i'm a chinaman

It Comes to a Close: Pt. 1: Friday Night & Saturday

I really don’t know how many posts it will take to sum up the experience I’ve had here, so I’ll just name this part 1.

We knew this day was coming six weeks ago; we knew this day was coming last week; we knew this day was coming yesterday; we knew this day was coming today. Friday marked the last official day of the program. We wrapped up the program with a slideshow of all our photos and a final large group dinner.

Our group left dinner a bit early in order to go to KTV. The group consisted of our “group”…the people we normally hang out with. We all went together to a rather nice KTV place - oh, and it was all paid for too by one of our group members’ friend’s mother.

Right as we left dinner to go to KTV, however, it started raining. It started with a few drops, but quickly grew to a downpour. We hustled back to our dorms, but by the time we all met downstairs ready to go, the roads were already flooded with huge and deep puddles. Debating as to whether to try to get a taxi or take the subway then a taxi, we found ourselves standing in the rain for a while. Eventually we decided to take the subway, but by this time, we were all thoroughly drenched. After a rather damp subway ride, we exited and began our mission to find taxis. The road was not a very well known one (although the KTV place really stands out). Given the amount of people, we had to take three taxis. Getting the first one was easy; the second one was a bit more difficult; the third one took a while as well. The good part was that it was no longer raining, so we could find our taxi drivers in peace.

KTV was KTV. Many members of our group were coughing due to sickness…but it was very fun nonetheless. We had three hours of singing goodness already paid for. Some of the tracks were weird, some of the music videos were weird as well. But it was free and the amenities were very nice.

We left the KTV place at around 2:30 AM and began our trip to find taxis again. This time there were not only more taxis down the road, they all knew where Peking University’s East Gate was. Right as myself and two others were going to get into the cab (the last one, mind you), we get a call saying one of our group members’ cell phones is missing. We turn around and head back to the KTV place looking. We pulled apart the sofa, checked the bathroom, and checked the front desk - no one saw a phone. As we leave to decide to check the road, one of us gets a call saying that the phone was found. Oh man…no problem though.

We get back and it’s around 3AM, 3:30AM. Now normally that would seem rather late, but time was not a problem tonight. We were all pulling all-nighters, so 3AM was nothing.

We celebrated by having one more Game Night. It was a quieter game night, since many people were really tired. We tried ordering McDonalds; an order that we placed took an hour to arrive. People were coughing, people were tired. But we still had our one last Game Night (with these specific people).

I will continue on about this later. But for now, sleep!

China Adventures: The Great Wall

It has been 11 years since not only my first visit to the Great Wall, but China has well. I have come back every other or every year to visit China; however, I never really wanted to go along the Great Wall.

Eleven years ago, I visited the Badaling section of the Great Wall with my mom, aunt, and cousin. I don’t remember much, but I do remember it was raining. There are pictures of me in a poncho, standing along the Great Wall. I remember buying an “I Climbed the Great Wall” shirt; I remember buying a small Great Wall statue.

That was eleven years ago. Today, in 2012, I visited the Great Wall once again. This time, at the Mutianyu section.

We boarded our buses and began the journey. Traffic hit, it began to sprinkle. We thought it would be a one hour trip, but that quickly turned into two. We arrived and climbed up a hill. We climbed up another hill. At the top of that, our tour guide told us:

You can take the cable car. It is 80RMB for a round trip or 60RMB for a one way ticket. If you don’t want to take the cable car, you will have to walk up there. It is about twenty minutes walking.

What our tour guide failed to mention is that it wasn’t a walk - it was a stair climb, almost non-stop. In fact, aside from a few flat areas between the stairs (about 1-2 meters long), it was all stair.

We began our ascent. The rain also decided to begin falling. I must admit, the journey up tired me out. It took me a while longer than the other UC students, but I made it up there. It was indeed a rather long time of pure stair climbing. Some steps were a foot tall, making the ascent rather steep at some points.

After climbing, resting, climbing, resting, getting rained on, and some more climbing and resting, I made it to the top. I admit, the entire purpose of the trip was to go on the wall and take pictures. Needless to say, we did. :)

The rain stopped (lessened? I feel like it stopped) as we decided to take our pictures. So many pictures! Jumping picture, black-shirt picture (we wore matching shirts), girl picture, girl jumping picture, panda picture (we also had matching panda backpacks), human pyramid, and any others I may have forgotten. It was fun taking pictures on the wall. :)

As for our descent, we decided to just take the stairs. The rain had stopped by this time and it wasn’t as annoying. Not to mention the cable car was rather far and involved even more climbing. Chris and I decided to see just how many steps this “twenty minute walk” had, so we counted each step of the stairs. Long story short, there were 1089 steps for all those stairs we climbed. Going up we climbed 1089, going down we walked down (what would you use as the opposite of climbed?) 1089 steps. I can honestly say that I have never climbed that many stairs at one instance to my knowledge.

Bus ride back, nap time, and after we had all showered (although it was raining, most of us were covered in sweat…I’d say for most of us, our faces were like 60% sweat and 40% rain), we decided to go get dinner. There was a pizza place that I went to during my first week here. My cousins and cousin in law took me to a place called Tube Station Pizza, rather close to our dorms (one subway station and some walking). They made the largest pizzas in Beijing, so when I suggested it, a group of us seemed down to go.

The atmosphere was so relaxing. Although it was pouring as we walked over and our shoes were drenched and stuff, once we sat down and began eating, everything about the place seemed so…relaxing. We ordered six pizzas and an appetizer. We got two mediums…one half Hawaiian, one half Tube Special; another was one half salmon, one half Philly steak. We also got four smalls, a Mexican, Hawaiian BBQ, Meat Lovers (it wasn’t called that…I forgot the name), and a Tube Special.

The waitress was super friendly and helped us out so much. I wanted a drink, since all I had was half a bottle of water. The drinks were unlimited refills, so I asked the group of we wanted to share one Coke and just keep getting it refilled. Suanne brought up the fact that they may not appreciate that, so I decided to ask the waitress. She not only said it was okay, but asked me how many straws I needed. Oh man. We also got free hot water sent to our table too. In China, you normally get water for free…but it’s hot or boiled water, as opposed to our cold/room temperature free water in the States.

But anyway, the waitress made sure our slides were cut slightly smaller due to the amount of people (there were seven of us there). She refilled our Coke constantly. When the air conditioning was blowing cold air right onto our wet clothes, we asked her to adjust it and she did so. I mean it’s typical of waiters/waitresses to do these things, but it was how she did them that made an impact on us. She was really nice in doing all these things. And by the end, we decided we wanted to tip her, something extremely radical here in China. She helped us sort out our bill because Chinese systems here typically don’t allow splitting of bills easily (I mean, I’ve had trouble splitting bills in the States too so I wasn’t expecting it to be too easy). She broke bills for us, she told us how much to give…oh man, she was a great help!

Tube Station Pizza has a bunch of patron-created graffiti on its walls. It’s not graffiti in the common sense, but rather just being able to scribble and write on the walls. Considering that this location was opened six years ago, finding a good empty spot was hard to do. But we asked our waitress and she brought over a few oil pastels and told us to draw.

We spent 30 minutes on drawing alone. I tagged APO PP chapter, Irvine kids tagged UCI, our Riverside member tagged UCR, our two Berkeley members tagged UC Berkeley. And we all tagged UCEAP, PKU 2012 too. :)

After a pleasant dinner, we came back to our dorms, dried off, and went off to game night. We played tungst and werewolf (mafia-based game). Werewolf was interesting and fun to play! I hope we continue playing it, it was very amusing spectating.

It was a fun Saturday. :)

Study Abroad: 8AM Class

8AM class is too early in both China and the States.

Note to self/anyone: don’t take 8AM classes.

That is all.

Quick Post: Peking University Gate Guards & Lines

I have been in Beijing for almost four weeks now. Almost every day I find myself going on campus, obviously for class. Peking University has many different gates that one can enter from; each gate is stationed with guards, be it for pedestrians or vehicles.

My first musing: Every day (weekends included), there are masses of people lined up outside the East Gate of Peking University. Morning, noon, afternoon, there are always people trying to get in. There are little kids, senior citizens, and middle aged adults trying to get in. I find it fascinating that so many people want to enter the campus.

I can understand the young kids and their parents; just like we visit colleges in the United States, I’m sure parents would want their kids visiting one of the best universities in China too. Of course, the sheer difference in population certainly plays a role.

My second musing: The guards here are very courteous. If you try to just enter the gate, they won’t let you through. Not just anyone can enter campus; even all the people waiting in line need a passport/identification and other things (I’m not really familiar with what they need/the process to get in). But as a student of Peking University, I just show my ID card.

At the less busy gates (there’s a gate slightly north of the East Gate, which is the large gate that everyone uses), there are usually a few guards there. The gate I use us normally for bicycles, but pedestrians can enter as well. Cars, to my knowledge, cannot enter/exit from the gate I usually use; they have to use the East Gate. But at these gates, the guards ask to see my ID. To avoid them asking and me taking time to get it out, I usually just show them as I walk through. They normally don’t stop people.

Anyway, more than few times the guard has actually saluted to me. One time in particular, just a few days ago, I was walking up to the gate with my ID card out. The guard put down his water and saluted as I walked through. I thought it was very interesting, to say the least.

My third (and small) musing: The campus is rather well guarded, in my opinion, given the amount of people who 1) want to enter and 2) live in Beijing/China. I usually need to show my ID to enter campus. Then, to enter my classroom building, I need to show my ID once again. The classroom building EAP is in is 4 stories tall with 15 classrooms/lecture halls per floor (size of the room varies, some fit 30, some fit 200).

Anyway, it’s almost 2AM now and I’m still up…I’m working on a paper, and it’s not even due until Monday. Although, I don’t have class until 3PM Tu-Fri, so I don’t really need to sleep early usually. Anyway, more to come later, for now, paper time then sleep!

Quick Tip: Shopping at Carrefour

Although I’ve come to China many times, I’ve never bought fruit (or groceries) from the supermarket.

As I was browsing through Carrefour today, the local hypermarket, I decided to get some bananas. After all, I haven’t been eating much fruit (or vegetables)…and it was cheap.

At the checkout line, the person asked me where the barcode was. I just replied with a dumbfounded “什么?” (“what?”). The person explained to me that you have to get the fruit weighed at one of the weighing stations in the store.

Now I’ve seen these stations before…there are people standing there weighing your candy and groceries and stuff. But I thought that stuff was always a convenience.

This poor guy had to take my bananas and run back into the store and weigh it for me. It had to be a separate transaction.

And it turns out that he didn’t scan the bag either (another tip: they charge 0.30RMB for a large bag here). So I had 3 transactions total.

Moral of the story: scan your bananas (or candy, or other fruit, or groceries) in the store before hitting the checkout line.

Opinion: Subway Line 1

To start off, yes, I am still alive. I’ve been busy these past few days/weeks! Classes have started and after sorting through Week 1 logistical issues, I’ve got my schedule set.

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to express my opinions regarding Line 1 of the subway. Now before I begin, I want to say that I understand there is reasoning and logic behind why some things are the way they are. I’m not complaining, just expressing my opinions.

So Line 1 has hit the 40 year mark, having opened in 1971. Being the first subway line to have been built, it is possible (and understandable) that many attractions or areas of interest or businesses have opened near line 1. Off the top of my head, line 1 hits popular places like Xidan, Tiananmen Square, Wangfujing, and CBD. Tourists will be attracted to line 1, so will regular people who commute to and from work using the subway.

At almost any time of the day on any given day, line 1 will be full of people, comparatively at least. It’s not always completely packed, but even at odd times in the day at odd stops, there will be more people, in my experience, riding line 1 than any other line. Ridership has hit about 1.6 million daily. Without a doubt, line 1 is the busiest line of the 15 lines in operation.

First off, the people. It is entirely way too crowded, in my opinion, on line 1. There was a time when a group of us study abroad students had to pull one of our friends off the subway because it was just too packed inside. I’m a relatively bulky guy and I usually exit with ease; I helped clear a path for the other students we were with. But one student was trapped inside, being too courteous to push or shove. As a complete tourist, understanding little of the language, not having a phone or map, we couldn’t leave him. We had little choice but to grab his arm and pull him out, completely disregarding any of the passengers in his way.

I’m sure in winter, the amount of people is delightful…all these people giving off body heat in Beijing-winter weather. But in the Beijing heat, all these people giving off body heat is not a pleasant experience at all.

And this helps bring me into my second point: these trains are old. There are trains that are 10-20 years old, easy. Some trains are newer, some are clearly much older. Some trains have air conditioning, quickly rendered useless by the sheer volume of riders, some trains have nothing. Given a majority of the subway system was built in the past decade, riding these antiquated trains is quite an experience.

To add on to age, many of the subway stations along line 1 themselves look old and lack many modern luxuries that the other subway stations have. The bright fluorescent lights in the terminals gives off a 90s feeling. Newer stations have better lighting…I’m no light bulb expert, but I’d say it’s darker in the newer stations. It’s still well lit, but the lights aren’t giving off a bright, powerful yellow glow.

The subway stations along line 1 (and, admittedly, some others) lack doors along the tracks. I don’t think there’s a term for this, but basically there are doors along the entire platform with doors that open when the subway arrives. Basically, you cannot jump down onto the tracks. In newer lines, these were installed to prevent suicides (and some accidents) caused by jumping on the track in front of a moving subway train. It doesn’t really give the feeling of safety, especially when people are all crowded around. Why they haven’t installed (/upgraded) the platforms of line 1 stations, I really don’t know. Perhaps it’s an aesthetic thing? Or a structural integrity thing? I don’t know. But it’d be nice and give the platforms a bit of a modern look.

In short, the subway stations along line 1 are clearly outdated. The bright yellow fluorescent lighting along with the yellow painted walls and the dirty and chipped tiles in the stairs make the walk (or squeeze depending on the amount of riders) through the station a rather unpleasant one, at least for me. Oh, I forgot to mention, there’s a lack of air conditioning or any sort of air flow along most line 1 stations. In my experience, many line 1 stations are rather far from the exits compared to other lines. In that, I mean the ticket booth/main walking area, for example, is further from any exit than other lines. This means there’s an increased lack of air flow. For most exits, you have to walk quite a bit (compared to other lines) before you actually get to the exit.

Off the top of my head, those are the things I dislike about line 1. In short: the sheer amount of riders and the semi-outdated (because some trains are newer) trains and the clearly antiquated subway stations.

Don’t get me wrong, the Beijing subway system is definitely an amazing system. There are 15 operating lines with more still under construction, and even more being planned. It’s easy and convenient to ride. The subway/transportation cards they use is pretty cool too. The subway card can be used on the buses as well, which means public transit can be paid using one simple card. The flat 2RMB fare is very fair (unlimited transfers) and the 0.40RMB fare for bus rides is really cheap too.

My gripes with line 1 will continue to exist…I mean, I doubt the MTR will suddenly renovate all the line 1 stations and replace the line 1 trains. Everything still works. And I’m sure for Chinese standards, line 1 is perfect and the newer lines are even more perfect. But I guess my western standards and views don’t match up. However, I will continue to ride line 1; I will continue to appreciate the fact that a trip costs a little over 50 cents (US) - 2RMB to go somewhere, 2RMB to come back.

Still a great system, nonetheless.

China/PKU: Day 4, Classes and Olympics

Dragon Boat Festival - celebrating the suicide of some warrior or something who refused to surrender to some army. This warrior jumped into the water rather than surrender and so was the birth of this holiday.

We had Friday off; we have tomorrow (Monday) off as well because of this Festival. I have not been updating as frequently recently simply because of time: I haven’t had any. Last night I got back at 1AM, the night before I don’t even remember. I will make a post about the 4 day weekend soon. Since I’m lagging behind a bit, here is Day 4 - Thursday, 6/21!

I had two classes on Thursday. 9:00a-11:30a. It was on the environment.

The classroom is interesting. We don’t have individual seats with those desks like we do at UC Irvine. It’s one long table with individual seats, some straight rows in the center and around the outer edges are half-circular/quarter-circular tables with individual seats.

Back to the class. It was rather technical. We learned about PM 2.5 and PM 10, and other ways of measuring air quality. We learned about some causes of pollution in the environment and the growth/change in pollution, but we just touched those topics. There were some questions I wanted to ask. For example, the fuel used in cars here is much cleaner. They use 92/95 for gas, as opposed to the 87/89/91 we see in the States. Why is the environment so bad still? I mean I know some of the older cars are very dirty and pollute, but isn’t the fuel burned rather clean/refined? I wanted to ask that, but the topics at hand were not exactly relevant, so I decided not to ask.

A few of the Irvine kids ate lunch together. We headed to the dining hall my cousin-in-law recommended. It was more “western” - there was Asian food (fried rice, noodles, etc), there was Western food (burgers, fries, wings), and more Asian food (dumplings, shumai, buns). It was a rather nice dining hall, I think I will be eating there again.

Came back to the dorm to rest a bit, then off to the 2:30-5pm class! It was on education and the education system. This class was rather interesting. The professor made comparisons with our Western system of education. Primary school here is grades 1-6, junior high school is 7-9, and senior high school is 10-12. To get into college, you have to take the nationwide college placement exam. That exam is do or die. You take the examonceand depending on your score, you are automatically placed into a college. You have so much riding on that one exam it’s ridiculous. Very interesting. Vocational school is pretty popular here too, apparently. Similar to regular universities, you have to take an exam to get into those schools as well. Adult education here is not uncommon either. During the Cultural Revolution, there were people who were around 18-19 and should have gone to pursue higher education, but could not due to the Revolution. Thus they now pursue higher education, having been denied that opportunity many years ago.

Following class, I believe we ate dinner at the restaurant in our hosing complex. We proceeded to go to the Olympic Green after dinner. It turned out to be a rather interesting trip. I love going there at night time, because of all of the lights. The Water Cube and Bird’s Nest are nice to look at during the day, but night time is when the two buildings truly stand out, illuminated with all their lights.

Upon getting off the subway, two of us realized we had to use the restroom. After searching to no avail, we decided to use this bush in a darker part of the Olympic Green. We took turns (I went first thankfully) and that was that - bathroom trip complete. We found an actual bathroom shortly after passing the security check. Sigh.

Upon hitting the Water Cube, a giant gust of wind hit. It was nonstop for a while and the wind grew stronger. We followed suit of many people around us and we began walking back toward the subway station, going with the wind. We decided to hide behind a pillar so the wind wouldn’t hit us. After 10 or 15 minutes, the wind died down, and we continued our journey. The place we waited was practically at the security point we entered from, so we practically walked back to where we began. We made our way back to the Water Cube, took some pictures, then it began sprinkling. The Water Cube/Bird’s Nest is right in between two subway stations. It was decided that we would keep going forward and just hit the other subway station and take that. Well, the sprinkling turned into rain, which turned into thunder and lightning, which turned into us making a run for it. I was the only one with an umbrella, but the wind kicked up too! We were going against the wind this time, so there was no chance for the umbrella. After running out in the middle of the Olympic Park, we found several covered tents to run to and immediately dashed there. We had to make some choices. Would the rain die down? Nope, not to my knowledge of Chinese storms. Could we wait it out? It would be at least an hour. Can we make it to a subway station? It is a possibility. It was the only likely option, so we began making our way under the tents to the subway station.

Long story short, we were drenched when we hit the subway station. We then had to take the 8, transfer to the 10, and then transfer to the 4. I will make a different post about the subway system…hah. We came home tired and wet, but the trip was worth it. I was with good company, good friends, and trying to outrun a rain storm is something that is seldom possible in Southern California weather.

Having had such an interesting day, sleep was welcomed with open arms.

China/PKU: Day 3 - Foot Massage Please!

This is going to be a very quick blurb, since I am far too tired.

Basically, we started out our day with a tour of the Beijing Capital Museum. For the first two weeks of our study abroad program, we take some get-to-know-China-and-its-history courses. Yesterday we took a course on Chinese culture and art; today we took a field trip to a museum full of culture and art. Pretty fascinating! I can’t say I was all too interested in the museum, but there were some very interesting pieces. And besides, I get to take field trips again - I feel like an elementary school kid all over again!

Following the museum tour, we had lunch there - 40RMB for a buffet style restaurant in the museum. It was a bit overpriced for China, but compared to the States, not bad at all. There was fried rice, some Italian pasta, vegetables, etc. I really like broccoli, random fact. I don’t know why people hate it…but when it’s steamed the right way, oh man is it tasty!

Immediately afterward, we went to Xidan. Beijing’s two main commercial shopping areas are Wangfujing and Xidan, both are along Line 1 of the subway, and just 3 stops apart (Xidan -> Tiananmen West -> Tiananmen East -> Wangfujing). We got to visit Joy City in Xidan. It has one of Asia’s longest escalators or something, going from floor 1 to 6 continuously, with no stops along the way. Joy City is also a pretty large mall…there is one main area, and like three sub-areas. In total, it is 13 floors. B4 is a parking garage, B3-10 are full of shops and restaurants. After you hit floor 6, you have to walk further in to see the F6-10 escalators - you can’t really go from floor 1 to 10 directly, you have to stop at floor 6 and continue up.

We were at Xidan until around 4ish. Some of us were looking for cheap clothing because we’re super sweaty here and we want to avoid the impending task known as laundry. After failing to find anything, we decided to come back to our dorms, take a one hour rest and reconvene. I found the Silk Market (well, specifically directions how to get there) and at around 530 we left the Silk Market.

Silk Market - five floors of haggling. Most of us bought shirts and stuff, I got some souvenirs for some friends :) I’ll post a specific post about haggling experiences tomorrow. But basically, we wanted to buy shirts - lady said 105RMB per shirt. Hell no. After a while and calling my cousin and in-law, we got the price down to 55 per shirt. Still, it’s a bit pricey - almost 10 USD a shirt…nothing spectacularly cheap.

The white guy in our group (other than him, we’re all Chinese) had a tougher time haggling. He overpaid on everything he bought, which, thankfully, was not entirely too much. But hopefully we taught him a bit about haggling.

We made our way over to Xidanagainfor dinner at a noodle place - Ajisen Ramen place or something. Arrived at 930pm, place closed at 10pm, left at around 1015pm.

The subway…you’d think that around 1030PM it’d be empty, but nope. More about that in my future subway-specific post. But after a while, here I am at my dorm at 11:47PM.

Class tomorrow from 9AM-1130AM, then 230PM-5PM. Yay…

Free time!

This morning we had a lecture by Professor Ding Ning; we had an opportunity to learn about different forms of painting and other parts of culture. The class itself was 2 hours 30 minutes, and it was pretty interesting. I’m not a big art person at all, so it was not too entirely fascinating to me, but some very interesting paints were presented. Quite a few symbols were explained too. For example, if you dream you are a butterfly, you are in a state similar to that of a philosophers. Boats symbolize longevity - actually, almost everything symbolizes longevity.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting. We are going to the Beijing Capital Museum tomorrow to see more more historical art pieces. It’ll be more up close and personal, as opposed to a Powerpoint presentation, so I am looking forward to that.

But after class, a group of friends and I went to Wangfujing. I remember coming here last summer and I really enjoyed it. There’s an entire story behind Wangfujing, how it was the prince’s (something), or something like that. Fast forward to 2012 (well, recent times), and it’s a magnificent area to shop and look around. There were plenty of malls, small stores, and clothing stores. The street itself is pretty long, it was no quick trip to go from one end to the other. It was pretty crowded, and yes, it is a tourist attraction.

We went into a chopstick store, which was kind of interesting. They had sets for 100RMB, up to 700RMB, up to 1500RMB, up to 7000+RMB. These chopsticks were made from different woods and metals, I guess some sort of near-extinct tree or something. But yeah, there was a set going for over 7000RMB, which is well over 1000 US Dollars - all for a few pairs of chopsticks.

Other than that, we pretty much looked at the malls. There was really nothing that we wanted/could buy that we couldn’t get for cheaper in the States. There was a Sephora, Gap, Nike, etc. I mean it’s cool to take a look at what styles they have (actually, we didn’t go in to Sephora or Gap, just Nike), but we didn’t want to really buy anything. I mean a Nike t-shirt was going to run me around 30USD (180RMB), and that’s just a no-no for me. Definitely cheaper in the States.

After parading up and down Wangfujing, we stopped by the Night Market/Snack Street or whatever. Here is the tourist/foreigner-renowned area to find scorpions, seahorses, and starfish. My friends got some of the famous lamb skewers, which seemed to satisfy their taste buds.

I’ve got to say, this place was definitely fun. There was one part along here where we could buy small toys/gadgets, very souvenir like items. I got to haggle the price down for a few objects; using my Chinese, I helped my friends haggle too. There were these small poster scroll things that were originally priced at like 80. We managed to get a few for like 40 a person. Not too bad (though in retrospect, it’s a bit pricey…). Talked a key chain down from like 15 a piece to 5 a piece. Haggling is a fun process, especially when you speak well, and without a clear accent. Some of the vendors are really nice and chill to talk to, although they will constantly try to sell you something. I can accept that - they have to make money somehow. But it was nice having some conversations with some of them. I will be making another visit to pick up some items, however.

For my picture captioned “Some store along Wangfujing”, this was actually some poor man and woman dressed up as such to promote a free drink promotion. It was a cup of soda on the 3rd floor. I was lucky enough to snag a picture with them; a few others wanted pictures but got turned down, unfortunately. But I mean it doesn’t seem like a very exciting job. It was some grocery store with some sale going on with free drinks to get people inside. But hell, it worked - the five of us went inside to get our free drink, with one of our group buying two things.

Once again, I had a great dinner/night. My two cousins and in-law and I went out for dinner. My older cousin had a place in mind. She lives in Beijing with her husband, my in-law, so she’s pretty familiar with the place. We went to some pizza place (Tube something) and they served “The Largest Pizza in Beijing”. It pretty believable. The back-story behind this pizza place is that a white guy was studying at Peking University. The Pizza Huts and Papa Johns here are a rather traditional style of pizzas. Well, I wouldn’t say traditional per se, but it’s not the average pepperoni + cheese + crust we’re used to. Their crusts are a bit different. But anyway, this guy opened his restaurant to cook only American-style pizza, and hey, seems pretty successful.

The pizza we got was a medium. It wasn’t a large or an XL, but rather a medium. The pizza was huge. I put a plate next to it, along with my normal sized utensils - fork and knife. Oh man, it was great. Hawaiian BBQ + the special. Not a bad price, not a bad meal. Good times. Spent over an hour talking with my cousins and in-law there, just sitting and chilling.

Ok, it’s nearing 12AM (well, it’s past that now). I will post more later that aren’t just day-recaps and hopefully they will be interesting. For now, I’m really tired and I will be headed off to shower and then sleep!

Gifts

Headed to Wangfujing later, might stop at Xidan too.

Let me know if anyone wants anything!

China/PKU: Day 1

Today is the end of day 1, I guess, of my trip.

We didn’t take any classes today, just a few orientations about living in our dorms, what is expected of us, etc. Went on a tour of the campus. The tour itself was not too big of a deal for me, personally, because my cousin in law showed me around last summer. But PKU is a remarkable university. It was originally built right at the end of the 1800s, at the turn of the century. Several buildings still reflect the architecture of the time (keep in mind, this was a time when the Qing Dynasty was still in power, so there was an Emperor still ruling at the time). The scenery is absolutely beautiful though. So much greenery around campus, the lake is really stunning, as well as the pagoda. I mean, how many schools have a huge lake with a pagoda on campus? The campus itself is also rather huge. Safe to say it’s tens of times the size of UC Irvine, probably tens of times the size of UCLA as well. I mean the sheer size alone allows for the lake and pagoda and greenery to be there without taking up too much vital classroom space. Absolutely stunning campus, very traditional.

After our tour and stuff, we had to find the dining hall that our undergraduate student tour guide pointed out to us. Actually, there were several dining halls and cafes on campus that we saw during our tour. There were various stores too, selling water, ice cream, refreshments, etc. There was even a mini convenience store! Hopefully that will provide some better prospective of how large the campus is for anyone who is reading this. To find the dining hall, we basically backtracked our entire tour. Even using the campus map, it’s hard to navigate partially because some buildings don’t have large signs that say the name of the building, so we couldn’t really pinpoint where we were on the map either. After wandering around, we finally found the dining hall.

Food was an interesting situation. I loaded 100RMB onto my student ID, because the dining halls and cafes on campus don’t take debit card/cash. And for the dining halls, rather than a swipe in like we’re used to, each dish or whatever has a certain price. It’ll be rather cheap, but dishes are priced and stuff. My meal came out to about 6RMB, which is close to 1USD, not too bad for rice and two dishes.

I also learned a lesson about reading characters too. The dishes had names in Chinese, telling you what was in it. But I didn’t notice. I grabbed a dish with some green vegetable and egg in it, figuring it was a normal Chinese dish. When I sat down to eat it, I ate some egg first with my rice. I thought it was a bit spicy, but not too bad. I proceeded to eat the vegetable…holy shitit was so flipping spicy. I guess it was some sort of pepper or something (trust me, it didn’t look like a pepper at all, looked like a regular leafy green). Holy crap…downed my water, ran to the counter to buy another drink. Never again…for anyone reading who doesn’t know, I don’t eat spicy…

We had dinner at the same place too, but it was more restaurant style upstairs - it was an EAP event, not “lunch on your own” sort of deal. Not too bad…we had some Peking Duck, but it wasn’t the best. I’m not a big fan of duck, but then again, it’s not too bad at all. Drank some all right beer (Yanjing), but I prefer Tsingtao. No refrigerators in our rooms, so even if I buy some beer to keep here, it’ll just become warm - weather is 95+ outside during the day.

Following dinner, a few of us (Chris, Will, and Steven) went to look for Carrefour. We had to take Will to the Airport Express subway line, because something happened with his luggage. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I know the subway here pretty well. Since I visited Beijing last summer, and stayed here for about a total of 2 weeks, I went on the subway every day. It’s pretty simple to navigate…it’s fast (if you’re going like 10+ stops away it’ll take a while, but faster than walking and cheaper than taxi!) and pretty fun if you ask me. The subways are pretty new, actually. Lines 1 and 2 were the original subway lines built in the 80s or something and it wasn’t until the 2000s when all these additional lines were built. Obviously, more lines were built because Beijing had won the 2008 Olympics bid…it’s truly remarkable to see how quickly the subway system exploded. There are about eleven lines total now, with additional lines/stops being built. To put this into perspective, when I first visited China in 2001, there were only Lines 1 and 2. Eleven years later, there are nine new lines with so many new stations/stops. Eleven years is a long time, but it’s almost an entire new line a year, which is pretty impressive given how many stops there are. But to be honest, I don’t really have a point of reference for subway building time frames.

Anyway, we took Will on the 4, transferred to the 10, and after close to 8 stops, arrived at the Airport Express line, and dropped him off. Taking the 10 back to the 4, we went to an area near my cousin’s place. There’s an 85 (the bakery…) like 3 minute away from their place, so we visited there. Chris and I are both from Irvine, so we were like “aww yeah!”, Steven is from Seattle/UC Berkeley, so he was like “wut”, but yeah, pretty fun. Eventually found the Carrefour (a hypermarket chain - not a supermarket, but a flipping hypermarket LOL)…we were on the B1 level, trying to find food/soap…all they had was like furniture, bikes, etc. After looking around for a while, we finally found the escalator to take you up to the 1st level, which had all the food and stuff. Oh man, so many things, so good, so cheap.

I had a good first day, I’d say. I’m tired AF from all the walking, but it was nice to bond with people. I dunno, I’ve grown so close to APO people that it felt and still feels strange to be out of touch with them (kind of), and not be able to see them/hang out. To be honest, I was kind of lonely Saturday and Sunday…although I had my cousins and cousin in law, they were busy too. They have their own things going on, we all got to hang out and stuff, but when I was at the dorm by myself, it was kind of lonely. But it’s been getting better. Not too bad, really.

The dorms here are great in that although it’s a “triple”, we have our own bedrooms. So we have one common living area with a “dining table” and a TV, and we have three bedrooms, one for the each of us, and one shared bathroom. Each bedroom is private, has a desk, bed, closet thing (like in the dorms, not built in closets), and a night stand. Almost everything is lockable too, so it’s pretty neat! The view from my room is amazing too…I’m on the 10th floor and I can see quite a bit! Pictures on facebook later.

I am once again living with a Korean roommate :P haha. I miss Min btw LOL. But he’s from Korea, studied on San Diego for 6 months, and has been here at PKU since last August. He’s moving out this August though, as his program concludes. My other roommate is Japanese, actually. Straight from Japan, doesn’t speak English, but speaks Chinese pretty well. We don’t see each other too much, since they seem kind of busy with their school work, but once their tests are over, we’ll probably chill or something.

It’s about 11PM here now, so I will be heading to sleep soon. One of the benefits of being here, I guess, is that there’s no Facebook activity or AIM or whatever to make me sleep late. I mean I guess I could stay up to 3AM here and it’ll be like 12PM in the States, but it’s summer! No one is going to be online to talk to me from like 10AM-12PM there!

I’m happy though. :) Dinner with my cousin and in law tomorrow night, they live here so we’ll eat well for sure!

Will post pics soon.