Actually leaving Beijing was a whole other story. Rather than fly out of Beijing’s snazzy capitol airport (jazzed up beyond belief for the 2008 Olympics), we departed from the dingy south airport, whose crusting planes by the roadside on our drive in made us anything but comfortable about the idea of taking to the skies. I didn’t do a good job of hiding it walking to board our plane…(props to Amber for catching the moment)

After a relatively uneventful flight (huge relief), we landed in Chengdu crammed into our undersized van with all our luggage and headed to our campus. We are staying in dorms here, each with our own room, and to be honest, I’m quite a fan of our set up. We go to class in the same building we live in. I’ll take a 9 floor elevator ride over the 15 minute walk we had in Beijing any day.

This is my first time in Chengdu, and all I had to do was wander of the street for 5 minutes and I was sold. The vibe, the pace of life, the rich culture is all right in front of your face. People still ride bikes here (they’re almost all gone in Beijing), there’s amazing amounts of delicious street food, and significantly fewer foreigners (which really just means that people stare at me more here).

I probably love the food most and the environment that comes with it. When you order off the street, a lot of places will set up florescent children’s stools and short tables for you to eat on the sidewalk…authentically wonderful. It’s a great vantage point for people watching, and always funny to imagine people from home imagining you sitting inches from the road enjoying your dinner. We’ve gotten into the habit of munching on 20 cents worth of scrumptious scallion pancakes while waiting for our individually selected shish-kabob sticks with varieties of meats, veggies and tofu that are then fried up with the wonderful spicy/numbing flavor unique to Sichuan. For all of $1.50, it feels like it should be illegal. Amber (on the right) and I have completely embraced everything culinary here, and we’ve come up with some great finds, usually around $1 or less.

Chengdu is also linguistically fascinating. Most people speak heavily accented Mandarin under the influence of the local dialect (Sichuan Hua). One of our teachers is from this province, so she gave us a bit of an introduction to it. Pronunciations and tones all shift based on a less than reliable system, for example, 4th tone becomes 3rd tone, “e” becomes “ou” etc. (it just doesn’t work all the time). Something that sounds like “Wo shi may gwo ren” (I’m American) in Mandarin becomes “No shee may gway zen” We’ve tried to use some Sichuan Hua here and there, but apart from making some people laugh at us, it’s not otherwise very functional.

Apart from that, I’ve already located my local sources of bubble tea and blind massages. Bubble tea is still around the same price, but massage prices have been slashed to not even $4 for an hour-long full body massage, AND they’re way more intense. My masseur today attacked my pressure points and joints, I was cracking all over the place! The last few minutes of my massage involved my masseur completely standing on my back (thankfully I’m decently larger than the average Chinese man) and yanking my legs upward, followed by him getting on all fours and kneading his knees into my back. By this point, my friends who were with me were sitting up and could see this spectacle, and needless to say I was shedding tears of laughter once we left…if I had known this was going to happen, I surely would’ve had someone film it. In the last few minutes of Amber’s massage, her masseur (a little old woman) shouted “UGH! I’m so tired! This woman is big and fat!” and made another masseur come and finish the massage… Amber and I are about the same height, so maybe the “big” is justifiable, but definitely not fat, but the comment was still hilarious regardless and only made us laugh harder once we left.

Classes have still been going, including lectures and cultural excursions. We’re finishing up our last teaching demonstration this week and we have our final exams next week! Believe it or not, I’ll be back in the US in less than two weeks!! Where does all the time go…

I was so excited about almost completing this program that when we went on a walk through downtown Chengdu, I couldn’t help but give good old Mao a high five! (Props to Lea’s photography on this one!)

Many of Beijing’s hutongs (traditional Chinese neighborhoods) have this character spray-painted on the side of the buildings, which at the very least have over 100 years of history.

My friend and I stumbled upon this neighborhood after a day of exploring local culture on our last full day in Beijing. We started off our day in Tiananmen Square. Although I’ve been there a bunch of times before, I like going there because it’s always an interesting cultural fusion of domestic and international tourists and the real Beijing-ers who embody everything that is China. The huge portrait of Mao Zedong peering over the massive expanse of public square is something you have to see to believe, as I can remember the first time I walked upon the square in 2005. As you can see below, I was only 19 years old and only beginning to understand the cultural ties and historical significance of this symbol of Beijing.

Once we emerged from the subway, we were immediately engulfed in everything we came looking for. All the examples of little cultural intricacies that we wanted to capture on film. Like the classic male style of exposing your midriff. (Usually it’s hiked ABOVE the rice gut, but you get the idea…)

And who can forget the classic stereotypical Confucius look-a-like:

How about the ever environmentally conscious no-diaper split pants to allow kids to relieve themselves whenever necessary? (This little girl’s wedgie was too funny not to photograph!)

Unfortunately, just like the hutongs, these cultural gems will also crumble as time passes. Lifestyles change, especially in the wake of Beijing’s rapid modernization, which is why I wanted to take some time on this trip to find these examples of traditional culture. After Tiananmen, we set off to explore some hutongs. The ones right around Tiananmen have been revamped and are swamped with people offering rickshaw tours and selling souvenirs, so we hopped on the subway.
Public transportation, as I’ve alluded to before, it can get kind of congested in Beijing. The subway is wonderful– clean, air conditioned, and accessible, but it’s hard not to laugh when there’s literally NO space and you’re left dashing from car to car looking for the tiniest opportunity to squeeze in, and more than likely forced to wait for the next car. It’s a pure example of modern Beijing at its finest…

Once out of the subway, we turned off the main road and into the hutong, and it was as if we stepped back in time. Flanked by single story gray traditional courtyard residences with weathered statues of dragons and layered roofs, we had found what we were looking for. Striking up conversation with locals (many of whom were rather entertained by our presence), my friend and I worked together to decipher their Beijing accents (just imagine adding a really harsh ‘R’ to the end of every word), and had fun discussing anything from airplanes to the signs of the Chinese zodiac. The man in the photo below informed us he was born in the year of the monkey and was in his 80s. (I later figured out that it numerically impossible, based on the zodiac he could either be 78 or 90…but who’s counting).

We also ran into these adorable kids! (No special story associated with them, but they were just too cute not to post)

And got a few other glimpses of the culture of yore, like this sign for a public bath, which used to be a much more prominent aspect of Beijing culture.

It was after all of these wonderful interactions that we first spotted the “chai” characters on almost every building we passed.

It definitely put a new twist on our afternoon’s experience, realizing that in just a few short months, the area will be most likely replaced by some modern building. As an outsider, it’s not my place to judge China’s approach to modernization, but these neighborhoods represent a time and a history that Beijing will never be able to rebuild. Balancing the push for modernity with a grasp on thousands of years of traditional culture and history is a challenge that creates conflicts and crossroads in deciding how Beijing will identify itself in the 21st century. It makes being here that much more interesting because with things changing as rapidly as they are, it’ll never be the same city twice.

(And in case you’re interested in more about this, NYT just posted a related article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/world/asia/21beijing.html)

After our dinner out on the town, four of us started heading to the subway to head home. Looking to create our own entertainment, two of us decided to wear our masks to walk down the street.  I peaked through the tiny eye holes at those who passed and I was pretty shocked to see that no one even so much as paid me a second glance. Oh well, I thought, and I took it off.

It wasn’t until the door to our subway car opened and I joined about 6 uniformed Chinese security guards, that I had a brilliant idea for a fun activity. I asked my friend if she would take a picture if I got one of the security guards to wear a mask with me, and after a few seconds (not really sure what reaction I’d get), I finally got up the courage to ask the unsuspecting man in uniform if he would humor me. He accepted without even a second’s hesitation. To top it off, another friend of his lent me his hat, and the look was completed.

The group of guards got off at the next stop, but with how fun the first attempt was, I decided to take it a step further. One of my friends bet I couldn’t get 5 people to do it. Game on. I love a good challenge, and despite my assumption that the average Chinese person would rather pretend I don’t exist than actually put on a silly mask and take a picture with me, I had to make it happen.

With the courage of my first acceptance, I found another group of guys willing to take a picture with me and converted a few of them into my scouting team to help me find more interested people. It became a subway car-wide event, with most people who weren’t sleeping getting a good laugh. Once I reached my goal of 5 (it was almost two easy), we decided to up the challenge, she thought I couldn’t get 12 people. How could I resist?

Once I had exhausted the resources of my scouting team, I was on my own again, sporting my biggest smile, two masks and my most pleasant Chinese tone. I began scouring the train for interested parties. I was pretty successful, but we had to switch trains, and I only had two stops to go and I still needed 3 people. On the next platform, another girl took a photo with me, 9 down, two to go. I then asked a man who was watching us, and he agreed, but the train was arriving and we had to take it on board. We got on the train, but like most trains at most hours of the day, there was not much room. Shoulder to shoulder with other passengers and pinned pretty well to the door, I had to work with what I had. We were able to take the picture, but I still needed one more. What about the unsuspecting older Chinese man in glasses behind me? He didn’t look like an obvious candidate (so much so that I almost didn’t ask him), but he didn’t bat an eye, put on the bunny mask, and posed next to me. I proudly informed him that he was the o-so-special 12th person, marking my victory, and overall satisfaction with the success of my impromptu entertainment.

With excited waves and big smiles, the four of us exited the train, filled with the pleasant, unexpected interactions with our Chinese co-passengers. For all the times I’ve ridden public transportation, in China or the US, one thing that never sits quite right with me is the way people seem to go out of their way to avoid human interaction. I am just as guilty as anyone else, but there are times I really appreciate a valuable interaction with a stranger, even if it’s nothing more than a smile. Sometimes I follow the tides and just blend into the crowd, but there are also times that I make an effort to acknowledge the people around me. I’ve got some wonderful people close to me who are champions at this (you know who you are), always seeming to know how to make people smile and never quite caving to the isolationist tendencies of our culture. It’s the times that I follow their example that I feel the happiest. Last night, all it took were a few pieces of colorful plastic, and we created a spontaneous and fun cultural interaction that left everyone involved with a smile. And to top it all, we’ve got these great masks that I’m sure will make some reappearances in the next few weeks.

Proof:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BboXtlFCns

When I first arrived in Beijing, I signed up for a temporary membership to the local Bally Total Fitness (I know, who would’ve thought) because they were offering a “deal” to people in my program. I’ve usually just popped in most days, run on the treadmill while watching low budget Chinese soap operas. I then usually finish up by lifting some free weights, partly for the workout, partly so I can giggle to myself as I watch Chinese men flex and stare at themselves in the mirrors. There is plenty of other entertainment too, from the revolving disco lights in the spinning room to the multi-colored swishy overalls to that time when I lost my balance and fell off one of the exercise balls…

Anyway, back to bellydancing. I’ve always had a class schedule and had wanted to go to one, but just a few days from leaving Beijing, I still hadn’t gone. At the gym tonight, I was just about to start lifting when I heard some fun music from the group exercise room. I went over and saw that it was bellydancing class. I looked at the clock… it had only started a few minutes ago. I looked at the schedule… this was the last bellydancing class I’d have a chance to take in China, potentially ever. I stood for a few minutes contemplating… do I endure the potential awkwardness of the white girl walking into the Chinese bellydancing class and come out with a great story? or do I go back to my free weights and pretend like I never had the opportunity to give up in the first place? It wasn’t easy, but I managed to fight the urge to be lame and I went in and started shimmy-in’ and shake-in’ with a bunch of Chinese women.

As I was dancing, I couldn’t help but think about the extremes of Chinese culture, how a farmer might feel if he were plucked from his rural village and suddenly transported into our class. The modernization and transformations in Beijing are astounding. Based on the culture that I’ve learned, I never in a million years would have though that I would have been taught bellydancing by a man in China. It’s just one example of new trends and phenomenons that are remolding culture on a daily basis. When I think back on some of my other experiences in different parts of the country over the last 5 years, it sometimes feels like they happened in a whole other world. The tides here unpredictable, and it’s absolutely fascinating. China, you never cease to keep me on my toes!

(Thanks to Katelyn’s creative genius for coming up with the title of this post!)

“Niu nai” means milk. For lord knows how long, I’ve been calling my jeans “milk pants”.

“Niu nai” is a very simple vocabulary word that I’ve known for a long time, but for whatever reason, somewhere along the way I mixed up “nai” and “zai” and judging by how awkward “niu zai ku” sounds to me when I say it out loud, I’m assuming I’ve been making this harmless yet rather embarrassing (and hilarious) error for a very long time.

It wasn’t long before I had tears rolling down my cheeks as I laughed, especially when my friend told me that when we were buying the jeans, she had in fact tried to correct me but apparently I didn’t hear her. I never suspected it could be wrong, so I guess I wasn’t paying attention, although I did give her a little grief for not trying a little harder to be heard!

What’s even worse, is that after our afternoon lecture today, a few of us were chatting and I casually mentioned an outfit I had with “niu nai ku”. It wasn’t a half second later that everyone crumbled into laughter, realizing that I apparently still hadn’t learned the proper word for jeans…further reinforcing that I must have been making this error for a very long time. The jokes just kept rolling after that… “Oh! I like yogurt pants!”, “I usually wear cheese pants” and every other kind of dairy pants you can imagine.

But thankfully from now on, so long as I can keep cowboy and milk straight, I should be ok!

Pig skin jelly and sea cucumber! YUM! YUM! YUM!

YIKES! Apart from the rather bizarre dishes, we feasted on roasted pork fat, dried tofu, entire shrimp (eyes, head, legs, etc), and a few other dishes better left unidentified.  I couldn’t bring myself to eat the pork skin jelly, but I did manage to stomach a bite of the sea cucumber (good story right?). Needless to say it was a difficult meal to get through, and apart from the one relatively normal chicken dish, I didn’t eat too much.

When it comes to food, Chinese people are very resourceful. In impoverished areas where food is harder to come by, this is a remarkable skill. However, when it comes to me having my lunch, I prefer the veggies/tofu/meat that don’t make me guess what I’m eating!

Here’s a peak at one of the kids dorms (personal space doesn’t quite exist in a country of 1.3 billion people):

Here’s the kids lined up outside the front of the school for announcements (we each had to introduce ourselves with a microphone in front of this group!):

Pugongying is a non-profit boarding school for kids whose parents have moved to Beijing to find work. These “immigrant” families face a lot of economic and social challenges, and this school aims to give these kids who come from these situations a chance at an education. I was pretty excited that the school existed and was fascinated as our tour around campus led us to better understand not only how the school works, but also the challenges they face. The most prominent being that many of the students who graduate from our equivalent of 8th grade are stuck without any means to attend high school or more.

In China, every citizen is given what’s called a hu kou. I don’t actually know what it translates to in English, but it’s basically an identification that ties a person to the geographic area where they are from. These children have spent most of their lives in Beijing, but they are still technically tied to their hometown. In order to be eligible for high school or to be able to later test into college, students must apply in the region where their hu kou is registered. Many of these kids either can’t get back there or don’t have family there anymore and are left without a way to continue their education. What I found most interesting is that some of these kids didn’t even have their hu kou yet because their families haven’t yet had a chance to register them in their hometowns. In some cases, kids haven’t been registered because they are chao sheng, meaning their parents have “over-birthed” their quota per the one child policy. Every once in a while there is a loophole and a student will get accepted to high school, but for the majority of kids this isn’t the case. The school has since started a program where those who have graduated can stay at the school and work while they continue to study, but it doesn’t count in the Chinese education system.

Apart from this glimpse into Chinese culture, the goal of the trip was to give us some exposure to English and Chinese instruction in China, as well as give us a chance to interact with their students. We observed an English class where the kids were learning about describing one’s features related to looks “He is handsome”, weight “My sister is heavy”, and other specifics like “I have big ears”, etc. It was enough to make a lot of us smile.

We also got a chance to become teachers again (and to take a break from our Chinese language pledge) to speak English with some students in a different class. I had a group of 14 and 15 year olds, and their English was good enough for basic conversation. We talked about a variety of things from our families to our future plans. After being introduced to the problems that lie ahead for these students after middle school, I was particularly moved hearing about their “dreams” (their words) to be doctors, lawyers, writers, artists and reporters. It really made me hope that they find a way to make them a reality.

We ended the visit with some impromptu basketball and hand clapping games and each bought our own Pugongying Zhongxue t-shirts before the kids presented us with printouts of photos they had taken of us while we were working in the English class with a handwritten note thanking us. Today was one of those days where I thought to myself, Wow, I am so glad I learned Chinese. Chinese specifically has opened so many doors for me, big and small, but sometimes just the value of an hour conversation with Chinese teenagers is enough to make all the hours I spent copying characters in college worthwhile.

I also relish in the things that I only get to enjoy here like bubble tea for less than a dollar and hour-long massages for $10. I knew from my disability research that I did while abroad in 2006 that in China, the only employment opportunities for blind people are in massage parlors. The fact that you can get a full body massage for an hour for $10 and you’re supporting disabled employment is a win-win situation, not to mention amazingly relaxing and rejuvenating. And as it turns out, there’s a blind massage parlor just outside the western gate of our university– I’ve had two since I got here….but can you really blame me?

I’ve spoken more Chinese in the last two days than I have in the last two years combined. This afternoon we had our orientation meeting and I signed a language pledge, promising to not speak English at all for the duration of the program. I instinctively spouted off a few sentences in English right before I signed my name and then let it go. Despite the challenges, it’s pretty fun, but talk to me in a few weeks and maybe I’ll have a different perspective. I will say it’s pretty interesting using Chinese to speak to other Americans, and I end up learning a lot really quickly too. Some of the people in the program I’ve never even heard speak English.

I also checked out the local Bally Total Fitness (I didn’t think they would be here but they are) because they’re offering us a deal while we’re in Beijing. The gym was nicer than many I’ve seen in the US– individual TVs with every treadmill, weight machines, free weights and a whole bunch of classes! All of the classes are of course taught in Chinese, so I’m thinking it might be an interesting way to learn new words. I’d finally learn how to say downward facing dog….

Anyway- no more procrastinating online or watching the World Cup with Chinese commentary because Chinese boot camp (ie. language class) starts tomorrow at 8am. I just have to memorize 83 vocab words and characters for our first quiz between now and then while still trying to fight off the last remains of jet lag… wish me luck!

After leaving my grandma’s house at 4am this morning (or yesterday?) I’ve completed the long journey and am now relaxing in my hotel room in Beijing complete with swollen ankles from a long flight. Travelling from New Jersey to Beijing was actually pretty seamless. I slept through most of my flight to San Francisco and tried to stay awake most of the flight to Beijing so I can go to bed at a normal hour tonight here and get a jump on jet lag recovery.

I’m sharing a hotel room with another girl from my program. Here’s my new home away from home for the next 3 weeks! (I didn’t bring as much as it looks like. My backpacks are in the bottom right corner and on the bed. The rest of the stuff is my roommate’s, but she’s been in China for over a year so she’s allowed)

I still can’t believe I’m here. I can’t quite figure out yet what exact emotions I’m feeling being back for the first time in almost 2 years. It made me smile to have Chinese be the ambient language around me. Walking the streets through the pollution-induced haze, seeing tons of street vendors lining the streets and flooding it with smoke and steam, and shirtless pot-bellied men squatting on the sides of the road….Even seeing my first Chinese t-shirt with misspelled English and absolutely indecipherable phrases, got me excited and nostalgic for the memories I’ve had in this country. Things are familiar, but definitely foreign at the same time.

I’ve only been on the ground for a few hours, and I already feel the challenge ahead. I’m not going to lie…my Chinese is rusty. Teaching beginner Chinese to 6th, 7th and 8th graders has been great for getting me back in the Chinese groove, but it hasn’t necessarily prepared my listening comprehension for active life in China. Also, having a few other languages swirling around in my brain (I got to speak French on the subway!) has made me a little less comfortable with my Chinese word order in more involved conversations. Even in my few interactions so far, I’m already finding myself questioning my Chinese. The fact that this is already apparent to me, only makes me imagine the brain-aches that will accompany these first few days. But, I welcome these brain-aches because I’m very eager to get my Chinese back to where it was when I graduated college and beyond. Assuming I challenge myself in my upcoming course and abide by the language pledge of speaking only Chinese, I believe I can get there.

I have one more free day before the program begins, so I’m going to be sure to soak up as much as possible before I dive into intense Chinese mode!

I’m due in Beijing no later than Friday to start my summer program, but I had booked my flight a few days early to Hong Kong in hopes of seeing my old host family. It wasn’t until after I had booked my tickets that my program changed the dates and crushed my chances of doing any pre-program travelling. It was almost $800 to back my flight up and give me a few extra days in the US, so I was just planning on entertaining myself for a few days in Beijing before the weekend. In normal circumstances, I’d be totally content with this, but that was before I was presented with the perks offered to passengers who give up their seat on an overbooked flight.

Continental sold more tickets than seats on the plane and I offered to give mine up. A $700 flight voucher, $26 meal voucher, a few fist pumps, and a free taxi ride to my grandma’s house later, they also informed me that they could re-book me to fly straight to Beijing the next day (meaning I didn’t need to book my own flight from Hong Kong). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good at this point. After all the annoying details I omitted earlier about the start date of my program, I finally felt like I had caught a break. I hopped in the cab and headed back to my grandma’s house, excited to squeak a little more time with family (including introducing Grandma to some of youtube’s funniest videos, like this one: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXXm696UbKY)

So I woke up this morning still radiating the euphoria I was feeling from my good luck and took the train to the airport to restart the process. With my pre-printed boarding pass in hand, I cruised through security and got in line to check in at the gate. I had managed to befriend the deliverers of good news (aka the Continental employees) at the counter yesterday, and checked with them again. I said (only partly in jest) “Well you know where to find me if you need someone to volunteer their seat today!”, and it was then that a new woman leaned over and said, “Well actually we are overbooked again…” My heart leapt a little as I immediately filled out the necessary paperwork (remember I don’t have to be anywhere until Friday), and became the first person on their list to be re-booked for tomorrow, opening up my seat for another passenger. SCORE!! Cue round two of vouchers and cab rides and badda bing badda boom, I’m back on Grandma’s couch, eating ice cream and enjoying some quality family time. For me and my vagabonding tendencies, $1400 worth of flight vouchers is good as gold. Not to mention the $26 worth of sushi I got at the airport and the sorbet I bought with one of my new vouchers on my way to my taxi today (and I still have $18 to spend tomorrow!) All I had to do was find Continental’s international route map and my brain’s been spinning with possibilities!

Apparently, I’m leaving for Beijing tomorrow, but as you can guess, if Continental feels like they want to be particularly benevolent and bump me again, I’ll be the first to volunteer. I’m sure they’re happy to have me too because I’m much more amenable to having my flight arrangements tweaked than the standard traveler.