Cheating the Chinese government
Blogspot is still blocked in China but Duckju found a way to cheat the government through a sneaky website.
(Duckju says, “You should write that I’m really cool.”)
However, I still can’t post pictures through the website, so I’ll be putting that off for a while. I’ve been writing somewhat consistently, though I obviously haven’t been posting, since I left Los Angeles. Here’s what I have so far:
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June 22, 2009
Korea
I got to Korea by Thursday evening for my layover. Speaking of flights, Korean Airlines probably has the most pleasant, helpful people ever. All the flight attendants speak in a singsong voice and want to do everything for you. Though I could only stay in Incheon for a night since I had a flight to Beijing the following morning, I had just enough time to have dinner with my aunts. I stayed the night at a small hotel near the airport and made the best of out of the few hours I had of being able to communicate without hand motions.
Beijing
I realized English doesn’t really get you far in Beijing once you leave the airport. Fortunately, my cousin and his wife picked me up at the airport and helped me settle into Beijing Normal University (北京师范大学). Once there, I met a lot of Yalies also here for Princeton in Beijing. We later went out to dinner and soon realized that in China, beer is much cheaper than water.
Placement test, Tiananmen, Wangfujin
After the placement test in the morning, a few friends and I trekked over to Tiananmen despite the heat and even found our way to a pretty famous shopping district, where we found a few surprising—slightly disturbing—food items.
This is where I would add a picture of live scorpions, but I guess I’ll have to wait for that one.
By the time we returned to our dorm, my legs were killing me from all the walking around and couldn’t convince myself to go back out for Saturday night fun. But no worries, I still have eight more weeks of adventure-seeking coming up.
The language pledge
I’m not gonna lie. I lasted about three hours before I burst out in English. In fact, Duckju and I broke the language pledge as soon as we saw each other after the signing. There’s not much to be said about the language pledge, except that a lot of frustration, Duckju’s head-banging on a wall, and screaming were involved.
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June 26, 2009
First week
Was totally consumed by Chinese. But tonight, I went over to my cousin’s apartment and had a ton of Korean food, soju, and broke my language pledge once again. It turns out Beijing has a pretty big Korean community, much like Koreatowns in cities in the U.S. Koreans living in that area would probably be able to get by without speaking much Chinese.
My roommate and I decided to stay in tonight because we have to get up at 7 tomorrow to go to the Great Wall with PIB. Instead of going out to Sanlitun (a hangout area in Beijing to which we’re planning to go tomorrow night), we just went through a bottle of soju in our huge air-conditioned room.
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July 1, 2009
The Great Wall of China on a Saturday afternoon, then Sanlitun
My roommate and I walked on and on until we decided the view from one part of the wall would look basically the same at any other point. So after about an hour and a half, we found a nice, cool area where we had a pseudo-Chinese table with some of the teachers and ate their food. After we got back to the school, Pearl and I were dead tired but decided to go to Sanlitun anyway to meet up with HBA people.
Jerry also came over to 北师大 to visit and even brought a little gift— he gave me a betta fish (inside joke with his suite and our room at Yale), which is now sitting on my desk.
Sadly, we couldn’t find fish food anywhere around here. Pearl said that her old fish used to eat lettuce, so that’s what we got for Little Jerry. It’s still alive, so I guess it’s working?
Big classes, small classes, individual sessions, then some more Chinese
Enough said. It’s just a lot of Chinese. Can’t wait for the weekend. I’m planning on meeting up with my cousin again this weekend and going to a Fourth of July get-together hosted by Yale and other universities. Fun times ahead.
Chinese government getting in my way
Last week, China blocked Google, including Gmail, for a night. I almost had a nervous breakdown. My Blackberry-less life has not yet cured my dependence on Gmail.
The PIB program coordinator sent out an e-mail saying that students planning on going to church should bring their passports to prove that they aren’t Chinese citizens. I’m not planning on going to church while in Beijing so it doesn’t really matter, but I thought it was interesting enough to note.
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July 10, 2009
Recent discoveries
The best one has to be the very nice café a short walk from our room. It’s much like the cafés back home, minus the no-smoking rule. It turns out my roommate is also a coffee addict, so we usually spend our Sunday afternoons there to do all the work we avoid over the weekend.
The McDonalds here do not have apple pies. Instead, they have pineapple and taro pies with crispier crusts. They definitely fall under my top ten finds in Beijing.
There’s a bootleg DVD store across the street from our dorms. So far I’ve bought a copy of Slumdog Millionaire and have watched several other movies with my roommate. I think we’ll be going back there soon for more.
Riots
The recent riots have occurred nowhere near Beijing and the only problem we’ve had to endure is the Facebook ban. At least Gmail still works.
Reuniting with half of my KASY family members
Jerry, Susie, my roommate and I had Beijing Kaoya today at Dadong Roast Duck Restaurant, which is a pretty popular restaurant in the city. Jerry’s birthday is tomorrow so we also had a pre-celebration over dinner— the restaurant played the Happy Birthday song, sung in English by a man with a Chinese accent.
