China Update 3

Hello again!

Another two weeks have passed, and Beijing life goes on as normal: crowded, lively, dirty, exciting, and impossibly inscrutable.  In these past two weeks China celebrated two holidays, which meant not only fun activities, but also days off of school (yay!)

Sep. 22 (Wednesday) was Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday that falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the traditional Chinese calendar (i.e. on the autumnal equinox).  Mooncakes are the traditional treat on this day, and though I had my fair share of them, I can’t say they taste very good (not bad, just a little too sweet, I guess).  Since we had school off on this day, we didn’t have a test on the following Friday (yay!), but it also gave us the opportunity to meet Bao Xin’s older brother, Bao Lei.  Bao Lei lives in a tiny apartment near the Datunlu area of Beijing, and he works for a website that sells health products (mostly medicine, I think).  He’s fairly quiet (much like his brother), but he’s also a very nice guy, very polite too.  Bao Xin, Bao Lei, and I went to eat at a Chinese barbecue restaurant near Lei’s apartment.  Chinese barbecue is much different than American barbecue, however: this restaurant (Jeju Island BBQ) was set up buffet style, so you go pick out your meats (all raw) and bring them to your table.  In the middle of the table is a griddle on which to barbecue the meat (with hot coals underneath, replaced every 15 minutes or so).  One thing I’ve noticed about eating meals in China is that I’m usually not completely full when I’m done eating, but tonight was not the case–I’ve never eaten so much meat in my life.  It was really good (the best meal I’ve had in China so far), but it was A LOT of food.  I kept telling Bao Lei I was full, but he kept giving me food anyway (I’m not sure if he was just being polite, or if it was because I was playing with my chopsticks and maybe I looked like I was still hungry, I’m not sure).  After dinner, we went to Houhai, which is a really nice area of Beijing.  In Houhai we went to Yandaixiejie (near Yangfang Hutong), which is one of the oldest (and nicest) streets in Beijing.  It dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), so it has some really cool, old architecture, but it’s somewhat modernized too and not run down like most of Beijing’s hutongs.  Yandaixiejie was lively that night, with a number of bars and fun stores (which I didn’t have time to look in, so I’ll definitely have go back 🙂 ), and a nearby lake.  My pictures of Houhai didn’t turn out real well since it was a nighttime, but when I go back hopefully I can take some better pictures.

On Thursday (Sep. 23) I started going to my elective once-a-week afternoon/evening class: erhu (I was supposed to start the week before, but I forgot–oops).  Erhu is a Chinese musical instrument with two strings and played with a bow.  The instrument sits upright and the bow rests between the two strings, so you can play either the inner string (lower notes) or outer string (higher notes).  I’m obviously not too good yet (rather awful, actually), but it’s fun nevertheless.  Plus, I get my own erhu (for ¥300), so hopefully I can take it back to America with me.  When I get better, maybe I can post of video of me playing on my website; but for now our classroom sounds like a flock of dying pigeons, squealing their last.  I guess I need to practice.

That weekend was fairly uneventful.  There was a student activity of hiking in the nearby Xishan Mountains and picking up trash, but I opted out (I probably would have enjoyed it, but I decided too late and couldn’t sign up).  So I laid low and caught up on some work.  My biggest adventure of the weekend came on Sunday.  After church on Sunday morning (I went out to lunch with Lawson again, accompanied by a new guy named Joel, who’s already graduated college but is here for a year to study the language and hopefully get involved in missions to some of China’s ethnic minorities), I wanted to check out the market near campus to look for some items, namely some sort of bag to carry things in (since stuffing a rather large wallet, two phones, and keys in my pockets every time I go out is somewhat uncomfortable).  Whenever I had tried to buy souvenirs or things before, Bao Xin said they were too expensive and told me I could buy the same stuff for cheaper nearer campus, so this was my day to accomplish that.  So we went to this market (Tianyi Market)–and I thought the subway was crowded!  We went in one building and on the second floor were bags–bags galore, bags here, bags there, bags everywhere; there were enough bags to supply the countries of Iceland and Bhutan combined.  It was actually really hard to navigate because it was so crowded and so labyrinthine, I kept getting lost.  But after some intense scouring, I finally found it, the bag of bags, not too big, not too small, canvas, and with an adjustable strap so I could sling it over my shoulder like a continental soldier, perfect for that 1920s New York paper boy look.  But of course, in China, you bargain.  Or so I’m told.  So the plan was to go away, come back, and ask for it at a lower price (that’s what Bao Xin said we should do, anyway).  So we came back and asked them to lower the price from ¥90, hoping to get it for about ¥30 or ¥40 (by the way, ¥90 is only like $13.43, so it’s really not that expensive, considering the same bag would probably be more expensive in America).  But when they refused the first time to lower the price, Bao Xin walked away.  Confused, I asked why he didn’t bargain… he said it was too expensive (but that’s the point of bargaining, right?).  So I looked around some more for another bag, assuming that ¥90 must be an exorbitant price and that the bag wasn’t worth that much.  But after some (more) intense scouring, I decided I really wanted that bag (there were some similar, cheaper canvas bags, but I felt weird about carrying a bag with a picture of Mao Zedong or Ernesto Guevara on the front).  So we went back and tried to bargain again, but they wouldn’t lower the price.  So we left again–and searched again.  I finally told Bao Xin that I didn’t care and would pay the full price, but he wouldn’t let me.  He said there was a place closer to campus that would have cheaper bags (sound familiar?), so we went–and they didn’t have any.  All in all, I spent three hours looking for one item and didn’t buy anything.  This was probably my most frustrating China experience so far… I’m not sure if Bao Xin is just really bad at bargaining, or if he really has no concept of how to shop (probably the latter, since he does seem like kind of a spaced out personality).  But it was a learning experience.  I went back the next day by myself and bought my bag.

After another week of my ritual routine of “class-lunch-homework-pick a nearby restaurant for dinner-bed-repeat,” Friday came–a holiday, so no test (yay again!).  This Friday (Oct. 1) was National Day in China, the equivalent of America’s Independence Day (it was on this day 61 years ago that Mao Zedong rode a Jeep into Tiananmen Square, declared victory over the KMT, and thus founded the communist state of China).  A tradition on National Day (for many, certainly not all) is to watch the raising of the flag at Tiananmen Square.  So, Bao Xin and I woke up at 3:30 AM (he actually had never gone to sleep the night before) and took a taxi to a place just outside Tiananmen Square (no traffic was allowed to pass in front of the East Gate (the one with Mao Zedong’s picture), theoretically out of respect but probably more realistically to help prevent protests, riots, etc.).  Then we stood in line for about an hour just to get in to Tiananmen Square–there were (I’d say) tens of thousands of people. It was a rather stately, yet eerie, experience, walking past all the communist guards into the Square.  We finally got into the square, waited until 6:00 AM for sunrise, and watched guards raise to flag to the playing of China’s national anthem.  After the flag was raised, there were released some several hundred pigeons, which flew over and around the square for the next half hour or so.  Then that was it–it wasn’t really a magnificent or splendorous affair, everyone just kind of walked away after that (I say ‘walked,’ but ten thousand people walking at 0.02 mph can’t really qualify as walking).  After eating breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we headed for home.  We had a hard time getting home because the subway wasn’t running and there weren’t any buses that ran anywhere near campus (but in the process I got to see Qianmen and Zhengyangmen, both (I believe) gates to the Forbidden City and several hundred years old (you can see pictures on my website)).  But we finally found a bus, got back to campus, slept until the afternoon, and laid low the rest of the day.

The next day (Saturday Oct. 2) we went to the China Open, an international tennis tournament held annually in Beijing.  This year the tournament was in the new area designed for the 2008 Olympics, and it was cool to see this part of Beijing.  The best part was, the tickets were only ¥60, which is less than $10 :).  We watched two and half matches (left during the third), all women’s matches.  The results were: Kateryna Bondarenko def. Anna Chakvetadze 6-0, 7-6; Jing-Jing Lu def. Carla Suarez 6-3, 6-3; and Olga Govortsova was beating Maria Jose Martinez (first set 6-3) when we left.  It was a lot of fun, a cool opportunity to see some of the people I watch on TV at home (and kind of random that I would end up seeing them in Beijing of all places).  I’d like to go to the final match, but it’s fairly expensive… I’ll have to consider.

Today (Sunday Oct. 3) I went back to the local Chinese Church (Gangwashi Church), not with Bao Xin (his stomach was hurting) but with another Chinese roommate here, Xu Moyi.  He had told me earlier in the week that he heard I was a Christian; he also told me he wasn’t a Christian, but that he believed in God, and felt that church was very important.  So I invited him to come to church with me, and he really seemed to like it, and wants to go back again (we can’t go next week because we’ll be at the Great Wall on Sunday morning, but in two weeks).  I’ve noticed how accepting and even excited about going to church these non-believing Chinese are (at least Bao Xin and Xu Moyi, anyway), a stark contrast to many believing Americans.  Whenever I tell Bao Xin I’ll pray for him (e.g. for his test or an illness), he always seems extremely grateful, as if he really believes in the power of prayer.  You can pray that God would really work on their hearts this semester, and that he would make me a ready messenger of the gospel (explaining the Gospel to someone is hard enough in English, let alone in Mandarin!).  Hopefully Bao Xin will be able to go next time too, and then maybe more and more will want to go!  That would be awesome (and also illegal, since I’m not allowed to “proselytize”… shh, don’t tell).  After this church service I went to the international church and then had lunch with Lawson and some of his Chinese friends afterwards.  They were all really nice, and I got to speak to them in Chinese, which was fun.

I’ve learned a lot more about my roommate in the past two weeks.  Besides not letting my buy anything (I guess I’ll have to shop without him from now on lol), he has some odd thoughts and habits.  E.g., he’s thoroughly convinced aliens exist (he reads news on his phone everyday, and apparently there have been several articles about UFO sightings in America), he’s superstitious about black cats, he’s really gullible (he believes all these fake YouTube videos he watches online, including one he just showed me saying Justin Bieber was a 51-year-old creeper in disguise), and he thinks it’s easier to move his entire bed than just shift the mattress (long story).  But he has some admirable qualities as well: e.g. he’s very faithful, always accompanying me wherever I go, kind of like my personal tour guide.  He’s also very patient with my poor Chinese and my frequent instances of misunderstanding.  He’s also not a partier (for which I’m very grateful) and he’s pretty clean (although he smells bad, probably since deoderant doesn’t exist in China).

I also learned more about Chinese colleges through talking to Bao Xin.  In China, what college you attend is based on how well you perform on the gaokao (“high test”); so for example, Bao Xin wanted to apply to Beijing University (PKU) but didn’t test well enough to do so, and ended up at a less prestigious school.  Upon entering college, you pick your major immediately (rather than waiting a year or two, as in America); but “pick” is a tricky word.  Based on your credentials, you are given a list of majors to pick from (may not be the ones you like), but then not all the departments may accept you.  In Bao Xin’s case, he was given 7 majors to “choose” from, but 6 of them didn’t want him, so his major was basically chosen for him: public management.  This made me very grateful for my own academic freedoms back in the states.  Moreover, he told me most Chinese college students will have completed 180-190 credit hours before graduating (in comparison to the 120-130 required for most American universities).  This is a BIG difference, by the way, and must mean that Chinese college students are busy all the time (though Bao Xin doesn’t seem to be too busy, so I don’t understand how he does it).

Bao Xin also has some serious stomach problems, the cause of which he isn’t really sure (you and he should start a club, Audrey).  Apparently he’s suffered from this for some time, but because of it he can’t drink cold beverages (including alcohol, which is probably a good thing), can’t eat food that’s too spicy (unfortunately, a lot of Chinese food is spicy), and on random days he can hardly get out of bed and often has to skip class.  It’s especially bad in the mornings, which is why he hasn’t been able to go back to church with me yet.  He’s been to a hospital in Harbin, and I think several others as well, but no one seems to know what it is, except that it’s a colon problem.  If you think of him, you can pray that his problems would be healed, and that he would come to know who his Healer is.

My language abilities are improving daily, but the more I learn, the more I realize how much more I have to learn–I guess learning is repentance.  Speaking Chinese is increasingly fun, but there can be frustrating experiences too (e.g. one of the Chinese Christians I ate with today had such an accent that I could hardly understand a word he said, and yet I could understand the rest of them clearly).  One of the biggest challenges is learning all the characters… I  can probably read 2,000 or so, out of about 20,000-30,000, so I have a ways to go.  I definitely wouldn’t say I’m fluent yet, but speaking and reading is definitely getting easier.  I also think my English is getting worse… whenever I write in English (which is very rare, mostly for these updates), I find that I have a hard time constructing my sentences, and they often turn out awkward, like I don’t know how to think in English.  And since my Chinese isn’t too good yet, I guess that means I stink at two languages now, instead of being good at two. Ha! Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get my English back when I come back to the States, but for now it’s Mandarin, Mandarin, Mandarin!

There’s probably something I’m forgetting, but until I remember, that’s it for now, folks.  You can see my new pictures on my website: Datunlu and Houhai, Tianyi Market, National Day at Tiananmen Square, China Open 2010, and some new pictures of food and signs (and, of course, Me!)…… Although maybe not, ’cause I just got a message from iWeb saying there was an error in publishing my site….. I’ll see what I can do.  I miss and love you all!

James