My Life as a Student in Beijing

      So I've been here at CET for almost two weeks now so I think it's time to tell you a bit about my life here and what I've been up to.
      First, my living situation. Full disclosure, upon first glance my thoughts about my dorm and the surrounding area was that it was...crappy. The school is small it's in a crowded shopping area with lots of people just chillin' on the side of the road in front of their shops. Also the dorms are no where near as nice as my dorm at James Madison. So you can imagine my...let's say disappointment at the idea of having to live here for two months. However, I quickly put my thoughts into a different perspective.
    At the first day of orientation (June 12th) one of the first things our Resident Director touched on is how in China, these dorms are considered very nice. She said how its not uncommon in most other Chinese universities to have 6 girls in one room. Here it's two people per room and some people are even in singles so they don't have a roommate. So, even though the bathrooms are kind of...eh and the room seemed small, and the walls are bare and scuffed, it's totally safe, absolutely livable, and nice if you can adjust your expectations a bit.
   My friends and I walked around a bit yesterday and I managed to get some nice pictures while the sky was blue. It has been raining the past couple days and when that happens the next day is usually really nice ('cause it clears out some of the pollution).

This is the entrance to our school,
The Beijing Institute of Education.
At night the gate is closed and there
is always a guard nearby (you can see him
in the back there).

This is the entrance to my dorm 西楼.
I live on the second floor

(from right to left) my roommate 舒放 (shu fang)
and my friends Eric and Mario

    The pictures above show the street that our school is on. It's fairly small and lined with shops and tiny "restaurants" like the one depicted below. Most of these shops have really cheap clothing or food stuffs such as ramen (which is quickly becoming a staple of my diet along with rice and watermelon). There's also a little hole in the wall place across the street that sells really cheap water and alcohol, two of the most important components of the student food chain. (On the first night, while hanging out with a bunch of the people here at CET, many of them had already decided that China was one of the best countries on the planet because alcohol is so cheap and they don't bother carding you or anything.) Down the opposite direction of this street you can find many more shops such as pharmacies and less sketchy restaurant and food places. One of my favorite places to eat is a dumpling restaurant that is just a couple minutes walk from the dorm. There is a small, little local park near are dorm that a bunch of the residents go to. We went by there the other day and got to try our hand at some ping pong, suffice it to say our skills were severally lacking, but it was still a really cool look into the everyday lives of people here.

Most of the shops and "restaurants" down this
road look like this. The shop at the end is where they sell
a whole bunch of ramen.

    Once you reach the end of our street and turn you see this big shopping mall called Korea Town. For some reason chinese people love Korean things enough to make a whole shop around it.

The back of Korea Town

    You keep going down the road past Korea town and turn and you feel like you're in a big city again. There are rows and rows of shops and little fast food places. The district we're set in is a shopping district so everyone comes here during the day to shop and walk around but it gets pretty quiet at night.

    Below you can see a particularly interesting restaurant chain that we stumbled upon. It's a Bruce Lee restaurant! We ate their the yesterday (June 21st) at it was actually okay, not a five star restaurant but better than McDonalds. Several days earlier when we were eating at the dumpling restaurant, we were watching a kung fu movie that was playing in the room. During one of the scenes this very serious, very bad ass guy whips out his mad kung fu skills and takes out the fifteen bad guys who had surrounded him. After that scene my friend Max turned to me and said "he ate at the Bruce Lee restaurant".

The Bruce Lee restaurant in all it's glory

Another shot of the area around my school.
You can tell it's much more metropolitan and big
city-esque.

   Then you go three minutes in the right direction and you end up in an area that looks like the picture above, very open and grand with the city sky scrapers in the background. After being here for two weeks I have definitely grown to like it. Yes there are pros and cons but it's good not to dwell on either and just kind of go with the flow.
   Speaking of pros and cons, besides the quality of the dorm there are several other things that have taken some getting used to. For example, which kind of water to drink and which kind of water to avoid. The water from the showers and the sinks you really shouldn't drink. It isn't treated in any way to make it drinkable, it's purely for washing. You can use the faucet water to brush your teeth, I have seen most of the students here (chinese and american) doing that but I personally opt to just use bottled water or water from the heater (each bathroom has a water heater that keeps the water at 100 degrees Celsius so it's drinkable). Like I said before there are many little shops around that sell huge jugs of water for cheap so it's very easy to stock up. Another part of life here that took some adjusting is the fact that we have to bring our own toilet paper. There isn't any toilet paper provided for us just chilling out in the bathrooms, it's up to us to purchase and bring our toilet paper to and from the bathroom. Also, you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet, the plumbing system can't take it or something. So instead every stall has a little bin in it where you can throw away the toilet paper. Another huge adjustment is figuring out which places are safe to eat at and which places you avoid. It's pretty much a no-brainer to avoid street carts. However, if for whatever reason you're in a dire situation where your only option is a street cart, pick one that has a lot of people at it. If there are a lot of people at one cart and nobody at the cart next to it, there's probably a reason why nobody is going to that other cart. Also at certain restaurants, you can tell when they are a little bit nicer or safer when they give you boiling water to drink. This shows you that they are careful about the type of water they use. When Dad was still here we went to a hot pot restaurant and they gave us each a cup of hot water. At the time we assumed we were supposed to use it for our soup but now I know it was actually to drink. However, even at regular restaurants where no one else has a problem you can have a bad reaction to something. I was the lucky one in this case and got to experience a slightly more than mild case of Chinese food poisoning.
      It was Monday June 16th, we had we signed the language pledge and had our first day of classes. That evening my friends and I went to this Sichuan restaurant that our Resident Director had talked about for dinner. She said it was fine and she'd never heard of any student complaints before so we decided to go. We ordered some kind of orange chicken, beef and potatoes, and this spicy green bean dish with rice. The rest of the day I was perfectly fine, no problems what so ever, well...except for a pounding headache and several frantic dashes to the bathroom (not to be graphic). That night I woke up and my whole body was shaking. At first I thought I was just really cold, up till that point I had a bad habit of turning my air conditioner up really high before going to bed. But even when I put on long pants, socks, and a sweatshirt it wouldn't stop. So I went to my friend Max (who is an amazing human being that didn't complain about being woken up at 2:30 in the morning) in tears telling him I had no idea what was wrong with me or what I should do. Anyways, to make a long story short, after calling our Resident Director (who gave us permission to speak English), taking my temperature and discovering I had a fever, we set off into the stormy night to go to the hospital. I wasn't by any means in serious danger, I did have a fever but it was relatively low. Just the fact that I had woken up in the middle of the night and was in a strange country kind of made things scarier, so I went with the "better safe than sorry route".
       The hospital we went to was an ex-pat hospital so they all spoke english (yay to no language barrier). The doctor who treated me even had a very western-cowboy sort of saunter to him. When he walked in the room I half expected him to say "Ni howdy" as opposed to the chinese hello "Ni Hao". He also had a very "rub some dirt in it and you'll be fine" sort of attitude to my condition, but in his defense it was 4 o'clock in the morning at that point and I was no were near in serious condition. So basically they found out I had "travelers diarrhea" which I was very common, gave me an IV with some stuff to stop the quesiness that had developed and to make me feel better, then sent me home with some Imodium. And that was my experience with a Chinese hospital, exciting I know.
      Besides the toilet, water, and food situation, the hardest thing of all to get used to is the language pledge. One of the core principles of the program I'm doing is that you sign a pledge saying you won't speak or listen to any english while you're here. Which means no english movies, tv shows, music...anything. Even the classroom is completely and totally in chinese. The most challenging part about this is it makes it very hard to express your self. For people who are in higher levels (I'm in 150 and the program goes up to 400) it's not as challenging and they have more freedom to talk. However, for those of us on my level or in the beginner level, having truly meaningful conversations is basically impossible unless you wanna do it all in writing or through text. Classes are really challenging too because if you don't understand something you can't ask them to tell you what they mean in english. However, I did have an amazingly beautiful moment the other day. While in my speaking class I forgot that I was speaking a foreign language! That's right, while sitting in a class that was ALL Chinese I understood everything that was going on and forgot that we weren't speaking english but we were actually talking in a language I've only been studying for two years. Of course this is all due to my amazing and incredibly patient teachers, Wang 老师 (laoshi = teacher/a respectful title) and Luan 老师. So, I know this program is working and despite all the frustration, my chinese has already improved immensely.
         Even with the very apparent language barrier I have still managed to make friends and have a lot of fun. Before the language pledge started a bunch of us made a little trek over to Tiananmen Square and the five story tall Beijing Books Building. My first mission upon entering the book store was to find Harry Potter in Chinese and it was....successful! I bought the first Harry Potter book which in Chinese is 哈利 波特 (Hali Bote). I also bought three Chinese children's books which you can read phonetically, meaning that above each character is the pinyin and the tone (however they are still a little too advanced for me).
          On Friday (June 20th) me, my roommate, and two other friends just stumbled upon the Beijing International Tea Expo of 2014. Which is totally ridiculous, especially since I am such a major tea enthusiast.

It must have been fate.

The incredibly lavish front of the convention center.

Nothing makes me happier than tea...well except maybe
books.

       At this expo they had stall after stall of all sorts of different tea brands. We of course picked up a couple free samples and wandered around for a solid hour or so just admiring all the different kinds of teas.

      Some stall had really cool displays like the one below where they created a design out of tea leaves. There were also many stalls with beautiful tea glasses and amazingly carved tea kettles, all of course very expensive and completely impractical for me to purchase.

      They even had people in old fashioned costumes. I'm not entirely sure why but my guess is to show the history of tea and the important role it has played throughout chinese history...or something.

Some off duty actors. I don't think
the guy is too happy about me taking
his picture.

       That night CET took us to an organized program to go see a Chinese Acrobat show. This one was much better attended and much better funded then the one my dad and I had scene earlier.
       Saturday, a friend of my from JMU who is actually from Beijing, Shirley, came by and took me and two of my friends to a very famous and very popular Hutong called Heizhima Hutong. This Hutong was really pretty and really crowded. There were shops lining the whole area and plenty of great and unique things to buy and eat. I got some very funny and random post cards with interesting chinglish on them as well as a gorgeous tea cup. My two friends Eric and Max both got seals of their Chinese names that looked really cool and I'm sure will have many uses in the future (slight sarcasm there). We ended the day with eating at a cafe which actually sold western food. For the first time in two weeks we used forks and ate a meal that didn't include rice.

The beautiful Shirley here to take us
on our Hutong adventure.

Our first look at the beautiful but crowded
Hutong

At this cafe, not only can you get food, drinks, and wifi, but also friendship!

The very tall and slightly grumpy Max.

The always good for a laugh Eric.

          One thing they told us about in the multiple orientation seminars we had to go to is Cultural Shock and it's three basic stages. The first stage is called the honeymoon stage. During this time you think everything about China is amazing. It's a magical fairyland that is a thousand times better than any where in the states. Then, the next stage is something akin to resentment. Everything about the host country is awful simply because it's not home. During this stage you are determined to dislike anything and would go home at the first opportunity. Then, finally comes the last stage. Where you are content and happy to be where you are. You see China as neither a mystical fairyland or a rotten pit. Instead, it's just another country where you have decided to stay for a while. It's a country where you can see people going about their daily lives just trying to be happy and live well. I had a rough go of it at the beginning of this program but I think I'm finally starting to move my way into the final stage. I'm happy here, and I know this experience has already helped me grow and learn in ways I have never expected. Who knows what is yet to come.

     So until next time, be safe, be happy, and remember...

Apologies For The Technical Difficulties (final)

Day 5
Six Star Hotels and Thousand Year Old Statues
     I'm going to take a moment to touch on the absolutely spectacular hotel we had the privilege to stay in while in Xian. According to our guide it was a 6 Star Hotel (which, before coming here I didn't know was a thing) that use to only be for governors or government officials when they came to stay in Xian. But now it has been opened to the public and it is absolutely gorgeous. The entire hotel has several wings which are basically separate buildings with different types of very lavish furnishings and fancy restaurants. The area is gated off so you don't even really feel like your in China. My Dad kept saying how much it felt like California. The air around the hotel also seemed fresher and smelled like jasmine and magnolia. So, three cheers to China tours for helping us get such good digs.

A little lobby just for the elevators

This is the East Wing of the Hotel

Probably the fanciest part of the hotel.
One of the bell boys followed us around so I was too
self conscious to take pictures inside

   So just by driving from the airport to our hotel I had decided that I liked Xian better than Beijing. The reason being is that Xian felt less like a big city to me. Yes, it is technically a "big" city, but Beijing had more of a New York sort of vibe (and New York isn't one of my favorite cities) where as Xian felt more like London a bit or a San Francisco (at least according to my dad), so it was more appealing. Plus, the weather was very nice and we were lucky that there was very little pollution.
  Our main focus for Day 5 was the Terracotta Warriors. We first went to the factory where they do all the restorations for the Terracotta warriors with traditional tools and techniques (you could also buy your own terracotta warrior or have a model done of your face and put it on a warriors body).

They had hallow molds outside the factory so we each got a chance to be a warrior

At the factory, hammering the clay into a part of the mold.

    Then we saw the warriors themselves.
    The terracotta warriors were discovered by a very poor farmer who had been trying to dig a well. However, instead of finding water he found a clay head. When the initial shock of discovering a piece of pottery that at first appear real wore off, he reported it to the government. When the government took over the site as an official historical site and began to understand the expanse of the project, the farmer was awarded millions of dollars. The excavation of the site is still going on today. There has only been one warrior found completely intact. The reason for this being, the Emperor who had commissioned the making of these warriors died before their completion. And when forces came in to take over as the next dynasty they raided and burned the tombs that housed the warriors. Since their discovery, archeologists have been working tireless to restore and reconstruct this marvelous collection, it is expected to go on for decades.
  The museum it self is separated into 3 pits, not including the exhibit with the emperor's chariots. The 1st pit is the biggest, number three is the smallest and suffered the least amount of damage from the raiders, and number 2 houses rows upon rows of un excavated warriors waiting for future generations to discover them in a way that will keep the color from fading like they have on the uncovered warriors.

The red marker is where the farmer dug the well that lead to the discovery of the warriors

These statues are some of the ones undergoing restoration

Here you can see the desolation these statues suffered at the hands of the raiders.
Many were completely smashed.

This is Pit 3, where the chariot would be held.
Many of these warriors were in better shape because
this pit wasn't attacked by raiders.

The kneeling archer is, as of today, the only Terracotta warrior
to be discovered intact.

On the back of the Kneeling Archer you can still see some of the original color.
Also, the attention to detail on the sole of his shoe is remarkable.

   Though the Terracotta Warriors was our big site for the day we still had one more destination. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda Scenic Area is an important cultural relic and is one of the only remaining symbols of ancient Chang'an. It also survived through 6 earth quakes. The first one caused a major crack down the side but then the second one closed it off. Then with the third earthquake the crack happened again, but the fourth one caused it to closed. The cycle repeated again until scientists discovers that the foundation was built in such a way to prevent it from collapsing, which was why it would open and close.

   Dad and I ended our last full day in Xian with another extra excursion offered by China Tours, however this time we were accompanied by the two Australian couples (and probably four of the funniest people I have ever met). This excursion was a dumpling dinner and culture show! The food was great, the company was fantastic, and the show was beautiful. The culture show showcased traditional chinese music and dance such as Ribbon Dance and several really cool music numbers with just percussion instruments or some type of brass instrument I have never seen before. Overall it was the best possible end to our day (and tour) that I could imagine.

DAY 6

   Was our last official day on the tour. Part of our group had already left for different destinations so it was just my dad and I and one of the couples from Australia that went out into the city for one last time. We saw the Xian city gate that used to be the entrance to the Emperor's city (much like the forbidden city) when China's capital was in Xian. It was massive and very solid, of course nothing like the Great Wall but still very formidable.

   Then, for our final destination we visited the Great Mosque, which is one of the oldest operating Mosques in China, then explored the great and very colorful market around it.

   Once we were done with the market it was time to part ways with the remaining members of our group. Later, Dad and I took a 5 hour train ride (don't worry we'd paid the extra to be in first class) back from Xian to Beijing. We had another brief...let's call it "adventure" with trying to get a cab from the train station to our hotel in Beijing but eventually managed to get back alright. 

DAY 7

   Dad and I spent some time wandering around Beijing on our own. Our time with China Tours had ended in Xian so we relayed on our map and natural navigational skills to find our way around the city. So of course we ended up getting lost, or as my dad likes to say "we took a daddy short cut", but eventually with our sense of humor and my dads superior map reading skills, found where we wanted to be.

   When our exploration of the city was done, I returned to the hotel, collected my stuff, and we took a Taxi to the Beijing Institute of Education. Which is where I am now participating in the CET Language Immersion program.

And...now I'm officially caught up. I will have a post up either tonight or tomorrow about what I think so far about life as a student in Beijing and CET program.

Until then, be safe, be healthy and remember "adventure is out there!"

Catie

Apologies For The Technical Difficulties (Part 2)

Here is the second part of my catch up post!

DAY 3
The Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall

   Once again we started the day early with a delicious semi-Chinese, semi-Western breakfast then it was off to our first destination. The Temple of Heaven!

  But before I go into the beauty that is the Temple of Heaven, let me talk about a bit of the culture we saw around it. So, before you get to the actual temple you walk through a sort of park. Our tour guide, Richard, told us that this park is free for locals to enter and many will come with food and stay there all day playing games and exercising. While we were walking through there were so many older people playing card games, doing their morning dance exercises, or just hanging out and talking. It was really great to see so many people going about their daily lives in garden that is hundreds of years old like it's no big deal. It was a really cool part of chinese culture to witness.

  So after walking through the park we got to the actual Temple of Heaven (pictured above). The intricate details and ornate designs were very similar to what I saw at the Forbidden City but still just as breath taking. Plus, we were lucky in that the rain storm from the previous day had cleared out a lot of the smog so the weather was very beautiful.

Dad and I in front of the temple

Close up of the ornate designs

   

  After spending some time walking around and reading about the history of this important building we were making our way towards the Echo Wall when we spotted something interesting. We saw an older gentlemen wearing what appeared to be an original Mao era uniform. 

Older gentleman wearing a Mao era uniform

  Seeing this was another interesting glimpse into Chinese culture in that it showed me how prominent that era of Chinese history still is to Chinese people. As Americans we often forget what Mao and his time meant to the Chinese people and this example made it evident to me how proud some Chinese people are of their history and culture and how much the believe in what Mao did.

  Then it was on to the Echo Wall which was still in the Temple of Heaven pavilion. The Echo Wall is a circular wall that surrounds the Imperial Vault of Heaven. When you stand in the exact right spot, if you clap you can here it echo one, twice, or three times. Also, if you speak into the wall at the right volume, someone on the other of the wall can here you. The Echo Wall faces the Circular Mound Altar which has a stone in the exact middle called the Heart of Heaven where the emperor would stand to pray for good weather. Now it is said to be good luck to stand on it.

  That concluded our visit to the Temple of Heaven. But our day wasn't over yet. We still had to see one of the 7 wonders of the world, the Great Wall of China! About an hour drive out of Beijing, the view of the country side and approaching mountains that house the Great Wall is absolutely breath taking. We parked the bus at the bottom of the town were one of the more popular spots of the Great Wall is then walked up steep hills and through a small market area to get the ticket. No, we didn't walk all the way to the Great Wall. Our tour guide told us that it would take almost an hour (probably longer for me) just to get to the wall. So instead we took a cable car to the top. Actually being on the top of the Great Wall was surreal. Just thinking about how great a feet it would be to erect a structure like this even in present times, and the Chinese were able to do it thousands of years ago. It is completely astounding.

Mao had his name carved into the side of the mountain so that it would be visible from the wall.

Taking a breather, just walking the wall was hard, I can't imagine the struggle in building it.

  With that we were done with the official schedule of the day. However, my dad and I decided to be adventurous and go on an extra excursion to the a Beijing Acrobatics show which our tour guide recommended. He took us off the beaten track by subway then by bus to a small little theater in a much...different part of the city then what we had previously been used to seeing. The show its self was...interesting. It was nothing awe-inspiring or totally captivating but I did enjoy watching the people around them and seeing their reactions to different things. We also had our first experience with taking a taxi on our own in Beijing. Unfortunately, my chinese skills are severely lacking so we ended up just calling our tour guide and having him tell the driver the address. But, obviously, we got back to our hotel with no problems.

DAY 4

Hutong Alley and Xian

    Day four was our last day in Beijing with the tour. It was an easier day in that all we did was take a rickshaw through a type of old neighborhood called a Hutong and explore for a bit. We saw inside of a traditonal Hutong home and met a girl who does the gorgeous paintings on the inside of glass bottles. I really enjoyed this but I especially liked the tea house that we managed to find. Our tour guide took us there and Dad and I got to try some excellent chinese tea that I have really grown to love since being here.  

With two people to a Rickshaw we were a parade of westerns through the Hutong

A final picture of our tour bus in Beijing

  Once we were finished exploring the Hutong we said farewell to Richard and left to take a plane to Xian. (The rest of the group took a train to Xian, which we ended up taking back to Beijing, so we didn't see them till our first full day in Xian).

This concludes the second part of my make up posts. I hope to have the last one up tomorrow.

Until later, be safe, be happy and remember "Adventure is out there!"

Catie