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Published: September 5th 2007
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Arriving
People, everywhere. So, how can I explain my time so far in China?
Let's do a quick picture re-cap.
First we landed, stood in several lines for way too long, and seethed both with anticipation and the desire to move our tired butts, slothfully inert for the past 12 hours.
Immediately after proceeding through customs, we were whisked away by people from Beida to our snazzy Beida bus. Between airport and bus, however, lay our first glimpse of China - and it was, well, foggy.
For the next week, a haze remained over the city, and I began to think this was the way Beijing always was. We never saw the sky, the stars never appeared, and most irritatingly, we could never see more than 150 feet in each direction. It was pretty surreal - cars and bikes would zoom in out of the haze, careen towards you, and fade into the mist as you dove aside. Giant buildings suddenly manifest themselves. And it was impossible to get your bearings, because nothing ever visibly connected to anything else.
We continued classes at Beida, and these were mild, enough to keep you from going out every day of the
Our dorm
Which looks like a hotel, because, well, it is a hotel too. week, but a joke compared to the level of difficulty back at Stanford. I've never had classes as intense as early summer, nor do I ever hope to again. It was nice to have time to wander around, see Beijing, and try lots of food.
Occasionally, we did get good food - at Beida, there's a run-down, plaster crumbling, hidden place affectionately named the "Medicine Hut" (despite the lack of medicine, though it does resemble an extruded hut). Its food, however, is amazing, and proof that China occasionally does get food right. However, Chinese food is vastly overblown in my opinion - it's not bad, sometimes, but there really is not that much variation. What's really good is American Chinese food - of course, we've had many a heated argument about this, but that's my opinion.
I quickly found a favorite place, however. The day we arrived, my roommate Jared met his sister (now a Beijing local, studying there) and took a large number of us out to her friend's birthday party at someplace called the Crow's Nest.
This place is heaven.
Basically, it is mini-America for when you get fed up with China. You walk
Crow's Nest
Ah, beloved Crow's Nest with your delicious pizza ... how I miss you ... in, the TV blasts America, the staff all speak English, and they serve you GIGANTIC pizzas. I'm talking like three and a half feet across. However, they maintain that one redeeming aspect of China: incredibly cheap prices. You can eat your fill and drink as much beer as you could possibly want, and it still won't run you more than five American dollars. I really do love the place, ardently.
I suppose I should mention some of the oddities of China, as well. For me, the weirdest thing is pricing: the grocery store is not the minimum pricing. This is my fundamental issue: I'm used to the raw goods from which food is made to be cheaper, naturally, than the prepared food.
In China, however, this is not so.
Because the cost of labor is so low, the cheapest places to eat are often restaurants - it simply makes more economic sense to have a person make dough, roll it, slice it, and cook it into noodles than to buy pre-packaged ones. This is severely weird for me, but I'm happy to reap the benefits. O, China prices, how I love thee. Let me count the ways:
Temple of Heaven
And an exuberant James. Note: 8.5 Yuan or so is a dollar.
An hour in an internet cafe: 2 Yuan
A day in an expensive hostel: 60 Yuan (stupid Beijing)
A day in a cheap hostel: 15 Yuan (Yeah, Chengdu!)
Handmade noodles in soup with meat: 7 Yuan
600 mL of Coke: 3.5 Yuan
1 L of Beer: 3 Yuan
A T-shirt: 20 Yuan (It's practically cheaper to buy new clothes than to wash them)
My new pair of shoes: 50 Yuan
Cover-charge to a phenomenally expensive club in Beijing: 50 Yuan
Basically, to get a feel for how much money this is for Chinese people, just say "dollar" instead of "yuan." The cool part is that it really is yuan, and in the U.S. we really do make dollars ... so, having extreme buying power rocks. Especially when you are a hardcore consumer whore, it's good times in China.
Every now and then, you can treat yourself to something super high-class, something you couldn't possible afford in the states. In Beijing, we used to go out to a Karaoke bar that more closely resembled a 5-star hotel with its abstract artwork, gilded columns, expansive (and numerous!) leather sofas. Companies
The sun.
The sun. Yup. It's so dim you can stare at it through the haze. It's not even as bright as some of the streetlights, sometimes. could take their patrons there; chefs prepared you duck, free of charge. Yet it never cost us more than ten or twelve dollars for hours of our crazed yelling. I'm sure the staff loved us belting out classic Backstreet Boys; singing, falsetto intact, Britney Spears; and mumbling through the occasional Chinese song we learned in class.
Oh, last, I should mention The Greatest Day of My Life. On this day, we went to see the Great Wall - quite an impressive cultural relic, stretching for miles and miles across the tops of mountains. Amazing. However, the *more* awesome thing was the fact that, from the top of this mountain, next to the revered grace and splendor of this ancient marvel, there is a slide. A slide that literally goes down the entire mountain. Check out the video clip. And the top of the Great Wall has Diet Coke.
After the slide down from the Great Wall, an assault of merchants shoved their wares in my face. This happens quite frequently in China. This time, however, I noticed my favorite food - dried strawberries - and a kindly old Chinese woman gave me like a quarter kilo of them
Nameless lake
This lake is named "No-name lake." Hmm. Anyway, it's pretty, and on the Beida campus. for a little over a dollar. After being tempted into buying sheer white half Chinaman / half MC Hammer parachute pants for another 2 dollars, I returned to the bus and dined, that evening, at the Crow's Nest. Man should not be allowed to have such a happy day.
Alright, enough for the initial post; this has been a means to show random China pics. Next up: the story of Datong and cliffside monasteries!
~Danny
P.S. The video may not work ... hopefully it does, and I'm just at a computer to stupid to play it. Let me know if not and I'll re-encode it.
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Doreen
non-member comment
Fabulous! great to hear your voice, but I got no video (sound only). You have a great skill to capture the essential in a tiny pellet of words- and pictures!