Shi Laoshi, Sam, Annie and I boarded the bus from Deshengmen to Yanqing. There was hardly any space left, and we got the last four seats in the very back corner. The bus roared to life and an incessant, high pitched humming sound came from behind my head, and then we began to go. Our immersion had officially begun. The English we had forsaken earlier that day was just getting us ready for the tremendous journey ahead. I finished my English homework reading and began to read 神奇宝贝, which is Pokemon in Chinese. The landscape changed drastically over the hour and a half we rode, from a cityscape to the great wall winding its way over treacherous mountains, to our destination, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The biggest one looked like a knife stabbed at an angle into the ground. The lot of us got off the bus and hailed a cab to take us to the school, arriving at 3. It was a large building on the outside of the gates, and as we pulled up, every window in the main building was filled with students waving at us and shouting, 哈罗. “HAAA-LUOOOOO!” We waved back at them and felt their overflowing warmth as we walked into the campus and our jaws dropped. The campus was enormous. It had buildings as far as the eye could see, with sports courts jumbled between them, hallways under stadium seating for the track field and bikes parked neatly in corners. We dropped off our stuff in the dormitories before they split us up and put us in our separate classes. I was gaoyi shiyi ban. I walked in and they made me introduce myself before picking a lottery number, number 7, and kicking out the corresponding person from her desk. I was now sitting in the very front right of the class room. Classes continued from when I entered at 3:30 all the way until 5, when we got out for an hour and a half dinner break. One of the kids pulled my arms and said, “Run.” I didn’t ask questions, I just hopped over my desk and ran out the door after him. We bolted down the flight of stairs and out the side door of the school building when he led me through a shortcut in the track fields. While we were running, we saw some other people coming up quickly behind us and through the gates that surround the field, we saw people running wildly, like an entire army of undead were at their heels. A minute and a half of a flat out sprint later we arrived at the cafeteria, with hardly any line for the food. My new friend, Li Yan, bought me my lunch and we sat down in the back of the cafeteria. His friends soon followed. The food was pretty decent, and the kids all asked me questions, that look like a blur when I think back on them. We finished up our meal and then they took me to play ping pong. I wasn’t too good and they all demolished me. Sam came over to another table and played, though unlike me, he’s good, and held his own against the Chinese kids. We all returned to class at 7:30 and then they had to do a self study until nine. I was beat by the end of it and when the bell rang, three of my classmates said they were my roommates and we went back to the dorm. It was cold in there. I chatted with them and then went to bed.
The alarms went off at 5:47, and I remained huddled under the blankets, as cold as the frigid air outside. It was nothing like the warm weather of Beijing I had just left. I got out of bed and threw on my uniform jacket, which was the only thing that I took off. It just served as a protective layer against dirt. Three of my 5 roommates got up and went to have lunch in the cafeteria again. We ate baozi and soup, both of which warmed me up. The soup felt like drinking liquid vitality. We went back to the dorm and woke up the other two before heading to the classroom across campus and sitting down in our seats to start class at 7. The classes varied and my comprehension of the topics did too. At 10 the bell rang and we all went outside to line up, we then ran in lines, in perfect unison, each step matched every other classmates step, until we got to our designated place in the field. We started the calisthenics by massaging ourselves. First our ears, then our temples, then our head and last our neck. They believe that doing this makes their heads clearer and that will help them test better. We then moved onto a dancing routine, and while we danced we heard the shouts of the gaoers from a different stadium and I could only imagine what they were doing behind those walls. Afterwards, most of the classes returned to their classrooms except mine and a couple others. We were having gym class and I went and played basketball with the kids. I actually did something and people wanted to have me on their team. Classes dragged on after gym class repeating the routine above, with a lunch break scheduled in from 12 to 1ish. I played ping pong again during the dinner break and I felt that I was getting better. Self study went on for a while and I felt extremely cold. We went back to the dorm and even the blanket was cold.
I woke up on my third day of the immersion feeling like I would rather die than get out of bed, but I didn’t want to waste my precious time immersed in the school system. So I went to class, head throbbing, mind fuzzy and for some reason understanding everything that the teachers were saying. But I didn’t care what they were saying, I was cold. It was unlike any cold I’ve ever felt in my life. I clawed for warmth within the threads of my clothes, hunching over and answering when called on. We had morning exercises and with each step I took, my head felt like exploding. My body ached and at the end of the exercises they made us run back to the school. We got in and sat back down in our seats when the loudspeakers blared, “You didn’t run perfectly enough, do it again.” We went back outside and did the whole thing over again, but stopped in front of the school where they made us stand in the sun, for which I was grateful, and gave us a speech. We went back to the classroom again, and had chemistry. The teacher put chalk against the warped inward, green chalkboard and asked me if I remembered any of it. I shook my head and eagerly awaited the lunch bell to go and get something warm to drink. I wasn’t even hungry. I drank two hot chocolates when I went to lunch. Each sip felt like warmth was flowing through my veins. It was the best hot chocolate I have ever had. I drank it and I didn’t feel as bad as I did before and some of the kids took me to a museum, the Yanqing Museum. I asked my friend Yali how he felt about Mao and he said he was 80% good 20% bad. That was a bit of a deviation from the norm. Yanqing had felt the wrath of the War of Resistance against the Japanese back in the day, and there were many exhibits about it. I suddenly lost my second wind from the hot chocolate and went back to the classroom where I passed out on my desk and slept until someone woke me saying English was starting. The teacher had me read a passage aloud, but my voice was in pain. And I should’ve known something was up for my voice had surpassed the deepness of James Earl Jones. When I finished the page long passage, the entire class stood up and applauded. My sick voice was music to their ears, and music class was next. I was getting ready to go to class when one of my classmates pulled me aside and said, you’re going to the nurse. I just stumbled to the office with him and they took my temperature. It was 39 degrees. And I began to wonder if that was high or not. Apparently that is very high. They wanted to take me to the hospital, but a call to Bi Laoshi convinced them that I should just go to the dormitory and rest. They gave me lots of bitter Chinese medicine, and I went to my bunk and slept. The person in charge of Judelou dormitory came in and covered me up with more blankets and brought hot water, and a canteen filled with hot water. He told me to drink it, but I just put it under the blankets and let the heat radiate out and get trapped under them. I went to sleep. Darkness, then I’d open my eyes and I’d see the same guy walk in and say, drink more hot water, before fading back into darkness. I came to again and the room was completely in twilight. I shuffled to the restroom and back, which was one of the most painful walks of my life. My entire body ached. Every single part. I went back to sleep and my roommates came back looking at me, and caring for me, tucking me in and making me more of the Chinese medicine. I told them I could do it, but they wouldn’t let me. I went back to sleep with my whole body in pain, dreaming of what comes with banana milkshakes.
I had gotten nearly 15 hours of sleep when I awoke on Saturday morning, ready to head back to the classrooms for a half day of classes. Luckily my class only had self study and I could relax and take it easy from the day before. I had brought a copy of Brisingr with me and started reading that to kill the time until we had to leave. By the time the clock struck 11 I was willing to go and destroy Montana for ever having encouraged this man to write such a waste of my time. Yali took me back to his village. We got on a bus and rode until we were in the middle of nowhere. The only thing was this road and in both directions you could see nothing. This was where we got off and began walking through the fields on the side. Barren apricot trees were planted as far as the eye could see. No tree donned even a single leaf. We kept walking until we hit a bunch of new looking houses with an ancient looking one here and there. I was welcomed into the village of 东红寺.We went to his house where I met his mother. They lived in a courtyard house and it was completely barren on the inside. They had a guard dog chained up in the garden in the center. He barked at us and I felt bad for the emaciated shepherd. We walked around the village and talked with his grandparents on both sides. They told me haunting stories of the War of Resistance against Japan. They told me how the bombs had rained down from the sky and killed their friends and destroyed their houses, they told how they ran into the fields and hid among those very same apricot trees I had walked through to get here, and how the Japanese invaded a nearby village and many of their friends were raped and murdered brutally. This is why there were some ancient buildings littered among the newer ones. Those were all that had survived. The Japanese didn’t even bother coming into the village, according to Yali’s mom’s side grandma, because it was already gone. Laolao, was upset and the memories brought tears to her eyes, and even the man imitating a dolphin on the TV couldn’t lift her spirits. I don’t do her stories justice; I can’t possibly with how little time I spent with her. There were other villagers, but I didn’t ask them about the war, they were only interested in me. We saw the water tower, which used pressure to push all the water into the pipes, before walking to the ruins of a temple and played ping pong outside of it. We headed back to his house and his dog, huzi, barked excitedly at us before we started playing Chinese computer games, and he told me the problem with school text books only being used once. The inside of his house was the exact same temperature as the outside of the house so I went to bed in everything I had. It was a meager 10 degrees outside.
I woke up the next morning to a draft from the window and the wind beating against the window pane. I looked outside and it was snowing. We hung out indoors for the whole time, and I watched huzi outside, shivering in the snow. He was trying to huddle in the lone blanket that he had, but it was already frozen stiff and against the ground. He took shelter under a piece of firewood hanging out from over the pile. We walked back to the bus station. The snow covering Yali’s black hair, and made him look as if he aged thirty years. I felt the snow, whipping around wildly, get stuck in my 5 day beard. There was already an inch and a half and it hadn’t been snowing for long. We walked back through the apricot trees, and I imagined what it must have been like, running through these trees away from everything you ever had or knew as well as away from death. We waited at the bus stop for about ten minutes. It felt odd, two others came up too, a deaf, mute married Chinese couple. What an odd lot as the bus pulled up, two Chinese adults signing to each other, one white person wearing a Chinese high school uniform and a high school student. We got on the bus and were off. The way back looked completely different covered in snow. The buildings wavy roofs now looked as if the waves were breaking. The snow kept falling and it felt like a blizzard. We got out at the bus stop and headed to the school, where they showed me where they were raising deadly scorpions in their dorm, and then a friend’s house. We chilled there, in the warmth of his apartment, before he gave me a gift that was a Scrabble-like Chinese game. It is a blast, and soon after we departed for lunch and then met up at the Bus station with Sam. We had not been able to get a hold of Annie so the two of us hopped on the direct bus back to Beijing and talked about our adventures, before getting sucked into some homework that we had put off. The bus went back through the change in landscape, from snowy mountains, to mountains, to cityscape. Beijing was still cold, but there was no snow. Chris was waiting at school for me, and when I got there, I ended my language pledge and spoke English for the first time in 5 days. I had a lot to say.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Update: Bye for a week
As you probably didn’t know, I applied to the 五日浸泡, or the five day immersion program, on the last possible day I could, (mainly because I’m too lazy for my own good.) I just received my response and it said, “Congratulations! The faculty has reviewed your application for 五日浸泡 and agreed that you would be an excellent representative of SYA at the Yanging Number One High School.
You will be participating in this activity on the following dates:
Wed, March 25-Sun, March 29
Details will follow.”
At first I was extremely happy, still am, but I soon realized that I have no time to celebrate my birthday. I’ll be gone the whole weekend before and after. No worries though, I just consider the immersion my birthday gift. Well that and going out for banana milkshakes afterschool on Tuesday. Homemade ice cream and hand crushed bananas in one glass. Best beverage on the face of the planet in everyone’s opinion who has tried it. Anyways, that will be my excuse for my lack of returning e-mails for the next week. There’s more to come on my immersion in the near future, seven days to be exact. I used to joke about having to make time for people in my schedule and look at all the stuff written on the back of my hand then say, I’m free. Now I legitimately don’t have time with a clock ticking until I 恋恋不舍地离开中国.
The wrong guy, the wrong situation, the right time to roll to me.
You will be participating in this activity on the following dates:
Wed, March 25-Sun, March 29
Details will follow.”
At first I was extremely happy, still am, but I soon realized that I have no time to celebrate my birthday. I’ll be gone the whole weekend before and after. No worries though, I just consider the immersion my birthday gift. Well that and going out for banana milkshakes afterschool on Tuesday. Homemade ice cream and hand crushed bananas in one glass. Best beverage on the face of the planet in everyone’s opinion who has tried it. Anyways, that will be my excuse for my lack of returning e-mails for the next week. There’s more to come on my immersion in the near future, seven days to be exact. I used to joke about having to make time for people in my schedule and look at all the stuff written on the back of my hand then say, I’m free. Now I legitimately don’t have time with a clock ticking until I 恋恋不舍地离开中国.
The wrong guy, the wrong situation, the right time to roll to me.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
So... when did you do homework?
Three trips to Qianmen, one to Xiushui Jie, one five hour bike ride, one visit from old teachers and classmates, one rescheduling, one breakup, two cheer up session, one scolding, one presentation, one count of trying to use a hotels pool, one awkward escape, one victorious round of milkshakes, one trip to a temple, one account of a temple being a house, another count of said house of having extremely friendly residents, two tests, three quizzes, one time sitting out in the middle of Beihai lake on a paddle boat, just the two of us, one time at a Xinjiang restaurant, one showing of Pulp Fiction and one day of rest wasted on homework. That was my week.
Ok… I think that might be the back cover to a short story. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as interesting… to you. So I’ll only address a few of the things mentioned above.
I walked into school and checked my email, finding one from my school’s tour guide; they were inviting me to go with them to the Gugong… in twenty minutes. I politely declined and went on with my day. I scheduled a dinner date over working on the Yearbook with Lauren for Tuesday, so we could work, talk and spend time with each other before she went on the five day immersion into a high school on the outskirts of Beijing. I was in high spirits despite the Chinese test and got home when my phone received a text in the kind of English that when you see, you know isn’t from an American. It was inviting me to go to Tiananmen tomorrow and then dinner. I responded in Chinese that I couldn’t go to Tiananmen. The response back was extremely happy that she could now use Chinese, and invited me to dinner. As if some sort of suppressed loyalty arose from the depths of my soul, I said yes. My heart was torn now between my school and my “interest.” I cursed the timing of the whole situation as my pendulous brain swung back and forth between Lauren and school, school and Lauren, but there was nothing to do but to forsake dinner. I went to sleep upset. We had a quiz and then I bolted early during a free period to go and meet my teachers and classmates at Qianmen. They told me to go to Tiananmen riding bus 22 but I rode the subway and got off at Tiananmen and they were actually at Qianmen which was a bit aggravating because I could’ve just rode to Qianmen, but I digress, I got lost and found my way eventually. Ran into Matt, Kevin, Mrs. Weelinberg, (sorry if I butchered that,) and Mr. Costello, and they asked me questions and such and I had an answer for everything. It felt like I hadn’t really learned as much as I could have before talking with them and then I realized that living here has been like a stream of knowledge flowing to my brain without me knowing it. They weren’t taking me to dinner right away and we went to Xiushui Jie, Silk Street and the guide taught the kids how to bargain. I didn’t mean to scoff at the advice but I had my own methods. I walked through there with Matt and bargained for him, and talked in general with the people in the stalls. I ran into one that remembered me from the last time and wanted to say hi to my dad. According to Matt I sounded fluent, but I felt nowhere near it. There’s so much more to the language. Afterwards we went to dinner and I talked some more. I felt bad for not letting others talk as much and I saw some of the girls on the trip look at me like they hated me. Of course I probably looked at them like they were babied princesses. But I digress, I left at eight with one hour left before curfew. I got up to leave and so did everyone else. I was a bit quicker getting out the door than everyone else and I was in a cab and on my way home as they all exited. I imagined it like a movie, sort of like how batman disappears on a moment’s notice. I went home, beaming at the improvement of my Chinese… comparatively.
The next day was even more of a sauna than before. Gavin began spreading his own secret around. I’ve promised him I won’t tell anyone. I said goodbye to Lauren and Jamie as they went to immerse themselves and then went with Ian and Annie to go finish our project on Qianmen. We rode our bikes from school to Qianmen. It was simply suffocating. Not only have I not visited a gym in about 3 months, my bike doesn’t go very fast. It hits its top speed at the time where everyone else is just casually gliding along. We arrived and went into the Hutong’s and found places forgotten by the map. An ancient 5-star Brewery, old famous musicians houses, the China Club Beijing, as well as finding places being torn down and rebuilt, both of which I went over and helped do. From shoveling torn down bricks for a 60 year old migrant worker and almost using the saw for rebuilding the ancient style hutongs, I did it all. We talked with them about how they felt about tearing down the history and they said as long as they get paid it doesn’t matter. Most of the migrant workers were from Hebei province. I went into a courtyard home with Ian and talked with the lady there. She was 83 years old, originally from Hebei, but couldn't lose her accent over the forty years she's lived in her house. She also had bound feet that she tried to hide in shoes that were too big for her. She was extremely nice and enjoyed talking with us, inviting us back whenever we wanted to drop by.
Ian got pulled into an art gallery and we ended up going with the owner to find an apartment to rent for his parents. The place was not suitable for parents and we left. I threw together the PowerPoint and went to sleep after being on the road biking for five hours.
Our presentation apparently went well and a bit too long. Had another quiz. I went home with no plans for the first time all week, and ended up talking with Chris about girls. He was not sure about what to do with his relationship issue. It felt like it was slowly dying, and that wasn’t good for him. So we came to the conclusion it should end. For both their sakes. That only took two hours of discussion. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be a tad messy.
I had another test, and was officially done with my Chinese midterms. Also had a math quiz. After school Chris did it. Breaking up is never pleasant. She walked away before he had a chance to explain why and he walked over to me and looked a tad upset saying I’m single. I told him we’re not going to let his mind dwell on the breakup and try and get his mind off of it, so Ian, Warren and I were going to take him out. We were about to head out when Dan walked up the stairs asking Chris if everything was alright because he saw Sophie crying. So far we were off to a bad start. But we went back to Chris’ place and made videos to cheer him up, and then Ian decided we were going to go swimming… at the Hyatt… in Wangfujing. The pool was amazing according to him. So we got all our stuff, our suits, towels and shoved them into our bags as we walked out of the house into the unfathomable haze of Beijing. We stood there feeling like this could be the start of a movie and or TV show. Oceans 4 or maybe 3 ½ Honkies. But we got in a cab and arrived in Wangfujing. We wandered around trying to find the hotel and we did. It was high class. The four of us walked in, single file carrying our bags over our shoulders and descended to the mall underneath the hotel to plan out our mission. The whole place was marbled with fountains and it began to make me feel a bit nervous. We found a deserted elevator landing and hit the down button to get to “the oasis.” We stepped out of the elevator and saw a counter manned by two clerks and we tried walking into the pool when they stopped us. “What is your room number?” Ian spat out 713, and they started checking it while Chris and I snuck back to the elevators and hit the up button and watched the numbers go down slowly, like a will o’ the wisp leading us to our death as the clerks began to question Ian. They began to get suspicious when the doors opened and Chris and I bolted in, the doors closed and we were about to head up when the elevator stopped and the doors opened on the same floor. Our hearts were in our throats. It was only Ian and Warren being pissed off at us for bolting at the first sign of trouble. The guards at the doors we came in were looking at us and talking on a walkie talkie so we went out a different exit into the crowds of Wangfujing. We ended up going to the giant bookstore and buying some books. Warren left and the remaining three of us went to Grandma’s Kitchen and got milkshakes and lemonade… which don’t mix too well, but were both delicious. We left the restaurant at 10:20 and realized that we had forty minutes to get home before curfew. We ran back to the populated section of Wangfujing and tried to hail a cab, but none of them would stop. We ran to the regent hotel and I asked if they could help me get a cab, but the employees told me that they all went home. So it was now 10:40 and we began to run home, when we found the mysterious line 5 subway line, hopped on, got off at Jishuitan and hired a xiao che with five minutes left. We told him to stop in front of the school because he was driving too slowly. We got out and ran with one minute to spare home. We ran into our compound and split, running up separate staircases making it home as the clock turned 11. This was our second time we almost didn’t make curfew by a minute.
Saturday had finally rolled around and I invited Karina to go out. We had plans to go to Beihai. We hopped on a bus and rode to Qianmen. We walked through Tiananmen and through the western exterior of Tiananmen along the lakes and through some hutongs. We saw an interesting looking temple and went inside. It was beautiful, then we heard the sound of voices chattering and it turned out it was a house. We talked with them about the place, their past, how it was turned from the temple of thunder into a house after liberation, etc. Some Taiwanese people came in who were exploring the neighborhood and explained to us that they were looking for all the eight temples around Tiananmen and that this was one of them. We had stumbled into the ancient thunder temple. Our hosts invited us inside their designated room and we talked and sat and it was just incredible. Try and find an ancient thunder temple in Cleveland. Good luck. This is why I love China. We exited after they invited us to come back another time. Karina and I continued to wander around until we got to Beihai. We walked into the park and saw a man doing water calligraphy on the ground. I asked him if I could give it a shot and I wrote my name in water on the ground. It turned out pretty well and drew a crowd. The two of us left after impressing them with our Chinese and went to rent a boat. We got on our little paddle boat and began to pedal away into the middle of Beihai. The two of us just enjoyed ourselves as we sat in the middle of the lake in the Forbidden City. These are the kinds of things that I wish I could do back home. Chinese people stared at us but we’d just address them and ask them how their day was, and they’d just smile and row away. We tried heading back to the dock, but our boat was broken and no matter how fast we pedaled, it wouldn’t go any faster. All the drifting we did made us pedal forever to get back. Her legs got tired and I trudged away at it for ages. The two of us walked out of the boat barely able to walk. Chris texted and the two of us agreed we should try and cheer him up, (just in case he was feeling down,) so we invited him to come to dinner with us at a Xinjiang restaurant. We feasted on an assortment of foods, all delicious. When we finished up, we walked to a subway that was at least a mile away and chatted the whole time. “It’s days like these that make me want to stay here forever,” were the parting words from Karina as we went our separate ways that evening. I went home and watched Pulp Fiction, and tried to console Sophie over the whole ordeal. They’re both my friends. I went to sleep to wake up in front of a mound of homework.
Chris and I went for a walk the next day and discussed girls, and the problems that are going to arise among our friends from this weekend.
I was nothing but a lonely boy, looking for something new…
Ok… I think that might be the back cover to a short story. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as interesting… to you. So I’ll only address a few of the things mentioned above.
I walked into school and checked my email, finding one from my school’s tour guide; they were inviting me to go with them to the Gugong… in twenty minutes. I politely declined and went on with my day. I scheduled a dinner date over working on the Yearbook with Lauren for Tuesday, so we could work, talk and spend time with each other before she went on the five day immersion into a high school on the outskirts of Beijing. I was in high spirits despite the Chinese test and got home when my phone received a text in the kind of English that when you see, you know isn’t from an American. It was inviting me to go to Tiananmen tomorrow and then dinner. I responded in Chinese that I couldn’t go to Tiananmen. The response back was extremely happy that she could now use Chinese, and invited me to dinner. As if some sort of suppressed loyalty arose from the depths of my soul, I said yes. My heart was torn now between my school and my “interest.” I cursed the timing of the whole situation as my pendulous brain swung back and forth between Lauren and school, school and Lauren, but there was nothing to do but to forsake dinner. I went to sleep upset. We had a quiz and then I bolted early during a free period to go and meet my teachers and classmates at Qianmen. They told me to go to Tiananmen riding bus 22 but I rode the subway and got off at Tiananmen and they were actually at Qianmen which was a bit aggravating because I could’ve just rode to Qianmen, but I digress, I got lost and found my way eventually. Ran into Matt, Kevin, Mrs. Weelinberg, (sorry if I butchered that,) and Mr. Costello, and they asked me questions and such and I had an answer for everything. It felt like I hadn’t really learned as much as I could have before talking with them and then I realized that living here has been like a stream of knowledge flowing to my brain without me knowing it. They weren’t taking me to dinner right away and we went to Xiushui Jie, Silk Street and the guide taught the kids how to bargain. I didn’t mean to scoff at the advice but I had my own methods. I walked through there with Matt and bargained for him, and talked in general with the people in the stalls. I ran into one that remembered me from the last time and wanted to say hi to my dad. According to Matt I sounded fluent, but I felt nowhere near it. There’s so much more to the language. Afterwards we went to dinner and I talked some more. I felt bad for not letting others talk as much and I saw some of the girls on the trip look at me like they hated me. Of course I probably looked at them like they were babied princesses. But I digress, I left at eight with one hour left before curfew. I got up to leave and so did everyone else. I was a bit quicker getting out the door than everyone else and I was in a cab and on my way home as they all exited. I imagined it like a movie, sort of like how batman disappears on a moment’s notice. I went home, beaming at the improvement of my Chinese… comparatively.
The next day was even more of a sauna than before. Gavin began spreading his own secret around. I’ve promised him I won’t tell anyone. I said goodbye to Lauren and Jamie as they went to immerse themselves and then went with Ian and Annie to go finish our project on Qianmen. We rode our bikes from school to Qianmen. It was simply suffocating. Not only have I not visited a gym in about 3 months, my bike doesn’t go very fast. It hits its top speed at the time where everyone else is just casually gliding along. We arrived and went into the Hutong’s and found places forgotten by the map. An ancient 5-star Brewery, old famous musicians houses, the China Club Beijing, as well as finding places being torn down and rebuilt, both of which I went over and helped do. From shoveling torn down bricks for a 60 year old migrant worker and almost using the saw for rebuilding the ancient style hutongs, I did it all. We talked with them about how they felt about tearing down the history and they said as long as they get paid it doesn’t matter. Most of the migrant workers were from Hebei province. I went into a courtyard home with Ian and talked with the lady there. She was 83 years old, originally from Hebei, but couldn't lose her accent over the forty years she's lived in her house. She also had bound feet that she tried to hide in shoes that were too big for her. She was extremely nice and enjoyed talking with us, inviting us back whenever we wanted to drop by.
Ian got pulled into an art gallery and we ended up going with the owner to find an apartment to rent for his parents. The place was not suitable for parents and we left. I threw together the PowerPoint and went to sleep after being on the road biking for five hours.
Our presentation apparently went well and a bit too long. Had another quiz. I went home with no plans for the first time all week, and ended up talking with Chris about girls. He was not sure about what to do with his relationship issue. It felt like it was slowly dying, and that wasn’t good for him. So we came to the conclusion it should end. For both their sakes. That only took two hours of discussion. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be a tad messy.
I had another test, and was officially done with my Chinese midterms. Also had a math quiz. After school Chris did it. Breaking up is never pleasant. She walked away before he had a chance to explain why and he walked over to me and looked a tad upset saying I’m single. I told him we’re not going to let his mind dwell on the breakup and try and get his mind off of it, so Ian, Warren and I were going to take him out. We were about to head out when Dan walked up the stairs asking Chris if everything was alright because he saw Sophie crying. So far we were off to a bad start. But we went back to Chris’ place and made videos to cheer him up, and then Ian decided we were going to go swimming… at the Hyatt… in Wangfujing. The pool was amazing according to him. So we got all our stuff, our suits, towels and shoved them into our bags as we walked out of the house into the unfathomable haze of Beijing. We stood there feeling like this could be the start of a movie and or TV show. Oceans 4 or maybe 3 ½ Honkies. But we got in a cab and arrived in Wangfujing. We wandered around trying to find the hotel and we did. It was high class. The four of us walked in, single file carrying our bags over our shoulders and descended to the mall underneath the hotel to plan out our mission. The whole place was marbled with fountains and it began to make me feel a bit nervous. We found a deserted elevator landing and hit the down button to get to “the oasis.” We stepped out of the elevator and saw a counter manned by two clerks and we tried walking into the pool when they stopped us. “What is your room number?” Ian spat out 713, and they started checking it while Chris and I snuck back to the elevators and hit the up button and watched the numbers go down slowly, like a will o’ the wisp leading us to our death as the clerks began to question Ian. They began to get suspicious when the doors opened and Chris and I bolted in, the doors closed and we were about to head up when the elevator stopped and the doors opened on the same floor. Our hearts were in our throats. It was only Ian and Warren being pissed off at us for bolting at the first sign of trouble. The guards at the doors we came in were looking at us and talking on a walkie talkie so we went out a different exit into the crowds of Wangfujing. We ended up going to the giant bookstore and buying some books. Warren left and the remaining three of us went to Grandma’s Kitchen and got milkshakes and lemonade… which don’t mix too well, but were both delicious. We left the restaurant at 10:20 and realized that we had forty minutes to get home before curfew. We ran back to the populated section of Wangfujing and tried to hail a cab, but none of them would stop. We ran to the regent hotel and I asked if they could help me get a cab, but the employees told me that they all went home. So it was now 10:40 and we began to run home, when we found the mysterious line 5 subway line, hopped on, got off at Jishuitan and hired a xiao che with five minutes left. We told him to stop in front of the school because he was driving too slowly. We got out and ran with one minute to spare home. We ran into our compound and split, running up separate staircases making it home as the clock turned 11. This was our second time we almost didn’t make curfew by a minute.
Saturday had finally rolled around and I invited Karina to go out. We had plans to go to Beihai. We hopped on a bus and rode to Qianmen. We walked through Tiananmen and through the western exterior of Tiananmen along the lakes and through some hutongs. We saw an interesting looking temple and went inside. It was beautiful, then we heard the sound of voices chattering and it turned out it was a house. We talked with them about the place, their past, how it was turned from the temple of thunder into a house after liberation, etc. Some Taiwanese people came in who were exploring the neighborhood and explained to us that they were looking for all the eight temples around Tiananmen and that this was one of them. We had stumbled into the ancient thunder temple. Our hosts invited us inside their designated room and we talked and sat and it was just incredible. Try and find an ancient thunder temple in Cleveland. Good luck. This is why I love China. We exited after they invited us to come back another time. Karina and I continued to wander around until we got to Beihai. We walked into the park and saw a man doing water calligraphy on the ground. I asked him if I could give it a shot and I wrote my name in water on the ground. It turned out pretty well and drew a crowd. The two of us left after impressing them with our Chinese and went to rent a boat. We got on our little paddle boat and began to pedal away into the middle of Beihai. The two of us just enjoyed ourselves as we sat in the middle of the lake in the Forbidden City. These are the kinds of things that I wish I could do back home. Chinese people stared at us but we’d just address them and ask them how their day was, and they’d just smile and row away. We tried heading back to the dock, but our boat was broken and no matter how fast we pedaled, it wouldn’t go any faster. All the drifting we did made us pedal forever to get back. Her legs got tired and I trudged away at it for ages. The two of us walked out of the boat barely able to walk. Chris texted and the two of us agreed we should try and cheer him up, (just in case he was feeling down,) so we invited him to come to dinner with us at a Xinjiang restaurant. We feasted on an assortment of foods, all delicious. When we finished up, we walked to a subway that was at least a mile away and chatted the whole time. “It’s days like these that make me want to stay here forever,” were the parting words from Karina as we went our separate ways that evening. I went home and watched Pulp Fiction, and tried to console Sophie over the whole ordeal. They’re both my friends. I went to sleep to wake up in front of a mound of homework.
Chris and I went for a walk the next day and discussed girls, and the problems that are going to arise among our friends from this weekend.
I was nothing but a lonely boy, looking for something new…
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Bland News from a Passive Agressive Observer
I walked up the white stairs, marked up with the black skid marks that shoes and bike tires leave, smelling an aroma that made my mouth water. It had just rained and the sky was clearer than I had seen it since the last time it rained in Beijing… which was my third day in Beijing. The sky was blue, the air felt clean and redolent with fallen rain, mixing with the smells of every apartment cooking food. It all smelled delicious. I walked up the stairs to my house, slowly for once, instead of bounding up the five flights of stairs. My teachers told me that this was the start of spring. The temperatures were going to rise after this rain they said, and the temperatures did. From 20 degrees up to 50’s and 60’s. The weather is getting gradually better.
I had a history paper due recently. It was a travel writing piece of at least seven pages long and had to have at least three sources. So I looked up Yunnan Gaokao on Google… and found my blog. It was a bit of a surprise to say the least. I guess I have to thank you all for making me so popular. Of course I didn’t use myself as a source, but one of my friends did. Bai Laoshi probably won’t like that.
Homesickness sucks, for lack of a better word. Ever since my parents gave Ba, Peter and me a tour of the house via Skype I became a bit nostalgic as I normally do. I used sheer willpower to overcome it. “You stop being homesick right now. Heeeeey… HEY! NO! Alright? Good, go back to work.” I’ve found it a lot easier to ignore mental unrest for some reason. Maybe because I don’t want to end up wasting the precious little time I have left here by being miserable. That’s a good attitude for life in general in my opinion.
Lately a restaurant I frequent has begun to recognize me. I come in and sit down and the cute Sichuan waitress asks me, “The usual?” which is something I only thought happened in movies, plays and the fifties. But it makes me feel a part of a community. Bi Laoshi, (Mr. Bissell,) says that today’s China reminds him of when he was growing up in America. To which I said the 80’s? And my classmates said you have brown on your nose. But if I had to describe what Beijing’s like in a sentence, it’d be, “It’s like living in the TV shows and movies about the fifties and sixties.” Of course I never lived then, but it always felt like an ideal time in my mind because everyone was friendly. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Chris, Warren and I have started a game to test a theory I’ve heard from both my dad and Rand. If you ask ten girls out, at least one of them will say yes. So far the game’s going well though. Also, a side note to that, do not ask for girl’s numbers at McDonalds… it’s kinda tasteless. Long story… Not the time for it, but let’s just say it made the three of us reconsider speaking English openly.
Shen Laoshi has kicked up the pace on our studies. We’ve had 45+ words a night for the past week just from his Chinese class. Li Laoshi has only been giving us 25ish and we’re ever so thankful for her leniency. But I love that we’re moving at this pace, it feels like we’re making the most of the time we have left, plus all the grammar we’re learning has been filling in the empty voids in conversations I’ve had in the past, and I slowly am understanding what people said months ago. I feel a bit like Jason Bourne in that respect.
I just felt like updating you all with a little lighthearted news from around here in a sort of… non-sequitor format.
You’ve got no time to lose. You are young men, you must be living.
I had a history paper due recently. It was a travel writing piece of at least seven pages long and had to have at least three sources. So I looked up Yunnan Gaokao on Google… and found my blog. It was a bit of a surprise to say the least. I guess I have to thank you all for making me so popular. Of course I didn’t use myself as a source, but one of my friends did. Bai Laoshi probably won’t like that.
Homesickness sucks, for lack of a better word. Ever since my parents gave Ba, Peter and me a tour of the house via Skype I became a bit nostalgic as I normally do. I used sheer willpower to overcome it. “You stop being homesick right now. Heeeeey… HEY! NO! Alright? Good, go back to work.” I’ve found it a lot easier to ignore mental unrest for some reason. Maybe because I don’t want to end up wasting the precious little time I have left here by being miserable. That’s a good attitude for life in general in my opinion.
Lately a restaurant I frequent has begun to recognize me. I come in and sit down and the cute Sichuan waitress asks me, “The usual?” which is something I only thought happened in movies, plays and the fifties. But it makes me feel a part of a community. Bi Laoshi, (Mr. Bissell,) says that today’s China reminds him of when he was growing up in America. To which I said the 80’s? And my classmates said you have brown on your nose. But if I had to describe what Beijing’s like in a sentence, it’d be, “It’s like living in the TV shows and movies about the fifties and sixties.” Of course I never lived then, but it always felt like an ideal time in my mind because everyone was friendly. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Chris, Warren and I have started a game to test a theory I’ve heard from both my dad and Rand. If you ask ten girls out, at least one of them will say yes. So far the game’s going well though. Also, a side note to that, do not ask for girl’s numbers at McDonalds… it’s kinda tasteless. Long story… Not the time for it, but let’s just say it made the three of us reconsider speaking English openly.
Shen Laoshi has kicked up the pace on our studies. We’ve had 45+ words a night for the past week just from his Chinese class. Li Laoshi has only been giving us 25ish and we’re ever so thankful for her leniency. But I love that we’re moving at this pace, it feels like we’re making the most of the time we have left, plus all the grammar we’re learning has been filling in the empty voids in conversations I’ve had in the past, and I slowly am understanding what people said months ago. I feel a bit like Jason Bourne in that respect.
I just felt like updating you all with a little lighthearted news from around here in a sort of… non-sequitor format.
You’ve got no time to lose. You are young men, you must be living.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Dinner Pains and Some News
There was no taste. There was even a delay before it hit me, then there just was fire. My whole body was in pain from what I just ate. It was flames running up and down my whole body, in my veins, in my face, burning my tongue, tensing up my chest to the point of almost pain. It was the most incredible wasabi rush I’ve ever had in my life… and it wasn’t even wasabi. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I reached for another bite. It was a good pain. Dinner was nice.
Life has been good around here lately. Nothing exceptional, really. Everything here feels almost exactly the same as before except for one thing. It was off and until now I didn’t realize what it was. Cabs. They’re everywhere. China has been experiencing a recession. For two straight quarters their growth rate has been around six percent, down from the ten to twelve percent it’s been at for the past so many years, which is nowhere near where it has to be to sustain a comfortable life style. Many people have taken to the cabs to make a buck. I was able to hail a cab on the outskirts of Beijing at 10:43 at night without waiting. That means the yearbook meetings can continue to run late. The pressure of that’s beginning to get to me… *sigh* but it’s on its way. With the start of a recession on the horizon in China, China is extremely tense, but to make for a more… stressful political atmosphere, this year is the anniversary of many important events within the past one hundred years. There’s the first year anniversary of last year’s Tibetan protests about the Olympics. There’s the twenty year anniversary of 六四, or the Tiananmen Square incident. There’s the fifty year anniversary of the Dalai Lama fleeing to India and starting his government in exile. And lastly there’s the ninety year anniversary of 五四，more commonly known as the May 4th movement, which was an iconoclastic movement to get rid of the old way of thought and replace it with a newer one. The intellectuals of China were upset with the Treaty of Versailles giving western colonies to Japan. But anyways, with all these anniversaries lining up on the same year, the Chinese government is very rigid, ready to crackdown if necessary. But don’t worry, the trip to Xizang, (Tibet,) has been changed. Foreigners aren’t even allowed into Tibet at the moment. Consideration for entry starts April 1st. So Gansu is looking more and more likely for the April trip.
Just some news for you this time.
Clinging to not getting sentimental
Life has been good around here lately. Nothing exceptional, really. Everything here feels almost exactly the same as before except for one thing. It was off and until now I didn’t realize what it was. Cabs. They’re everywhere. China has been experiencing a recession. For two straight quarters their growth rate has been around six percent, down from the ten to twelve percent it’s been at for the past so many years, which is nowhere near where it has to be to sustain a comfortable life style. Many people have taken to the cabs to make a buck. I was able to hail a cab on the outskirts of Beijing at 10:43 at night without waiting. That means the yearbook meetings can continue to run late. The pressure of that’s beginning to get to me… *sigh* but it’s on its way. With the start of a recession on the horizon in China, China is extremely tense, but to make for a more… stressful political atmosphere, this year is the anniversary of many important events within the past one hundred years. There’s the first year anniversary of last year’s Tibetan protests about the Olympics. There’s the twenty year anniversary of 六四, or the Tiananmen Square incident. There’s the fifty year anniversary of the Dalai Lama fleeing to India and starting his government in exile. And lastly there’s the ninety year anniversary of 五四，more commonly known as the May 4th movement, which was an iconoclastic movement to get rid of the old way of thought and replace it with a newer one. The intellectuals of China were upset with the Treaty of Versailles giving western colonies to Japan. But anyways, with all these anniversaries lining up on the same year, the Chinese government is very rigid, ready to crackdown if necessary. But don’t worry, the trip to Xizang, (Tibet,) has been changed. Foreigners aren’t even allowed into Tibet at the moment. Consideration for entry starts April 1st. So Gansu is looking more and more likely for the April trip.
Just some news for you this time.
Clinging to not getting sentimental
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