And Then Sleep Didn’t Happen =(

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And now for the third part of the trilogy. So last time I fought a war on drugs using something those druggie-losers (riding the Technicolor dreamscape) never thought of: tripping on life. So I went to the steampunk club, was forced to watch gay strippers, and may or may not have been approached by a 40 year old prostitute. And since I went to bed, I must have slept in super late right?

July 30th:
8 am I wake up so I can make it back to CET, where at 10 we went to 798. I took a cab back, because I don’t think I was functional enough to walk back to CET with just 3.5 hours of sleep. So I got in a cab, and was able to have a conversation with the driver. Who said my Chinese wasn’t “especially good”, but that I should keep studying. Seeing as I was working on 3.5 hours of sleep and have lots of tone problems, I felt like that was a fair analysis.
So then I got back in time to go to 798, which is Beijing’s modern art district. Which I honestly think is overrated. Now I will say that this will be taken with a hint of salt, as I’m not an art person, but then I was wondering “if I’m not an art person, why do I like the embroidery so much?” and then I realized that truly great art is art that everyone can awe at, no matter how much or little they normally like art. Now grant it, that still means that the average man can not-understand great art, but only the best of the best can bring out something in everyone.
However, there was one exhibit that was really powerful, and that was an artist who got a prostitute to take 500 photos of herself over 1 workday. The photos were decent, but on top of that, she also wrote her feelings and actions of the day, unedited, and it was very eye opening. She talked about how she use to be a college student, and then something happened (unknown – also unclear if she graduated or no) and now she’s a prostitute. She talked about some of the physical pain she felt, or some embarrassing things she had to do, and how getting the money would normally wash away the pain immediately. And she was making a fair amount of money, but her family currently was jobless. Also how it destroyed her thoughts on marriage and love were rather tragic. It was a very weird mix of emotions toward the whole thing. One the one hand, you can’t help but to feel sympathy toward the life style, and her doing things no one should ever unwillingly do. But on the other hand, wasn’t this a choice for her? If she got into college, she probably graduated (cause in China, the hardest part of college is getting in), so that probably means that she chooses to take on this life style to get more money. And yes her family is jobless, but she was talking about buying them new phones or something for Chinese New Year, not basic necessity things. There weren’t enough details for me to have an accurate judgment of the situation, but some of the vagueness of the story (as it wasn’t an autobiography of her life, but just 1 day) left a lot to think about. And then to think that there are women who are given the choiceless choice to go into the oldest profession and do some of the things described is simply heart breaking. So all and all I had a big day at revelation, but not because the artwork was good, but because I thought some of it was meh and a story in an art gallery, not the art itself.
Back at CET, I ate lunch, slept, and then went back out to Tucker’s place with Ross, Ian, and roomie Jian Qiang, as he was having a party that night. The roof party was legit, and I met a ton of people, including old roomie Ben Turman’s classmates (who are all freaking awesome btw) as well as catch up with Ben, which was also awesome. Now I should explain that Ben is in a super program that is a lot like CET with the only differences is that it’s for people that are really good at Chinese and the government pays for it all. It’s a rather complicated process, but I hope to do it someday when I have the time, and Ben said he’d put a good word in for me (yay!). So I met a ton of people, and everyone had a blast. I eventually made it back to CET by 2, where I slept in for quite a while

July 31st:
Just kidding! I woke up at 7:45 so I could support my peers in a speech contest! So we all hopped on the bus and went to Beijing Normal University. It was a speech contest (aka: boring), so I’m not going to say that much, but I will say that Ben and his friends were there, so I got to support a lot of people. Also, the teachers got really paranoid that we didn’t win as much as we should have (which they blamed on the judges, not us). Now I know that contests like that are a lot about reputations at schools, so the teachers care a ton, but they don’t seem to realize how unproportional everything was. And by that I mean it really can’t reflect how well a school does when some of the students don’t care about the contest. Case in point: Ben’s school only got 1 3rd place prize winner, but they’re suppose to be the government sponsored super kids right? Well for them, this contest really didn’t matter, proven by the fact that they were all at Tucker’s party last night, having fun and what not. If they wanted to, they probably could have swept the advance level rankings. CET was similar, were we had people who wanted to do well, but care more about seeing Beijing, having a social life, not spending all their time memorizing and rewriting a speech. However, there were other kids from different programs who did, and for them – good for you, but none of the students are going to think twice about it and I hope the teachers don’t get too stressed either.
Afterwards we went back, Ian and I had our magical bread dish, and then I took another nap.

And that’s it for this batch, some thought for food
How hard is the life of a prostitute? At what point is it a choice, and at what point is it forced?
Is it possible for art to be inspiring because it’s uninspiring?
Why didn’t I get some sleep?
--Robby

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