Final Thoughts

So here it is, my final blog entry from my summer in Beijing. I was right about the fact that I’d be too busy to write after I stopped working, so I will try to include everything interesting.

I got to attend two different Olympic events: women’s soccer and beach volleyball. The soccer games we saw were Brazil v. Nigeria and Canada v. Sweden, and the beach volleyball was six different games, four men’s and two women’s. We got to see the second women’s US team, but unfortunately not Walsh and May. The security getting into the Olympic venues was extremely tight. There was this ticket reader with a webcam that scanned each ticket and took a picture of the ticket holder so that each ticket matched a face, then the security was similar to that at most airports: putting all your belongings through a scanner, walking through the detector, and getting searched with the handheld one. I purposely didn’t bring a purse to the soccer game, and as such had to empty my pockets and explain what my extra battery for my camera was used for (couldn’t really do that in Chinese). What was extremely surprising at both venues was the number of empty seats. Any of you who’ve been watching on TV can see that the stands aren’t too full, and it’s really unfortunate that all these corporations buy a ton of tickets and then don’t use them when there are people everywhere scrounging for tickets. Also interesting though is how available it seems many tickets have become. I’ve probably gotten at least 5-10 e-mails sent out to the Beijing Ultimate list of people with extra tickets.
Inside the soccer stadium, there were sections of Chinese people all wearing the same yellow shirt and red hat, waving those inflatable cheering sticks together; it seemed these people were assigned to be in cheering sections. There were also of course the people cheering for the countries playing randomly in crowds wearing their country’s colors and waving their country’s flag. Our seats ended up in the right above a Canada cheering group, which made the second game a lot of fun. At half time, the fuwa (characters) came out with some cheerleaders and danced around the stadium. I could not believe that they were dancing to “We’re All in This Together” from High School Musical! All of the music they played in general was American, and all of the announcements were in the three official languages of the Olympics: English, French, and Chinese, so it almost made me forget that we were in Beijing.
The beach volleyball stadium was just built for the Olympics, ad it is very clean and new looking inside. The entire thing was open air, which made me very happy our tickets were in the evening (6pm-12am). I enjoyed watching beach volleyball a lot better for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which being that I played volleyball for six years and actually know all the rules and calls. What made it so much more fun, however, was how they entertained the crowd. Between every point, they played about seven seconds of some hit song from the 80s or 90s. It was extremely fun to sit there singing along and especially exciting when they played “My Sharona” twice. As the night went on, and more people left, we kept moving closer and closer to the front rows, and by the last game, we were in the second row, which was just AWESOME. It was like watching from the bench, and I was so enthralled with it that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

Concession Stand: The food available at all the Olympic venues was horrible. You can read the names yourselves, but does it look appetizing to you? The names don’t really give you a great idea, so here are a few descriptions: The sausages come in vacuum sealed packages and were basically like American hotdogs, but slightly smaller. The ‘Presidents Snack Noodles’ are actually a package of instant noodles WITH the spice packet, but with no bowl or water, so you just eat them hard. The biggest issue with the lack of decent food is that many Olympic tickets run the course of several hours; my friends had beach volleyball tickets from 9am until 10:30pm, and it’s kinda hard to survive all day on ‘Presidents Snack Noodles’ and sausages. The beer, however, was great and extremely cheap for beer at a sporting event. Unfortunately, most Chinese volunteers don’t know how to pour beer into a cup, so it usually came with a decent amount of foam. It seemed strange to me that China wouldn’t take advantage of selling snack food at higher prices and more of it to gain back some of their debt from preparing for these Olympics, but hey, I won’t complain about 5 kuai Budweiser!

Besides the Olympics, I spent my last week here doing some last-minute souvenir shopping and sightseeing. I finally went to the silk market, which is a huge building full of people trying to sell you things. Depending on how much of a foreigner you look like and what stores you are walking past, they grab you (literally) and try to sell you things. The silk market is all about bargaining, and the people who work there know how to bargain in most common languages. I’m told they go to a special school for this. My first purchase was two ‘disco attire’ dresses, which I ended up paying 350 kuai for, which I guess isn’t too bad since the original price was about 2000 kuai each. I bargained with this woman for about 30 minutes, and she was way too nice for me to not buy them at that point. After that, I was totally worn out, and I only purchased one other small souvenir the rest of the time we were there. I don’t know how people can go there all the time, but I guess some people are just not as nice as I am with bargaining.

On a similar note, I also made it to the zoo market this week. The zoo market is quite the opposite of the silk market. Everything there is already really cheap, no one pulls you into his or her store, and only slight bargaining is necessary. The following day, I also went to the zoo, which as you could guess is right across the street from the zoo market. The pandas there were adorable, and I did the best I could at getting a good picture.

The rest of the zoo was similar to most other zoos, though the animals are in much smaller cages than in most zoos in the states.




And now my final thoughts on my trip…

This is the first time I have actually lived someplace away from home (besides college) for longer than three weeks. Over the course of my two months here, I felt very free and in control of everything I was doing. I also felt like I really had my own life here, unlike anyone else, mainly due to the awesome Ultimate community. I’m really glad I found them before I left because they became some of my best friends over the past two months. Last night it finally hit me that I’m leaving, and as many of you could guess, I got really upset. I couldn’t really be going much further away from the people who live here. Even now, as I sit in the airport terminal waiting to board my plane home, I’m holding back my tears. It’s not only the people though, it’s the city itself and the ability to wander around and see new, interesting things every day and learn new words. Especially during the Olympics, it became really interesting to meet people on the streets or in a bar because everyone had some interesting story as to why they were in Beijing.

As far as my Chinese language skills go, they’ve improved drastically, probably even more so than I realize. When I went to return my bicycle two days ago, I actually managed to have an argument with the woman about my deposit in complete Chinese, and I won! Also walking out of the subway earlier that week, a Chinese woman graciously shared her umbrella with me, as it had started pouring while I was underground. I started talking to her in Chinese and actually managed to get through the entire conversation without misunderstanding or having to say things in English. I know for certain that my Chinese would be almost inexistent had I stayed in the states this summer, and I’m expecting to experience other people feeling that way in the second-year class this fall.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading about my adventures this summer. After living here for two months, I am positive I will be back within the next couple of years, and I’ve definitely met some amazing people who I’ll be keeping in touch with: Skype is my new best friend.

That’s all for this adventure!

~Chirona

中国加油! 奥运加油!

I know most of you can't read that title, but what it says is "Zhongguo Jiayou! Aoyun Jiayou!" which is China's Olympic cheer; it translates to approximately "Let's go China! Let's go Olympics!" The opening ceremony is tomorrow night, and I realized that I haven't actually written anything about the Olympics and how it's changing Beijing.

Construction: When I first arrived here, there was contruction almost everywhere and at almost every hour. The street I live off of, which is constructed of cement blocks, was constantly being torn up and put back together, and everywhere else in the city, you could probably not walk more than a block at any time of day without seeing construction. One of the most impressive parts of all this construction was how quickly it all happened. Near my office just over the course of a couple of weeks, the roads we take to work completely changed paths. For weeks I was frustrated as to why every single map of Beijing is wrong in some capacity, but I understand now...it's because Beijing's map literally changes every week. A couple of weeks ago, construction stopped on my street, which now seems a lot wider than it ever was and where it is now actually possible to ride your bike without crashing into people every ten seconds. The rest of the construction going on is either done or halted for the games now, and it makes things seem slightly quieter.

Weather/Pollution: As many of you know from reading my earlier posts, the weather when I first got here was very rainy and hazy almost every day. The government was making it rain in an attempt to clear the pollution from the air. About three or four weeks after I got here, I saw my first Beijing blue sky, and it was extremely exciting, in fact I never though I'd get so excited over seeing a blue sky. This occurred occasionally over the next couple weeks, and recently it has been much more frequent. There was even one day that had a gorgous blue sky with white fluffy clouds. My friend Tao got some great pictures of it, which you can see in this blog entry of his. Currently, however, looking out my office window (a little over 24 hours before the opening ceremony), it is relatively hazy.

Traffic: As a means of both getting rid of pollution and reducing traffic, starting July 20th, half the cars in Beijing were taken off the road. This was implemented by allowing alternating odd and even days depending on the last number of your license plate. I know a bunch of you immediately thought this, so yes, zero counts as even. Beijing has 5 concentric ring roads within the city, and I believe this rule is in affect within the 5 rings. There are also some addtional laws about larger vehicles, but I'm not exactly sure what they are. There have been some interesting changes in transit since this rule went into affect. The first thing almost everyone noticed was that it became nearly impossible in many locations to get taxis. All taxis are allowed on the roads at all times, but since so many people can't drive, they're all taking taxis. This was especially the case after 11pm when all public transit (except the newly added olympic bus lines) stopped running. The week before Avril left, she and I ended up walking 40 minutes back to our hotel because we couldn't find an empty cab along the entire route, and later that night, it took a group of us over an hour to hail a cab just to take us 15 minutes down to the street to a popular bar district. As far as traffic itself was concerned, it was a lot lighter, and it made riding my bike places a bit easier since there were less cars to possibly run me over. Public transit I'm told also got a lot more crowded, though I've only taken it a couple of times since. The past couple of days, however, as olympic athletes and spectators started rolling into town, traffic has been worse than ever. What's normally a 50-minute bus ride home from work for my friend Mike took him about an hour and a half on Tuesday night, and many other of my friends told me they were gonna start riding their bikes to work, which I've been glad I already do. It'll be interesting to see how traffic continues during the games.

Buses/Subways: Since I've been here, three new subway lines have opened up, giving much more access to the city. One of these lines is a straight shot to the airport in 16 minutes, which is a nice trade-off from the 3o-45 minute drive, depending on traffic. There are also a bunch of Olympic bus lines that have been added to the system and all run 24 hours. The generally run between Olympic venues, but have become convenient for a lot of people's work commutes. Additionally, the subways and many bus lines are supposed to start running 24 hours, which will be awesome, though I'm not sure when that goes into affect.

Security: Security has been noticably stepped up everywhere. There are cops almost every block just standing guard, as well as sidewalk security cameras and mandatory bag checks in every subway station. In addition to the normal traffic security standing on the corners of intersections, I've seen cops standing there, as well as right in the center of the intersection at many locations. I haven't made it over to the Olympic Village yet, but my friends who have said they couldn't get within a couple blocks of the Bird's Nest because security was so tight.

Olympic Paraphernalia: In addition to not being able to go a block without seeing a cop, you can't make more than ten feet without seeing some sort of Olympic paraphernalia. The contruction fences, sides of buildings, cars, buses, subways, and stores are covered in advertisements for the games. There are flags all along all the ring roads and some of the other major roads, and almost all the street signs have the olympic logo somewhere on them. The new subway lines have moving advertisements in the tunnels with the Fuwa (Olympic mascots), and on the inside, there are TVs explaining a random sport, usually one of the less common ones. Last week, lit up visa (official sponsor of the Olympics) signs were put up outside of all the small stores as well, which I think totally takes away from the feel of things. I literally watched vans full of these signs stop and drop two off along with people to hang them at every store in the area.

In general, it's really exciting to be here during this time, and I'm really curious to see how things change in the next week and a half. I have plans to watch the opening ceremony on one of the huge outdoor screens being set up, and I'm really excited for it as well as the events I'm attending next week. I'll probably post again before I leave, but this is my last day of work, and I might be really busy doing everything I still haven't done in this city. Enjoy the Olympics!

Chinese Exercise Parks

I've briefly mentioned these before in at least one entry, but they definitely deserve an entry all to themselves. Last night was my last night of Tuesday pickup (Ultimate), and I finally made myself go early so I could stop by the exercise park and take pictures.
That's not a great shot because it was dusk, which is a really hard time to take pictures, but it gives you a general idea. That path area in front actually goes around in a circle and people walk around it for exercise. There are also other large areas where people dance or do yoga in large groups. The first time I stopped in this park, there was also a large group of men singing. This is all going on at about 7:30pm, but I'd assume it's also pretty crowded during the day, especially since none of the kids are in school right now. Here are a few of my favorite machines:

On this machine, you pull the metal chains down and up with alternating hands as you can see the guy at the next one doing.






On this one, you hold onto the black handles and turn the wheels one with each hand. We joke that the people who use these a lot are probably really good at drawing perfect circles. Also note that there is one set higher up and one lower down.






On this one, the orange parts extend backwards, pivoting from the top, so it's basically just leg exercises, but you can do it facing your friends and even have a conversation!










Hope you find these machines as fascinating as I do. It's just really interesting to see everyone using them at almost any time of day, though the parks are significantly more crowded in the couple of hours after the work day. I also found a weather site in Chinese that, in addition to pollen and air quality forecasts, includes a section on "morning exercises forecast," which shows how common they are.