a little bit of everything

The thing I love about China is that there are babies everywhere. Not just babies but little toddling things running around all chubby and dressed up in mainly what looks like traditional Chinese outfits, only with special pants that have a slit in the bottom for going to the bathroom because no one uses diapers. Parents wrap their kids up in blankets and carry them around so bundled up it is often difficult to discern whether there is actually someone inside or they are simply going to do laundry. It is strange to look at all the thin as a rail students walking around and think that they were once, well, round. Dieting for girls is big here, although I haven’t seen as much evidence here as in Beijing, where my friends roommates would alternate weeks when they could eat breakfast or lunch, or even dinner. I can understand not wanting to eat food drenched in oil and msg all the time, but this does not seem to be their reasoning. Also they have a very strange concept around healthy, er, bowel movements. The next few sentences may be a little graphic for some people so feel free to skip down to the next paragraph. I have a friend whose roommate informed her that if your bowel movements are yellow, that means you are really healthy. My friend tried to contest this of course because it was weird and didn’t sound right, insisting the proper color was brown, but no, no, her roommate said that same from eating too much meat or chocolate. So she went and researched it herself since she was confused, and found that yellow indicates eating too much msg. yikes. And they think its healthy, but not that surprising when considering the looks we get when we ask for food made without msg and especially after discovering the clearly labeled “msg covered salt” that we found at a nice Japanese restaurant.

In other food related topic, I ate a HAMBURGER. The first one I have ever had in my life because I don’t eat beef in the states, but it’s harder to do here because the lack of fresh vegetables and Italian food, which I have realized is my main staple. The Italian, not the vegetables, sorry mom. Anyways I have just lost one of my best truths for Two Truths and a Lie, I’ll have to think of a new one. We decided to have a cookout to show the roommates that hamburgers can be more than the flat boring patties you get at McDonalds, although I can’t really talk cause I’ve never had one, so we made burgers from ground beef that would usually end up in dumplings or buns or something, and got a lot of condiments, most of which are still in the kitchen, but the hardest part was finding charcoal for the grill. And there was no lighter fluid. We had to go around asking restaurants if they had any coal they could sell us, finally finding one that did, but it was the slowest start to a grill I have ever seen in my life. It ended up working out in the end despite some of the frantic worrying earlier, which seems to be a trend with any American food we try to make here, for example the pancakes we made the day before. Things didn’t start out so well since we lacked a mixing bowl, spoons, plates, frying pan and a stovetop. So we made do with a converted juice container, a knife, bought some plates, and used a wok and pot on the two hotplates provided for us in the kitchen. The first couple were a disaster, but after that we started to get the hang of it, flipping them in the wok without a needing a spatula. Well, I didn’t do it that way, never have been able to flip pancakes like that, but perhaps I will try next time.

I went to West Lake for the first time, which was necessary since it is essentially considered sacrilege to go to Hangzhou and not see it, and I have lived here for a couple months already, or at least one month anyway. I went at night and only to eat in the area, so I didn’t get to see that much, but it was really pretty, bigger than the Hou Hai lake we used to go to in Beijing. I have to go again during the day and walk around it, but just haven’t found the time so far. I don’t really have much time for things besides my work and two extracurricular classes, unfortunate, but I like my wushu and ping pong class a lot. I have realized that even though I may work up a sweat during ping pong I am not going to come out of this class as the best player ever, but instead will simply have an understanding of the proper basic technique, which is fine but people should not expect me to beat them now if I wasn’t able to before. My wushu class is a lot of fun, there are only 4 of us but its good since it makes it less embarrassing when we look like fools jumping around trying to do serious kicks and instead simply falling over. I come out of every class extremely sore, you’d think after a couple weeks that wouldn’t happen anymore but obviously my body disagrees.

So I kinda cheated with this entry since I wrote before I went on break to give you guys something to read while I was away and then didn’t have time to post it. So I actually just got back and now am posting and will try to write about my vacation when I get caught up on work. They don’t seem to understand that vacation should indicate no hw, especially since we are expected to travel the whole time. Oh well.

Nanjing excursion

When it rains China becomes a sea of umbrellas. Not just your normal boring gray and striped variety either. Like most accessories in China, people tend to lean towards the taste of an American 6 year old girl. Hello Kitty, Peekachoo, Winnie the Pooh and flowers of all shapes and sizes bob down the sidewalk protecting the 3 or 4 Chinese students huddled underneath them. I have yet to see a Chinese person wearing a raincoat, and although fewer people use raincoats in the cities in the US as well, there are usually a couple. Apparently the spring is rather rainy in Hangzhou so I might actually have to buy some rainboots, as I have been meaning to for the past two years to help with the mud season in Vermont. It is supposed to rain all week starting on Sunday, hopefully after we get back from our weekend camping trip.

Last weekend I took a trip with some friends to Nanjing, a place unlike any other I’ve been to in China due to the coffee shops on just about every corner, not the same as the US where it is usually just a competition between Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks, but each one seems to be individually owned, and of course all also serve tea. I wasn’t expecting Nanjing to be as international as it was, more like Shanghai, and so we took advantage of the opportunity to eat some western food. We went to two Mexican restaurants, the first one was ok, nothing special, but the second was great. We originally trying to go there for a western breakfast, and walked around in the rain talking to them on the phone for about 45 minutes trying to find the place. We were carrying all our stuff since we checked out of our hotel and hadn’t found a new one yet, which granted wasn’t that much since we were only there for two nights, but was still a hassle, especially since we couldn’t find a cab because it was raining and they were all already full. But worth it. Very worth it. One of the people who worked at the restaurant came to the intersection where we were lost after we called for the fifth time and led us back, which was a promising start. When started looking at the menu we realized that our wandering around caused us to miss the 12:30pm breakfast deadline. French toast, pancakes, eggs, bacon, all no longer available. After a brief mourning period we started looking over our other options. I ordered nachos. Unfortunately they were out of churros, which was upsetting, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We all ordered and settled down to wait, essentially starving because this was our first meal of the day. We waited. And waited. Possibly half an hour passed before the first 3 burritos arrived. We realized during our wait that the slow service was due to the fact that they made everything from scratch, including the tortillas. And it was slow. Another half hour or so went by before the next orders came out. I was a little confused by how long my nachos were taking, since they are basically the simplest things in the world to make. Put some salsa and cheese and beans on some chips and you’re a successful chef, however when they came, a beautiful mountain of fresh salsa, lettuce, cheese, bean dip piled on top of amazing looking chips, I realized that the sound of the deep fryer I had heard earlier was part of my meal. They made the chips from scratch. Made the dough, cut them up, stuck them in the fryer and it was one of the best meals I have had in a long time. Great quality even for the US, spectacularly amazing quality for Mexican in China. I got extremely full about ¾ of the way through but couldn’t stand letting it go to waste. After finishing it I didn’t even want to think about food for hours.

After the restaurant we went to the Nanjing Rape museum, which sounds horrible and depressing, and it is. I had never heard of it before and did not know what to expect. We arrived in a laughing and contented mood leftover from our wonderful lunch, but sobered immediately even before entering. The first statue we passed on the way to the entrance was a woman holding the body of her dead child in her arms, with a poem engraved underneath about the devils who had come. The statues continued, each with its own phrase underneath about the brutal massacre, called the Rape of Nanjing, done by the Japanese military back in the 1930’s. The atmosphere reminded me of the Holocaust section of the Newseum in D.C, either that or the Holocaust museum itself, I can’t remember. Seeing as I didn’t even know the even occurred it was extremely informative, I’m glad I at least know something about it now. There were pictures and video clips as well as military gear and even an actual excavation site of bodies hidden after they were shot to death. There was also a group of cameramen walking around who interviewed two of the people I was with who were both obviously American. They worked for the museum and were trying to get people’s feedback about what they thought of the set up and the content and if the museum was needed. It was nice to see people really caring about what they were doing. Also the English translations were really good, which shows that they really cared about letting people know what happened. I don’t want to be too depressing, so I will just say that the Japanese army invaded Nanjing and massacred hundreds of thousands of people, rounding up civilians and gunning them down. Their officers also told them they could pillage and rape at will, and so there were over 20,000 cases of rape and gang rape in the first month of their occupation. People were brought to pits and shot then buried so no one would find the bodies, as well as being thrown in the river. They also refused to honor the established safety zone set up for civilians. By the end I had seen more than enough pictures of the dead and stories of survivors, but the ending also explained the tribunal for the military leaders and they had a clear message at the end that people need to learn from this tragedy and the value of peace.

After that we went looking for a hostel, since we didn’t book anything before we left school, which meant we couldn’t find a hostel for the night before and ended up at a more expensive hotel. We wasted a lot of time going around trying to find a place, but it eventually ended up ok. We went out for some really good Chinese food that night, supposedly Nanjing food, but I can’t really tell the difference.

Right now I am off for a weekend camping trip with everyone and our roommates. I wanted to have s’mores but apparently two main ingredients, graham crackers and marshmallows, are no where to be found in Hangzhou. It just doesn’t seem like proper camping without them. If anything exciting happens on the trip I will let you know when I get back.

Everyday life is not that exciting

So I guess I have been slacking on the posts, I apologize, but part of the reason is I haven’t really had time to do anything. There is a lot of work here, unfortunately, about the same as at Midd, except that since everything is Chinese which makes things a tad more difficult. And by “tad” I mean outrageously difficult. I don’t have a whole lot of time to explore, I have classes in the morning and then one or two in the afternoon. I am also taking two extra curricular classes, ping pong and wushu, which is some form of martial arts and is reminding me that I haven’t done any proper stretching since the 5^th grade. Ping pong is rather intense, the teacher is really good, apparently he was on the Chinese ping pong team that played the US team when China first opened up. If you have seen Forrest Gump it might make more sense, since I still have not I can’t explain any better. He spend an hour or so trying to correct my stance and the way I hit the ball, stopping every few minutes since apparently my muscle memory is less than desirable. I was actually tired after my class. Playing ping pong correctly is actually exercise. Also where ever there is a tv they are usually showing ping pong matches. It really is a big deal.

The first weekend we had we were required to go on trips with our roommates, bonding experiences they say. We went with Hana and her roommate to see a bunch of caves, which were actually really cool. You go into a mountain and everything is lit with multicolor lights. There was also a guide who explained some stuff and pointed out formations that look like animals, but seeing as it was in Chinese and spoken for Chinese people with no regard for foreign speakers, I understood just about, um, nothing. Also I used up my camera battery that afternoon and so have no pictures for the rest of the trip, I should buy a new one that lasts longer than 2 hours. However the signs they have in there are pretty hilarious. A lot of places in China have English translations on the signs to help out us foreign people, the problem is their translating is not always the best. In the caves we past a sign that said “do not clamber please crawling.” I’m not actually sure what that means, but there are others that are slightly more understandable, such as “Lonely lane, don’t be crowd please.” I would love to have a job that is just going around correcting English, but unfortunately they don’t seem to have any interest in paying people for that. Although I must admit it is a great form of entertainment. We all have a lot of pictures with English mistakes. After the caves we walked through a bamboo forest, then went to my roommates house for dinner. They don’t always speak Mandarin because they have their own dialect, but they can. The problem is I can’t really understand the Mandarin either. I’m also still not used to seeing chicken heads floating around in my food. We also went to a hot pot place the night before and there was a chicken head in there two, also all of the Chinese people were wearing plastic gloves like the really, really cheap ones you can use in kitchens, and sucking the marrow out of the bones using straws. Very strange. Anyways, we stayed overnight in a hotel place and walked around her town the next day. We also went to my roommates back yard and cut down a bamboo tree and then chopped it into pieces and got to take them back with us, so now I have a bamboo pencil holder and one other piece I don’t know what to do with.

There was one other time, I think during orientation, when we went for a hike up near West Lake, which is apparently one of the prettiest places in China. We couldn’t really see the lake on the hike so I want to go back and check it out, I just need to find some time for it. Also it was a lot of stair hiking. I really want to find a hike that is just a path, I hate walking up stairs for hours, that is not fun, and I don’t consider it real hiking anyway. But the view from the top was great and our director brought his kids along, ages 4 and 6, who are really cute and hiked faster than the rest of us, which is rather embarrassing but I will use the excuse that we were taking a lot of pictures.

The weather has been getting warmer, which is great because the buildings are all still really cold. Unfortunately it makes us want to go out and explore, which we have no time to do. Actually people just signed a petition to try and reduce the work load, but they said that because Middlebury sets the curriculum there is nothing they can do, and of course Middlebury Chinese standards are rather high. I’m in the easier section of the lit class and I’m still struggling to get things done. We did go to this western style restaurant place to do some work and eat last week that was pretty good. It is pretty expensive, as all western food is, but reasonable for what you get. 68RMB, about $10, and you get bread, choice of salads, soup, choice of pasta and then the best part is all you can drink coffee and tea, and even better, all you can eat DESSERT! Not the best stuff ever, and they are small sample size, but since it is unlimited it works. It also includes ice cream, strange flavors, but they have the basics so I’m not going to complain. I might go back again tonight to study, since they also have free wi-fi, and I have two tests tomorrow. Sam and Mairead and some other people are going to the Backstreet Boys concert tonight in Hangzhou, I was considering but ended up not. I went to an Olympic qualifying womens volleyball game the other night so I figured I would sit this one out. Sounds like it will be entertaining though. The volleyball game was fun though, China won, which was nice for me but not as fun for all the people I went with who were rooting for Cuba. Lame. The playing itself was a little disappointing, but the atmosphere was fun. Also there were these cheerleaders that came out between games, and the first time the danced to Avril’s Girlfriend, not even the version with the Chinese chorus, and the second time, oh, wait, again to the same song, only they changed their outfits, which apparently made it different.

oh, and i forgot, we were supposed to go on a solo trip, so i went to xitang, where part of MI3 was filmed. it was really pretty, rivers, bridges, a lot of people and some museums. It was a little weird traveling alone since you dont talk for an extended period time. also i forgot to put my camera battery in my camera before i left, so i bought a disposable. not quite the same but hopefully good enough. also i tried to eat this sugar candy stuff, it is liquidy and you have to keep it moving or else it falls off the chopsticks that you eat it off. it was extremely sticky and messy and got it all over the place, but was fun to try and was really amusing to watch other people try and eat it.

Seeing as I have no amusing anecdotes or more interesting experiences I am going to stop writing and go eat lunch. Hopefully the next post will be more interesting; we are going to Nanjing this weekend so maybe something fun will happen there.

playing catch up

So I have finally started a blog, a little later than I planned but better late than never. I am currently in Hangzhou after a month in Beijing and then traveling to Hainan, Qingdao and Shanghai. Beijing seems like it was so long ago that I can barely remember it, except for the fact that there were too many people, too much pollution and enough brand name knock offs to fill the closets of every celebrity in Beverly Hills. Not to say there weren’t good aspects as well, because there were. Our area of the city was a little out of the way for most things, but had the essentials, supermarket, clothing stores, restaurants, knock off DVD store, and a bus station, which we didn’t really understand how to use until the last couple days. There were a few restaurants in the area that we got to know pretty well, even if we did order the same thing over and over again, and almost everything is drenched in so much oil you get fatter just looking at it. A lot of restaurants have picture menus now, which help a lot, but some of the time you just have to guess at a character and point and hope that what you ordered seems somewhat edible. We went to a restaurant the other night where we didn’t understand the menu and ended up just asking for chicken, which is exactly what we got, including the heart, innards and other parts, all covered in a brown sauce so you didn’t really know which part you were eating. However you can always resort to dumplings, buns and street food, which they tell you isn’t all that clean but tastes better than some restaurants anyway.

The classes in Beijing took up the most time and unfortunately were the least interesting, so I won’t bore you by going into details. We did get to visit the Great Wall and Forbidden City, which was under renovation so you couldn’t really see all of it. Probably the highlight of those trips was going down from the Great Wall on the alpine slide. We had a choice of taking the gondola or walking down and the program would reimburse us for the gondola ride, however the slide was deemed too dangerous to be school sanctioned, even though it seemed pretty safe too us, and even if it wasn’t you could buy insurance for 1 yuan, which in US terms is essentially 13cents. We sat on these little car things and went down in a metal pipe, very fun except that the cars didn’t go very fast. At least that far out of the city you got away from some of the pollution. However the pollution problem is complicated by the number of people who smoke. I think there were more smokers in Beijing than I have seen in every country I’ve been to in Europe combined, yes, including France. Fortunately in Hangzhou there don’t seem to be nearly as many people determined to get lung cancer.

I had about a 2.5 week break after classes ended in Beijing and went traveling with Hana and Josie, meeting up with other people in Hainan and Shanghai. There were way too many experiences to write about them all, and some unfortunate incidents including a very expensive cab ride, an assault by Chinese men with beer bottles which ended up resulting in 9 stitches in Josie’s head and hanging out in a hospital until 5:30am, as well as Hana being bitten by a monkey and almost getting hit with fireworks. Now for those of you of the older generation reading this, aka family, don’t worry, China is actually one of the safest places in the world for foreigners to travel, and everything ended up alright in the end. Aside from these isolated incidents the traveling was a lot of fun, and we ended up making some friends from different countries in our hostels, as well as being able to relax some once we reached our destinations. Because it was Chinese New Year not a lot was open, but we did get to see a lot of celebrations in Sanya, where it sounded like a war zone because people lit off fireworks nonstop for hours. You could see the smoke floating all around the city. It was also really odd seeing little kids running around with boxes of fireworks like they were candy, lighting them off with seemingly little supervision. We were slightly tamer in buying a bunch of sparklers and a big red lantern thing that you light from the bottom like a hot air balloon and send flying up into the sky. I think it is supposed to be good luck, except for the poor bird who might run into it during its flight.

After break we arrived in Hangzhou and were welcomed with orientation meeting after orientation meeting. I suppose necessary but not the most exciting start. We still haven’t gotten a chance to really get out and see the city, but what I have seen is pretty nice. The campus is a little small, which is inversely proportional to the amount of students at the school. There is a river running through the middle and several bridges, including one old fashioned one and a Chinese style gazebo, which is quite picturesque despite the green water running underneath. There is also a Frisbee field and soccer field, where a lot of Chinese students go to play around after classes, unfortunately they are all boys and will rarely let a foreigner play with them, nevermind a foreign girl.

Just in back of the school is a road that is a mecca for cheap, fast food, and is currently the location of my lo mien study. Seeing as I will be here for several months I see no need to eat mediocre noodles when there seem to be so many options, so I am surveying each type of noodle at each restaurant on the street (but a short street mind you) to determine who has the best, and then I can become more or less a regular and be content knowing that I am actually eating the best I can get for my money. And no worries on the health factor, there is also a fruit market, which I do go to, right next door. However it also has a lot of seafood (live and dead) as well as poultry, where you can take your pick and they will chop its head off for you then and there.

Seeing as I have just about written a short novel since I had to play catch up I suppose it is time to get back to homework. Kudos to anyone who actually read this entire thing. And if you are only reading this because you skipped to the end, well, that’s cheating, but I suppose impressive as well.