It might be merely that they were too used to inflexible fact and far too unused to pliable people. --Issac Asimov, "Foundation"
"Now I really don't know what to do. It's very difficult to decide such things because there's no one you can talk to; no one understands. You have to go through it alone, and sometimes you choose wrong." --Philip Dick, "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said"
"I'd rather be a little spacey than never trip." --Melissa Button
written 7/4/08 10:15 a.m.
Hey everyone, these next three weeks are going to be some of the most hectic/exhilirating of my life. I have my CHI201 final exam on Thursday morning, which means next couple days are studystudystudy. Then by Friday night we need to have any non-carry-on luggage packed and tagged to be pre-shipped + our room keys turned in. Because Sat. @ 5 a.m. our bus leaves for the airport and you wouldn't wanna miss that. We'll be flying to the very Northwest of the country, a city called UrumQi in the Muslim Chinese desest just South of Mongolia. Talk about culture shock. Talk about exiting.
Following that is 10 straight days of cultural landmarks, historical marvels, natural wonders, and night trains. Eventually on July 22 we'll somehow stumble into Xi'an, stay for a few days in this historical city that's still relevant/contributive to China at large today. This is where Terracotta and Hang Tombs and all the museums are. I can't wait.
A few days here then a few in Shanghai then a couple free days in Hong Kong (!!!). Then I'll be back and I can tell you all this palavar* n person.
So yeah, like I said, looking forward to the most intense couple weeks of my malenky young life (also highly tempted to look past this final but I'll try to buckle down and study hard this week). But it also means that I will not have time to update this while traversing the Silk Road or keep up other contact very well. So I'm just letting everyone know that I'll be keeping a daily journal in my notebook, taking pictures of absolutely everything, and will have infinite stories for everyone upon my return. And mayhaps some soveneirs haha
Oh yeah About those pictures. I had a whole bunch from Fragrant Hill and all the other beautiful places of last week, but there was a...slip-up, while uploading them. How to say...I accidently deleted them all. Yeah, like over 100. But not to worry, I've asked around and will be getting a lot of other peoples' pics emailed to me. And we're still planning on organizing that huge group photo site. 对不起 everyone.
*I subscribed to dictionary.com's "Word of the Day" recently, so I had to drop my Monday morning vocab in on y'all haha
And now, a little window into this past week, to tide you guys over until my triumphant return...
the Rest of Tuesday
Didn't do much besdies finish all my online shit (travel journal, photobucket, etc). Read a little, studied some, can't recall anything special.
Wednesday
Last chapter, Lesson 9, introduced, about travelling. A little late in the trip for that haha. At 2 p.m. we had our additional weekly culture class, on contemporary/Mod Chinese art scene. Beijing is honestly the hottest place in the world for avant-art right now, a lot of play with reforming classical styles, and using weird materials/mediums to produce them (e.g. writing entire scrolls of fake calligraphy on scrolls with human hair).
These past couple days have been fairly boring to be honest. Everyone's kinds got their focus in the future at our 2-week Silk Road tour, after all.
A couple culinary foibles today though--at lunch, I wanted something w/fish & stable food, so I ordered "Fish &___cover steamed rice," 鱼香茄子盖饭. But apparantly 鱼香 is a type of sauce, which in retrospect makes sense because 香means "aroma," and 茄子 is "eggplant." So I basically got eggplant and peppers and spicy sesame sauce on top of white rice. But hey, eggplant/hot flavor/rice are all highly tasty, so no complaints eh? Also found a new drink bag--date milk.
Yes. Just date fruit juice and milk. Yes. No other ingredients, in a bag. Sounds god-awful but actually delicious and by far my favorite "drank-bag" so far haha
Hao and Wes and I also tried out our new poker chips this night with a small game of Hold'em in the 3rd floor lobby. I won of course, cashing in a 25 kuai profit. That's like $3.50, but that's also like, a dozen subway tickets or fancy dinner for two.
Thursday
A little more busy--our composition is due Saturday afternoon it seems. Language students have to write an essay entirely in characters on their own about their experiences in Beijing, length based on level of Chinese (mine has to be 1000 characters). So I spent all afternoon and last night on a rough draft to give to our resident grad student teacher at the 2 p.m., 2-hour study session. Get back from that and was restless from too much studying, so I put on the headphones and took a trademark random walk thru the smogy sweaty streets of Beijing (it's not PHX temp but we supposedly cracked a humid 100 degrees this week).
Stumbled across what I've always wanted to find...a hole-in-the-wall, no, THE hole-in-the-wall tea house on the corner of a back street. It was perfect: only like 10'-10', but that little square was immaculately kept up by this quixotic shop owner and obviously loved & poured into fully. Only person inside was a woman in her late 20's reading a book. We immediately started talking tea in a confused mix of broken Chinese and not even passable English. Her background: she had moved with her family from S.China just to open a tea shop in Beijing, and this shit was goood.
I was permitted to basically taste-test any variety or leaf in the store unlimited times. She used thimble-sized tea cups and had a serious ritual of drinking tea: brewed in special mini-mugs, while cups washed and excess boiled water splashed over the head of a wood-carved statuette (a frog with a necklace of gold mediallions, symbolizing prosperity) on the small tree trunk-carved table. The tea poured, and we both had to smell not only the cups but the steamy freshly-used brewing lid before partaking. She matched me thimble glass for thimble glass (out of cordiality only I assume) and showed me how to best taste for flavor--by taking a couple small sips in a row, breathing in while tea is in your mouth, and then sluping the sip gently before swallowing.
I didn't even start trying the black or green teas, I still needd to study, and I could be here literally all night without remorse. But still I sampled a few oolongs, a jasmine, a flower, more than 5 types of tea in all. Ended up buying 200grams of two of them at a ridiculous price , because she was honest and sold leaves at comprable price to how she bought them wholesale, not by gouging based on which types Americans would most likely buy out of novelty. At an exquisite, high-end tea emporium downtown that some kids went to, rose tea was the most expensive by quite some margin, but here it was basically the cheapest. About $7 U.S. for 500 grams. Translation to non-tea drinkers; it's very rare to find good authentic rose tea, so that is astronomically cheap. So I bought all 200g she had in-store haha.
After telling classmates of my find and noticing their exitement, I've rounded up a small group to return Saturday morning. We'll try everything she's got haha.
But I mean, that's where I wanna be spending my hard-earned cash, places like this, real street vendors and shopkeeps who make their livelyhood on the occasional 块. Judging by her excitement and giving me a loose tea container for free, she doesn't get a lot of substantial sales, and I'd rather make a substantial purchase from her than some tacky tourist trap.
Ran into Dan on the way back and found out Peking Pita (the obligatory joke band that every extended trip forms) has our first gig--final dinner next week. Me on hand drum (with the new string I bought at a swap meet recently--now I can wear it around my shoulder, now I'm mobile), Dan on Mandolin, Kyle on bass, Dave on viola (they all bought brand-new instruments at dirt-cheap Chinese prices, and none of them know how to play yet--all are musicians who are picking up the random instruments they've always wanted to try but have never had the chance to). And Melissa on Dan's gourd & backing vocals. Dan/Dave/I scrambled to the dorm building roof for an impromptu jam session. Probably gonna try to nail down some cover due to time constraints, tossed some ideas around, and "Close To Me" by The Cure seems plausible.
Spent rest of night studying for Friday's test, not so exiting a conclusion.
Friday
Test was pretty easy really--and I got an A on last week's, so I'm feeling solid for the Final.
Today is 4th of July, and we're going on a China cultural variety tour haha
This is because it's our last day w/access to our driver who we affectionately call Yu 师傅 "Master Worker Yu."
How to explain Yu ShiFu? Simply put--he sweats Esteem, and pisses Prestige. He is Excellence.
When he drinks, he only drinks BaiJiu (112-proof Rice Whisky).
He wears black powerful shades, wears white driving gloves, never has to exert effort, never takes shit on the road, and drinks the nappiest grip of tea I've ever seen (leaves take up about 80%!o(MISSING)f the cup).
He speaks with mountain-crumpling minimalism of body language, a few syllables if you're favored.
He's an Asian, shuttle-bus-driving Samuel L. Jackson, "Jackie Brown"-style, and he don't give a damn.
THe group is so infatuated with him that when Dan (the most infatuated, with me perhaps 2nd) mentioned in passing to some of us that he wanted to make Yu ShiFu T-shirts, word got around and all but 3 kids agreed to buy one if he made it. So, he snuck a profile picture of him and turned it into a stencil, then everyone bought their own blank shirts and gave them to Dan and a couple other art kids, who spent at least a full day with their spray paint, making multi-colored outlined resemblences. Mine is a blue/green/yellow shaded rendering on a white wife-beater, ad I'm wearing it right now.
The day of our departure to the beach, everyone wore their shirts to surprise him. He loved it so much that when we arrived he insisted on a group picture and to give us a tour of the HeBei Night Market district. One of the best moments on the trip, his expression upon seeing 35 white kids wearing shitty t-shirts with his face plastered on them haha.
So today was his and our excursion assistant Wang Laoshi's last day, and we're hopping around and having a good old-fashioned Chinese AMerican Independance Day.
Who knows what Beijing 4th of July will bring?
written from memory, 1 p.m.
First we headed to what is now our 3rd spot visited along the Great Wall, JiYang Passage. This was the more touristy part, moreso than out big mountain hike for sure, but still stunning as usual. Unfortunately, lost all these pictures in the accidental deletion, but everyone around me was taking them too so no worries.
JiYang is basically Great Wall's "main drag." Still a decent hike since we took a less-traversed route, straight-up, 85-degree angle staircase to start, but then easy sailing for 1/2 hour until we reached where the Wall was closed for rennovation.
Packed PB sandwich on bus as we headed to next location--no picnics or fireworks but I can celebrate the 4th somehow haha. Next we visited some traditional style enamel-pottery factory. Got to see whole process up-close, from initial design-carving to shaping/polishing, paint-mixing, etc etc onto the firing process. Some guy (worst job to have maybe?) dunked plates of small enamel cups vertically into a firing pit, with the hole in the top of the furnace rather than on the side like ovens. Covered opening slightly, then hooked out white hot, flaring pieces about a minute later.
It was kind of a lame side-trip honestly but then again after pouncing around Great Wall again and getting all sticky muggy sweaty it was also kind of nice to just walk around an air-conditioned store looking at pretty shit.
Too bad the prices weren't right haha, but ascetically just what I needed. Green Chinese serpant dragons over a black backgrounds are so powerful. I've gotta learm more about this color symbology shit.
Next stop was a walk through the Ming Tomb Road, a garden-bordered lane that all the Ming Dynasty emperors had their coffins paraded through before burial. Beautiful statuettes on alongside walkway--elephants, warriors, mythical beasts, camels, lions, etc. Only downside again is the humidity--you couldn't have soaked me up afterwards if you'd used a whole pack of sponges.
After that was the long-anticipated goodbye dinner. We gave Yu 师傅，王老师 their presents--giant handmade cards from the art students, signed by everyone, a bottle of BaiJiu for Yu ShiFu, and a pair of expensive shoes for Wang LaoShi. I signed mine in Chinese characters, and Master Worker Yu looked at me & said, "your signiture is better than mine." I literally almost fainted out of glee.
Luckily I didnt', else I would've missed the delicious Korean BBQ dinner. I realized what it was that had actually made me sick the second day of the trip--that Korean joint was less efficient about cooking their meats, and I probably ate something still a little too raw. So I tried the Kimchi here with full success--thank God, that shit is good haha. Also had my share of beef, regular & sweet potato pre-sliced and grilled in front of you on a table-top flame by staff. Delicious marinade. Top that off with spicy octopus salad (spicy everything w/Korean food haha), noodles and wintermelon and you've got yourself a hella good meal.
We trucked it over to English Corner upon return, but only stayed an hour or two because the rain started up again and natives took off early. So we freshened up and hoped to go out dancing for the 4th of July, but the rain was also keeping the taxis away, and it would have taken all night to figure out. So, Wes/Ryan/Kyle/Daniel & I just chilled in various lobbies playing poker, taking late-night rain walks, reminiscing about home on Independance Day and staying up past 4 a.m.
Saturday currently listening to: "Jams Run Free" by Sonic Youth
Turned right around and woke up at 8 to take the tea lovers out to the Hole in the Wall, the Tea Eden. Daniel, Kyle, Melissa & I made her day--spent over 2 1/2 hours trying maybe a dozen types of tea total, everything from green to black to red to new types of jasmine and flowers. Found a type none of us had even heard of--it's a flower tea, color of a rose and look of a tulip, that stains the water dark pink and has a tangy sour taste. You can mix it with any other tea, and it makes it better. It's the perfect back-up flavor; subtle, unique, clean, unforgettable. Add it to rose and you have sweet&sour tea. Add it to jasmine and you have Sour Green. Sour Flower + Oolong = tangy & bold. Altogether we bought 16 bags from her, maybe 4000 grams, and we're leading a final group back on Thursday after the final. We took our picture with her. We let her teach us everything she knew and humble us with her humility.
I couldn't wait til stateside to open up my two new bags of tea--I'm drinking Sour Pu'er as we speak and it's ambrosia. I'm stocking up on tea here, because come on, where am I gonna find this stuff in America? I'm gonna ride the plane home with a backpack full of a year's supply of loose tea leaves and nothing else. Try and stop me, Customs officials.
Came back @ 11 and worked nonstop on my essay, finishing at 3:50 and bolting downstairs with Wes (who finished simultaneously haha) to turn it in to Pang Laoshi before the 4 p.m. deadline.
Whew. So much work. So stressful. The art kids are also stressed because their portfolios are due Wednesday and most aren't even close to finished. So I walked up to the Art classroom to check on Dan & Kyle who had drawing nonstop while I had been composing characters nonstop. Decided to take a break, we all walked over to Cerrefour, which is like a weird French department store about 1/2 mile walk from campus to pick up cheap tea grips. Came back to my room, made a sandwich while I read a book and fell asleep in the middle of both.
30 minutes later I'm refreshed and we all need to unwind tonight. There's only a trickle of rain tonight. Tonight's the night.
We dance.
Just about everyone went to the Beijing club district at 11 and didnt get back until after 4. Danced nonstop pretty much--woke up a little sore, which didn't even happen after Fragrant Hill haha. And when you only hit free clubs and don't drink, the only expense is a 4-way split cab ride for an entire night of the most let-loose fun I've had so far. Even the shy kids went with our group and a lot of us can actually dance well. Us Americans tore those clubs apart, taking over stages, forming dance-off circles, everything. I also snuck off into a corner for a few minutes to jot some creative thoughts out, but mostly we all just let ourselves melt away into bass kicks and synth shouts.
Bass kicks and synth shouts bass kicks and synth shouts don't tell us what to do we wanna learn some things the textbook won't tell you
Sunday
Had been hard-core running on fumes again--8 hours of sleep over two jam-packed days. So I slept in til past noon. Then I went with Wes, Dave, and a few others to the Silk Market again to try and pick up last-minute suveneirs, but it was too pricy. Picked up a ridiculous hilarious Chinglish t-shirt though, and a few bootlegs.
Oh yeah. "Chinglish T-shirt" needs a definition I suppose. Chinese youth wears a lot of trendy novelty clothes, just like the good ol' USA. Except sometimes, they try to make them in English. This has mixed results, and by that I mean mixed degrees of failure. Sometimes there's funky font, or a irrelavent yet flashy picture alongside, or sometimes just the nonsensical, misspelled, mispunctuated statement itself. Thus, the "Chin-shirt." This phenomena is remarkably similar to the oddly-phrased signs in public places. Daniel and I have been making notes of Chin-shirts as well. Once an entire list is made, I may make a seperate post catalogueing all the hilarity.
And now I have one. I've been wearing it since last night. I have no plans to take it off anytime soon except to sleep. It's also my Traveljournal profile picture.
Wes was there while I haggled for it and asked the salesgirl if she could read english, read the products she was selling, and she said, no, and laughed. So did we. I love Beijing, these kids have no idea what they're wearing.
Last evening, I met with my English/Chinese practice friend, XiaoHui. She had looked up some parks in the area and their English descriptions, and we decided to take a quick bus ride to 紫竹园, "purple bamboo garden." It was free to get in and great to walk around in the cool air. The afternoons are humid and hot now but the evenings cool down beautifully still at least. We traversed the small park, which was originally a relaxation point along a small river that leads to Summer Palace. The river was used almost exclusively for rowboat transport between the two.
I learned quite a bit about Chinese culture resting next to a lake inside 紫竹园. People here seem to be very curious about religion in America. Everyone wants to know if I'm a Christian and when people go to church. I was asked if non-Christians were "allowed" to go to church. A lot of odd opinions and suggestions about U.S. spirituality along those lines. The words "Christianity" and "Jewish" are known here, in the sense that they're part of the vocabulary, but they don't really hold significant meaning or set definition. That's okay; "Buddhist" and "Karma" and such misunderstood Eastern terms are similarly tossed around in America. In a way, we may be more haphazard in pretending to know what they mean-- the modern Chinese citizen is almost fully ignorant of all religion but admittedly so.
That's what was so interesting to me. Almost nobody in China is Buddhist anymore. Or Taoist. Confucianism has survived a little better but not as religion, more as the advice of a great thinker, motivational and patriotically appealing philosophy. Like Americans sometimes turn to Ben Franklin or Mark Twain quotes, in a much more augmented/ingrained sort of way. But basically the newer Chinese generations have become largely Athiest. Buddhism and Taoism almost provoke cringes from some teens, in fact. "That's what the old people believe," they say. Only 老人 rely on that stuff to live their lives. Some of this can just be chalked up to run-of-the-mill youthful rebellion, but not wholly. It's such a turnaround in 50 years. Because it's true, every older Chinese person seems to take the Taoist and/or Buddhist teachings to heart.
Devoutness is decreasing exponentially by age. It's remarkable. I've never seen or heard anything like it. Is it a product of the Cultural Revolution that Mao imposed? The influence of Western cultures and capitalism? There's a defined trend, whatever the source--belief in a higher power is stratified by age and directly correlated. Thinking about it makes me feel like I'm living in a line graph.
The direct quote I heard this night: "God is, how do you say it? A 'fake thing,' a thing that when people are scared or don't know what to do or think they need help, they believe in it to make themselves feel comfort. But I think that you choose for yourself and and you can do whatever you put your mind to, and how hard to try makes how good you life is."
The unofficial religion of China is Work Ethic.
I asked what happens after you die. Is there an afterlife. "As in, a heaven where the good guys go, and the bad guys go to the other place...hell?"
"Yeah, maybe. But what do you think happens when you die? What will happen to you after your life is over?"
"I think that...it doesn't really matter then, because I make my choices right now to live the best I can."
The conversation went on, and basically we came to a cross-cultural and very Humanist conclusion together.
You're alive right now and don't know what happens after, if anything. So really, what else is there to do but try the best you can, and help out everyone else around you? Because they're just living the best they can too.
I think Vonnegut and Voltaire would have been proud of this convo, haha.
We bussed/walked back to the college and talked about lighter topics. We traded more idioms, only using ones that involve trees. She gave me, roughly translated, "The best shade is under tall tress," which I think is written 大树 好乘着. Basically it means that having a successful family gives you a better chance at a comfortable life. I offered "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" in return.
It was revealed that when viewed "in profile," my face looks like Tom Cruise. So I had to ask, in Chinese, "Do you think Tom Cruise is a very handsome man?"
"He's...okay. I like Will Smith better though. And Brad Pitt is really cool. Really cool."
Ouch. Buzzkill.
We didn't want to call it a night just yet, so she taught me a simple Chinese child's card game in the dorm lobby. Then Wes came down and we taught her the only true American card game--Blackjack. She had beginner's luck of course haha.
Just as XiaoHui had to leave, Daniel walks up and tells us a few art kids are watching a movie in Melissa's room on a mini-speaker/projection system against Melissa's room wall. Wes & I were down. We joined them, Kyle and David for a bit of a marathon, 3 animes in a row (not usually a fan of the genre, but these were plot-based and not like seisure-inducing action cartoons. Like real movies, just animated). I was actually really impressed. Unfortunately they lasted until 2 a.m. Immediately to bed, early to rise for class.
Today
Found out in-class that we're squeezing in Chapter 10 before the final ("at the post office"). Before now I wasn't worried too much about the Final, thinking that we had all this week to review, but now I'm a tad concerned. Oh well, I can always sleep on the plane ride to Silk Road.
At 2 we had a lecture about the cultural background and artistic history of the places we'll be visiting the Silk Road. Everybody, right now, do an internet search for--BingLingSi, "The Flaming Mountains," QingHai, GangSu Passage
In less than a week I'll be trapsing around the Mongolian border and dancing in the DunHuan Desert and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm so exited. An unsteady mixture of Middle Eastern and Far East culture, Islam and Buddhism together on the same trapease line. The area is much more similar to say, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan than China, and only about 30%!o(MISSING)f the population is of Han nationality. But it's in China baby. It's their territory. Eerily similar situation to that of Tibet, but less explosive. The convenient bonding powers of Capitalism have seen to that.
Regardless, this has gotta be about the most unique and eclectic cultural landscape in the world, and we're gonna tear through it.
Just tried a new "drank bag," and may have jumped the shark this time--peanut butter milk. I can read the characters, and that's literally what the label said, just "Peanut Butter Milk" with a picture of a peanut. So you see, I had to try it.
Remember "Ritz Bitz," those little kid's snacks that were the mini-crackers with filling in-between them? The liquid in this bag tasted exactly like Peanut Butter Ritz Bitz. It was uncanny. I'm left confused, a little scared, yet oddly satisfied.
Well, it's 7 already and I've got a lot of studying to do tonight, so this will have to do it. May not have time for another entry until after the trip, but I will try my best to at least put some pictures up or something in the next three weeks.
But honestly, probably won't have time. I'll be on the Silk Road, kids. I feel confident and invigorated right now. I think the Chinese/American youth concensus was right after all: doesn't matter if there's a God when we're so busy just trying to live next to everyone else.
Gambling and swearing? I didn't raise you that way!
I like the iltalic font. Thanks for this (probably) last blog entry. I can tell you are creating some good bonds on top of everything you are learning. Sounds really fun!
anonymous
non-member comment
Gambling and swearing? I didn't raise you that way! I like the iltalic font. Thanks for this (probably) last blog entry. I can tell you are creating some good bonds on top of everything you are learning. Sounds really fun!