Photos from 1/30/09, Beijing: Forbidden City/Beihai Park/Drum and Bell Towers/Olympic Stadium

It was only after I sat down and went through the effort of sorting through the sixty odd photos of this day that I realized how insane it was. I really did walk half the city in this one day. It also took me forever to upload all these pictures on the bracingly slow internet here. But here we go.

This was probably the best shot I took of the hutong alleyways that my hotel was surrounded by. As you can see, a certain amount of charm, a certain amount of dirt.

A little architectural detail on the road to the Forbidden City.

The first big gate you see as you enter Tiananmen Square from the south. Note scale. In pretty much all of my Beijing photos, I recommend you note the ridiculous scale.

Mao's Mausoleum

Why I decided not to try to get into Mao's Mausoleum.

The expanse of Tiananmen Square, with the Great Hall of the People in the background.

Tiananmen, with the front of the Forbidden City. I did not do a good job of capturing on camera how big Tiananmen Square is, but it's really, really, really big. It makes Union Square look like my backyard.

Great Hall of The People

Entrance to the Forbidden City. The Chinese, btw, says, I believe, "May the People's Republic of China last for ten thousand years. May the peoples of the world unite (possibly the Internationale) for ten thousand years.

An old lion, dating back to the Ming period. For some reason, I didn't take a picture of the very famous Yuan era winged column.

Bridge crossing the moat into the Forbidden City

Inside the first courtyard of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is actually a series of huge courtyards and giant reception halls, intended to impress upon you the power of the emperor. It certainly is impressive.

I would have tossed this, but I really wanted to show you the silly method Chinese tour groups use to keep track of everyone. This particular groups uses very silly pink hats.

Courtyard before the Noon Gate.

First Imperial receiving hall, bridge over a moat, throngs of Chinese tourists. Only looking back on these photos do I realize what a mob scene it was, and that, really, it was mostly due to the holiday.

One of the moats that snake through the Forbidden City.

Another hall.

Courtyard. You can see, from this vantage point, a number of terraces/porticos/w/e that surround the main receiving hall, very beautiful stone carving.

"IT'S A MADHOUSE! A MADHOOOOOUSE!"

Why I struggled (sometimes physically) with the Chinese tourists to get blurry, ill lit photos of imperial thrones, I do not know. Not seen: me later elbowing this woman in the face. Photography is a rough business, honey.

One of the many magnificent stone stelae to be found in the Forbidden City. I believe this was carved out of one giant block of stone, and then moved on an ice track into place. Sadly, despite the many warnings not to touch the damn thing, a lot of Chinese tourist insisted on reaching over the railings and touching it. Sigh.

Another hall. They have fancy Chinese names I do not care to remember or look up.

The lovely Forbidden City gardens, with far too many people.

Rocky outcropping.

A "pavilion" in the gardens, like an outdoor office of sorts.

More rock garden.

One of the many long passageways that winds its way through the Forbidden City proper, where the Emperor actually lived, which is still incredibly big.

A palace within the palace that had been damaged by fire.

A massive courtyard within the palace proper.

A beautiful ceramic fixture called the "Seven Dragon Screen". Can you guess why?

An incredibly ornate stage within the Forbidden City, where the emperor would watch Beijing Opera.

Records of Beijing Opera cut at the Imperial Court! Awesome! For the buffs out there, considering the date of the recording, they're probably shellac 78 rpms, but don't quote me on that.

A shot of Zhongshan park, an old summer haunt of the Emperors that rises high right behind the palace. Didn't get a chance to visit, unfortunately.

The huge exterior moat of the palace.

A shot of the stupa in Beihai Park.

Beihai lake.

The Chinese cavorting on the frozen lake surface.

A calligrapher advertising his trade using water on the pavement of the park.

A lovely old bridge on the road to the Drum and Bell Towers.

The Temple of the Fire God, on the road to the Drum and Bell Towers.

The Drum Tower, from the street.

DRUM TOWER!

A closeup of the really lovely Ming Dynasty paint details.

Drums. In the Drum Tower.

The view south from the Drum Tower.

Beihai Park and Beijing haze from the Drum Tower.

The hilariously treacherous stairs leading up to the top of the Bell Tower.

Bell! This one dates from the Ming Dynasty, and there's this whole legend about how a girl threw herself into the bell mold while the bell was being cast to save her father.

The high-tech Beijing Subway.

Creepy clean subway stations.

Self-portrait, on the subway.

This little doodad tells you, in English and Chinese, where you are and where you are going. Almost like NYC, except this one ALWAYS WORKS.

The Bird's Nest, and the surrounding giant plaza.

Water Cube

Water Cube, another angle.

A big New Year's thingie, and a close-up on the Bird's Nest.

Another close up of the Bird's Nest. The stadium really is a quite thrilling piece of architecture.

YES! The first installment of food porn. This is delicious cumin lamb and nan bread (as well as green tea) at the Muslim restaurant I ate at that night. Even looking at this gives me flashbacks to how good this was.

A glammed-up-for-tourists street near my hotel.

Photos from 1/28/09-1/29/09: Plane/First Night in Beijing

Now I've got my computer (whoopee!), I can start posting pictures. This first day was rough, since I generally don't take photos, it took me a while to get used to steadying my hand. I could only salvage about five photos. I'll let them trickle out slowly, one photo post roughly corresponding to a blog post.
Me after about seven hours on the flight, with an appropriate scuzzy five o clock shadow. Terrifying.
My hotel room in Beijing. Pretty comfortable, and pretty dang cheap, even though it was relatively bare bones.
My toilet (to prove to my dad that, yes, China, does have toilet). I'm glad that the toilet was absolutely sterilized. From now on, I will never use a toilet that hasn't been pre-sterilized.
My hotel, rising from the Hutongs

My first view of Tiananmen Square (or the gates anywhere), from the street nearest to my hotel.

Oh hell yes!

It finally arrived, after perhaps my most high pressure must use Mandarin situation ever:

OMG, meta!

Kunming: Week 3

And another week without a computer. This situation is sliding quickly from irritation to sheer farce. Apparently, they tried to deliver the package on Friday at 5:30 when the package center was closed. So as far as I know, the computer is floating around Kunming somewhere, in the hands of someone loosely affiliated with FedEx, and nobody who speaks English seems to be quite clear on what happens next. For me, this is insane just because, after all, it's not like we shipped my computer with Mr. Chen's Chinatown Package Company, we shipped it with FedEx, but once it crosses the border, nobody seems to know what's going on. Oh well, it's in God's hands now - perhaps literally, for all I know.

I wish I had fantastic adventures to tell you about, but unlike some study abroad programs where you drink your way across Europe, I actually have to work here. In fact, the weeks here can sometimes turn into nightmarish cycles of undercaffinated class (I've already switched from green to black tea, and may have to switch to french press coffee pretty soon) to homework to bed, and again. Class is not bad, when I'm not in a tired daze. I don't like drills or dictation much (does anyone?), but I really enjoy conversing in Mandarin, which I can do at a decently high level now, although my tones are often terrible, and my written Chinese is much better by far. My English classes are pretty good, because the kids on the program are pretty smart. I'm still definitely not feeling this field research paper. I may do a project on the Hui (Ethnic Chinese muslims), though I'm kinda nervous about going to a mosque here. I don't really have much time even to get out and about around the city here, which is kind of a bummer, I basically keep a tight circuit around the school since I don't have all that much time. But back home, it's not much different - except when Karl facilitates the occasional John Donut run, I eat/sleep/work/sleep. I miss good parties however.

The highlight of my week this week was definitely a trip to the local elementary school. Our Chinese professor knew somebody who knew an elementary school teacher, so we were allowed in the school. I assumed that the process would be somewhat more formal, considering we were entering an elementary school, but we basically just walked in. A fun reminder that the Han Chinese may be the most racist people on the planet: my white classmate George walked into the school no problem, but when my black classmate Nick walked in, he was immediately stopped by security. Nice.

I'd like to tell you that Chinese elementary schools are full of portraits of Mao or shaolin monks or something exciting, but actually, they are creepily familiar to this product of the NYC public school system: big, overcrowded, institutional structures, with bars on the windows and barbed wire fences (yes, my middle school had a barbed wire fence). They have English slogans pasted up on the walls, some of them ironically, sadly ungrammatical or misspelled. Many of the kids also wear the red scarves of the Communist Youth League, which is kind of unnerving.

The kids themselves are great, as are little kids anywhere in the world. I was basically shadily hustled into a classroom and told to talk to a couple of kids. So I asked, what did you do today, and they said, nothing, we were here all day. Yes, I said, but you were in class, what do you do in class? Oh, they said, we sit at our desks and raise our hands. Ahh, kids. They have an hour and a half of homework every day and a ranking system, and some of them commute in, although nobody's commute is as long as mine was to Hunter. One girl played the flute, another played a traditional Chinese instrument known as the Guqin. One girl wanted to be a fashion designer (she also wanted to go to France, to see Paris), another wanted to be a teacher, and another (who apparently spoke the best english in the class)wanted to be an ambassador (to which I replied, you already are). I also asked her why she studied English, and she said, because it's the world's language.

After a while, a crowd of girls started bombarding me with questions. Apparently, it was all girls because they all thought I was handsome (I kid you not...hey, there's no accounting for good taste). They asked how many people were in my family, so I said, my sister, my mom, my dad, and oh, my dog. A little girl responded mournfully with that international complaint of little kids, I want a dog but my mom won't let me have one. I said, well, dogs are very troublesome. No, the little girl said with authority, dogs are not troublesome, they are cute. I asked her what kind of dog she wanted, and she responded, a German Shepherd puppy, because they have soft fur. They also asked if I had any Disney things, what my favorite color is (well, whatever color is suitable, I responded. Black, for example, if black works. Oh, they said, because black is very cool), and whether everybody in America had very white skin (I replied, some people have whiter skin than me, and well, some...and I pointed to Nick). One girl was particularly fascinated with the American college experience and expressed a desire to attend an American college. Probably my favorite question I recieved: Does America have mosquitos? Are the mosquitos big? Apparently, the girl had seen a thing on TV about how America has huge mosquitos. After our brief interview, me and my classmates went to get our first Chinese pizza, which was both overpriced and exceedingly average.

I'm still all about the language partner. It's really a fascinating interaction, because she seems determined to serve as a representative for China. For example, she said that her teacher had told her that in China, unlike in the West, people feel that everyone who helps you in your life shares in your success, and so your victories are the family and the society's victories. I asked her if she agreed, and she said yes. I asked her if she felt that way about herself, and only then did she back away from it, saying, yes, it's partially true, but also I help make my own successes. I wonder, however, if I am just projecting my own particular ideas about the Chinese consciousness on her; maybe what I see as a Chinese tendency to accept cultural generalizations handed down from above is just someone with relatively few opinions sharing a general view, or someone trying to represent her culture, or someone who frankly believes in these things. We also discussed an incident in my textbook, where a little girl helped a little boy with his homework in class in exchange for money. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, and thought it was quite normal, and I struggled to explain to her (and hell, myself) why it wasn't appropriate. I asked her her views on the Hui, to which she responded, what views? My view is that they don't eat pork. Alright then.

Last night, I went over to my professor's for her birthday to make and eat dumplings. I really like the close relationship we have with the professors here, and I took a particular joy in Nick playing an extremely uncensored version of "Get Low" off of my IPod and watching the Chinese professors bob along to the beat. I can also eat so much, goddamn. I think it will be weird to adjust to the lack of safety protocol we have in America: the ability to just drink a glass of water, and to eat a piece of fruit without worrying. I came back to the dorms and was introduced to my new roommate, a Japanese student, 31 years old, learning Chinese to improve his business as an accountant. It's kind of a great situation in that I cannot speak Japanese and he speaks little English, so we have to use Chinese. My Chinese is better than his, I think, but in any case, we often have have many moments of repeating. It's not bad though, he seems like a really nice guy.

Today, we headed off to the gorgeous Xishan area, some forty five minutes outside the city, a Taoist holy site with breathtaking views of the city. I'm pretty spoiled now, at least since Taishan, but I think Xishan is ,marvelous by any standard, with astounding vistas overlooking the lake and the city and lovely karst geology and pine groves. I'll probably make my parents go, when they visit. After a lousy lunch, we went to Dian Chi, Kunming's central lake, and met with an entrepreneur who is trying to clean the disasterously polluted lake. The lake is filled with sewage, busted through with nitrates and phospherous, and strangled with algae, really bad. This guy filters the water through a special filter, and lets lotuses and special plants do the rest. It's astoundingly green for anywhere, not to mention China, and with government subsidies, he makes a profit of about a nickel per square meter of water, which is not much but is something.

I love the parts of this blog where I express general opinions about the state of the country: it's so 19th century foreign correspondent dispatch. But as far as the environmental situation here goes, I think if anyone can solve it, it's China. The central government understands it's a huge problem, and has dedicated giant sums of money to it. The citizenry is also used to living in what we think of as a "green" lifestyle (lights that only turn on with motion sensors, no drying machines, no dishwashers, low flow toilets, public transportation and biking, eat locally, etc.), just because most of the population cannot afford to live in any other way. The real threat is, of course, corruption and heavy industry. The Northeast, China's industrial heartland, is a damn coal-stained nightmare, and government money has a way of disappearing along the way to its intended goal. Also, what's scary about China is the possibility of a Malthusian crisis, that population pressures will just make any sort of equilibrium with nature unimaginable. For example, the best way to clean Dian Chi would be to restore the marshes that Mao drained and destroy the Cultural Revolution era dams that allowed local residents to reclaim around 200 kilometers of land; but if you were to do that, you would basically flood a couple thousand residents, and not rich people either, common folk who are pouring into Kunming for the hope of a better life. But I hope that China can figure it out...if they can't, in any case, it's bad news for all of us.

On that somber note, I bid you farewell, and promise to check in at least next week, and with photos as soon as I am able.

Kunming, Week 2

Dang, it's a real drag not to have my computer again. This week, my computer, finally in the same country as me at least, chilled its heels at customs while I attempted to puzzle out what a FedEx Customs rep needed me to do. The rep called me on the cell phone, and according to the rules of my program, I answered in Chinese. The rep let out a flurry of Chinese, and I meekly said, in Chinese, "come again?". He then started in an English which was only marginally clearer than his Chinese. With the help of my professors, I figured things out, and my computer is scheduled to be here some time this week - lawd willing - at which time I'll post pictures, as promised. Meanwhile, I'll give you a state-of-the-me update, and share some fun antecdotes.

First, the antecdotes. Last Sunday, I headed out to try one of Kunming's specialty dishes, Guoqiao mixian (crossing-the-bridge rice noodles). Like a lot of Chinese cooking, it's a very showy dish. The waitress brings a bowl of steaming hot chicken broth, and various fixings, including rice noodles, several different types of vegetables and slivers of raw pork, and throws them in the broth to cook. The result is a delicious, interesting mix of the broth and the oil of the vegetables and pork. However, first, I had to figure out the procedure. I wandered into the restaurant, looking like the confused westerner I often am in this country, and saw a bunch of people taking food from a window, while other people seemed to be waited on. So, assuming it was the traditional restaurant scheme of waited and waited on, I sat down. After about fifteen minutes, another table called the waitress over to explain to me the situation. After having her repeat herself once or twice, I caught on the key phrase - "mai piao", buy a ticket. So I wandered out to find the ticket office, bought a ticket and triumphantly presented it to the waitress, to the laughter of the table who had helped me out. The waitress brought the noodles and mixed the ingredients for me, and figuring that the pork needed to cook, I waited a little bit. A Chinese guy approached the table after five minutes, patted me on the back and said, to my embarassment, "It's ok. You can eat it."

This actually, is exactly the kind of scenario that demonstrates what I mean when I say I can't get angry in China. None of the embarassment and irritation here is anyone's fault but my own. In fact, I'm the one to blame for being a general pain in the butt for everybody who has to deal with me. It's my fault I can't understand the language or the culture, and yet I've come here and put myself in situations where these things are necessary to understand. So I have no right to get angry; I just thank everybody, and hope they can be patient with me, and feel embarassed that I can't help but be a pain in the butt.

Another fun story. The Chinese are the least race conscious people on earth, which makes for fun times with my black classmate here, Nick. When we went to register with the university, the registar said, excitedly, to Nick, "You look like a basketball player!" Nick, without a beat, responded, "Yeah, I play for The Lakers". Good times.

Overall, my mood here varies depending on the day and the situation. Some days I just don't feel like speaking Chinese and am tired and generally agitated. Especially since the language pledge took effect (it's not too strict, but strict enough), I've been feeling the stress of being isolated from my language. It's often no fun to have to use Chinese all the time, and can take a lot of energy. Often, I'll get the jist of things, when I have to deal with administrative details in Chinese, I can get very lost very fast. Also, as part of my program, I have to do what's essentially an ethnography, with cultural informant interviews and various other elements I neither have the skill set for, nor the desire to do. The prospect of that project is majorly stressing me out. Wednesday was a really bad day. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and was just generally in a bad mood the whole day. Finally, I ate three awful Chinese donuts and slept for two hours.

China brings some of my bad personality traits into particularly sharp relief. Here, I realize that my occasional bouts of depression and especially my sometimes extreme social anxiety are not normal and do me no favors. It strikes me here, in such a different place, that I might be able to, and what's more, might need to, switch to another way of being.

The most rewarding part of this program, by far, are the opportunities we get to interact with the Chinese. Not only do I have a language partner, but another student and I are matched with a Chinese family, whose home we visit every other weekend. I really like asking my language partner about things, and explaining to her various facets of American life. This week, I asked her about her views on the problems facing Chinese children. She said that since many Chinese kids are only children, they often are selfish and don't know how to interact with other people. She also said they watch too many violent/sexual videos on the internet. I also discussed the Chinese education system, and gave her an Obama pin and a map of NYC.

The most curious part of interacting with her is her conviction that the Chinese are one way, and the Americans are another, and that is that. For example, she is convinced that Americans always insist on their children's independence, while the Chinese are overprotective and controlling. When I said that in some cases, American parents also are overprotective, she shook her head and said, no, for example, Chinese parents are always holding their kids hands when they cross the street, Americans don't do that. When I said, uh, yes, actually they do, she just shook her head, and I stopped arguing with her. I also enjoyed when she looked at the map of NYC and asked where my college was, and looked shocked when I said it wasn't on the map, in fact, it was three hours away by plane. Talking to her about the education system carries its own particular baggage. This college is not a top Chinese university, and so the students here are often kids who have lost out in the great contest that is the Chinese education system. I, on the other hand, am somebody who has been fairly lucky with America's education system. Watching my language partner explain the unfairness of the Chinese education system therefore made me a little bit uneasy.

A final fun language partner story. We were scheduled to meet on Thursday, and although she usually texts me, she had to tell one of my classmates that she misplaced her cell phone and would meet me at the usual spot at 5:30. When she met me, she explained that she had left it at a friend's house. Afterwards, she borrowed my cell phone to call her friend. A male voice answered, and I could tell by the nature of the banter that it wasn't just a friend. I teased her about it afterwards and laughed all the way back to my room, and was pretty much in good spirits the rest of the day. There's something extremely reassuring about knowing that the young Chinese are also doing it.

I also visited my chinese family this weekend. They asked me and my classmate Michelle when would be a good time to meet, and we, very politely said, oh, any time that's convenient. So they replied, ok, how about 9 AM. D'oh. Our family is a sophomore at Yunnan Normal University and her father and mother, who look about in their late fifties, early sixties. The father is a sports facilities manager at the university, and the mother is retired. They are very charming, and I especially liked it when the student cheerfully showed us her music collection (complete with Enya, Dido and the Backstreet Boys). They made us a delicious lunch, and we discussed various matters (I found out that Kunming folks are more easy going than most Chinese, in their opinion, that Mah Zhongg is a waste of time, although their neighbors play, and that their ancestors came here from Nanjing 200 years ago - I think). We also watched a cartoon version of the Tang Dynasty classic "Butterfly Lovers", which I half-understood and was half awake for. Oh, and in a classic Chinese mother moment: Michelle asked the mom what the daughter was like when she was young. The response: "She used to play piano". When Michelle said later that she could play a little piano, the mother dutifully dragged out a keyboard and insisted that she play, to Michelle's embarassment.

Friday night, I headed out to a Karaoke club. This club happened to have an incredibly bizarre floor show, complete with an MC who asked the entire club to welcome "our international friends". I don't even know whether I would call what I saw a show. It was a pounding techno hallucination, with a mock beauty contest, women in short skirts clog dancing to "Cottoneye Joe" and weird, reject cirque du soleil type guys posturing in odd costumes. Whenever China attempts modernity, the result just seems to prove that China is a real confused country. As for me, I drunkenly sang "Like A Virgin". And, to my joy, the bathroom had a cartoon explaining that blowjobs in the bathroom were forbidden.

Today, I went with my professor and a small group of us to a Taoist temple on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the most magnificent temple I've ever seen, but it's nestled in the mountains among flowers and lovely trees, with buildings and natural elements mingling to a lovely extent. It's nice to visit temples and parks here, because it's basically springtime and the flowers are in bloom. Walking around the temple, I mostly thought about Wash U politics. I'm amazed the extent to which this trip really has served, as I hoped it would, as a time and place for me to reflect on where I want to go and what I want to do overall. I've been thinking a lot about the big question of, if the position were to open up, would I run to be KWUR's GM again. KWUR and the issue of SU reform have, in recent years, been intertwined, often for the benefit of neither. For example, it'd probably be better for SU reform if this proposed constitutional change was sunk in referendum, but it'd do KWUR no favors to campaign against it. Additionally, the reality is that what KWUR wants is generally not incredibly significant; there are bigger issues with SU then just the fact that they cut the funding for KWUR Week. So I've been asking myself a lot, am I more interested in SU and university reform, and would I want to channel my energies in that direction? Or do I really ultimately not give a damn what the university as a whole does, as long as KWUR does alright? Or, beyond that, would it be better for me just to, as Voltaire puts it, tend to my own garden, and leave all this stuff behind? I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, though the results of KWUR's block funding initiative will certainly impact my decision.

I fear that this blog has become the kind of confessional thing I wanted to avoid. But I did say that I would talk about what I saw, and how it affected me, and is, it's affecting me a great deal. So, no mission creep, IMHO, not yet. I will soon post pictures, God willing. See you later.