. Instead we chose such activities as passing an afternoon (well, more like one whole day) in the upstairs of a starbucks drinking caffeinated beverages and hanging out on the internet (we deserved it!). The coolest experience I had during this time was an afternoon jog I took straight through Tiananmen square. After studying this at school and learning the significance this space holds in defining and challenging modern China I couldn’t believe I could so easily and leisurely jog through it. There were tons of military troops and people around and security is tight (you can’t visit at night), but I still couldn’t believe I was actually in such an important space.

The next day I parted ways with my American friends and finally headed to school. My school is on the Western side of Beijing in a more quiet neighborhood far away from the tourist sites in the middle of the city. However, at the time of my arrival I was not aware that my school 首都师范大学 (Capital Normal University) has 2 separate campuses. Of course, the taxi driver brought me to the wrong one! This caused massive amounts of confusion as I hopelessly dragged my suitcases around asking everyone I saw where the International Culture Plaza (my new home) was. When I finally discovered I was in the wrong place I had to catch another cab and ride the 5 minutes down the road to the other side of the split campus.

Finally  I arrived at my dorm and was immediately surprised at how different it was from the place I stayed in Hangzhou. In Hangzhou I stayed in the foreign students dorm but it at least felt like a conventional college dorm. The dorm I am in now staying is actually managed by a company that owns and operates hotels. Therefore, my dorm is more like a giant hotel filled with foreign students than any sort of conventional dormitory (or at least what I am used to at Bowdoin). Hangzhou did not have nearly as many foreign students; we had only about 40 foreign kids in out building. This place is completely different as this “hotel” is brimming with foreign students with very few Chinese students in sight. People from all over the world come here to study and I have already met tons of Korean, European, American, and Australian kids. I am excited to see how being in such an extremely diverse place will be.

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what Beijing has to offer and am still getting acclimated to the new neighborhood. I am really grateful to have this opportunity to study and explore the city for the next 3.5 months. The bulk of my time abroad will be spent here so its is awesome to finally begin living and studying in the place I have been excitedly anticipating for the last 2 months.