Thursday, July 31, 2008 1:06 AM

Chengdu

Out of all the cities I’ve been to in China, Chengdu is the one I would most like to live in if I ever decided to live in China for a while. We saw some really neat places, which included the largest sitting Buddha in the world at LeShanDaFo, pandas, a Three Kingdoms museum/temple, and a museum of the most recently discovered bronze-age civilization in the area at SanXingDui.
            I’m really tired right now so my blog is going to be relatively short. I spent the whole day today packing and getting ready to go to Geneva tomorrow. Most of the day I spent trying to figure out how put as little in my suitcases as possible/ what I was going to do about a 20kg weight limit. From America I took 2 suitcases, and they were decently heavy, so probably 20-25kg, but now I have all the stuff I bought in China in addition to the stuff I originally bought, so I’m way over the limit.
            It’s kind of strange to think that I’m going to be leaving China soon. I feel like my view of China now compared to when I first arrived is drastically different. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten used to it—well most of it, I still cannot believe people eat pig snout and rabbit head and other stuff like that that I saw in Chengdu. All right, I’m going to go do some last minute things here in Shanghai. My newest pics are up on Facebook.
            Next up, Geneva!

Saturday, July 26, 2008 2:21 AM

China Night

Well, Chinese 202 is officially over, we had our last test yesterday. Yesterday was also our “China Night,” in which everybody performed. I sang a Chinese song with a friend and a laoshi, participated in a skit and played the Chinese gourd. All in all it was a really fun night. It was videotaped, so I’ll get a copy to show everybody back home.
            This morning I ordered Wang3Qiu2Za2Zhi4 (China’s version of Tennis Magazine) to be sent to me starting in August, so that should be pretty cool. I’ve already bought a couple issues here and I can understand some parts a little bit.
            Tonight we went to a Sichuan restaurant for our farewell dinner. In addition to food, the restaurant also had a performance of a guy who, in an unfathomable way, changed masks every few seconds, and who blew fire (click to see the video).
            I’m leaving for Chengdu, which is in the middle of China and a safe distance away from where the earthquake happened, in less than 3 hours, so I need to go pack. I’ll be back in Shanghai on the 29th.

Friday, July 18, 2008 6:49 PM

MoGanShan

The trip to MoGanShan was a fleeting one. We left yesterday morning by bus. I must say it is a very beautiful place, although its attractions are very far spaced apart and there is not a good map of the place. I wanted to go see the Sword Pond first, so a couple of friends and I started out to try to find it, using a very simple map on the back of a card.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we didn’t see it and passed it and then decided to take a path into the bamboo forest of the mountain, thinking that might be the right way.
            There were tons of mosquitoes there, and even though I put on repellent I still got bitten all over. So we kept walking through this forest, full of tall bamboo trees, and the ground was covered in bamboo leaves. As soon as we started to think that this was perhaps the wrong way we saw a stream, and since we were looking for a big pond we figured it might be the right way, so we kept going. After about an hour’s hike we ended up in a small town closer to the base of the mountain than the top. I actually really liked the town. It was very quiet, the buildings were very nice and the people were friendly. In the town and along our hike we saw gardens, fields and chickens, as there are a lot of farmers on MoGanShan. At the town one of the locals told us that the fastest way back to where we had come from was to go the same way we had gone down, and the climb up was a lot tougher than the climb down. All in all I thought it was a pretty good hike with beautiful scenery. After we got back to our original starting point we backtracked and found the entrance to the place we had been looking for. The Sword Pond is so named because two thousand or so years ago a sword maker and his wife made two spectacular, famous swords there, and the mountain is named after the man and his wife. There are also two waterfalls there that were very beautiful. The cicadas there were incredibly loud as well.
            After that we all pretty much just hung out for the rest of the night at the hotel because there’s nothing to do there at night, and then we came back this morning. We’re flying out to Chengdu at the end of next week. We won’t be going to any earthquake-hit areas or any other places that are unsafe.

Thursday, July 17, 2008 0:32 AM

CHIN 202!

I know it’s been a while since I last wrote but nothing much of note has happened since Beijing (in rereading this I have realized that this is in fact not true, I've just been too busy). The most important thing was the Wimbledon final, which I saw most of. The Sunday night before last I went to my Chinese friends’ apartment, which is one of the thousands of closely-packed, towering apartment buildings that are everywhere in Shanghai. The conditions in the apartment room were fine; the halls did not look like the halls of a building, but more like alleyways on the streets between buildings—they were not lit very well and people piled their bags of trash in the elevator lobby.
            My two friends, both guys, live with two girls, although in different rooms, and everybody was very nice and welcoming, as most Chinese are. I had no idea my friends had invited me to their place for dinner when I first got there, but I was very happy that they invited me to eat with them and have some JiaChangCai (Home-style Food), which was very good. After dinner we went out in search of a bar that had a tv the could show the match. After about 45 minutes of searching and riding in a taxi, we found a restaurant with a tv capable of showing the match, and all the while I was very distraught because I knew Federer was down 2 sets to love, but I got to see most of the third set, at the end of which the restaurant closed, so my friends went home and I went to a bar near HuaShiDa (ECNU), where I got to watch the end of the fourth set, but then at that time it started to rain in London, so I figured that the match would be postponed until the following day, but I was wrong. I ended up watching the rest of the match via Skype. I still cannot believe the result. I didn’t feel that great that week due to the fact I hardly slept that night and that Federer lost.
            On a different note, I must say that I really enjoy Shanghai in the evening. Walking around the city or the campus at 1 or 2 in the morning is very relaxing because the weather is much cooler than in the daytime and there are much fewer people. At night there is also a light humidity, but not so much as to be uncomfortable. They also have cicadas in China. A lot. And they are very noisy and sound just like the ones in Virginia. I’ve seen a few and I think they might actually be bigger.
            Last Saturday was the home-stay part of the program in which a couple of us stayed at a Chinese family’s house. We spent most of the day in Shanghai. First we went to YuYuan (Jade Gardens) to the actual garden part, not the Bazaar where I’d gone before, and it was very nice. There were lots of fish, the typical big orange goldfish that you always see in paintings of Japanese ponds. However I forget why these gardens are so important. Next we went to a very fancy restaurant and ChiBaoLe (Ate our fill). After that we went to see a Chinese movie since it was raining. We went to a movie theatre to see a movie called “Red Cliff” (I forget the Chinese name) and it was really cool. There were Chinese characters and English subtitles, so I understood some of it. I forgot to mention that there were, for the most part, two students per family, and the family I was assigned to was friends with the family who was hosting my roommate and another fellow student, so we pretty much spent the whole day with all of them. The movie was really cool, the plot was intriguing, the graphics were very good, the characters were diverse and interesting, and it took place around 200 AD in the Han Dynasty. The only bad thing about it was that it didn’t end. After 2 ½ hours the screen went black and then read “To be continued.” In America that would never fly—well I guess that sort of happened with Pirates of the Caribbean 2, but I really don’t like it when directors do that.
            After dinner we went to a karaoke place, and that was a lot of fun, and then we went to our respective host families’ houses to sleep. Our host family’s house was pretty normal—it was in a gated community about 20-30 minutes outside of Shanghai.
            Today was our last day of class for the week, as we’re going to MoGanShan (MoGan Mountain) tomorrow just to relax and cool off up in the mountains for a couple of days. Apparently it used to be a resort place for Shanghainese and other cities’ VIP’s to go during the summertime, and now there are many fun things to do up there. I’m just looking forward to relaxing a little bit. After MoGanShan we have one week of classes, tests and final presentation before we go to Chengdu for our final trip. It’s hard to believe that I’m going to be leaving soon. I still feel like I just got here.
            Today I went with a friend to the most famous fake market in Shanghai, called QiPuLu (CheePooLoo); that was an interesting experience. As soon as we got out of the taxi this guy was insisting that we follow him to the best store (his store), and he just would not stop following us. It didn’t help that I was weary my very noticeable red ECNU shirt. The shopping places there were huges buildings with about 5-6 floors that were crammed with shops that all sold pretty much the same things—clothes, shoes, bags—at very cheap prices. These fake malls were not the cleanest of places and there were RenShanRenHai (People from the mountains to the sea—Chinese idiom). So this guy was following us through this mess of people and shops, and even though we kept telling him to leave he simply wouldn’t, so then we tried to lose him by walking ahead and then making some tricky maneuvers by backtracking and turning corners randomly, and we succeeded for a while, but then after we went into the next building he found us somehow and he wouldn’t leave until we finally went to his shop, which had expensive leather purses and wallets and similar things.
            After we finally shook him I promptly bought and changed into a white shirt. After walking around that area for another hour or so we finally left. I was glad to leave—I really didn’t like that place. There was no variety and there was nothing interesting to buy, so after that we went to YuYuan again, this time to the Bazaar, and I bought a ton of cool stuff. Then my friend wanted to go to Shanghai’s famous XiaoChi (An area’s specialty snacks) Street, but I forget the name of it. The food we had there was not very good since we ordered two dishes of what were basically chicken bones. One big problem with regards to ordering food in China is that there is a good number of dishes that are almost just bone, and if you can’t read the menu you’re at the mercy of the waiter/ waitress. I don’t know why I didn’t learn the word for bone until today. From now on I’m going to make sure I never order a bone dish again.
            Above are pictures of YuYuan Gardens and my Chinese friend and host. The last picture is supposed to say "Mont Blanc." If you change the D to an O and make the and V into an N you'll be able to see it.
            All right, I need to get some sleep before I go to MoGanShan. I’ll write again when I get back.

Monday, June 30, 2008 1:11 AM

Beijing

We all just got back from Beijing this morning, and I think it was a worthwhile experience. I did not see much preparation for the Beijing Olympics. We mostly visited historic sites and I did not have time to go see the Stadium.
            The train ride was very interesting. At the train station there were so many people it was unbelievable and there were so many people crammed on one train. We were in hard sleeper cabins, which hardly had any room for you to sleep, let alone move around. The very top bunk had absolutely no sitting room, the middle had some, and the bottom had the most, but it was still very cramped. There were seats in the aisle that you could pull down as well. On the way there all six people in our rooms were fellow students, but on the way back there were only one or two of us and the rest were Chinese people.
            When we got to Beijing our first stop was Tian’anmen Square and The Forbidden City. I must say that I wish I had known a lot more about Chinese history before I went to all these sites. I felt like I was walking on Tian’anmen Square, one of the most important sites of China’s recent history, and I didn’t really know why it was so important. The Forbidden City, which is right next to Tian’anmen Square, gave me a similar impression. There were so many maginificent buildings but I knew next to nothing about all the dynasties and China’s ancient history. That being said, the place was still very impressive.
            I also spent way too much money on stuff that I didn’t really need. I find bargaining to be very entertaining and I rarely pass off a chance to try to buy an expensive-looking thing for five kuai. Our group went to this place called Hongqiao Pearl Market, which is this huge mall full of places that sell fake or rejected, or seemingly real, items, and it is one of the prime bargaining places in China, and they had lots of cool stuff there.
            The day after going to Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City, we went to the Great Wall, at the part called Simatai, which I thought was unquestionably the highlight of the trip. There are a lot of pics I put up on facebook. I, along with a few other guys, decided that it would be a good idea to walk the wall shirtless; unfortunately I did not put sunscreen on and so my back and arms got burnt pretty badly where my backpack wasn’t covering me. There were multiple options to actually get up to the wall, and I and a few others chose to take the chairlift. En route I was not too happy about it, but it was not as bad as being on Mont Blanc. After a short hike we reached the wall, and all I can say is that it is very, very, very long but not that wide. I would say only six people could walk on it side-by-side comfortably, maybe even less.
            On the wall there are also a few locals who first help you and talk to you and take your pictures but afterwards try to guilt-trip you into buying some souvenirs. There were also a few park rangers, or the equivalent of them anyway. The views were absolutely spectacular, as was the wall itself. I found it hard to believe that 1-2 thousand years ago people were able to build such a massive structure at such an inaccessible location. Not every part was in great repair, but the parts we walked on were all walk-able, although some stretches had walls on the sides and some didn’t, and some stretches were incredibly steep and strewn with precariously attached pieces of stone. There was one part that we were not allowed to go on: it was the highest point at our location, and the walls had fallen into such a state of disrepair that walking on them was too dangerous. I could also see a long way into the distance, there was no constant drone of traffic, and I could breathe fresh air, so all in all it was very nice, and also a good workout. That entire day I actually did not eat a proper breakfast or lunch, and that night one of my fellow students’ Chinese friends took us to this old-style Beijing restaurant and we had a feast—the food just kept coming and coming, and we all kept eating and eating, it was great.
            The next day we went to the Summer Palace, which was very nice although the smog obstructed a lot, as you can see in the pictures, and then we visited QingHua University, which had a building and lawn oddly similar to those of UVA. At a QingHua cafeteria/ restaurant we ate Beijing KaoYa (Beijing Duck) which I didn’t think was the best food I’ve ever tasted, but it was good. We went to a few more historic places, but the soon all came to look the same as there was little variation in style: they all had red buildings with the gilded dragon paintings and the same style of roof.
            I lost my cell phone on Friday, which was really a shame because I wasn’t able to meet up with some of my friends in Beijing because of it, but I found it the next day on our bus.
            That pretty much sums up the Beijing trip, although I have left out a few things, I’m sure. I did forget to mention that we stayed a youth hostel that was very nice and comfortable, pretty much like a hotel, except no tv and no individual bathroom. There was also lots of English there, on signs and people speaking it, with all kinds of accents, and it was kind of strange. As I saw so many foreigners staying in the hostel surfing the net, playing computer games and watching tv, I couldn’t help but ask myself why they were in China.
The way back was even more uncomfortable that the way up because we were with Chinese people. I talked for a while with one man who was in the same room as me, and he had an accent that I was not too familiar with, he spoke very fast, and he used words that I did not know, so I had trouble understanding him at times, but he was very patient and he kept reiterating things for me. Now as I’m sitting in my nice, comfortable dorm room I appreciate a little more having such a big bed to sleep in.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 2:35 PM

Going to Beijing
Today I took my last written test for CHIN 201 and so am officially now in CHIN 202. I think my Chinese has improved a good deal in the past three weeks and I’m looking forward to testing it out in Beijing, where there is no Shanghainese, although there is Beijingese, and where a lot more people speak standard Mandarin. From what I heard Beijing sounds like a really exciting place with lots of history, and now with the Olympics coming up it’s going to be busier than ever.
            I played tennis with my Chinese friends for a good portion of last weekend, but I also went to a shopping street and bought a Chinese Chess board, and I just yesterday learned how to play. It is very similar to International Chess. Also, my Chinese friends invited me and a couple of friends to go “roller skating,” and when we got there we found it to be a pretty cool roller skating club/bar, and it was a lot of fun.
            The picture of the flower is the painting that I did a couple weeks ago that the teacher thought was so great.
            I also need to mention that “la duzi chuan” (litterally “diarrhea sticks,” our name for meat and other food on wooden kabob sticks grilled to perfection by Shanghai street vendors) is one of the best foods I’ve had here in Shanghai.
            Last weekend I also got to string my own racquet, which I was extremely excited about. My Chinese friends showed me the tennis shop in the big gym on campus, and one of them was going to string it but then I asked if I could. It took a little longer than usual because I wasn’t used to the machine and because one of the clamps came undone and I had to redo it, but I still got to string my own racquet. It was pretty cheap, too, only 30 kuai, so about $3-4.
            I need to go get ready to go to Beijing. I’ll write more when I get back.

因为我每天努力学习中文，我没有很长时间在我的Blog写英文， 更不用说中文。不过，我希望我有空的时候能在我的Blog 写我的已经写的作文。你们过一会儿能在这里看我的作文，还有可能其他的中文的“Blog文“。