Shanxi Trip

Yes, this post is basically a year late. I am very sorry. This is about our November trip to Shanxi. I wrote it when we returned and never quite got around to posting it.

On Friday night, I fell asleep at 8pm. My normal bedtime is usually around 9:30pm; on Friday, I usually stay out until curfew at 11pm. Yet on this particular Friday, I was absolutely unable to keep my eyes open and went promptly to bed as soon as it was a reasonable hour. The reason for my extreme exhaustion was a 5am wakeup time for our returning train trip from Shanxi. We stayed in four cities, spent around twenty hours on a bus, a total of ten hours on a train, and climbed at least two thousand stairs.

Our trip began on November 9 at 10am, when we all lugged our various sizes of luggage to the school, and boarded the bus for the first of numerous bus rides. We got to experience a high-speed train on the trip to Taiyuan, Shanxi’s capital. The seats were comfy and the scenery was vastly different from that of Beijing. I read for most of the train ride, which was a generally enjoyable experience. Watching the steely high-rise buildings lower themselves into dirt covered barren plains through a thick, unwashed glass windowpane, I realized just how much of China I had yet to see. The only minor hitch on the train ride was when Li Laoshi, one of our accompanying teachers, informed us that we would need our train tickets to disembark the train. When you give a group of teenagers small slips of paper, the likelihood of them retaining these papers for four hours is relatively low. Luckily, we all somehow all made it off the train and onto stationary ground in the Taiyuan train hub (points for you if you caught the pun). Taiyuan was cloudy and depressing. Nevertheless, our hotel was pretty nice (the nicest on the trip, in my opinion). We ate some forgettable meals and departed the next morning.

The next day, we visited the old house where Zhang Yimo’s Raise the Red Lantern was filmed. It was an impossible maze of courtyards that all looked alike to my American eyes. Nonetheless, the architecture I was able to appreciate was gorgeous.

After visiting the complex, we went to a town called Pingyao. Pingyao was an absolutely adorable town that the bus was not allowed to enter; we had to take a set of what seemed to be expanded golf carts (Li Laoshi called them battery carts) into the city. The city had a bank that we visited that was apparently the first bank in China (I think, please don’t fact check me on that). Additionally, we explored the city wall.

Later that night, we were allowed to explore the Ming-Qing dynasty street filled with really cute shops.

At the end of the night, I got tea with Jtu, Jpark, Nina, and Erik. It was Jtu’s birthday that day. That night, I slept early. The hotel in Pingyao was the worst one of the trip, but luckily we only stayed one night.

The third day of the trip, we promptly departed for Wutaishan, after consuming another unremarkable meal. There is a sort of fried dough thing similar to a donut that is relatively palatable; besides the mock-donut, breakfast choices are minimal. The hotel also had the option of toast and nothing to put on the toast. We arrived at Wutaishan, moved into our hotel, and then walked up 1,080 steps. Some people were injured or sick and planned to take the gondola up for 30 kuai. Unfortunately, the gondola stopped at 5pm and these people thus walked back to the hotel for about 2 miles; it wasn’t exactly ideal. Yet it was probably substantially more fun than walking up the unnecessarily large amount of steps. However, the view from the top was absolutely worth the hike – you could see the entire valley from the outlook point in front of the temple. Unfortunately, my pictures of the view seem to have been accidentally deleted. I apologize.

After we wearily descended the monumental stairs we had just summited, we reached the ground with our legs shaking, and settled onto our bus once again.

Later, we reached the Hanging Monastery, which was really super cool. More climbing!

Back at the hotel, dinner was disgusting.

The following day, we resumed what seemed to be the major occupation of our time: riding the bus. As we rolled away from Wutaishan, the silhouettes of the craggily peaked mountains faded into an obscure cloud of ash-grey coal dust and dense, smothering fog. Today was the day we would reach Datong, the most major city on our trip and former capital of China. For lunch, we sopped at an excellent restaurant and after went to go see the Mu-tah. The Mu-tah is the world’s tallest wooden pagoda, built by the emperor Daizong in the Liao dynasty. Again, no picture (sorry).

Eventually, after another hour and a half on the bus, we arrived in Datong in the evening. As our bus rumbled into the city, tall bridges grew up on either side of our vehicle and buildings sprouted from where half an hour previously there had only been sandy hills and unassuming foliage. Yet the buildings seemed to be suspended in time; no glowing window lights penetrated the approaching dusk, and no human beings seemed to occupy or note these half-skyscrapers. As we got further into the city, lights began dotting the horizon of our bus’s fogged-up windows, and the feeling of being one person in an endlessly large city returned. I expected a city of this size to have wifi at the hotel; unfortunately, I was disappointed on that front. Regardless, I went to sleep that night thrilled by our return to a sizeable city.

The next day, we went to see the Yungang Grottoes, an ancient Buddhist site with over 50,000 figurines in the entire complex.

 

The battery carts returned (not the same ones) and we were taken to the grottoes to explore. After the grottoes, we returned to Datong and went to the city wall to begin a scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt was almost ridiculously easy.

 

My group was Jtu, Jpark, Nina, and me. All of us impulsively bought some very unclean raisins that became increasingly less enjoyable to eat. After we finished the scavenger hunt, we took a cab for 6 kuai ( a dollar!) to the business district. We went into a mall, tried to see The Hunger Games (it wasn’t out yet), got wifi for the first time in four days, and ate some delicious potstickers. Overall, it was an excellent day.

Datong Day 2: We went to a local school in an attempt to integrate ourselves into the community. We all lined up on the stage in the morning assembly in front of rows of similarly-clad Datong students.

The first two classes were the most dreadfully boring things I’ve ever sat through. They were math and “Chinese class”; I understood a minimal amount of both. The most exciting part of the morning was when Yankee Doodle started playing and a student came into the classroom to supervise the class’s self administered face massages. I was in a class with Conrad and Nikolai. The students seemed essentially indifferent to our presence. At around 11am, we all went to watch SYA play the local school in a soccer game. SYA, unsurprisingly, lost (we only have 37 people, the odds of us having a good soccer team are quite low). Waka Waka played on repeat from loudspeakers the entire game. I took countless pictures with students, gave about five of them English names, and chatted amicably with them about America and China and our respective languages. Nearly all of these conversations were held in Chinese, so it was a great opportunity to practice my language skills.

After that opportunity to socialize, I made local friends who I hung out with the rest of the day and ate lunch with. After two more classes (one was an hour-long tofu documentary during which I may have fallen asleep), we all went to see the talent show. SYA had two acts perform; the Datong students mustered a significantly larger number. It was a really fun event. At the end of the day, Conrad, Nikolai, and I had dinner with our friends and then hung out in the classroom with them. From 6-9pm, the students are required to do homework at school. I can’t even imagine that. My school doesn’t even go until 6pm! I took lots of pictures with my friends, and then it was time to go around 7pm. We said goodbye and drove eaway. I really enjoyed the experience of Chinese school, although I’m glad I don’t have to attend one myself. I originally applied to a program called AFS where they drop you in a local school, but on second glance I’m extremely glad I ended up attending SYA. My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to survive in a local school for an entire year.

The last day in Shanxi: 5am wakeup. We departed the province on a slow speed train. I slept for the majority of the train ride, then sleepily disembarked and took the subway home. I lugged my bag the fifteen minute walk home from the subway stop, mentally grumbling the entire way. I then sat around at home for a couple hours, catching up on what I had missed in my week without wifi. My family and I had dinner together and I promptly slept at 8pm. And thus ended my trip to Shanxi.

My First Month in Beijing

I wrote this blog post after the first month, and forgot to post it. So, here it is. Have things changed? A little, perhaps. But this is a very accurate picture of how I felt after the first month.

I could never have predicted what life in Beijing is like. It's incredible to know that I am going to live in this chaotic and wonderful city for an entire year. My host family's house is finally beginning to seem like home. But in all honesty, I still can't believe that I now bike to school every morning, wearing a blue and white tracksuit, to start my day off with two hours of Chinese class. I'm mindblown by the fact that breakfast can cost me less than a dollar, I'm allowed to explore this city on my own, and I return home to be greeted in a language that often feels to foreign to even begin to understand. Yet despite the adjustments to my lifestyle, I am absolutely having the experience of a lifetime.

The Chinese teachers I have here are the best Chinese teachers I've ever had; we use the words we learn in class in such that we learn to use them in real life. History, math, and English are similar to what I'm used to at my home school. But Chinese homework occupies most of my studying time. SYA China is the first time I have really, truly loved studying a language. Being able to use what I learn in the real world is an absolutely invaluable experience. 

The people I most often use my Chinese with are my host parents. I have an older sister who is fluent in English, but she lives at the school she teaches at. So at my house, Chinese is the only language we speak. My parents have had twelve host students in the past, so they most likely understand a substantial amount of English; they occasionally drop hints that they understand more than they let on. Yet for learning purposes or just for convenience's sake, they only speak in Chinese. I'm in Chinese 3 out of a potential 5 levels after studying the language for three years (in reality, I studied it for five, but I had a bad teacher for the first two years). I can talk about most basic things, but interesting conversation topics often elude me. Therefore, there's a significant amount of discussion about the weather, food, and school. I love conversing with my parents; they're honestly some of the nicest people I've ever met. I feel incredibly lucky to have been placed with them.

One of the most amazing things about this experience is the city itself. I've been here in Beijing a month, and I still haven't run out of things to do or places to see. So far, some of my favorite places in the city are 798 Art District, Sanlitun, Houhai, Ghost Street, Jingshan Park, and a coffee shop near my house. Honestly, I'm not sure you could be bored by this city. There's always something to do.

I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't come to China; so far, I feel that coming here is one of the best decisions I've ever made. Actually, that's not true. I could imagine exactly how my life would be if I hadn't chosen to do SYA - I've been attending the same school for eleven years, and as much as I love my school, I was ready for something new. I've undoubtedly found what I was looking for in Beijing - a new experience - and I can't wait to see what else the city has in store for me.

Halloween

This blog post was written on October 31st, but somehow not published. Apologies for the extremely late post.
Today is Halloween. This morning, my alarm broke. Thus, my dad woke me up at 7am asking me if I was going to school today. I did, in fact, plan on going to school today, although at a much earlier hour. So, I woke up at the time I usually leave the house and speedwalked to the bus stop. I arrived at the road across from my bus stop just in time to watch the road become dangerously congested with cars and to see my bus pull up to my stop, and then pull away. I made eye contact with the driver of the 104 as I reached the other side of the road and watched my ride to school rumble away. So I waited another 15 minutes for the next bus and desperately attempted to memorize my Chinese presentation. My memorization efforts were unsuccessful; the presentation, once I arrived at school, would most likely go under the label of "disaster". And so began my Halloween.

The rest of the day proceeded as per usual. Thursdays always fall a bit short of a good day, because school is 45 minutes longer than usual due to Society & Culture class. And tomorrow, we have a Tie Laoshi test. My excitement truly knows no bounds. We seem to have tests every two weeks in Chinese class, a quiz every week in history, some sort of English assessment every week, daily tingxies, and a math quiz every three weeks and a math test the following week. So, my Halloween is ending with a lengthy reflection on assessments.

At home in America, I would probably do something tonight - with friends, or family, or family friends. Note: my family has never handed out candy on Halloween due to our location on a tall hill that intimidates trick-or-treaters to a degree of nonexistence. But tonight, in China, I will be studying hard for my Chinese test; my plans for tonight stand in stark contrast to what most likely would have been a fun night in America. When I think about it, though, the amount of Chinese holidays is probably essentially equal to the amount of holidays we will miss in the United States. Halloween and Thanksgiving can be replaced with the Mid-Autumn Festival and New Years. I will probably never have a better chance to experience a Chinese holiday such as the New Years festival in China itself. And this is the reason I came to China; to experience it as much as possible. Despite my whining about "missing" Halloween, I ultimately am completely fine with missing the holiday. And so, as my Halloween comes to a close, I will sit down with a Chinese textbook in a Chinese cafe and attempt to improve my mastery of the Chinese language. And honestly, I'm glad I can do that; it's completely worth foregoing the commercialized, sugar-filled event that is Halloween.

A Typical Day at SYA

Here's the average day's schedule for me, to give you some sort of vague insight into what I spend my time doing. Please ignore the egregious grammatical errors.
6:00am: Wake up and attempt to get ready for school while rubbing sleep out of my eyes.
7:00am: Depart for school on my bike if the weather is good or on the bus if there is smog above 200 or a vague promise of rain.
7:20am: Arrive at school and/or get coffee, lock my bike into a rack, then climb the 6 flights of stairs to our school and either study or talk to people, depending on the homework the night before.
8am: Chinese class "starts" and we hand in our homework, then cram for our tingxie (daily dictation quiz on the previous night's new words).
8:10am: We have our tingxie and Chinese class really starts.
9:00am:  Our first Chinese class (Shi Laoshi's class) ends, and we begin cramming for our next tingxie.
9:10am: We do our second tingxie, and Chinese class with Tie Laoshi starts.
10:00am: Chinese class ends, and "conference time" (a code word for break) begins.
10:30am: Conference time ends and another class starts. I'll just give you my schedule, but everyone has different blocks. This is Monday's block rotation. At 10:30am, I have study hall/Chinese tutorial. So on Tuesdays and Fridays, it's a free period, but on Monday and Thursday, it's a 2-person class tutoring session with one of my Chinese teachers.
11:25am: Chinese History starts. We have about 12 people in our class, so it's small but not ridiculous. So far, we've covered how to make bronze and some early dynasties. We're currently discussing the Tao Te Ching.
12:15pm: Lunchtime! We can go to the cafeteria or go out for lunch.
1:00pm: Conference time technically begins now, but in reality it's just an extension of lunch.
1:30pm: Classes resume. I have Honors Precalculus (4 person class, wow).
2:20pm: English class. We're currently reading a book called Rivertown, which is pretty decent.
3:15pm: Class ends! I usually go out with friends to a cafe or something until around 5pm.
5pm: I bike or bus home and crack down on my homework.
6:30pm: My family calls me to eat dinner. Dinner consists of vegetables, rice, and sometimes fish or shrimp. One night we had pork, which was pretty crazy. My family eats mainly vegetables, though. I'm not complaining; my dad is a really good cook! I even liked the cucumber he cooked and I don't like cucumber.
8:30pm: I shower and get ready for bed, then finish up my homework.
10:00pm: I sleep.
6:00am: It starts again.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the everyday life of one SYA student.
It's the Midautumn Festival tomorrow, so we have Thursday and Friday off school. 中秋节快乐!

Houhai, Sanlitun, and Coffeenie

This post is going to be about my weekend. On Friday, I had plans with a couple other people to go back to the 798 District (Beijing's art district). However, those plans were foiled by our general unwillingness to go all the way across town to one of the outer ring roads. Therefore, we decided to take a local bus to see a movie, with we being me, Isabel, Conrad, Alex, and Lizzie. There were some other people too, but they split off. We arrived at the movie theater and bought tickets to Elysium. We heard it was about class struggle, but it turned out to be mostly about really violent physical struggles. About 20 minutes before the movie ended, we got fed up with the whole thing and left, only to return 5 minutes later because we realized how close the movie was to ending. After that, we went to a really cute restaurant called Der Hut where the service and food were both awesome and the grand total for a five person meal was $12.58 USD. After dinner, Isabel and I split from the group, intending to go to Jessica's house, but eventually ending up at Houhai to meet a bunch of other people. We went back to Isabel's house, changed clothes, and sloshed through the pouring rain in order to get to Houhai. Once at Houhai, we struggled to find a taxi that would take us to meet our friends. The taxi that took us only took us because we jumped into the cab nearly before the other guy got out (perks of being a white person in Beijing). After some serious communication issues, we ended up at the south entrance of Houhai. Our directions were to meet at the local Starbucks (Xinbake); a group of locals thought it would be funny to give us wrong directions. Luckily, we ran into some friendlier people who pointed us the correct way. We arrived at Starbucks just in time to see the majority of the people we had come to meet decide to go home. However, with the people that stayed (in total it was me, Michael, Isabel, Zach, Erik, and Jessica T), we walked around for about an hour and then headed home on the subway after failing to procure a cab. I'm definitely planning on returning to Houhai; the view is incredible there. After I got home, I Skyped my friend Mia.

On Saturday, I woke up and Skyped with my friend Alison, then met up with a bunch of other people (Erik, Nina, Jessica T, Jessica P, Will, Zach, Michael, Reid, and John) to go find a fake Chipotle restaurant we'd heard about. We wandered near somewhere called the U-Center for about 20 minutes without finding the rumoured restaurant, and ultimately ended up at the mall in a Korean restaurant. After lunch, I went back to school and met up with Maya, Conrad, and Lizzie and we went to Sanlitun, which was awesome and which has lots of awesome foreigner fare (ex. burgers) and fun shopping. We then just walked around Sanlitun taking pictures. We walked up to the top of the Adidas building and looked at the view (which was gorgeous) and then walked down and across the street to watch some people roller-blading and take more pictures. All in all, it was a good day/night.

On Sunday, I went to Jessica P's family friend's coffee shop with Erik, Michael, Jessica T, Jessica P, and Nina. The coffee shop is called Cofeenie. I finished nearly all my math homework and rediscovered my love for iced lattes, then went home. It was a quiet day, but it was nice.

Closed Weekend

On Saturday, my mom took me to Tiananmen Square Park on the bus and we did this form of tai chi where you have a sort of tennis racquet shaped object with some stretchy stuff on it, and you do things while balancing the ball on the racquet. This, of course, was at 7am. I got to sleep in till the ridiculous hour of 6:30am. I discovered I have zero proficiency for it, despite my host mom's encouraging remarks as I struggled to do even the simplest moves. After, we went home for lunch. I forget what we ate at this point, but it was most likely vegetables; one of the first things my host family told me was that they rarely eat meat. I guess this year will be a healthy one for me. I then managed to take a nap, which I nearly never do. However, I was worn out from my failures as a practicer of tai chi. After I took a nap, my dad and I went to the cellphone store where he and the employee had a long conversation about something and I found out that I wasn't supposed to use the card until the next month. Following that second failure to accomplish something, we went to the bicycle store. The bicycle store, luckily, was a success. I bought a bike for around $50 with a basket, bell, and lock. The bike store, oddly, did not sell helmets. Another failure for the list! We then went home and ate dinner or something and I went to sleep.

The next day was some sort of Chinese school ceremony where they raise the flag and give speeches and give students awards. I understood nothing, but I had fun talking to the girl next to me. After that, since my host family wasn't picking me up later, I hung around with some other SYA kids for half an hour or so. I purchased some snacks to stash in my suitcase; I'm used to being able to grab a snack whenever I want it. I bought these Korean snacks that are like short Pocky with a mushroom cap of chocolate and some small mini boxes of raisins. I then went to the cellphone store as instructed by my host parents; I wanted to get 3G on my phone. Unfortunately, that required me registering my SIM card, which is a more painful process than you might think. After a two hour wait and communication issues (I had to call the Unicom English help hotline to translate) I finally procured 2.5GB a month for only 100 RMB, about $16 USD! That's pretty cheap, I believe. I also Skyped one of my friends at home while in line; it was awesome to catch up. I then got very, very, very lost trying to go  home from the store; I went all the way past my house and biked back and forth in the area for about an hour trying to find a familiar storefront. After deciding to go back to the school and start over, I realized where I was and made my way towards home. After I got home, my mom and I went to pick up some medicine for my father (apparently some body part of his is cold because he doesn't drink enough water...? My translation may be off) and to buy shoes. Unfortunately, my host mom slightly misunderstood what type of shoes I wanted. I wanted house slippers because you're supposed to have them in Chinese houses, but she thought I wanted Nike running shoes. Luckily, it was a big mall and we managed to buy the ugliest pair of shoes I've ever owned for me to wear around the house. That one can go on the success list!

I have no clue what we did after that. That was essentially all we did during our closed weekend. Not really much bonding, but the effort was there. Hopefully it will get better as my Chinese gets better.

"It's Okay"

The moments ticked by more quickly than I could count. My host mom stared at me, her eyebrows raised. I desperately fished around in my head for the correct thing to say, knowing that the next couple moments were key.

“是好的!” I blurted out, desperately hoping it was the right thing to say. It was a literal translation of the English phrase “it’s okay” -  taken in America to mean no thank you – but apparently taken differently in China. My words resulted in a giant smile across my host mom’s face as she unwrapped the package in her hands and stabbed the contents with a toothpick. Still smiling, she handed me the preserved snail she had brought back with her from a trip to Taiwan.

A moment later, I discovered that I do not enjoy snails. I especially do not enjoy snails that are salty, chewy, and reminiscent of cuttlefish. Yet what else could I do but eat it and attempt a smile when my host mom was clearly overjoyed that I was trying the food she had just given me? Personally, I was not blessed with a penchant for enjoying exotic foods; although I’ll generally eat most things, snails were up to that point not on my list of foods I had consumed, nor planned to. For me, eating a snail was an extremely unpleasant experience; in stark contrast, my host parents both seemed to greatly enjoy it. However, after this experience, I will never again use the phrase “是好的” to mean “no thank you”. Although the lesson itself may have been slightly unsavory*, the outcome was one of many language lessons that I believe will be fully worth whatever discomfiture I may encounter as a result.

*pun completely intended