Sandstorm! or, I think I woke up on Mars...

Asia » China » Beijing
March 20th 2010

Published: March 20th 2010

Ni hao pengyou!

I hope everyone is doing well! I survived my first dust storm! So exciting!

I woke up this morning to this eerie yellow glow streaming through the bedroom window, and I was really confused! It was super hazy but bright and yellow.. it really felt like I was on another planet! Perhaps not Mars, maybe Venus or Mercury or something. But still! So weird. Apparently it's the biggest sandstorm to hit Beijing this year. The Huffington Post had the best pictures of what it looked like this morning, so here's the link if you're interested http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/beijing-sandstorm-2010-ph_n_506875.html . The sand combined with Beijing's naturally pristine air made for really stellar air quality, and Chinese people everywhere were wearing face masks. By 6pm tonight, it had cleared up a lot and was actually a pleasant day! Go figure. Hopefully we'll be spared more sandstorms, at least till May, but I doubt we'll be that lucky.

Last night we went to see a mariachi band! It was great! They played at this nearby bar/lounge, and they seemed pretty legit! They had about four or five bandmembers, and I'm pretty sure that some of them weren't Chinese. They even sang "La Bamba" and "La Camisa Negra!" It felt good to diversify my music experiences. =)

Ahh diversity.. I don't want to say that China isn't very diverse... but in some senses it seems pretty homogeneous. For example, 85% of the restaurants I see on a daily basis (keeping in mind that I'm not really in the internationally-influenced districts) are Chinese restaurants. There is an Indian restaurant on the way to school and a few coffee shops/Western-owned bars/restaurants in Wudaokou, but the prices are pretty steep compared to the Chinese alternatives. Don't get me wrong, I love Chinese food, but I'm definitely missing affordable American/Mexican/Italian/etc food. On a side note, one of my teachers didn't know what lasagna was! At all! And tomato/pasta sauce does not exist in grocery stores, except for international ones where it's undoubtedly expensive. How I miss tomato sauce!

But Chinese food is delicious. Not super filling, but quite good. Zhou is pretty much porridge, except you can put meat and vegetables in it to make it "savory", or make it sweet, like having pumpkin porridge. Baozi (bread-y round dumplings), jiaozi (dumplings), and miantiao (rrr) are a lot of what we eat for lunch during the school week. Miantiao(rrr) is lots and lots of noodles in broth with a few vegetables and maybe some fatty pieces of meat thrown in. Mian means noodles, and tiao is the measure word, which describes long and thin things, and the (rrr) I added to indicate the Beijing accent, which is reminiscent of pirates because they add this rrrr sound onto the end of SO many words. You might think I am kidding, but talk to some Beijing taxi drivers and you might wonder if you've just gotten in with Blackbeard. Some of my teachers have explained that adding the rrr means that the object is cute or small, which very well might be true, but it seems to appear on the end of every other word! For example, the East Gate of Beida is Dong Men. When we tell taxi drivers that we want to go to "Beida Dong Men", we have to say Dong MURRR. If we say "Men", they literally don't know what we're talking about. This happens frequently. With many other words. This phenomenon occurs in reverse, as well. Adding the rrr is a northern/Beijing thing, but people in the South/Shanghai, etc, don't do it. So if a person from the South asks me if I speak Chinese, and I reply "Yi Diarrr Diarrr", which means, "A little", they will correct me by saying, "Oh, Yi Dian Dian?" Diarrr is the Beijing version of Dian, which they form by taking off the n and adding the rrr. Mostly everyone we talk to on a daily basis uses the Beijing rrr, so whenever we encounter someone else we have to adjust.

Chinese people don't really drink water during meals. Or any other beverage. I've heard from some people that it's because you're supposed to eat and get full off of food, not fill up your stomach with water. I'm not exactly sure. There are very few water fountains anywhere, but I wouldn't encourage their use either way. In the restaurants/coffee shops that do serve water when you sit down, it's always hot, if not steaming. This is to ensure that it's safe, but I think a prevalent thought is that drinking cold water is not optimal. Thus, hot water with perhaps some lemon. It takes some getting used to, but when it's really cold the hot water can actually be refreshing!

I will miss Chinese instant noodles, though. They're called "Fangbian Mian" which means "Convenient noodles". Unlike the rubbish that is called Ramen in the States, the fangbian mian here have lots of flavor and don't taste like sodium and cardboard. They have so many different varieties and are actually kind of tasty, as far as instant noodles go. Oh, also! Corn is a popular candy flavor here. For example, they have corn flavored hard candies. Along with sesame seed, ginger, red bean, and other interesting flavors of sweets.

I'm just going to jump around from topic to topic, like I normally do. Beijing popular culture is .. interesting. It's very bling-y and shiny and sparkly, flashing lights on all the buildings at night and hats, shoes, hair clips, jewelry, anything that can be bedazzled is. It seems like they've grabbed some very select things from American culture and molded it a bit.. but American is the thing to be, it seems like. It's kind of hard to articulate but it definitely feels like American culture is what's cool and is to be aspired to. For example, the little kindergarten type school in our apartment complex blasts Christmas carols every morning over the loudspeakers. I kid you not. Silver Bells, Jingle Bells, the one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.. we've heard them all. I asked my teacher why they would play those, and she said they probably just know they're popular American songs. I still don't know what purpose they serve, but still. Also, some Chinese parents are giving their kids English-ized/Americanized names, for example one that sounds like "Mai Kuh"-- Mike. And they have a word that sounds like "coo" which they use for "cool". It's interesting and kind of wacky, but I guess it works for them! =)

Okay, I think I've rambled enough for tonight. No really interesting pictures, but I'll write again soon! Love!

Sandstorm! or, I think I woke up on Mars...

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