China Blast

Asia » China » Beijing » XiCheng District
June 27th 2011

Published: June 27th 2011

To my readers:

I'm sorry about the delay in my post. As I'll explain below, my school week is really intense, which doesn't give me a lot of time to do things like post blogs, or not study chinese. So expect weekend updates while I'm at CET (aka, till mid august, and then we'll see). Also, my internet connection has been sketch (Marn, which is why this is getting posted now as opposed to this past weekend, so if there isn't a post one weekend, expect one in the next day or two.

Alright, so when I last left off, I had just spend my first night at CET. I woke up in the morning-Thurs, June 16-and went to breakfast with everyone, which i left early when a friend told me my luggage had arrived. I was so happy I sprinted to the shifu's office (think building manager) and hugged my luggage in front of the guy. We went to an orientation meeting, which didn't have anything super special besides meeting the teachers. Oh, and a language test at 8:30 in the morning while everyone was still jet-lagged. No biggie. My only theory on why on earth they would do this is so that any form of cramming (not like people had the energy to anyway) would be nullified for the placement test. Spoiler alert: I didn't fail it, although I sure tried to with my essay.
Afterwords the CET students went to the cafeteria for lunch, and then we went on a shopping trip. We went to a french-walmart-equivalent called Carrefour, which in Chinese is Jia-la-fu. There I got a cell phone and SIM card. This was on the first floor. While I was doing all of this, my friends had gotten all their other stuff from the first floor, and me being jet lagged followed them to the basement, which was all super market stuff. Now the problem I didn't realize (cause this makes absolutely no sense) is that once you go to the basement, there's no going back unless you pay for what you have and make another lap in Jia-la-fu. And by the time I had figured this out (because none of the workers I asked mentioned I had to pay for my freedom in a sense) and had navigated what I needed from the basement floor (which I still can't do, and I've been there 4 times), almost everyone had left save 1 other girl from UNC. We headed back to CET and had dinner. After dinner, most everyone went to 1-2 rooms and had a mini party to meet everyone. The funny part about this is that because we were so jet lagged that what felt like 10 to us was about 7 in the evening, and the party died around 11, which is when quiet hours start in the dorm. So we didn't even tick anyone off (aka: the shifu) which is an excellent start to everything, even if we felt super lame for dying out at 11.

Fri Jun 17 - So today we had orientation part II which was a lot of: this is how not to die in China, how to function in a foreign country, foreign dorms, etc. A lot of which was rather useful information I wouldn't have thought of. For instance, most everyone knew not to drink the tap water in China because the system is ancient, but the sewer system is so sunk under Beijing that the city can't fix it, so almost everywhere has water boilers and unless you buy bottled water, you have to a) drink hot/warm water (which is a perfectly normal chinese thing to do) or b) wait for it to cool. Also, you can't flush toilet paper unless your mad at the floor below you and want a quick way at petty revenge, as the toilets can't handle it, so most toilets have a waste basket next to them. After the orientation, we had lunch at the cafeteria.
To give you an idea of what we're served for lunch (since that's all they serve us now) is 2 vegetarian dishes (steamed/stewed something), 3-4 mixed dishes (your beef and broccoli type stuff), 1-2 meat only (meatballs are surprising common), and then a mix of pasty stuff, including baozi (YEAH!). While I'm on food I feel like this is a good time to mention 2 things. 1) Chinese food is super oily. The asian stereotypes on food (so I've been told) is that Japan is sweet, Korea is spicy, and China is oily. So how is it that most everyone in China is a stick? Because they cook with unsaturated fats, so peanut oil, veggie oil, etc which is suppose to be a liquid at room temperature, unlike us Americans who have to use a stick of animal fat, a stick of butter. 2) China in my opinion is divided up into 2 main food sections and then a subtype. North China is very wheat based foods, like baozi, jiaozi (dumplings), or noodles, while the South is rice based foods. This is due mainly to different growing seasons of China's super coast. Then in the south there are 2 provinces - HeNan and SiChuan - which are known for spice. Mom, you would stave in these provinces.
After lunch we had a psych come and tell us about depression, but 1/2 of his presentation was more just funny pictures of Chinglish, and he had some really good ones. Then there was an optional session about cultural oddities about living with Chinese students. I, along with 4 of my hallmates decided to skip this and go see the forbidden city, as I had already lived with Chinese suitemates, and talked about living differences in Chapel Hill - I had not seen the Forbidden City in Chapel Hill. So me, and what has become my tight group of friends of Matt (I think 1/2 Taiwanese, 1/2 Korean ancestry, and a Longhorn) Ross (White, Johns Hopkins), Tommy (Chinese ancestry, NYU) and Dohyun (Native Korean, 27-looks 20, Tar Heel) and myself (Whiter than the sun, Tar Heel) went out into the subway system to find the Forbidden city. Luckily I was prepared and managed to get us to the Forbidden City with next to no hassle. Bo-yah.
The Forbidden City might be the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. Honest to God. You start by walking up to the entrance with the famous Picture of the big man himself, Mao over the entrance. Which is kinda a cocky but awesome move when you realize that a dead man who - while uplifted China from oblivion (disregarding how) - never had a dynasty. And yet his super portrait is the first thing you see before entering the living space of many emperors over different dynasties. In all honesty, it's a bold move (esp. for a dead man) that isn't lost on me. We go in, and there's just yards upon yards of open pavement surrounded by these superwalls. Within the walls there's a lot of guard quarters and apparently a small music venue too for local bands at night. After walking like 300 yards, you finally get to the entrance of the actual palace (aka: where you gotta pay). So after paying, you walk through security and basically over 400 yards (probably more) you see 5 different thrones. Seriously, the emperor had 5 different thrones, and didn't have to walk an inch to get to any of them. You just kind of get hit with this sense of grandness.
And then you find it really funny when you turn around after the fourth throne room and see some kids going to the bathroom in a corner, but not out of sight. You think I'm joking, but potty training over here is slightly different. They have diapers like everyone else for the infants, but then when kids are at the age where they know they gotta take care of business soon, they go to a "less populace place" as I'm going to call it and do their thing into a plastic bag. And to add to all of it, kids pants at this age group don't even have backs. They're wearing buttless pants with no underwear. And it's perfectly normal for them. Still haven't gotten my head around that one.
Anyway, back to the Forbidden City So after throne room after huge throne room, you finally hit the last and smallest part, which is the garden, which has some really weird trees, like 2 that grew into one, two tree's that branches cross that represent love, and one that if you squint your eyes (and probably have to be smoking something, seeing as it's China, I'm going to go with Opium) one that looks like a crouching dragon. It was probably my favorite part, especially where they have some rocks with plants growing from the ground, through holes in the rocks, bloom flowers above your head. So the kicker to all this is when you're finally done, you walk out the back, and unless you want to pay a super expensive rickshaw, you have to walk all the way back to the front of the gate for the metro (though busses were at the back gate, we didn't want any messy transfers). So it was probably a 20 min walk, after 2 hours of wandering the forbidden city, just to get back to the metro.
So after Forbidden City and later getting dinner, CET went out to a few clubs. Now I'm not posting this just to say I partied or got a girl's # (ok, kinda am on the second part) but there's a specific bit of racism I'd like to point out here. I've been told that Chinese clubs love bairen (white people) cause it's an attraction point of "hey, we're cool enough for the Americans." Which kinda makes sense since a dance club is a western invention. But there is absolutely no subtlety with this, as this will demonstrate. Since CET rolled out as a group (note: mostly white group, a few ABC (american born Chinese) and Koreans) to the first place, we all entered as a group. We were meet at the door by the manager, lead through at a different entrance where we didn't have to pay. After waiting for my friend Dohyun to convince the manager that he was with the group, we went through the special entrance near the end of the line of CET kids. I went through and got a card that ment I didn't have to pay cover for the rest of my life. I turn around and while Dohyun also didn't have to pay cover, he didn't get one of these cards either. Nor did any of the Asian ethnicity kids. But all the white kids got one. Defiantly a weird feeling where you kinda feel cool for being different (aka: white) but then feel weird about the inequality. But if anything, clubs are known for being sexist, and are known for being racist in China too. Just something to think about.

Ok, well 2 days of info took me about 3 hours to write, and seeing as I still have class tomorrow, I will end this here and post again tomorrow. Hopefully I get to my normal school week by tomorrow.

Some other thoughts to end on:
Plain hot water, not as bad as Americans make it out to be. Wimps.
I'm guessing that walking the forbidden city is a 5K at least.
Everyone assumes you speak absolutely no Chinese, even when you say more than "ni hao (hello) and xiexie (thanks) if you're not Chinese.
--Robby

Copyright Notice: All Rights Reserved