Thursday May 10, 2012

this is us getting ready for karaoke

Sleeping in until 7:30 was pretty decent. I definitely could have slept a little longer though. I finally had an American style breakfast today: eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, toast, fruit, and juice. The only non-American things I had were drinkable yogurt, and fried rice. All of the American stuff is there, just in different places, so it has taken me a few days to compile it all. After breakfast, we had lecture in which we learned about modern Chinese history (modern being around 1800-1980). It was pretty interesting to learn the Chinese perspective of European colonization and wars related to foreign imperialism (such as the opium wars and the sino-japanese war). We learned about the Boxer rebellion and the civil war between the Nationalist and Communist parties. We spent quite a bit of time talking about Mao Zedong and the era of Maoism. We stopped around the time of Mao’s death and his impact on Chinese society. They treated him like a god while he was ruling China, even though he was responsible for much persecution and the Cultural Revolution that killed 5-10 million people. Some older people in China still treat him as a god, even though he has been dead almost 40 years. After class it was lunch time, and we all decided we wanted to see the Chinese take on McDonald’s. We got to McDonald’s to find it packed with people. The meal itself was pretty much exactly the same as it is in the States, but cheaper. For some reason though, it tasted really good. I think it was because we have all had Chinese food for almost every meal and it was a good break to get American food. Our guide Vanessa said that, as Americans, we’re so used to getting different meals everyday (like Italian for lunch and Mexican for dinner) that eating Chinese food every meal seems repetitive, whereas the Chinese who don’t have all those options like we do, are perfectly content eating the same thing for every meal. Anyway, the meal there wasn’t any different than a regular American McDonald’s. After lunch we had a little break time before we went to karaoke. Apparently, karaoke is a huge entertainment business in China. There are so many rooms in any given karaoke building and there is a pretty good number of karaoke buildings. According to the Chinese students we are here with, Ruby and Vivien, karaoke is one of the biggest weekend activities for students. We had a ton of fun singing 90’s songs together, and even our guides sang a few songs in Chinese. One of the students who is with us, Ruby, was a really good singer. She kind of blew us all out of the water. Later that night, we went to a different part of Beijing to get dinner. We went to a Vietnamese/Mexican restaurant in China, listening to American music play over the speakers. It was definitely a strange, yet unforgettable dinner in Beijing. Tomorrow is the summer palace, but there is a forecast for rain. Let’s hope it holds off until after we get back.

Wednesday May 9, 2012

After breakfast this morning, we were all pretty pumped to see the zoo, mainly for the giant panda exhibit. Because it is their most popular attraction, the panda exhibit is an additional fee once you’re inside the zoo. I thought it was definitely worth it. The giant pandas were really cool looking, even though they were pretty lazy. In one of the habitats, the zookeepers put up the two pandas in lawn chairs and gave one something that looked like a carrot. The other one decided that it wanted the carrot, so it climbed down and jumped on the panda with the carrot. It was pretty funny to watch. After the pandas, I went to the lion and tiger exhibit and saw a white tiger (pretty much the world’s coolest animal). I then wandered around and saw the lions, elephants, hippos, and a golden eagle (the world’s second coolest animal). Americans are the coolest things ever to Chinese who haven’t had much contact with white people. A lot of different people would come up and ask some of us to be in their pictures. Some of them were really shy about it, but others would come up close, and we’d do a peace sign for their pictures. I thought that was pretty weird, probably because as Americans we’re used to seeing people of different ethnicities, but according to one of our guides, Vanessa, some of the people from rural China haven’t seen too many white people. We were probably as interesting to them as any animal there the way they were taking pictures of us. Afterwards, we all had lunch at a Japanese restaurant not too far away from the zoo. After lunch, we went to a shopping “mall” (I guess you could call it). It was an eight story building with shops on each floor that were packed really tightly together. The merchandise was about 95% shoes and shirts and 5% of a random assortment of other clothing items/accessories. Frankly, I’m not sure how everything doesn’t get stolen with how much stuff is just lying around and how many people are crowded into that space. That was a fun/weird/memorable shopping experience to be sure, even though I didn’t buy anything. We went back to the hotel after that to hang out for a little bit. For dinner, we went to a pizza place and had something a little more familiar to eat: pepperoni pizza and coke. The coke here is made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, which I think makes it better. We all took a trip to a place called Houhai after that, which is a series of shops, restaurants, and bars lined up around a lake. It was pretty cool to see where Chinese college students actually go to hang out. Some people from our group had fried scorpions on a stick. I thought I would hold off on the weird eats for a while. We also got cotton candy that was bigger than two of my heads. The shops and restaurants around the lake was a really cool place to hang out. I wish we had time to go back to explore a little more. We were all exhausted after that, so now we’re all back at the hotel about to crash. Good thing we don’t have to be up really early tomorrow. We don’t have anything until lecture at 9:30. Time to sleep well and sleep in.

Tuesday May 8, 2012

Breakfast today was pretty much the same. Stuck to the usual toast and jam. We left really early (around 7:45 am) to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. However, it took us almost two hours to get there by bus. If there’s anything to be said about traffic in Beijing, it’s this: absolutely chaotic, every-man-for-himself anarchy. Everybody just seems to do whatever they please, paying no attention to lane lines or traffic lights. And bikers/pedestrians fill in all the spaces, risking their lives to cross the streets. Nobody will stop for anyone else, so I’m not sure how we haven’t seen someone get killed yet. We did however happen to see the aftermath of a biker who got hit by a car. His leg didn’t look very good. When we finally got to Tiananmen Square, we were all ready for pictures and tourism, which we’re getting pretty good at. We saw the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, a memorial to Chinese heroes, the gateway to the Forbidden City (the building with the huge picture of Chairman Mao), and finally got to the inside of the Forbidden City. I had always thought the Forbidden City was just the palace of the emperor, but it turned out to be as large as well, a small city. There are many different tiers to the Forbidden City, and they all pretty much look the same, but have different purposes. The throne room was really cool. We saw the emperor’s quarters and the quarters of all his servants (his servants were mainly eunuchs, and he had thousands of them). The Forbidden City was built on a line pointing to the north and is very long. When we reached the end of the actual city, we got to the back gardens which were really cool with temples and small but ornate buildings. We then left the Forbidden City and went to lunch at a place that looked like an indoor garden with tables and songbirds singing by our tables. They gave us a spread of seafood, meat, and vegetables and we cooked them in individual pots of chicken broth. Apparently this is called a “hot pot”. It turned out to be really good. The weird thing I ate today was shark lips. Yup, that’s right. The lip meat of a shark. It wasn’t that bad, though kind of more chewy than I would have liked. I tasted the chicken broth more than anything, so I guess you could say that it tasted like chicken. After that we had tea at the restaurant. I like the tea here. I don’t think it really compares to sweet tea, but I like it nonetheless. After lunch we went to a huge shopping street behind Tiananmen Square. There were a lot of cool things, but I couldn’t find the Chinese character watch that I was looking for. We were all exhausted by the time we left the shopping street and we all slept on the bus on the way back home. For dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant and had chicken quesadillas to have a break from all the Chinese food. Afterwards, a few of us went to Häagen-Daas to get some overpriced ice cream (almost $10 for two scoops). That ended the day for me. After the ice cream we came back to the hotel. We’re prepping to go to the zoo tomorrow to see the Giant Pandas.

Monday May 7, 2012

Today was a really long day. I woke up at 5:30 AM and the sun was up so I couldn’t get back to sleep. I ended up getting ready by 6:30 and watching some Chinese action movie until 7:30 when I went to breakfast. Breakfast, similar to most things here, is really different. They had some of the same things we have in America, such as toast, eggs, and hashbrowns, but they serve a lot of the same things they eat for lunch like noodles. They also had yogurt that you drink through a straw. That was good. We had a Chinese history lesson on all of the Chinese dynasties which was really interesting to learn about. After that, we went out to lunch with the group at a mini mall type place, and had some really good food. I don’t know what any of it is called, but it had chicken and beef with broccoli, some sort of bean stalk thing, rice noodles, mushrooms, and the ever-present rice. I also tried a chicken foot. It didn’t taste too bad, but the thought of what I was eating made it unappealing. We went to a grocery store after lunch and got packages of water. We took a tour of the prestigious Tsinghua University this afternoon. This University is home to some of the brightest minds in China, and has a long history and many important alumni. It was actually started when America decided to give back the war indemnities that China paid to us back in 1911. The US government didn’t want to give it back to the Chinese government, so they built a school instead. I would say that’s a good investment. We went to several of the buildings and learned about what went on there, and then went through the park they have there: Tsinghua Gardens, which was really peaceful. I wouldn’t have minded studying for finals there. After a short break back at the hotel, the 16 of us (none of which spoke a lick of Chinese) went back to the mini mall where we had lunch to go somewhere new for dinner. We ended up picking some place where, of course, none of the waiters spoke any English. Luckily, the menus had English translations of what the food was and pictures of the food. However, all of the meat on the menu was raw. We looked at some people beside us and saw that they were grilling their own meat on a grill in the middle of the table. We tried to order by pointing, but that ended up in disaster the first time we tried it because we wanted a tray of meat, and the waiter was trying to tell us that we had to order at least two of the trays (which we didn’t figure out until afterwards), so we ended up ordering the large platter of cattle (on which I think might have been some cow tongue), some dumplings, and a tray of fruit. Figuring out how to grill the meat on the grill was fun too. Overall, the dinner was definitely memorable and a complete disaster, although the food was really good when we finally figured everything out. Tomorrow we wake up bright and early to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Should be fun.

Sunday May 6, 2012

So after a very long day of travel (almost 30 hours given the time differences), I begin blogging my experience here in China. We left for the Pittsburgh airport at 8 AM Saturday May 5^th, and flew over the top of the earth (coming within 100 miles of the North Pole and over Siberia) to get to Beijing. Air Canada has some really good service, and their first meal of pork and noodles was pretty good. Their second meal of eggs and home fries was actually pretty gross. We were all excited to finally touch down at Beijing’s massive airport. The air, however, was very dusty and hazy and made everything look dismal. We met up with our leader and some of the students from Tsinghua University with whom we will be working and learning. On the way to our hotel, a lot of the land was barren and looked desolate despite the attempts at reforestation around the area. We arrived at our hotel, which is pretty nice, and went to dinner at a local restaurant. They had a lazy susan style spread of food. The Chinese food here in Beijing is MUCH different than any Chinese food I’ve ever had in the States. There’s no such thing as General Tso’s chicken here. They had beef and potatoes in some spices and it was pretty good. They also had the root of a Lotus plant which was squishy, but sweet. I’m thinking the food itself will be an unforgettable experience here in Beijing. After our meal, everyone was travel-worn so we’re now back at the hotel getting ready to sleep.

Pre-departure Individual Report

My international experience to date is:

I have only been out of the country two times before. In the summer of 2006, I traveled with my family to Denmark to visit some of my family members that live there. We were there for two weeks and visited Copenhagen and a village called Marstal on the island of Ærø. The other time I have left the country was this past Halloween with Pitt Band to Toronto, Canada. We were there for two days.

I want to go to China because:

I would like to take advantage of the opportunity that I have to go to China because I don’t know if I will get the opportunity to go to China again, and China is a country that I really want to see. I have always been intrigued by the Chinese culture and their historical sites, and would relish the opportunity to get to see them.

I think the main professional work differences I will experience will be:

I think that the Chinese workers will be very work-oriented at the companies we visit and will maintain themselves very professionally. I expect that there will be a bigger disparity between the average worker and the managers than there is in the United States. I’m sure when I actually arrive at one of the companies we visit, I will experience more professional work differences than I expect.

I think the main cultural differences I will experience will be:

The Chinese culture is very different from the culture of the United States. I am not entirely sure what to expect from the differences in culture. I think the main differences will be meal time etiquette and being polite to other people. There are different rules that must be followed when eating to show respect to your hosts that are different than in the United States. There are also some differences in showing the proper people respect when meeting with them.

I think the main political differences I will experience will be:

Political differences between the United States and China have caused a strain between the two countries for many generations. The only things I know about the Chinese government are things that I have been taught, having never been to China myself. I don’t know how government elections take place in China and how positions of power are achieved. I think the main political differences will be a more restricted lifestyle caused by government censorship. The government must approve any and all publications to make sure there are no anti-government sentiments, whereas the United States Bill of Rights guarantees that no one can be punished for any opinions they might have, for or against the government.

I think the students I meet in my country will be:

I think the students we meet in China will be very polite and helpful. I think they will take us to the popular places that other students our age go. I think we will hang around the students we meet, and learn the culture and things that they do. They will show us around the city and make sure we don’t get into any trouble we shouldn’t due to cultural ignorance.

I predict that I will be surprised to find:

I think I will be surprised to find the large amount of people in the city of Beijing. I will be surprised by the markets in China: how many open shops are there and all of the street vendors that will try to get me to buy something. I think it will be like other major cities like New York, but with an entirely different culture and way of doing things.

I think the major differences in living conditions will be:

I think the differences in living conditions will not be too many. I think Beijing is a very westernized city, and many of the living accommodations will be much the same as here in the United States. I don’t think it will be much like the stereotypical mat and sliding door that are seen in movies.

Anything else I want to add:

I am very excited to go on this trip to China. I am looking forward to meeting Chinese students our own age, visiting the many historical sites in and around Beijing, as well as getting to visit the Chinese companies. Only a month and two weeks!

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First post. I don’t really know how this works yet, but this is how I’m going to document my China trip.