We're Moving!

Hello all, sorry to make your lives slightly more tedious, but due to recent problems uploading pictures and the fact that I can't actually directly access this blog from China, I'm moving to a new site - http://ramblingelsewhere.wordpress.com. Everything should be moved over and fixed up a bit soon and then I'll get back to updating. Or maybe I'll just finally catch up on pictures.

Pics: Wooden Pagoda Take 2

Let's try this again.

Pics: Wooden Pagoda

Some pictures of the Wooden Pagoda in Da Tong including one of me with my roommate Hae-In and one of some classmates spelling out ACC, the name of the program I'm doing.

Midterm Break: Trip to Da Tong 大同

It seems as though I should write about this while it is still fairly fresh in my memory, although I truly am still a little shocked that we have already passed the midterm break and the summer is more than half over. So following our marathon of a midterm test (including a written test and two oral presentations of 5 and 12 minutes length) we got ready to go traveling about China a little, courtesy of ACC's planning. Between the two options for the midterm trip - Luoyang and Datong - I chose to go to Datong for one because the places we were going to looked more interesting but also because I've already been to Luoyang, which is where the Shaolin Temple is. As it turns out this was a wise decision for another reason - it rained almost constantly while they were in Luoyang and Chinese streets are simply not built to deal with rain so flooding was definitely a problem for them. Lucky for those of us who went to Datong not only did it not rain but it wasn't unbearably hot either. Before leaving some teachers had warned us that Datong's air pollution was worse than Beijing's and while certainly noticeable, I had been prepared for the worst and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't too much of a problem.

Anyways, on to the specifics. Thursday night we took an overnight train from Beijing to Datong, arriving early the next morning. We then met our two tour guides and headed off to the hotel to clean up and drop off our luggage (I, being a fairly light packer, only brought a single bag/purse so didn't have anything to drop off, but most normal people brought two bags or a backpack and a purse). And then before long we were back on the bus heading out of Datong to visit first the Wooden Pagoda, then the Hanging Monastery, and then last to hike a mountain. Hold while I go find the sheet of paper with the Chinese names and more historical/informational background so that I can fake impress you with my knowledge.

Ok, so the Wooden Pagoda (应县木塔) was built in the eleventh century and is one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world. It's said that no nails were used in it's construction. Upon arriving, we all took some time to appreciate the outer facade of the building and hundreds of small birds whirling in and around the pagoda before heading into the pagoda itself to climb some very, very steep, very old stairs up to about the third floor or so (this included some cross over beams that even I had to stoop for). In retrospect of course, going up was no sweat compared to coming back down (smooth but uneven wood, oddly placed handrails, really steep decline - luckily I didn't have to add fear of heights to that list but I know some people who did). Afterwards we walked around to the back of the pagoda where there was a small temple before getting back on the bus and heading to the next destination. As you may soon be able to tell, we didn't spend much time talking with locals or even really wandering the streets around these places - we were definitely tourists and acting like them, no pretensions otherwise. I have a post in the works about what it means to me being Chinese/Asian American in China but traveling with a lot of foreigners (who are easily identifiable as foreigners (老外)) means that you get a lot of stares and attention from the locals.

Next stop? Hanging Monastery or 悬空寺 which is a monastery built into the side of a mountain thus basically is "hanging" off the side of the mountain supported only by some poles that lead from the edges of the infrastructure diagonally back into the mountain. I think this was definitely one of my favorite places to visit just because it has a very interesting set up given the architectural requirements of their location - lots of skinny pathways and many floors - and had a nice view out into a small valley with mountains in the background. I only wish I could get there sometime when their weren't so many tourists because I definitely think that the monastery has the right atmosphere but it is hard to fully appreciate such sights when you are goaded along by hoards of tourists (both foreign and from other parts of China) crowding behind you and the constant noise of both their chatter and that street carved into the mountain across the way where the traffic is absurd. Nonetheless, it's an impressive sight to see. So as not to completely overwhelm this post with pictures (and because I have yet to actually upload them onto my computer) I will shortly post pictures of each sight so you can get a better idea of what they look like. I promise they will come in some sort of timely manner.

At this point, our stomachs (mine for sure) were all grumbling since it was already nearing 2pm so luckily the next stop was lunch. Our food was ordered for us ahead of time and we were treated to a veritable feast (this is in American standards, by Chinese standards we may have been at least a handful of dishes short, I mean there was some food left on the table but not an absolutely absurd amount left as seems to be a requirement for a true Chinese feast) that included a whole fish (yum), some of Da Tong's specialty - knife cut noodles, and lots of other delicious food. Nothing so strange as to scare off the foreigners (whereas last time I was in China back in high school at one meal they fed us whole steamed fish and only the Asian Americans feasted on them while the other looked on skeptically - my classmates now are definitely more open minded about food).

With energy slightly renewed but also partially sucked into a food coma, we got back onto the bus and headed to Heng Mountain (恒山) - it is apparently the Northern Mountain of China's Five Sacred Mountains. Once there we were presented with a choice to either take the cable car or hike up that mountain. The teachers all took the cable car while all but one student chose to at least pretend like they still had lots of energy and hike up the mountain. Despite a teacher's warning that there was one particularly difficult part, it was a pretty easy hike, made even easier by the fact that in the 1990s they paved the entire way up the mountain. In total to get to the almost highest spot it took maybe 40 minutes or so - really not bad at all considering what my family likes to do (i.e. go on significantly longer, steeper hikes). Along the way there were a bunch of small-ish temples to peek in and around.  Funnily enough at the base of the mountain where the parking lot, there was a performance going on with very energetic music and the mikes/speakers were loud enough that for almost if not the entire way up we could head the music (which in some ways may have helped us maintain our energy but also took away a bit from the natural beauty and I guess purity for lack of a better word that I expect climbing a mountain to include). Still, definitely an interesting case of man meets nature, or nature meets man, whichever you prefer.  Anyways, after walking back down (while "learning," meaning trying and failing to learn, some Chinese songs from our very enthusiastic tour guide, getting some ice cream to help us all cool off, we got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel even though we had the rest of the night free, since we were pretty much all exhausted, we made a quick trip to the super market (which was not as quick as desired because when you ask Chinese people for directions and they tell you that it is not very far they actually are just going along with the trend of all distances in China are deceiving so you should double or triple the time they tell you it will take to get there). Bought some small snacks along the way and then walked back through some hoards of street vendors to relax and talk in our hotel room.

If you're still reading, I'm pretty impressed. And for the sake of helping my really bad memory I'm going to keep going. So the next morning we woke up for breakfast buffet at the hotel, which had a mix of both Western and Chinese breakfast foods including my favorite, hot soy milk that you can add sugar to, yum. After that, we headed off to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) and then the Huayan Monastery (华严寺), both of which were closer to Da Tong city center so we spent significantly less time on the bus that day then the prior day. So Yungang Grottoes is essentially a massive set of caves each with hundreds of stone carved Buddhas. In total, there are some 51,000 statues ranging from a few centimeters to tens of meters in height. The visit involved copious amounts of picture taking and a modified Chinese version of the Buddha's story. Originally just simple stone carvings, at some point in their history many of the larger Buddhas were painted over. Now of course that paint is all faded (in fact much of the caves have noticeable wind and water damage). Some of my classmates were saying how they wish the Chinese government would invest in repainting the statues to return them to their former glory, but in my opinion that would actually be more of a loss than a gain - even if you are attempting to restore them to some kind of original form I think it's better just to appreciate that which is not impeccably clean and new looking - I guess I just think of that as less tacky tourist-y and in general just like the feeling of being able to visually understand some of the affects of time.

After one last round of pictures with a camel outside the caves gates (you could pay to take a short ride around the small courtyard and have your picture taken with it), we headed off to our last planned out tourist destination, Huayan Monastery. Definitely the smallest and least crowded of the places we went, it had a more unique architectural style coming from the Liao Dynasty (907-1125 according to Wikipedia - which I can't actually access here) and according to our handy sheet of blurbs is one of the largest Buddhist halls still existing in China. I do think the Chinese might be overly willing to call many different places the -est of China or of the world and when you reach that place you may be underwhelmed - not to say that Huayuan wasn't an interesting place to poke around for a bit, but it didn't have the power to induce awe that some of the other places had.

That night we had some free time before the overnight train back to Beijing so we walked around aimlessly for awhile before splitting into groups for dinner - had some really delicious dumplings, edamame and peanuts sitting outside while talking and drinking Tsingtao over the span of a couple hours, was a really relaxing night with some badminton birdies flying around behind us. Arrived back in Beijing nice and early around 5am for a short bus ride back to our dorm and some more zzz's.

Pics: Di Tan Park

Hmm, I don't know how to capitalize Chinese names when Romanizing them (Di Tan? Ditan? DiTan?). I also just made up that word...

Pics: Confucius Temple

Now that our midterm is finally over, I have time to upload the rest of my backlogged pictures - enjoy!

Chinese Host Family 中国家庭

On Saturday, my phone decided to be strange and show me a text message for two seconds and then disappear off the face of the earth. Luckily, I'd seen the words Chinese family and figured that the text was from Adam, the other ACC student I share a Chinese family with, who later told me that the rest of the text had been about the fact that our Chinese family had given us a call to say that they wanted to take us out on Sunday morning, 10 am. Having no other set plans besides perhaps being a really earnest student and getting a jump start on writing the oral presentations for our midterm exams, we agreed to go (with no notion of what we were going to be doing). Also, in case your confused since I am living in a dorm, ACC gives us host families but they aren't home stays, we can just spend time with them on weekends and ask them for help when/if we need.

[Tangent: That night, Adam, Sam and I went out for perhaps the very best chuanr (串儿) I've had yet, although the place near CUEB also has pretty good chuanr. If you're wondering, chuanr are basically like kabobs covered in a spicy powder and you can get meat ones (we had lamb, lots and lots of lamb) but I've also gotten really delicious eggplant ones.]

As it turns out, beside being out first chance to meet the father and son in the family, it was also my first trip to the area surrounding Beijing, called jiao qu (郊区), which loosely translated means suburbs, but they are almost completely different from American suburbs, at least the American ones I am familiar with. The area is beautiful and has the rural feeling that I think a lot of Beijing-ers crave (the pollution in the city is, as newspapers attest, quite bad). Houses are smaller and farther apart with yards, gardens etc. We went to my host Chinese family's grandfather's house for lunch (they invited us to stay for dinner but Adam and I both hadn't started preparing for Monday's class yet so we had to trouble them to let us leave earlier). The food was delicious and fresh - undoubtedly the most authentic Beijing fare I've had yet including rou bing (肉饼) which can loosely translated as meat pancake (there were also veggie ones), chicken feet, mu er (木耳) which is a fungus, green bean soup, fresh cucumbers from their garden and lots more. Naturally, since it was an authentic Chinese meal, food abounded and there was much effort to ensure that we were really eating enough and trying everything in the right order/enough of everything.

Afterwards we relaxed and talked a bit while our host brother (who's English name is Bob because it is easy to say and remember) taught us a Chinese game that vaguely reminds me of Magic (although since I have no idea how to play Magic it may have no relation whatsoever). Anyways it's grounded in some really famous book and there are 4 players trying to survive and there are weapon cards and bonus cards and it was very confusing for people who couldn't read everything on the cards or remember what all the different ones mean. Still, it was definitely an interesting experience especially with the sports channel of CCTV on in the background which included boxing (streamed in from Vegas), China vs. US volleyball game and some very strange form of pseudo-gymnastics.