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Tianenmen Square Obelisk
Obelisk on Tianenmen Square. I forget if it honored the 1949 revolution (when Mao came into power) or the Cultural Revolution (an interesting situation here) So, I write this email with a sore body from playing basketball over the past two days. When I first played 2 days ago with 2 other Black guys from the IU-Indy law program (legit Africans, Arsene and Kofi), I realized the Chinese love basketball, and they love to play against Americans. These guys are bruisers and play very physical. People would surround the court watching us play. And we suck... relative to US standards!
Friday we took a tour of our campus and a group of us walked outside of the campus for about 5 hours. We went to a mall and some electronic stores. One of the electronic stores we went to was very suspect. It was like going to Chinatown in NYC: we had to go down an escalator to take an elevator up and walked through an office building to get to a place where we sat down and were shown cameras. The one thing that surprised me was the price of clothes and electronics. Even though a lot of that stuff is made here, it is just as expensive here as in the US. We only went to malls and somewhat legitimate stores, so I
Background Noise
This is one of the people that wanted to take a picture with a Black guy, but did not ask directly and tried to use me as "background noise." I motioned for her to get closer. am sure the back-alley markets are another story. Our local colleague told us when someone goes to the US, they will give that person money to buy electronics for them. I definitely found this surprising.
Yesterday, we went to the the Forbidden City and Tainanmen Square. This was our first field trip and chance to see some Chinese history. (The picture of the sign is near where the guy stood in front of the tank. Bill, a guy on the program, lived here several years ago and pointed this out. Least to say, there is no marker signifying this event!) Chairman Mao is their George Washington for the most part and the Square is all about the legacy he created. He is entombed in a building on the Square and his Revolution has its own historical museum on the Square. (I will go into those sometime while I am here.) The Forbidden City is across the street from the Square and is the old palace for the emperors of years past. While it is a truly amazing structure, after going through the first couple of gates, it begins to look the same. The place is enormous and there were
Tanks Come Rolling
The sign with the arrows in the back-right is near where the tanks rolled the protesters back in the 80s
thousands of people there. It would have been nice if we had tour guides that were able to give us information and historical aspects, but we had to make do with the posted text we saw once in awhile.
I learned A LOT about the people here, particularly yesterday. The Chinese are very friendly and nice, which may seem odd because I think some Chinese people in the US are not so. They also like Americans and are FASCINATED by Black people. I could not count the times Kofi, Arsene, and I posed for people's pictures. Some people would directly come up to us (Arsene, the lady and her kid), others would be shy, stare and try to find the courage to come up to us. Some also would just pose near us and use us as background noise! (The picture with the girl in pink is an example, but I waived for her to come closer.) After awhile, I would smile at those that seemed shy and say 'hello' in Chinese. That gave them the confidence to come up to me and get take a picture with me. I'm not an arrogant person, but I thought it was
Arsene, the family and me
A lady and her kid coming up to Arsene to take a picture with him. Arsene waived for me to get, much to the girls' delight. fun to take pictures with the Chinese, their kids, etc. They were always friendly and just curious. Black folks are far from common here. I never felt they were being rude or threatening. I even had a group of Russians come up to me and take a picture. I thought this was particularly odd because Russians and Eastern Europeans tend to have less kind reactions to Blacks (at least in their homeland).
The food here so far is AMAZING. And it is very cheap. $1 is about 7 yuan and you can get a hearty meal + a beer for about 15 yuan. My goal was to lose weight here, but I'm questioning if that will possible!
There are a group of students at the law school here (Renmin... the Harvard of China) that are our "pen pals." We can talk to them and ask them questions we have about the school or China in general. They are very helpful and super nice. Xu Fei (or just "Fey") is an angel. She is very sweet and took a group of us on the 5 hour jaunt we had on Friday. The other students have been very nice and
Gates of Forbidden City
A picture of some of the gates of the Forbidden City. I took so many pictures, but none of them can really show the true size of this palace for emperors past. helpful too. It is utterly amazing the kindness these folks have shown us.
All in all, I really love this place. The people, the food, the cost of living, is all wonderful. The language is very different and difficult because you can not pronounce words by just looking at the phonetic spelling in a book. I have to look at the phonetic spelling, hear a Chinese person say it, then write it in way I can understand it. I don't actually have a translation book (I'm an idiot and did not buy one state-side), so I usually try to write things down as I hear them. I am trying learn the basic phrases first, then I will expand my vocabulary. One thing that has gotten me into trouble is saying something with a good Chinese accent, then the person assumes I speak Chinese and tries to have a conversation! They eventually get it when I have a confused, blank look on my face.
I could talk more and more, but I'll end it here for now. After drinking last night and evading a Chinese guy that had a SERIOUS man-crush on me (see pic), I am going to
Forbidden City- 2
Another gate at the Forbidden City. take it easy today. I need food and want to walk around. By the way, we are 12 hours ahead of everyone in the Eastern Time Zone, so you are getting this message at 2am on Saturday night!
Classes start tomorrow: an overview of the Chinese legal system and Criminal Procedure.
Cheers,
Jason
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Josh
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Translator
Do you still have your Droid? Does it work there? If so...the google translate app is great.