Back in the US

From China's east coast to my home east coast - I'm back from my trip. My sleep cycle isn't entirely restored (some adjustment has happened, but I'm still not feeling sleepy until around 4 or 5am, and then sleeping until about 11:30am each morning), I'm not used to seeing so many waiguoren and not hearing Chinese everywhere, and my stomach is still getting used to DC cuisine. What is DC cuisine? It's a menagerie of everything, a smorgasbord of international diets. In only the last week, I have had Thai, Mexican, Americanized Chinese, Indian, as well as pizza, sandwiches, oatmeal, and shredded mini wheats. I just realized how much I actually love sandwiches! Sounds strange, but when you don't have them for a month, you really miss 'em!

Switching back entirely to English is interesting. The environment makes it a smooth transition, because of course I have grown up speaking only English in this area, around the same people, so it's simply picking up where I left off; I can simply think and speak, instead of think, translate, and speak. I'm concerned for my spoken Chinese though -- my difficulty with learning Chinese has been largely due to my rare actual usage of it. As I saw in Tianjin, what you learn in a classroom and from a textbook isn't necessarily what you use in day-to-day conversation. I'll have to really try to stay in tune with Chinese news, podcasts, tv/movies, and other media to at least keep my listening comprehension in practice.

Things I miss about China:
the prices,
our Nankai teachers (language, tai chi, etc.), and our new friend Zhao!,
being outside every day (you can get away with staying inside virtually all day here),
the crowds of people,
the ridiculous extravagance of the KTV industry,
"gangster clubs,"
E-mart,
taxi rides (hair-raising but fun and convenient, esp when the drivers are chatty!)

Things I do NOT miss about China:
the lack of toilet paper in public facilities,
the standards of "sanitation" in public facilities,
spitting,
risking my life in traffic on foot or inside a bus/taxi,
the option of only Chinese or "American" food,
the lack of diversity within the population,
mosquitoes, (although I tried doing tai chi in the backyard the other day, and my ankles were definitely bitten by other equally-enthusiastic insects)
the laundry facilities (I love dryers like I love sandwiches)

It's great to see friends and family again, and now that I've been back, my trip to China feels like it was months ago. The purpose of the trip was to expose us to as much of the different parts of China as possible, which it did. From here on, it's up to me to individually start to pursue the rest of it.

Thanks for reading, those of you who've kept up with my blogs! Stay tuned...who knows, maybe there will be a RobynInChina2009.com!!

再见!!

I was Shanghai'd!

So our last weekend trip from Tianjin was to Shanghai, via train. This train ride (10 hrs) was definitely more comfortable than the ride from Xi'an back to Tianjin (almost 20 hrs), but the experience of waking up and having that feeling of travel grunge just can't be avoided. I slept on the top bunk (of 3), and this is the aerial view I had of the Go game happening on the bottom bunk:

Shanghai is definitely more condensed a city than Tianjin, and the famous skyline was quite impressive.

Aside from the skyscrapers everywhere, I actually was not as blown away as I thought I would have been. Shanghai is featured in hundreds of films, travel reviews, novels, etc. as this exotic hub of Asia that is the epitome of style and modernity, but I couldn't help feeling underwhelmed. It definitely had a more modern feel to it than the other cities we visited this trip, but I suppose I was expecting an environment similar to Tokyo or Hong Kong (the Tsim Sha Tsui district), and comparatively, I didn't feel it measured up.

The night scene is definitely a treat; these pictures were taken at The Bund (I'm still not sure what a "bund" is, but I'm guessing it's a strip of vendors next to a river) around 9:30, 10 at night. Every five minutes a different ferry sails by, and many buildings have intricate electric light designs rotating through the various patterns. The real sight that evening was the memorial commemorating the Chinese civil war between the Kuo Ming Tang and the Communists:

<-- This one is from underneath in the direct center, looking up

This one is from the front, at the base -->

Granted, we weren't able to spend a considerable amount of time in Shanghai, so perhaps my perceptions are skewed, and the city is actually everything I have heard it is. That's definitely possible, and I do know there is no way you can accurately grasp the concept and magnitude of any city in two days. Every city has so many aspects to it that many people who themselves live there never see everything there is to see. I'll just have to go back and do my own investigating :)

Outside the city, we visited an international school, and were able to sit in on a few elementary and middle school-level classes. One part of the student population is made up of Chinese children taking English classes for the summer, the other part is comprised of non-Chinese children learning Chinese (many students' parents have moved to China for work/business). All the children learn in classroom environments, and have a full day of Chinese (for all children), art, math, English (for the Chinese children), and sports. I think we all learned something new just sitting in on the Chinese classes!

During the weekend, we were also lucky enough to see a temple in Shanghai (although it started raining halfway through), a river cruise with some gorgeous scenery and fish ponds, and Dr. Chen's brother's factory in neighboring Hangzhou.

Another whirlwind weekend, so much to see and do, but we managed to fit in one last kareoke night!!

Terracotta Soldiers!!

I have a new favorite Chinese city: Xi'an. Xi'an was NOTHING like what I expected it to be. I was expecting a smaller, relatively rural and remote town with mostly tourists, and what I got was nothing of the sort. Although it is technically smaller than Tianjin, Xi'an is much more densely arranged, with both people and buildings. It's a really interesting setup - it's an ancient city with historic architectural sites, but around and within it has sprung a busy and vibrant city. See the picture on the right, the ancient bell tower acts as the center of a traffic roundabout, with a huge shopping mall in the background.

This is a view from inside the drum tower, which was used originally to signal the time of day, and then also for announcing weather forecasts (I may have that wather part incorrect...). Both the bell and drum towers had some interesting exhibits, and I was debating picking up various souvenirs, but I kept deciding not to, since everything is so mass-produced. I figure my pictures are the most authentic items I left Xi'an with.

It's the most fascinating blend of old and new I've seen. The city is still surrounded by a moat and a large wall, which originally shut at the end of each day and opened the next morning. One of the more fun parts of the trip this weekend was renting bikes for an hour to ride on top of the wall, which was much more physically demanding than I expected, haha. But, I'm excited that I have ridden a bike in China! Only not with hundreds of other bikes and traffic, which we have seen in so many movie scenes in America. Actually the other day, my classmates and I were riding in a taxi and we saw a woman on a bike who had been hit by taxi and was laying on the ground. Traffic is so dangerous here...

The highlight of the weekend for me was visiting the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Emperor of the Qin dynasty. Seeing the excavation sites in person and all the

terracotta and bronze sculptures was amazing, truly breathtaking. It's funny, since there's so much to see, we are always told "meet back in 45 minutes" or "alright you have 15 minutes, that should be plenty of time," but I could honestly spent countless hours at each location. I would love to return to these sites for research in the future. There was no excavation happening while we were there, but there were sites set up and in progress. The actual location of the Emperor's body has not been opened yet, as there has not been a method yet created to preserve the integrity of the artifacts inside; it will be extremely interesting and historic when the tomb is finally excavated.

After visiting the soldiers, we went to a palace that the emperor had created especially for Dowager Cixi. It is quite large, and very peaceful. Every evening there is a light show and a performance, which likens the location to the World Showcase events at Epcot Center at Disney World (Orlando, FL). Also, we visited a mosque and the cultural street of the local Muslim population.

The Chinese population is 95% Han ethnicity, and the remaining minority ethnicities seem to all cluster together in various neighborhoods. Xi'an happened to have a dense community of Muslims, and we saw an "ethnic minorities neighborhood" in Beijing. It would be interesting to do a socialogical study of the various groups in China, and learn the different norms and taboos; apparently intermixing of ethnicities is not common, as the 5% has not been absorbed by the overwhelming majority thus far.

It's the last few days of my experience in China this year, so I'm going to try and make the best of it!! I'm excited to go back to the U.S., but I've really grown accustomed to my daily routine here. There are always pro's and con's, a significant CON would be the usage of trains between cities! We traveled via rail from Xi'an back to Tianjin, which took around 19 or so hours. It is mostly huge masses of people being herded from one area to another in sweltering conditions, and heaven help you if you are either physically disabled or have more than an airplane carry-on-sized roller suitcase, and you should just forget travelling altogether if you are both disabled and have luggage.

(Sidebar: I'm really not sure how the handicapped population of China gets anywhere -- every site we have visited has been non-wheelchair-equipped. I wonder if there are government efforts to install thousands, probably millions are needed, of handicap ramps and railings in preparation for the Olympics??)

Anyway, the train was certainly an experience, and we take another to Shanghai this weekend, but I have heard that it will be more comfortable and cleaner. Let me tell you, waking up in the middle of the night in a shoebox that has been mounted onto the wall, with five other shoeboxes around you, with your skin sticking to the wall, searching around you for your shoes in the dark, climbing down a metal ladder without kicking anyone in the face, all to go pee into a hole in the floor of a shaking railway car and making sure you don't slip on who knows what on the floor surrounding said hole, and then reversing the process to get back into your shoebox is NOT the rail equivalent of "flying the friendly skies." When we first boarded the train, it was cute. "Yay for bunk beds and trains and long sleepover trips" quickly turned into "let's play how many diseases do I think I have contracted?" But, as my classmate said about biking the wall of Xi'an, it builds character. We should all be the most character-laden people you'll ever see once we get back. :)

Got to run, but hope you all are doing well!! See you soon!

Zaijian!

Beijing Opera!

Da jia hao!

The highlight of today was above all, our second culture class this trip of Beijing Opera, with Li Laoshi. We watched two clips of CCTV interviews he was in, and then he taught us to sing, and then the best part, we were able to dress up in traditional Beijing costume. It would have been great just to sing, but to actually get involved with the dress and makeup was just amazing. We were each famous characters, each with different roles. I was a goddess that descends from heaven spreading flowers and travels across the world, others were famous emperors, army generals, empresses, etc.

This is me:

The amount of preparation is really incredible, and there was an extremely efficient team. Makeup was used to create facial features that are actually exaggerated to the point of being artificial (see: my eyebrows.), all the hair you see consists of several pieces, all flowers and jewels around the front are added individually, and then the clothing is all puieced together by about three people. The downside was that everything from the neck up was tied together with many straps of cloth, so several of us were getting headaches, and actually getting a bit dizzy by the end. I can't imagine having to perform an entire opera in all the gear, especially when singing and acrobatics are added!

This is our whole class, in final dress:

One of my favorite aspects of this trip is the series of culture classes we have. We really are lucky to be able not only to learn about the subjects covered (t'ai ch'i, wushu, calligraphy, Chinese painting, Beijing Opera, etc.), but also to be taught by professionals. I have learned a great deal, and it is an opportunity we may not have again.

To the left is Li Laoshi, teaching us (or trying to, haha) to sing Beijing Opera.

Tomorrow it's off to Xi'an to see the Qin Emperor's terracotta army and a martial arts school!

I'll write later on, hi to everyone!!

Miss you!

~Robyn

Welcome to Beijing! aka, "So, I climbed the Great Wall of China yesterday"

Hi everyone! (Da jia hao!)

This weekend we went to Beiijing on a whirlwind trip. Saturday morning we left around 6:30a and arrived by bus about 2 hours later. First, we stopped at Tian An Men (City of Heavenly Peace) Square (this is me, cheesing really hard, and my friend Katie, outside Tian An Men), where we saw several government buildings, memorial structures, and the actual body of Chairman Mao. Seeing Mao was an experience, because it is highly regimented and highly secure. Bags and purses aren't allowed, and neither are cameras. Metal detectors and x-ray machines are present, and an older man carrying a small boy on his back was yelled at by a guard to throw the child's candy away before entering the memorial. No lagging and "dilly dallying," as my parents would say, is allowed, and people are barely allowed to whisper once inside. There is huge support for Chairman Mao; several people were purchasing flowers to lay under his portrait inside the memorial while bowing and paying respects. The line is hurriedly ushered through a room that has the body of Mao inside a glass-enclosed area about 10' away from the lines of people, and you aren't allowed to stop walking. One elderly man bowed three times to Mao's body, and then fell to his knees and started praying, but guards rushed over and pulled him up, telling him to keep moving. Mao's body seems to be embalmed, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the body itself is a stand-in. It looks exactly like wax sculptures I've seen at Madame Toussaud's in London, but the body is far enough away that you can't tell for sure.

After Tian An Men, we drove over to the Forbidden City. Initially, I was actually really disappointed. Everything is so modern and commercialized, with a basketball court and makeshift parking lot in the midst of street vendors and shops. Here on the left, you can see soldiers performing some kind of training exercises in the outer area of the City.

We passed through the main gate and then I found I was not to be let down. It opened up into a vast area of palaces and relics, and the first view was this:
The picture here doesn't do it justice, but imagine stepping into this site and thinking about the history behind it all. Trust me, it's pretty breathtaking.

There is a lot of restoration and construction happening, but many things are in their original state (according to Xiao Ma, or Little Horse, our tour guide). If this is indeed true, I walked on 600 year old bricks, the same as thousands of royal family members, past emperors, and who knows what other historic figures!

The next stop was the Summer Palace, and by this time, the weather had begun to turn rainy and dreary.

Beautiful islands and lakes shrouded by mist and fog; it was an almost eerie feeling, but after visiting the two other sites, everyone's energy was beginning to drag. We took a ferry (see below, right) over to another side of the island, and then explored the longest walkway in the world. The area was gorgous, but the weather dampened the aesthetics.

Something happened after we disembarked from the ferry that has been happening to us actually quite frequently in China: a small boy, about 10 years old, runs up to us and says "Hello!" At first I thought he was selling something, because he was carrying several touristy-looking things. We said "hello" back, and then in perfect English, "Welcome to China! Will you take a picture with me?" Foreigners are few and far between, but definitely in greater amount at the popular tourist sites like the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. Even though there were plenty of other non-Chinese at this point, he appeared so fascinated and eager to capture his foreigner siting. This happens every time we leave Tianjin, without fail.

We then left and went downtown for an evening of the famed Beijing Opera. I studied a little bit of Chinese opera at Maryland, in my ARTH 489 class, and I was loving it. I can understand it was probably not too interesting for some of the others, because many of the sounds are piercing and not in accordance with Western music tastes. It was great to see how it is still revered after so many years, and I'm glad we were able to see it live.

Finally, we headed for the suburbs, staying near Sunday's destination, the Ba Da Ling section of the Great Wall. The Great Wall was definitely the most physically challenging destination so far, with insanely steep and what I would actually call treacherous terrain. Hundreds were there, and I'm not sure how so many elderly (70 year old's, plus!) were hiking around on the wall! It's actually kind of of dangerous, and I was worried with all the uneven bricks that someone would fall, but no accidents. The picture here doesn't capture the steepness, because each time I reached a peak or valley, I would look around to see if I could take a picture of the low/high points I started from, but they weren't visible in the mists.

Upon reaching one end of the Ba Da Ling section (about a 45 min, 1 hour hike), we turned back and had lunch (Peking duck!) and haggled with street vendors for souvenir prices. Apparently, the vendors told Dr. Liu (our professor from Maryland) that we were very polite and respectful during our time there. I am much more comfortable bargaining now, by the way, and usually you can get your price if you know how to act. I'm collecting a nice little treasure trove of souvenirs, and I'm sure I'll be adding to the collection this weekend when we head to Xi'An to see the Qin Emperor's terra cotta army of soldiers (SO EXCITED ~ I am thinking about doing research on Emperor Qin Shi Huang later on, maybe during my master's pursuit...)

Now I'm back in Tianjin, and pretty much exhausted. Several of us Maryland tongxue (classmates) are having some stomach issues, including me. Maybe it was Beijing, maybe it's being always on the go and having little downtime, maybe we just caught something going around, but it's not serious. It's just enough to feel under the weather and want to sleep all the time. Time to go take a nap and then get my homework done.

Hope you enjoyed the post!

Zaijian!
~Robyn

Week Two - Part Two

Ni hao everyone!



I'm having some camera picture loading difficulties, so no pictures this time, but more will follow soon, I promise. :)



Yesterday was my class's day of final exams, so there aren't any classes for the rest of the summer. As a result, Nankai University has graciously had two teachers step forward to personally teach myself and my roomie Monica for the remainder of our stay, beginning this morning. Classes are from 8:30a-10:10a and 10:30a-12:10p as usual, only this time it's like having a private tutor. The classes are entirely in Chinese, and let me tell you, trying to explain things like "luckily" and "movie director" in Chinese to us is quite amusing. I have learned a lot today alone, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how much I can absorb during the rest of my stay. One thing that's interesting, for those of you with a penchant for linguistics, is how varied the pronounciation is within ONE dialect. For example, the Mandarin word for "who" is "shei," which I've always been taught was pronounced "shay." But here, people don't recognize what you're saying unless you say "shui," which sounds more like "shway." I know that probably doesn't interest 90% of you reading this, but it just earmarks what a tough time learning a foreign language can be, especially when literally billions of people speak it. I've had so many different teachers, I wonder what I sound like to a native speaker; probably extremely geographically confused with my myriad of accetns, if nothing else. (high school Spanish students, you know what I'm talking about - the "th" thing, lol)

As a result of having virftually one-on-one lessons, I will be having a hefty amount of homework each night. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this is the time when I miss my instant internet access I was so accustomed to at home. No opening a laptop and having an immediate connection with the rest of the world. Also something I miss, my mom recently sent me an email about one of the best shows on American television these days, So You Think You Can Dance. I definitely miss my call-in-and-vote shows. (American Idol, see you next season!) :)

Today, I went and had my hair cut at a Kerastase salon (a well-respected international hair product and styling company, for those of you who prefer the $7 haircut and are unfamiliar with this particular line...ie Dad...lol). I had an AMAZING head massage, and they microscoped my scalp and hair (I could have done without that, you know I'm queasy with seeing my own cells), and then I showed them a picture in a magazine of the style I was looking for and...no. NOTHING like what the picture was. I'll have to post a pic next time, but let's just say, I'm as uber-stylish as the native Chinese girls here now. Which means I feel ridiculous with the result. Half of me feels extremely Chinese, the other half more like a 50s actress, with the volume and flips and rounded-to-the-side bangs. Short in front of my shoulders, long in back, my brother would definitely call this a not-so-distant relative of the mullet. I am undecided as to what to do right now...but it did cost me only about $10 US. Small price for all the hair they took off...I'm leaning more toward just keeping it completely tamed with clips and hair thingy's. To be continued...

Alright, that's all for now. Beijing Saturday!!

Zaijian!
~Robyn

Getting Into Week 2...

Ni hao everyone!

Alright, so this post is infinitely more comfortable as I've discovered the computer lab on campus, and no longer have to sit in an environment of greasy keyboards, obsessed gamers, cigarette smoke (it's apparently fine to spit and throw cigarettes out on the floor), and generally suspect activities. It's raining very heavily outside, and three classmates and I swam our way over here after a dinner of fried pork and pineapple, and pork and seafood dumplings. I've never had so much pork in my life since being in China, by the way. My earlier thoughts of considering being a vegetarian have been put on hold for this month, as it would be virtually impossible to stay fed here were I to not eat meat.





The rain is welcome, as it's usually quite muggy and humid, and it is actually causing the smog to disperse temporarily. This is a picture of one of the bridges into Tianjin. Two things to notice: first, the sculpture is in the style of Western art, but maintains Chinese physical features, and second, the hazy slightly brown air is actually accurate of what we see every day.

As an aside, during the same bus ride we went over that bridge, we came across several amusing signs like this, warning against drunk driving (there is a car inside a wine glass, with various alcoholic beverage containers flying out the windows).


This past weekend we went to Tai An, the hometown of Confucius, or Kongzi. We were able to view the Kong graveyard, which currently contains 74 generations, from Kongzi himself, his son, grandson, and so on. Apart from the graveyard, there were many sites for prayer, and the compound was filled with several separate houses for the members of the Kong family to live. The picture on the left is of the main gate to the Kong compound.

The area has become quite comericalized, with countless vendors selling the same things - personalized name "chops" and fans, fake jade jewelry, small figurines of Confucius and Mao, etc. We ran into hundreds of other tourists, all of them Asian. Aside from the historical sites, our group seemed like the main attraction everywhere we went. After leaving Confucius's town, we visited a site that had been erected in honor of the achievements and contributions of another great Chinese philosopher, Mencius. This was a much quieter and less busy area, and non-Chinese are rare here. The elderly and children especially would stop walking/biking/playing and just stand and stare as we walked by, with expressions as if saying "they really do exist!" These reactions have become the norm for our group, and the following day, Sunday, when we ascended Mount Tai (Tai Shan), a child asked us if we would take a photograph with him. It doesn't bother me, and I always wonder what runs through people's minds when they are one of those with the incredulous looks on their faces. I wonder what kind of international exposure children receive in different areas of China. It's interesting to contrast with my own life; one of my groupmates Mike commented that for us in the U.S. to have such a reaction it would take something extremely exotic, or perhaps a celebrity. Even then, living in the Washington, D.C. area, celebrity sightings are not so rare.

The weekend was amazing, so many historically significant and culturally filled sites, I feel honored to have had the chance to see one of them, let alone all of them. This coming weekend were are headed to Beijing and the Forbidden Palace and Great Wall, and the following weekend is what I am really looking forward to, Xi'an and the terracotta soldiers of the ruthless Qin emperor Shi Huang.

I have found Chinese class to be tough to keep up with, both in class content and the actual class itself! This morning after t'ai ch'i and breakfast, I headed for class as usual, only to find for the second time that no one was there. Class schedules are highly dependant upon the teacher's schedule, and we somehow were not on the same page with the frequent changes. It turns out class had been moved to 1:00-4:40, instead of 8:30-12:10, so my roommate Monica and I took advantage of the free morning to go to the ever-reliable E-Mart (Yi Mai De) for some grocery shopping. The country is getting ready for the summer Olympic games, and logos and the five Olympic mascots can be found just about everywhere you turn, like this kite we found in Shandong province while learning about Confucius. Our taxi to E-Mart had its seats covered with an Olympic-themed motif, and tiny mascots hanging from the mirror and the ceiling. The city of Tianjin has also constructed a huge enclosed stadium to house Olympic soccer matches, but is closed for tourists at the moments. Olympic fever is permeating the radio and television too; every morning on the tv news we hear about the preparations and excitement surrounding the Games.


Thanks for your comments! It's time to get down to homework and then bed; tomorrow we have 7am t'ai chi as usual, and then our second round of wushu in the afternoon following classes and lunch. Sleep tonight is crucial, as last week's intro to wushu on Tuesday sent all of us into a week of pain and strained muscles! I'm looking forward to it though, I miss martial arts and getting a taste of it once more has convinced me to take it back up when I return to the U.S.

Hope you all are well, I miss all of you!
Zaijian!
~Robyn