Back in Beijing

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I've been back in Kaifaqu for a week, but still haven't fulfilled my promise of writing about my time in Beijing. This blog is slowly falling a week behind whatever is actually happening to me at the moment. I'd say I'm sorry to any of my readers for leaving them hanging, but it's more important to me that I live my moments, and record them afterward, even if that might result in me forgetting most of them before I get them down in type.

Anyways, about Beijing. I stayed there with a friend of mine from Ithaca, Jake. We went to elementary school together, and then kind of grew apart, but like all Ithacans we remained on good terms and are still able to have a normal, unforced conversation with each other. He ended up studying Mandarin in college, and spent a semester at the same language program in Beijing as I did (although he did his a semester after me). So now, like me, he's graduated and is back in China trying to perfect his Chinese and seeking some of that same old Eastern magic. I stayed in his apartment near Houhai with him and his two roommates, who have also been living and studying Chinese for a few years. It was fun to geek out with some other Western Sinophiles; getting into passive-aggressive arguments about the meanings of some part of a character, or what its etymological origin is, or what the correct situation is to use some idiom that no Chinese person actually says anyway. Staying there for four days made me feel pretty guilty for spending the last month in Dalian hanging out with foreigners, so while I was there I bought a new textbook and since I've gotten back home I've been trying to make myself study every day. It's working out so far. I like the feeling of completion I get from memorizing a new character; it's like solving a math problem. There's a right way and a wrong way; clear-cut, and the difference between success and failure is obvious.

So back to Beijing: I spent most of my days strolling around the neighborhood; Jake recently broke his foot skateboarding and was on crutches. Beijing reminds me a lot of Brooklyn; the houses are (relatively) low to the ground; it's spread out; there's people from all over the world living and interacting within close proximity of one another; everyone who lives there is insanely cool, and knows it. Jake has a lot of friends in Beijing already; the city is full of young students, both Chinese and international. In stark contrast to Dalian, the two groups actually get along with one another. Also, most of the foreigners I met spoke pretty good Chinese, or were at least trying. The shopkeepers here in Dalian meet a foreign face with a grunt and a gesture towards the most expensive item on stock, but their counterparts in Beijing just start speaking Chinese to you. It's kind of comforting, actually, to have a Chinese person initially assume that since I'm living in their country, I can speak their language.

The time I spent in Beijing coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival. From what I've understood through interrogating taxi drivers and waitresses, this is a time to reunite with your family. If you can't do that physically, you look at the moon, and you can know that your loved ones are staring at the same celestial orb. For our Festival, we had a Chinese barbecue in the back-alley of one of Jake's friends. She lives in a hutong, which literally means "alleyway" but is an old-fashioned kind of apartment complex found in Beijing and elsewhere. Kind of like the compounds you hear about or see in the movies. A big courtyard and lots of little houses all connected together. We roasted meat and vegetables on sticks over the same kind of coal furnace that street vendors here use, and of course gazed at the full moon. I hoped that my family and friends would be gazing as well, but then I remembered it was daytime back home. But if you looked at the sun on October 3rd, we were both seeing the same light rays; mine were just being reflected off of a giant spherical mirror.

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Comments

[Mom]

Glad we are at least on the same planet. Love you, Mom

[Pedro]

:)
Well written Ted. Glad it's working out for you. I might join you in China in a few years if all works out! Take care and keep writing!

[lunchbox]

Not hard to tell
You were a physics major. How philosophical tstone. Got any favorite idiomatic insults? Sounds like Beijing is bangin.