link to pictures

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Group was going on another art museum/tea house excursion, Wes and & (as well as about a dozen other students) just said forget it and stayed back, as these sort of smaller afternoon trips are optional. I really needed to do laundry haha, and everyone's backed up on studying, didn't wanna have to choose between the two when I got back tonight.

Anyways also got a chance to get all my pictures in one accessible place.
http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm93/sterlingsin/

on the lefthand side is a link that says "Great Wall" which will take you to some other pictures, follow these links as long as possible. For some reason this is how photobucket organizes albums.

Got a B on my first test--I'm happy with this, considering I didn't know at all what to expect. This week's test should be easier as I know a little better what to study for.

Went to various markets this weekend, as well as Temple of Heaven yesterday, one of the most important and beautiful Daoist destinations in the world. Temple itself is breathtaking. The grounds also contain many elaborate tree gardens and Echo Wall, a smaller temple whose surrounding structure is supposedly aucoustically perfect, meaning a whisper in the center will resonate to all points and can be heard from the outer walls.
Most interesting though was the "Center of the Universe." This is a sacrificial shrine with three tiers: top is heaven, middle is earth, bottom is hell. In the center of the top tier is a small stone knob, which the Taoists humbly marked because they believed it literally to be the center of the universe. Now it has become a tourist attraction roughly equivilant to Arizona's Four Corners--"hey, i got my picture taken in the Center of the Universe!"

Also met up with some kids I kept in contact with from English Corner last night. A group of three Renmin native students who get together and sit on the campus grass lawn two or three nights a week to practice their English together. They graciously invited me to join them and practice my Chinese as well. I learned more abou Chinese youth culture in that 1 1/2 hours than on the rest of the trip put together...
--Chinese guys loooooove American movies and basketball
--Chinese girls looooooove American pop music
--DVD's are unbelievably cheap here
--Chinese people think Americans only eat hamburgers and pizza. They couldn't name a single other food we might eat there. Not even cereal. Hilarious.
--English is taught mandatory in secondary school, then left as optional in college. High emphasis is placed on making China able to compete on a global scale, and as a result many students feel a lot of pressure to be finance/marketing/relations majors with highly fluent English. I asked them if they were learning it because they had to or wanted to, and all three hesitated before giving mixed responses.
--Dance clubs are highly frowned upon in Beijing as "dangerous places where men without jobs like to go." However, alcohol is found in every school cafeteria.
--The Chinese youth is still 100%!b(MISSING)ehind the "one-child policy." They believe it to be a necessary precaution against overpopulation and poverty, which is apparantly still rampant in the countryside. They can't seem to imagine anything else, in fact: the girl I met at English Corner who invited me asked, "What is your government's policy on raising families?" Well, our government {is supposed to} stay the hell out of it. Chinese teens/young adults have just grown up in this culture and don't understand quite yet the flexibility most major countries allow their citizens in personal life. They were also a bit fascinated with my upbringing, as I have a younger sister and divorced parents. The notions weren't entirely foreign to them, though--although still frowned upon traditionally, they said that the divorce rate is slowly on the rise in China. I asked them if they personally thought keeping a marriage together was worth being unhappy, and again, no straight response. But the tentative consensus seemed to be that it was.

What I took away from this encounter most was that China is very much a country in transition and its contemporary youth wobbling on a balence beam of heavily-marketed Western modernization/Beijing Olympics catch-up and traditional roles of family and strict personal obligation. They are being ruled by a pseudo-Communist government facing the same confusing case of identity crisis while trying to feed a population of 1.3 billion AND catch up to 1st-world economics and politics.

Well that's all I have time for today, will probably use the rest of my night to study with classmates, since I was able to get so much other stuff done this afternoon.

This weekend is a 2 1/2-day long trip to Tai mountain, and an extended stay in Shandong Province. This is in the of China, near the modest village birthplace of Confucious, which we will also visit.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-580478/Mount-Tai
Uh, expect a lot of pictures after this. Whenever that may be.

'Til then, Tye

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Comments

[dad]

from dad
Tye, the pictures are amazing. thanks so much for letting everybody share in them. I'm sending another package your way. Mainly just local newspaper...maybe a CD. Great job on your first test also and on successfully navigating the local mass transit. Light rail in Tempe will just be a joke to you now. I do have a request though for more pics that have you in them. you look good kiddo...just no more Kimche. Dad.