Closing Notes on Tianjin

Thank you those of you who have written recently. As always these posts are late, disorganized, and un- proofread. I apologize on all of those points. There are only a couple of things I would like to say about our last couple days in Tianjin.

First, in true Minnesotan fashion, the weather. Tianjin has a serious pollution problem. Honestly, after a weekend in Beijing I pine for some nice, crisp, clean Beijing air. There is a large needle-like antenna-tower-thing behind our dorm that should be able to be seen from the entire college. I was in my dorm a couple of days ago I honestly couldn’t see it. It’s a huge tower a block behind my dorm AND I COULDN’T SEE IT. I was even wearing my glasses. The Chinese bicyclists sometimes wear facemasks and stuff, but, honestly, the only solution that I’ve managed to come up with is to convince myself that Tianjin is the sister city of San Francisco. Keep saying “It’s just the fog” and it seems fine. I also love how the Chinese grade their weather. They say things like “Today’s air is not good.” Not only does the air sound sick but also sounds somehow morally lacking. Also, calling air that turns my snot black “not good” is understatement on the level of Hawaii being humid and the polar ice caps being a mite chilly. I was running a couple of days ago and I am pretty sure I got acid sweat. I looked outside and was like, I can almost see my hands, it’s just the morning fog at three in the afternoon, and I have a lot of energy, I am going for a run. Chinese people, by the way, don’t go jogging they believe such frivolous activities should be done on treadmills indoors and, after the run, I quite agree. I got all dressed up and was running quite fast when I felt pricklings on my skin. Then slowly as I continued running I realized that all parts of my body that were sweating had dull burn that was very uncomfortable. It took me five minutes to name the feeling acid sweat. I hate to think what the air is doing to my lungs.

Second, my Chinese friend. From the outset of the program we were assigned Chinese friends to help us with homework. I gave her a call before the midterm to meet up with her and ask a few questions. She is an excellent conversationalist whose English is sufficiently good that speaking Chinese is both embarrassing and counterproductive. To get into college here you need to be able to speak a good deal of English so basically all students want to practice their English with the ‘foreigner’ anyway. We met up a couple of times after that. She had a couple funny things that she said. One, in the middle of one of our conversations she leaned across the table with a self-satisfied, conspiratorial smile and said, “I know someone who believes in God.” I tried to keep from laughing as I congratulated her. That’s a sentence I don’t hear very often. Second, the Chinese are very interested in the US election taking place right now. At some point she asked me who I was supporting in the presidential election and I mentioned that I had worked for the Obama campaign during the Iowa primaries. She looked at me and, with a somewhat professorial tone, asserted that Obama was a rather unsavory word for African-American. She then asked me if I hated such people. The easy part of the response was to say no. The hard part was to form an explanation to her questioning and somewhat skeptical eyes and her repeated usage the offensive word before mentioned. I think even if she was convinced as to my lack of racism (which is unlikely) I am positive that she is convinced that every other white American (including my classmates) have a Confederate flag tattooed somewhere on their bodies and attend lynching after church every Sunday. It’s disturbing in the face of those misapprehensions that the Chinese still like America.

Third, Jingju. On the final day of Jingju (Peking Opera Class) those of us who felt like it paid 50 kuai to dressed up and painted in the traditional Chinese opera style. The pictures are, I think, self explanatory. I was lame and studied for my test.

Fourth, finals. The Chinese culture final was interesting. We were told a couple days before the test a list of poems, names, and idioms to memorize. Although, the amount needed to be memorized was fairly large, we study Chinese. This is the kind of academics we are good at-- bulk memorization. I left it with the distinct feeling that I had somehow cheated. I memorized it all and then evacuated it from my brain onto the page as quickly as possible. The class itself is fascinating. My initial impression was that it was like a history class only minus dates and facts. However, really our textbook is wonderful and provides a summary of all history. The class has nothing to do with it. The class is about what the Chinese tell their children the history is. It is the legends, the scraps of poetry, the idioms, and, of course, the field trips to actual sites. We also had an essay which was very manageable. Everything is graded very easily.

Before coming to China, I had been told that the Tianjin program was basically a vacation. This was in no way why I wanted to go but I was told explicitly that the academics were not in the least bit rigorous and that Zhao Laoshi was occasionally hard to find. Both these statements do not represent my experience in the slightest. The workload is at the same time manageable and impossible. Yes, you could put almost no effort into the class and end up with a decent grade, but, that’s not the point. To live up to the teachers’ expectations of how much we should retain and understand to the core of our souls I would need to work literally every spare moment I have. Especially for those of us in the class who either have not been in China all summer, or whose parents don’t speak to them exclusively in Chinese. The grammar surprisingly enough is often what strikes me as difficult. The book lacks any explanation of grammar and considers a single example sentence to be sufficient preparation for tests. Our homeworks almost exclusively cover things we do not discuss until after we have handed them in. It is not the hardest class I’ve taken but it is far from the spoon fed A that I had been told so much about. It also often feels that not only are we cramming to much information to retain but I honestly, occasionally, think that the class is worsening my Chinese. I just spend too much time doing homework and not enough talking to Chinese people. Second, Zhao Laoshi is, one, easy to find and, two, very actively involved in our lives. He treated us all to bubble tea and made himself available for questions the night before the final. I see him almost everyday either on the walk to breakfast or leaving the gym or something that he has planned. The program has been without any serious problems and Zhao Laoshi has always been available to talk with and has been more than sympathetic to all questions and problems people have had.

Finally, karaoke. Chris and David performed in an international students singing competition. The wowed the world (and what seemed like the entire population of Nankai University) with an inspired rendition of some sappy Chinese pop song. Pointing at various girls in the audience when lyrics like “I love you” came up (the girls usually responded by laughing, turning red, shaking their heads and saying “No”) and throwing candy into the audience.

I have received numerous requests to write more. So, as a servant to the whims of a tyrannical public, I wanted to, with all possible expediency, cooperate: M O R E.

Saturday 10/17/08

Terrifying. Easily the most terrifying experience I’ve had so far in China. I took a shower this morning. (All good stories start that way.) While in the shower I was singing thinking about the ridiculous amount of work that I should have done yesterday. Life was good. Then everything changed… I had just put shampoo in my hair (and finished singing Redemption Song in broken Chinese) when the water pressure became very very low. It then became a reasonable water pressure (meaning 3 times the normal water pressure here.) This seemed strange. I reached for a towel and rubbed just enough soap from my face so that I could open my eyes. Everything was yellow. All of the water was yellow, the floor of the tub was yellow, the drops of soapy water falling from my head were yellow. I immediately knew that my liver had exploded. I’ve been watching pirated episodes of House. If anything is yellow (and I mean anything) then the liver is leaking. If everything is yellow there must have been an explosion. While trying discover where so much liquid could have burst from my body without me noticing I turned around and found the shower raining me in yellow water. I don’t mean slightly yellow water. I mean Oak yellow. Aslan mane yellow. It was the kind of water that was in Atlantis in the third Aladdin movie after they drop the hand of Midas. I stepped back covered in soap and watched. I cupped some in my hands and smelled. It didn’t smell like sewage; that was a relief. Ten minutes later it returned to clear water, I rinsed hesitantly, dressed, and ran downstairs to ask if other people had had the same thing. Lydia said she had and claimed that it was rust from the pipes. I tell you this, either the pipes are made out of gold or that’s just what They want you to think. Sorry I’ve been behind on the posting this last stretch of the Tianjin program is miserable. 2 finals, 1 final essay, and packing. I can’t wait till Thursday. Feedback, as always, is encouraged, requested, and begged for.

Sunday 10/11/08

This morning we went to the Confucian Temple which was cool. It was actually I think the most tourist friendly historical site I’ve seen in China. The plaques next to buildings were in both Chinese and perfect English and the entire temple was completely deserted. It smelled a little bit funny because the moat had recently been drained and there was a bunch of rotting plant material, but overall it was great. It’s interesting how much emphasis the Chinese place on their writing system. Where as in the west at this kind of place I feel like there would be art (statues, paintings, etc.) instead there are huge stone columns covered in Chinese characters.

We ate lunch and went to the Science museum. Almost everyone went into geek overdrive and disappeared to look at the exhibits that are most closely related to their majors. Lacking a major personally I needed to sprint from exhibit to exhibit. The museum itself is huge. Luckily I couldn’t understand the majority of the plaques which spead things up considerably. We also watch an Omnimax Movie. It started with hula dancers and Crosby, Stills and Nash. At first this seemed an odd juxtaposition. Then the screen said “narrated by Liam Neeson” at the exact moment it started jabbering away in Chinese. It was great.

Also for those of you who are interested on Friday those of us who did not go to Beijing participated in some international student sports competition. We apparently did well. John apparently brought his huge American flag and waved it around on his shower curtain pole. John and Divya were the winning team for piggy back races. We placed in every event we competed in and… yeah, well, I ate a scorpion.

Saturday 10/10/08

Qianmen Hostel is great. It is literally a stone’s throw from Tiananmen Square. The guys have a quad and the girls have a triple. The rooms are small, smell like freshly cut wood, and are less than 10 dollars a night. We have a nice lounge, great location, friendly staff. We also have internet! I would give up the tv, refrigerator, room service, personal shower we currently have at Tianjin (and my first born child) for just some fast wireless internet. I could do homework in half the time. I could keep in contact with people so much better. I could post more frequently. I paid for an 1hr of internet to try to watch part of the presidential debate. I loaded 5min in 1 hr. In a celebration of internet we all watched an episode of the Daily Show and the Saturday Night Live Vice Presidential debate sketch before bed last night. It was great.

Because I had no new clothing or a towel I was required to use my T-shirt as a towel this morning which left me in my, finally dry, jacket. We took the subway to the Temple of Heaven. The exact purpose of the Temple of Heaven was never completely clear to me. What I do know is it is huge, pretty, has amazing architecture and rose gardens and that today was broilingly hot. The center of the complex is a massive building that makes a pleasant break from the Chinese obsession with red. I bought a T-shirt of it at the first opportunity just so I could change out of my jacket and stop sweating. The troubling thing about these places is that beautiful and breathtaking as all of it is I feel like I’ve become desensitized to the awe that they are supposed to inspire. Perhaps its best to never travel and just see one incredible thing before you die. I don’t know.

We went to lunch at a place next door and Rachel said that she wanted to go to the Pearl Market. I managed to buy a towel and some socks there. Pretty sure I got ripped off. Perhaps they could see the need in my eyes. Rachel said that she got a pearl necklace that was initially being sold at 40 USD for about 15. There was also a toy market where I met a very charming couple who were in charge of a stand full of puzzles. They gave me one and said if I could solve it they would toss it in free with the other one. Oh. Irritating. I got it completely by luck. There were also shops selling helicopters, gameboys, scooters, skateboards, legos, it’s amazing how quickly one can go from communism to such aggressive, rampant and primarily illegal capitalism. I’m impressed. We tried to go to the ancient observatory. Zach and I tried to scale the walls with limited success. We then returned to Wangfujing and had starfish. It tastes like cardboard on the outside and the inside (which is what you’re supposed to eat) is some nondescript soft, squishy, dark meat that did not taste like fish or really anything but squishy wetness.

Friday 10/9/08

Ok. These posts are going to be excessively long. I’m sorry. Last week I was talking with people and suggested going to Beijing for the weekend. So we did. We= Alan, Allison, Me, Peter, Rachel, Rita, and Zach (I’m never sure when I alphabetize myself whether I should alphabetize Noah, me, myself, or I. So I decided to do all of them.) The train ticket was 36 kuai (5 USD) at a shop on campus.

I’ve had bad experiences trying to do laundry here. First I postponed doing laundry until just past the point of being disgusting. I then did two loads using the washing machine in the dorm. My laundry card did not work so I used Alan’s for two washes. There was a problem, however. My clothing would enter the wash bad smelling and normally shaped and leave it better smelling and stretched to accommodate extra limbs. Also, it didn’t seem to clean the clothing only to make it smell better. So I decided to do my laundry by hand. They sell the equipment (a bucket) on the street for a dollar and so I bought one. I reached the point of being completely out of laundry I could decently re-wear on Wednesday, but because I was studying for a test I wore pajama’s to class and did all of my laundry on Thursday night. Hand washing is fine. I did the first couple shirts and then got into a groove and went through washing the rest of my clothing. Something about the repetitiveness, the calming splash of quickly browning water, the warming friction of the wash and cooling freshness of the rinse is so calming, so…

I woke up in a daze on Friday morning to realize that every piece of clothing I owned was very wet an hanging from something in my room. I also realized that I was supposed to pack for Beijing. Nothing was packable, nothing was wearable. I went to class soaking wet. I could not bring myself to pack a soaking towel or soaking underwear or anything else with my computer, so, Friday afternoon I went to Beijing with only the, still wet, clothes on my back.

We took a taxi to the train station which at first led us to the conclusion the taxi driver was either lost or insane and, once there, led us to the same conclusion about the planning commission. There are many, seemingly unnecessary, and certainly sketchy underpasses that lead to a big shiny pretty new train station that is only ½ complete. The train ride was about an 1 hour and 20 minutes and was very nice and convenient. We dropped our stuff off at the Hostel we’re staying at an went out for Peking Duck. It is sort of disappointing to be back to where people are not excited to meet a white person. It is also liberating not to be stared at. Peking duck was expensive, greasy, and good in the same guilty way fried ice cream is. Fried ice cream, by the way, is delicious.

NIGHTMARKETS! (Wangfu jing) This is totally why I wanted to come to Beijing. First the bad news: really pricy, really touristy. Good news: fried ice cream. What a wonderful idea. They put a scoop of ice cream on a piece of wonder bread. You may ask “How can they make that any better?” Well. You surround the ice cream with a little bit of whipped cream so that it looks like a slice of wonder bread with a huge blood clot on it. Then you deep fry it. Why doesn’t Minnesota have this? They fry everything else. It’s warm and crunchy on the outside and cool and refreshing on the inside. They sell other amazing things here. Deep fried 100 year tofu that made me think I was going to be sick just walking past it. Noodles, dumplings, soups, dumplings filled with soup, candied fruit, meat, hairy looking fish, fried silk worms, whole fish, crickets, 什么的。 The vendors are really funny. Their English is limited to the words “buy,” “hello,” “free,” and the name of their goods. This leads to the hilarious man at the far end who stands on a chair shouting “buy one sheep penis, centipede no money.” I’ve had some bad experiences with centipedes and was excited to eat a fried one but I could feed myself for 4 days on the amount of money it cost for a single centipede so instead I opted for some fried scorpions. I’m not joking, or bragging, or anything, scorpion is really good. It is fried past the point of tasting like anything but a delicious crunchy piece of …something. I’m a big fan. I suspect it would be the ideal snack food for a movie. (Kukui Grove Cinemas, think about it.) I’m going to bed. Thank you those of you who have sent me emails. It looks good if you actually post it on the website. Gives the school evidence that people are actually reading me. Any input is great and the emails definitely improve my day. Ok. Thanks again.

Friday 10/9/08

Yesterday was the Midterm exam. It is very hard to cram 200 words/idioms into your head for a test. It is also very hard to memorize a bunch of grammar based solely on the 1 example in the book and quickly jotted down notes in Chinese that are often illegible and almost always unintelligible 2.5 weeks later. I’ve heard various things about the levels 1&2 tests. Most people said they were very reasonable and many said easy. I can say with only a little bit of exaggeration, however, that if I am not put on immediate academic probation after that test they’re not grading it properly. No that’s a lot of exaggeration-- I think. But it was tough, very tough. We were given 2 hours to do the test and 3 hours later I handed in my paper with the rest of the class and was still not done. I tend to feel a calm relief after tests and a sharp anxiety when they are being handed back. Realizing that I could conceivably get everything on a test wrong filled me with a strange elation. I think I should do that more often.

Interesting side note: There are access holes to the sewage system here everywhere. I think that the infrastructure of Nankai University is very old and can’t handle the current population. This is the only explanation I can come up with for why I see men everyday ladling sewage from multiple holes in the street in buckets. Sometimes you don’t see them you just see where they spilled on the street. (No, Mom, I am not barefoot.) This occurred to me just a little bit ago. I suspected that they were just transporting sewage to fill the University pond but I think old infrastructure is more likely. How the sewage gets in the pond remains a mystery…I suspect leprechauns.

Today in class we watched a movie called 活着 (To Live.) I was very impressed. It was funny, sad, well acted, well directed. I highly recommend it. Lydia and the most vertically challenged of the teachers (not one of my teachers) cried. I think, twice. It wasn’t really all that sad. It was, I thought, very similar in style and message to “Life is Beautiful.” It was nice though to rest a little. It’s been a while since I’ve felt well rested. The people on this trip are all very good academically. There is no competition but I feel like there is an unspoken standard of work that just weighs on you. Also, although the homework load is very manageable our days are always very full and the amount of information we are supposed to understand, retain, and use in conversation is very overwhelming. (This is probably just true for me.)

Saturday 10/4/08

Academics are going well. The difficulty of the material (36 new words every two days with a quiz to make sure we learn them) is balanced by the generosity of the grading. (Who’s ever heard of taking of .1 of a point?) My teachers are both excellent. Our class begins Monday through Friday at 8:30 (and unlike Carleton and Island School we have bells that make class actually start on time) and we start with a 2 hour Chinese language lecture. This is given for the 300 level class by Li Laoshi who is quiet, composed, on top of it, very clear, very nice, and has the exact same facial structure and smile as Zhao Laoshi. Our textbook does not have any English even for the new words, which are explained in simple Chinese that I still am unable to understand. This ends up making preparing for class a time intensive process and often frustrating futile because of how highly idiomatic many of the words/expressions are. This is actually one of my criticisms of the Chinese class. I am being taught charming idioms for love at first sight and prince charming but I often find myself unable to keep up in just normal conversation. I won’t pretend my Chinese isn’t improving and the classes are both enjoyable and useful (especially the grammar and speaking) but…. The second 2 hours (10:30 to 12:30) are taught by Ye Laoshi who is very nice, very frank, very aggressive, and very funny. It mostly consists of her reviewing information taught in the first class, forcing people to talk, and her talking about her love life and asking about ours. It’s funny, in class, she talks to someone else in the class and I think “oooh I know that” but when she talks to me the flight instinct kicks in, my brain shuts down, my eyes get really wide and I look like an idiot…oh well. I also have the bad habit of imagining the resulting battles if the Chinese Characters on the chalk board were to fight. (龙 is a vicious looking character.) It gives my face an intent expression that tends to make me get called on despite the fact that the only thing in mind is 急 getting gutted by 传。 It’s sometimes fun to try to make up an answer on the spot having no clue what the prompt is but, yes, mom, I’m working on it.

We take a couple other classes which I’ll summarize quickly and then I’ll start studying for my quiz. My study habits here have changed drastically. I go to bed at 10 and get up at 5. It’s been working so far.

Mondays: Tai Chi. Our female teacher is, I think, attractive and bends in ways that no human being was ever meant to. The class itself is remarkably difficult. My lack of coordination and muscles make things rough. Especially when moving at 1/100th of the speed you want to move at. Fun. We also have Calligraphy which is also a trial of patience and is remarkably humbling.

Tuesdays and Thursdays: Zhao Laoshi teaches his cultural history of China which seems to mostly be nice little forays into his mind and metaphors. Zhao Laoshi is, I think, at this point universally revered by the class and could (but does not) come to class and preach infanticide without damaging in the least his following. Also, today he treated us all to hot pot (which was amazing.) The class is mostly taught pictorially with very, very good sketches put on the chalk board and interesting verbal cues like “Confucius, duck, arrow.” Also last class he was talking about prehistoric man and drew literally the perfect cranial structure for a Neanderthal on the chalk board. It was more accurate than the pictures in science magazines. It was amazing.

Wednesdays: Beijing Opera. Our Prof. was an actor. If I ever have his stage presence I will be able to rule the world. He can sing, he can dance, he loves John, he shouts, he entirely makes up for the aesthetic problems of Beijing Opera.

Friday: Wushu or martial arts. I am sore in parts of my body that I did not know could be.

For the record: I am enjoying Tianjin so much that I wish I had another term here with the same routine. 5 weeks seems too short a time. As always if you have questions, comments, suggestions email me and randolpn@carleton.edu or post.

Friday 10/2/08

This week is a holiday in China. We are the only people in the country who are currently going to school. On Tuesday we got the day off and for most people that meant watching pirated DVD’s and procrastinating on doing homework. We then met after dinner at Zhao Laoshi’s house and watched his interview that was being played on the English speaking channel before the National Holiday celebration coverage. It was very interesting. He was being interviewed with an advisor to British Embassy on how China’s status in the world had changed in 2008. The interviewer was infuriating. He was some little Chinese man that was trying to William F. Buckley and only succeeding in being both insulting, condescending, and inarticulate. The British guy took hours to say nothing and Zhao Laoshi was only asked the most idiotic questions. His answers were, I think, significantly better than the other guy’s but he would be cut off frequently by both his aggressive and annoying companions. Oh well.

Yesterday, (Thursday) was very cool. We were supposed to meet outside of one of the classrooms at 6am. We took this to mean the bus would leave 7am and so planned on waking up at 6:45am. Instead we were woken with a knock on the door and a shouted “We were supposed to leave 15min ago.” Some of us (a little more than half) signed up to participate in Dragon Boat races. Over the last two weeks we have had 3 practices on the Tianjin River The river is about 20 degrees warmer than the air outside, which we’ve decided is due to nuclear waste dumped into it. It has a similar color and consistency to sewage, (perhaps a little bit more watery) and I heard a body was discovered in it fairly recently. The practices themselves were exhausting. The boat is filled 2/3 with Carleton students and the 1/3 with a German, a couple Chinese, a Korean, a Spaniard, and another American. Practice was 2:30 to 5:30 of sprints. Dragon boats work sort of like an outrigger canoe except that there are 22 people in the boat. The paddles are similar as is the technique. There is a person at the front who beats the drum and a person in back who steers. These practices were training us for yesterday’s race that was humbling. We planned our excuse if we didn’t win to be because the Chinese have been doing this since birth. We were not expecting to be competing exclusively against foreigners and being demolished by the Russian and Italian teams that flew to China exclusively for this race. We went to the coast for the races which was nice and we were given matching track suits. It was a lot of fun and we only came in last place once.

Friday 10/2/08

Everyone is doing well and I think enjoying the program. We are almost always together (which has its disadvantages and its advantages) and everyone seems to get along well and to be doing fine. However, for the benefit of parents and in honor of the paraolympics I’m going to give a brief summary of everyone’s current condition using a single word spelled backwards.
Alan: kcis (but recovering)
Allison: tsol (but will be found soon)
Bekson: gnihcaop
Ben: sedarahc gniyalp (with roommate who only speaks Japanese)
Brenden: dezicinis
Chris: snospmis eht gnihctaw
David: ykrans
Divya: gnilggig
Duncan: gnivrats (having trouble adjusting to Chinese food)
Fred: nainrofilac
Grace: nacnud
John: evets (apparently the translation of his Chinese name)
Katherine: tuo gnikrow
Lydia: oooooooooohca (gnizeens)
Me: siht gniyojne
Molina: !!!!!!gnojhaM
Mark: tnrubnus
Pa: teiuq
Peter: bacov egnarts gniwonk ylsuolucarim
Rachel: tneduts tcefrep
Richard: gib
Rita: gnidaer
Teagan: gnihgual
Tenzen: tneulf
Trey: dyslexic (not really. Doing very well but someone had to be disabled.)
Zach: peelsa

Wednesday 10/1/08

These are tidbits that I jotted down and do not know how they fit in chronologically. I need to stop titling them “today.” They are, however, interesting.

Beijing Opera: We went to Beijing Opera today. It was fascinating. I didn’t understand a word of it and I often thought my eardrums would begin to pour blood, but the costumes, the acting, and the amazing skill required to do everything made it a worthwhile experience. Also the audience was so involved and would laugh and spit so energetically that it was a very fun. To my ear at least, the singing is 难听 or unpleasant to listen to. It lacks the continuity in my mind to be considered music but the skill required to jump from one note to another completely unrelated octaves away is, I think, without parallel in the western world. Apparently the other opera had a bunch of choreographed Kung Fu fights. I think, I would have liked that.

Yuebing: I have a problem. Now that the Mid Autumn Festival is long over, the Moon Cakes (Yuebing) are on sale. I happened to have had the perfect yuebing in Mongolia and eat between 2 and 6 of the sweet filled pastries a day in search of another. Some taste like fruit cakes, some taste like (to quote Zach) stale gummy bears, or pumpkin, or sweet potato, or red bean, or…

Five Roads Cultural Tour: I came to this under false pretenses. We were told that we should come to see the Five Roads Cultural Tour in the concession district. (Much of Tianjin has Victorian style architecture from it’s periods under Western domination.) I went with the expectation of touring five roads that I assumed were particularly cultural. What I did not expect was no tour, no five roads, and, really, no historical or cultural sights what-so-ever. We were, I think, brought to be photographed. (Which, upon reflection, at least in my case, is understandable.) No, seriously, there were a bunch of party officials and some diplomats on a raised platform above a part of the street where a bunch of cameramen would film us. There was then a small parade where many groups of scantily clad haole (white) women came in and did terrible dances. (I think, I’m a prude. I don’t approve of cheerleaders in America, let alone here where they’re so conspicuously inappropriate. Especially considering how 难看 they all were.) The diplomats on the platform were usually unsuccessful at hiding their distaste. (There was a Russian thing that was good and a drum act that was also good but the Brazilian dancers would have been inappropriate at a strip club.) We then listened to a speech by the local party leader, were photographed some more, given Chinese flags to wave, and bussed back to school. I’m glad I went. I’m still completely confused as to what we witnessed but it has given me a lot to think about.

Internet: Internet is really hard to get. Phone cards run in the 5 USD per 2 min range. The phones are ridiculously picky and won’t even let you call an 800 number phone card (the ones you buy here, you actually stick into the phone.) Internet places are open almost always during our classes and more infrequently when we’re not in class. There is a substantial time difference. We also have a homework load that results in my getting 13 hours of sleep on Saturday night to try to compensate for the complete lack of sleep over the week. So, if your children, or boyfriends, or whatever, are not calling it’s not their fault. It’s really hard.

Bookstore: I went to the main bookstore in Tianjin. It is very much worth going. It is seven floors of paradise. The entire first floor is all Chinese as a second language or English as a second language. Basically every classic piece of literature from anywhere has an edition that has on one side the Chinese and the other side the English. This is also a good place to buy a Chinese English electronic dictionary. They make everything easier. (I don’t need to buy one, I have a roommate who has one.) I also went to the ATM to get out money and it said that I had 0 RMB. My entire world came crashing down. How I was going to survive in China on the 5 USD in pocket suddenly became an issue. It ended up just being a sadistic machine but for a moment there…

Antiques Market: I have a terrible sense of direction but there is a street where a bunch of street vendors peddle antiques or very good imitations for very negotiable prices. Go. Don't ask me for directions I've already gotten several people lost that way. I thought I’d be really good at haggling but once that put their arm around my shoulder and call me friend I fold. My policy so far has been to not pay for anything more than 50% of the asking price. There’s a lot of cool stuff, lots of communist poster, pins, etc. One of the vendors we were talking to asked where we were from (I went with my roommate Alan) and I said America. She smiled and said America giving the thumbs up sign. She then said Japan, held her pinkie, and shook it making a genuinely menacing sound. The resentment is still very much here.

Ancient Culture Street: This is again like the Five Roads. My expectations of an ancient culture street would be a bunch of historical buildings on a road maybe with souvenir shops. Instead there is a network of streets all of them new in imitation of traditional China and all of them selling something. There are people everywhere, and the vendors are so aggressive its shocking and almost always overwhelming. However, the stuff they’re selling is very interesting. Even without negotiating the price the amount they charge for an original, medium sized, painting that you actually see painted is like 5 USD. After a little negotiation it is 2.5 USD and, I at least, feel bad.

Clubbing: Lots of clubs in Tianjin. I’m a prude. I don’t really approve. Especially these places where the tables all have hookahs which makes the entire place look like my mental picture of an opium den. It was nice to dance a bit but the music was so loud that my heart was reconsidering the advisability of its beat. The music was amazing, though. There were a couple songs so grossly inappropriate that I am trying not to think about the let alone write them. The lyrics are all in English which is unfortunate. It was really funny though seeing Chinese people who you know have no idea what they’re saying singing things about their sexual organs and prostitution that defy comprehension in any language. There was also an intriguing song that had two lyrics: “What is you password?” Techno beats. “Your password has been accepted.”

Wednesday 9/24/08

I thought I was going to die today. I went to the swimming pool. Nankai has wonderful new sports facilities for the Olympics. (As the Olympics took place 100mi away, why the Olympics were relevant escapes me but they emphasize it rather strongly.) Included in the huge new and shiny complex is a massive swimming pool with bunch of Chinese people slowly either doing laps or drowning or bathing (it is often hard to discern which.) I went to the front desk and asked for a swim card. I know that the varsity swimmers on our trip had been using it so I paid about 120 kuai for the remainder of my time here in Tianjin. (That’s about 15 bucks.) It seemed to me to be a reasonable price but I think it’s fairly representative of China. Everything is cheap but you need to pay for everything. (You need to pay for napkins.) First I tried to get into the pool in my surf trunks but they wouldn’t let me. I tried to explain in broken Chinese that my surf trunks were significantly cleaner than their air but at last I was ushered to some shop that tried to sell me a variety of skin tight swimming wear. Turning down the distinctly Asian and ungodly cross between jammers and a speedo I bought a pair of jammers and entered the dressing room where I was serenaded by many naked Chinese men singing. I changed somewhere more discrete and entered the pool.

I decided on choosing the lane that seemed most deserted and was stopped while I was going in by one of the lifeguards. I’ve been able to follow conversations almost always a little bit but I was somewhat caught off guard and so had no clue what he was saying. He held up two fingers which seemed to indicate some form of peace and gently pushed me into the water with the command of 游泳 or swim. I started swimming and would look back occasionally to see him shouting at me and indicating me to go on. I started swimming faster and faster hoping that at some point when I looked back he would disappear. This never happened. After 2 laps I felt done with the shouting and tried to get out of the pool. I was pushed back into the pool and told through body language to put my hands above my head. Remembering the guards outside of the swimming facility I quickly became convinced that I was going to be shot and considered whether if I were to hide under the semi obese man slowly swimming past me I could use him as a shield. It also occurred to me that I am a foot taller and 100lbs heavier than every other person in the room. Perhaps if I were to overpower the lifeguard and dive through a window the military… After a little bit he motioned me over and helped me out of the water, made me sign some forms, and gave me a red bracelet. In hindsight I think in the initial conversation he was telling me that I was trying to swim in the deep end of the pool and I needed to pass a test that he was willing to supervise that involved me swimming two laps at whatever speed I wanted to and 3 minutes of treading water with my hands above my head. In hindsight.

I swam for probably an hour and while I was leaving was accosted by another lifeguard who asked where I was from. I told him America and he started talking about how beautiful America was and then he started talking about something that I could not understand in the slightest. I ended the conversation feeling humbled at my Chinese abilities and guilty at the show of affection for America. I feel like it would be hard to find people in America who like either America or China with that lively affection. I am still perplexed as to why the Chinese seem to like America so much. Having recently ended a Cold War and genuinely negative relations it seems that China would be more justified in disliking us than almost any other country. (Espeacially considering the amount of their population we’re killing with our tobacco.) It was very interesting. I will try to get pictures of this place up ASAP. Talk to me peoples of the world! I can change!

Sunday 9/21/08

Today I discovered 2 things. 1. Possibly my favorite food ever. They have some sort of egg burrito in the morning with tofu, egg, delicious fried bread, and some really good spices. They are around 20 US cents. 2. I was wandering in Tianjin with my roommate Alan and Diviya. (I’ll correct the spelling of that on Monday) and we stumbled across the natural history museum. It is very cool and very troubling. It involves a lot of fine specimens of the art of taxidermy (pandas), an aquarium (that consists of a bunch of big fish in small tanks, sea turtles, sharks, and a single very lonely seal,) dinosaur models, and a bunch of cool looking dead bugs. It was very cool but the amount of sea turtles I found very troubling.

Saturday 9/19/08

We are now fully transitioned from being nomadic tourists to the routine of school. Our drive from Mongolia was uneventful excepting some truly remarkable driving by our bus driver. The prejudice that Asians are incapable of driving is absolutely absurd. True, the drivers here don’t drive safely but their knowledge of the exact size of their vehicle (so that they can squeeze past another car and merge perfectly into a space exactly 1/189th of an inch more than the length of their vehicle) and their knowledge of their brake reaction time (so that they can stop so close to you after waiting so long to slow down that your entire life flashes before your eyes) leaves me in a constant state of awe (and fear.)

Accommodations: We arrived at Tianjin sometime in the evening on Thursday. For those who don’t know Tianjin is about an hour drive makai (towards the sea) of Beijing. It is China’s fourth largest city and home to Nankai University, where Zhao Laoshi grew up and one of the best universities in China. It was rather demoralizing coming back from the wide rolling plains and blue sky of Inner Mongolia to the crowded frenetic energy of a city and to smog that obscures everything more than a block and a half away. (I thought it was so bad I couldn’t see the face of the person next to me but that was just because my contact fell out.) We are settled in a dorm called the “Yi Yuan Hotel” which is probably a better description than dorm. It is an on-campus hotel in all including name. The rooms are set up in the universal hotel layout twin beds facing TV’s and we have room service. Over all, the accommodations are wonderful. (It’s nice to have a full toilet again. The ingenuity and flexibility required to successfully use a squatter has been taxing my hamstrings and my brain. As a note, toilet paper here comes in the bring your own variety.) I will attempt to post the address here where packages can be sent.

Food: Nankai is really a very cool school. It is in a sense a world unto itself, it is connected to elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, it has its own gym, market, street venders, restaurants, liquor stores, residential neighborhoods, young children doing bizarre exercise routines on Saturdays, old men who play xiaqi (Chinese Chess,) libraries, lakes, statues, parks, it’s actually quite impressive. So far the highlight of the area is Xinan Cun (literally Southwest Village.) It is basically two streets of street vendors and small restaurants, hair cutting places, pirated dvd sales booths, and a small supermarket. Mostly though the food is cheap and delicious. Something that was new to me is called 包子 or Baozi. For .5 kuai (or about 7 cents) you can buy 1 steamed ball of dough filled with either meat or vegetable mixes. All of them are delicious if not necessarily easy on the stomach. There is fried rice 炒饭, steamed noodles, and a variety of red bean filled pastries. Meals average around a dollar.

Academics: On Thursday we met our Chinese buddies (Nankai students who are majoring in teaching Chinese as a foreign language) and had one hour of forced conversation. It is difficult to avoid issues like politics in a one-hour conversation about Chinese culture. I oscillate between depression at how little of the conversations I can understand and surprise at the amount of what I say that they seem to be able to understand. I’ve always considered speaking to be the biggest issue in my Chinese so I was both relieved and somewhat sad to find myself taking a completely written placement test on today. I studied about three hours too many for that test but… oh well. After that we had class for about an hour. The teachers seem nice and look like they might be 22…if that. (Then again, here I have a lot of trouble determining ages so they may very well be in their mid-sixties.) We’ll see how that goes. I’ll try to get this posted soon. Please send feedback for those who haven’t yet and for those who have thank you. 再见

Saturday 9/15/08

Sorry I forgot to post this note I made. It is from before Changde. The Great Wall is amazing. What is most amazing is how bad of a wall it is. It is not straight. It branches and twists as if it has a will of its own. It was not, I suspect, useful as anything but as a public works project. Its steps are uneven and often treacherous, its function as a communication route would have been served just as effectively with a series of tents filled with 中国人 (Chinese people) with fireworks. It is, however, easily one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Hiking along the Great Wall is not only seeing how expansively beautiful the Chinese landscape is but an exhausting adventure up steps that have completely crumbled into guarded military zones. I can’t explain how much fun this excursion was or how breathtakingly beautiful the great wall is. I will attempt to post pictures as soon as possible.

Wednesday 9/17/08

Today was easily my favorite day to date in China. We went to a battleground between the Manchurians and Mongolians. The rest of the day was unplanned until dinner, so, Brendon, Alan, Bechson, Ben, and I decided to hike to the top of a hill on the other side of town. So we walked through the town that from a distance looks clean and tourity and in person is a coule steps below the class of ramshackle backwater. (Though there were some delicious mooncakes.) The hike was reasonably strenuous mostly because of the time constraint of dinner at 6, but the views were spectacular. It is always windy here. This is the ideal climate for a flag or windmills. We walked through fields with friendly farmers. People here are not as aggressively friendly as they were in Beijing. But it only takes a few smiles and a couple horribly butchered words in Chinese for all the Mongolians I’ve met to become incredibly friendly, warm, and generous. I feel that fundamentally I am somewhat Mogolian (besides being considered barbaric by the Chinese.) Brenden and I took a somewhat more circuitous route back and ended up slipping under a barbed wire fence to walk along the freeway. Along the way we came to the decision that we would try to hitchhike back. After getting no response by holding out our thumbs, or shouting ting, ting, ting! (stop, stop, stop!) A Jeep driven, I think, by a farmer, randomly stopped, more out of curiosity, I suspect, than anything else , and we caught a ride into town. Also, while walking along the highway we passed some farmers who were loading trucks full of freshly harvested carrots. We had a brief conversation and both of us were gifted carrots the size of my forearm. (Honestly after eating that I expect to get X-ray vision.) We then went into town to buy some water for the walk back to our yurts and I had a nice trans-cultural game of peek-a-boo with the little son of one of the shopkeepers. Peek-a-boo is apparently universal, high fives, and patty cake are not. Oh well.

We are currently staying in yerts out in the middle of the Inner Mongolian Steppe. Yesterday we went horse back riding. Again, I like the lack of safety laws in China. They put me on a horse, and at some point I asked the horse owner if I could ride the horse independently and the guy laughed, said I could, and left. I did manage to get the horse to canter a couple times in the 2 hour ride through the steppe. This place is kind of like a cross between the southwest (cowboy hats, ranches) and China (chinese people speaking chinese.) Last night we had a party that involved watcing a goat get chosen from the flock, having its throat slit, being butchered, and slowly roasted over a fire. We also sang Karaoke and people who wanted to tried the local liquor which is made out of fermented milk. (To the best of my knowledge it is the most foul substance ever invented.)

I would like to apologize for grammatical errors. As the son of English teachers, they offend me as well, but I'm constantly behind with these posts and end up writing them when I am exhausted. The first picture is Zach going down a slide. The second picture is John and David cruising in tubs ontop of a hill surveying the grassland. The third picture is where we hiked taken from our we hiked you can see our yert camp distantly in the back behind the town, the penultimate picture is of an Aobo or Mongolian shamanistic temple, the third picture is Tianjinners enjoying Mongolia, Ok. 再见.