All the stuff I wrote before I got internet!

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My Travel Diary, Day 1: Time: 2 ½ hours into the long flight

The first lesson of travel, things always look better on paper. Case in point #1, the Sterling Silver Sirloin Steak, which is described as a steak “complimented by Asian barbecue sauce, green onion rice, red bell pepper strip and sugar snap peas.” It turned out to be a microwaved steak with a odd, but good sweet/spicy sauce, overcooked rice with what looked to be small chunks of egg in it (no green onions in sight) and a side of broccoli and carrots. The only thing that was as the menu described it was the dessert which was simply listed as a cookie. So far I’ve also slept for an hour or two and we’re executing a westward turn in northern Canada (the onscreen map says I’m currently over the far North Atlantic and the last bit of land that we passed over was Goose Island). Yep, the flight maps I looked up were WRONG, if I see the Rocky Mountains I’m going to see the furthest northern peaks. This also means that I’m going to see the sun for… approximately my whole trip so I really hope my seat-neighbors near the window close them soon so I can go back to a sleep-like phase. I think if I’m lucky I’ll probably catch a few more hours sleep before we disembark, but at the same time I think it is fairly likely to happen.

At 7 hours into the flight we passed over the North Pole, pretty cool, huh? I took a look as we were going over the last part of the Arctic Ice and it looks just like the Discovery Channel, so they aren’t screwing with us, just so you know. I’m at the stage of the flight where I realize that I wish I had been off the plane about 6-7 hours ago. I’m glad I got an aisle so I can and/or go to the door windows and look out. The last I saw the flight has about 3 more hours to go until we land (which won’t be soon enough) though they have fun little statistics like what our current altitude is (35,000 feet) our approximate ground speed, which ranges from 500 to 600 mph, whether we have a tailwind or not (less with us, more against us). I think I’ve slept for about 4 hours total on this flight, so I’m still a bit wired and I’m looking forward to getting settled in the hotel. I’m less excited than I was this morning, but that’s more due to the extraordinary amount of traveling I’ve done so far.

Beijing Time 5:50 PM June 19, 2007

I haven’t seen a sunset since the 17th. Luckily I was outside and got to watch every little bit of it. Flying over the North Pole when one should normally be sleeping does that to a person. I’m tired beyond belief, but I’m not letting myself sleep because I know that’ll just put me more off of what I’m doing.
I’ve seen the smog of LA, I’ve seen the disgusting, polluting factory along the Ohio River in Washington County, but until I came to Beijing I had never tasted smog and wiped its crust off of my mouth. This place is dirty and disgusting in that fashion, though in every other it is interesting and I want to explore it! I’m having fun with my hotel roommate… though as usual I can’t remember his name (turns out it’s Ben). He’s been searching out the non-brothel massage parlors while I’ve been searching out phone cards to call the US. The card that I bought in the US is worthless, it won’t connect, I think that the international label it has is just because its designed to call Canada and Mexico and a few other Latin American countries. Thanks again drugstores of America!

Beijing Time: 3:30 PM June 20, 2007

I woke up early this morning (approx 6 AM) with a start because I had slept for 8 hours and I don’t think I sleep for more than that,, so I took a shower and walked to Tian’anmen Square (天安门广场) and took in the sights there. I’ve got some great pictures of the smog in Beijing because most of the sights are somewhere in the range of 50 to 200 yards away from you at any given point. I saw the big picture of Chairman Mao (毛主席 or 毛泽东, depending on who you ask), which is a lot bigger than one might think because the picture itself is approximately 30 feet tall. There are a few other points of interest in Tian’anmen Square, such as the final resting place of Mao, the front gate (前门), which is beautiful and is the marker of a few things, firstly of the zero point of all of China, secondly of the Old City walls that were used for protection centuries ago when Beijing was small. Tian’anmen Square is the symbolic center of China, and the biggest thing I remember about it after the enormity of the buildings is the incessant street salespeople trying desperately to sell me kites, postcards, wristwatches with Mao as the picture and Chinese postage. Bu Yao (不要 - I don’t want any) is a phrase essential to one’s sanity.
Unfortunately it has started raining a bit here today so my travels have forced me back to the hotel. I hope that the rain will clear up soon, so that I can go out to the Forbidden City after my first group meeting tonight. We’ll see!

Harbin Time: 6:15 AM June 22, 2007

We’re just about to pull into the Harbin Train Station, which is odd because it’s the only thing that I’ve seen in China that starts on time and arrives on time/early. Everything else is normally jammed up with traffic. These trains are amazing, the soft sleepers are great though I’ve heard that the hard sleepers aren’t bad either. So, I didn’t write anything yesterday because I forgot to as soon as I got on the train and we as a group were running to each other’s compartments, bonding for the last time in English (gotta start speaking Chinese only on Sunday evening!). So yesterday I went to two different places in our times between group meetings and whatnot. First, I went to the Beijing Underground Museum (地下城), which is a tunnel system that Mao had built (by hand) and was completed in 1979. The thing about China is that if you want to get somewhere it generally isn’t on the main road, and in spite of that they also aren’t very clearly marked, so to get to this place we had to guess what side street to turn on, then guess which side street intersection to turn at. It was quite the experience because no one among us had a map detailed enough to say any of the street names that weren’t so large that you risk your life crossing it. The shelter was designed as a nuclear bomb shelter, and it has tunnels reaching every part of the city, which is cool. The really interesting thing about it is that the tunnel system had the feel of a western bunker, but then it would have something entirely Chinese, like a small Buddhist shrine at the end of a tunnel. In addition, a big difference between China and the US is that most women of a certain economic stature own and use parasols on bright days because white skin is the standard of beauty in Asia, as opposed to the tanning we pursue in the west. It’s a really noticeable difference and whenever I see them I think of pictures I’ve seen of life in Victorian England. The second place I visited was a huge Buddhist shrine called the Lama Temple or the Yonghe Gong (雍和宫). So, as I’ve been writing this we’ve slowed down from our express speed to almost a stop, but I don’t really see a station, but by my clock we’ve got a few minutes until we stop. That means I should pack up, I’ll write more a little later!

Harbin Time: 9:17 PM June 22, 2007

My first full day in Harbin and the differences between it and Beijing are astounding. I’ve seen my first true clear blue sky for days today and it made me happy, which is incidentally the name of the local beer, Hapi. Hapi is a shortened version of Harbin Pijiu, or Harbin Beer . It’s the first beer I’ve had in days. I like Harbin a lot more than Beijing. Surprisingly enough it was 34C for a high today, and if you remember 37 is normal body temperature in Centigrade. I was quite surprised for a place that has such a famous Ice Festival to be this hot in June, in fact the average high is just 27-29C for this time of year, which is high 70s, low 80s. The craziness of drivers still astounds me. Today at the lunchtime rush hour I saw drivers begin to drive on the wrong side of the street, and not just to make a U-Turn, but driving almost 500 yards/meters in the wrong direction, from SUVs to low-end motorcycles. There are no rules when it comes to driving, cars drive on sidewalks when they decide that they’re tired of waiting for traffic to lessen. The few safety features they use are constantly laying on the horn, flashing lights (because they don’t turn their headlights on until well after sunset), and just driving so slowly that if they hit you, that’s how they let you know. I watched one of my teachers get ‘bumped’ this morning just because she didn’t realize some tiny 5 yr old European car was behind her and wanted to get through our group.
Shopping in China is another entity unto itself. In most stores you cannot leave a section of the store without checking out, which can become tedious if you’re running out for more than one thing, or things from more than one section of the store. Each building also has an interesting architectural feature, being that if a building is of any importance they will build a threshold that’s at least an inch tall, buildings of great importance might have a threshold that is a foot tall all because of an ancient Chinese superstition. The superstition is that ghosts shuffle, and you don’t want ghosts to enter the places where you sleep, eat or worship. It’s really very interesting, but it makes you watch out everywhere you go.

Harbin Time: 8:36 PM June 24, 2007

I’m starting to get used to life over here, but I’ve gotta say the food is starting to take a toll on my stomach. Otherwise it’s quite interesting being here. Today is the first day of our pledge to only speak Chinese for the next few weeks so this morning we were talking as much as we could in English, and now we’re still coming to terms with the pledge. Every once in a while an English word falls into our sentences, or we completely forget and use English when we shouldn’t be. Luckily the pledge doesn’t affect phone calls, reading or writing, so I can keep my sanity!
Harbin is an interesting city, I’m starting to get the hang of it, or at least the area around my campus. The busses are interesting, it costs 1 kuai to get on a non-A/C bus, 2 kuai to get on a bus with A/C, in Dollars 1 kuai is 12 cents, 2 is about a quarter, which makes getting around the city really cheap and easy. I often pay 10 kuai for a medium sized Chinese dinner, which translates to about $1.25. The cost of living is almost nothing here, it’s one of the pluses, one of the pitfalls is that they still have livestock in the city. I often pass a mother hen and her chicks on my way to places around the city, we all joke that the chicken’s name (or dog’s name, etc.) is 晚饭, or dinner. Ordering food here requires a dictionary and the deep understanding that the server isn’t too worried about how much time they spend on you, so the trick is not to get flustered when the waiter is standing over your shoulder as you try to decipher the menu. A huge difference between here and the US is that no one ever wants a tip. I’ve heard stories of people getting chased down by the wait staff trying to give them their change. Through all that, things are more the same than different, the only things that have really changed are the language, the system of writing (though that often has the official Chinese Romanization beneath it), and the relative insanity of the people.

June 26, 2007 6:45PM Harbin Time
I had to wash my first load of clothes here and suddenly it became obvious how integral writing is to one’s daily life. Classes one can get one’s way through understanding 50-75% of the utterances coming out of the teacher’s mouth because they’re normally the same words you went over last night in the book, but if you don’t want to stand in front of the washing machine in a room with no overhead light and your electronic dictionary trying for the life of you to clearly write a character that’s in the equivalent of a 10 point font one must know an insane amount of characters. Buying detergent was also an entity unto itself, I had to look at the little illustrations and try to make sure the detergent didn’t have the character for “white” in it; else my colored clothes would be in trouble. At the moment I’ve broken down into listening to Led Zeppelin as I just need some English listening to keep myself sane for the moment. I also had pizza today, or what they call pizza here as the sauce was more like a weak molasses than tomato sauce, which was interesting, though good if you weren’t actually expecting pizza. The Chinese versions of American staples are quite interesting as there are Chinese spices in things that they think of a quintessentially American, and thus are their versions of the American items, but they think the versions they have are the exact same as what we eat in the US, they’re always surprised when we say that things aren’t quite the same.
Other than that I’ve been through two days of class and three days of only speaking Chinese to everyone, the other foreign students, my American classmates and every Chinese person I see. It’s an on and off difficult thing. If I’m talking about something that I know about, then it’s just as easy as English. If I’m talking about a subject that I don’t know anything about, or if I need to use function words that I don’t really know then it can take me 5 minutes to finish a sentence. The latter is far more frustrating.
That’s about it for now, I’ll be writing more soon.

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Comments

[Amy]

where's my panda?