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.

Western Lunch

Yesterday when we were on our way to one of our usual lunch restaurants, we passed by a new western restaurant, and the woman outside handed us menus. The front of the menu says in large print "WALK TIME" and underneath in small print "Please.flower me". We spend a good portion of our lunch drooling over the menu, as we've had western food maybe once or twice since we've been here, and making fun of the English translations. The most interesting thing about the translations is that they don't ever stick to one spelling. Here are a few examples: "spughetti, spaghetti, spayhetti", "sandwick, sandwith, sandwich", "friedrice, friderice, froderoce". By the end of the meal, we decided that we had to go to this place for lunch the next day (today), and we even got an okay from our three Chinese coworkers we always eat with (their English names are Apple, Kitty, and Tweety).

Nathan and I spent a good portion of the morning discussing what it was we wanted to order for lunch, since we had the menu, and being excited about eating western food with our coworkers. We clearly walked ahead of our coworkers on the way there, and when we got to the restaurant, they kinda gave us a weird look, but then followed us in. We had of course by this time decided exactly what it was we wanted to eat, but the three of them sat there flipping through the menu for a good 15 minutes, seemingly quite confused as to what they should order. Mind you all three of these coworkers generally eat kung pao chicken for lunch almost every day. After having a bunch of conversations with the waitress and each other they finally ordered, though Nathan and I could tell they weren't so happy. A minute later, the waitress brought out small plates, forks, knives, and spoons. Tweety picked up the fork with a look of confusion, clearly thinking "I don't know how to use this!". Nathan and I did some demonstrations and at the same time got really excited to see her attempts to use a fork.

My salad showed up first, and I was ecstatic. I hadn't had a salad or even anything salad-like since I'd been here. I ate it pretty quickly all the while my coworkers stared at me using my fork so fluidly. Tweety's beef with rice showed up (very adventurous choice I know), and her immediate reaction was "panzi hen da!!" (the plate is so big!!) Now she was actually referring to the plate itself, as plates in China are generally not larger than 6 or 7 inches in diameter. She started attempting to eat with a fork, but was having a really hard time with the concept of stabbing the pieces of meat. Nathan helped her out a bit, but meanwhile we were both holding ourselves back from laughing hysterically. Our (Nathan and my) pasta dishes showed up and we started eating as well.

It was now 1pm, and our lunch break is only from 12:30-1:30. Apple looks at her phone for the time and immediately yells to the waitress to hurry up because we need to go back to work. This recurrs probably 4 or 5 times before they get their food. Apple ordered some chicken wings and split a tuna sandwich with Tweety, and Kitty ordered a pasta dish with seafood. The entire meal was entertaining just watching them figure out how to deal with forks and hands (for the sandwich). Tweety ended up eating it with a fork because she couldn't deal with it with her hands.

When we finished eating, we asked our coworkers what they thought, and they were like American food is just sandwiches and pasta, and they went on about how Chinese food has so many more options for dishes, so they like it a lot better. We of course countered this with the fact that there are a ton of options for food in the US (not to mention the fact that they still eat the same thing for lunch every day) and that Americans feel the same way about Chinese food. By the time we paid, it was 1:32pm, and the three of them ran in front of us (yes...ran) to get back to the office. Of course, we were in no rush seeing as we have no real work to do at the office...

I think for our last three days of work, we'll stick with Chinese food so as not to overwhelm our coworkers.

Hua Kai Hotel

I've talked somewhat about my hotel in earlier entries like when I first arrived here, but I'm going to start from the beginning, mainly for the flow of the story:

The Hua Kai Hotel is in the Dongcheng district on a hutong, right off of Nanluogu xiang, which is a well-known bar street, with all the buildings in old Chinese style. The location is great, about a 5-minute walk from Houhai and Beihai Park, however, the hotel itself is another story...

When I first arrived at the Hua Kai, I was put in a room at the end of the fourth floor. Within 10 minutes, I discovered that the toilet was broken, and the hotel staff, which consists of two young-ish girls and the owner (Lao Li), told me I could pick any room on the floor. They started opening doors and showing me different rooms. At this point, I just wanted to put my stuff down, so I chose the room next door.

Let me pause here and give you a general description of the rooms in our hotel: Every room consists of minimum 2 beds, a desk, some cabinets, a closet, a coffee table with two chairs, a small water cooler with hot and warm water, and a bathroom with sink, toilet, and tub/shower. Beyond those common items, there are very few other similarities. The rooms on the right sides of the hallways are smaller, and generally have a green-ish bowl sink, whereas the ones on the left sides have an entire black marble counter with an inset grundgy tan (maybe it used to be white) sink. Some of the larger rooms have 3 beds, and one of them even has one huge (like bigger than king-size) bed and then one twin. The AC also varies from room to room, some with individual units and some with somewhat central-air that is controlled by the floor, not to mention the fact that the functionality of both types is sporadic.

Within a couple of days in my new room, I realized that the window wouldn't close all the way, the water heater for the shower constantly got unplugged, and there was no curtain on the shower (this was the case in everyone's room). After someone complained, a curtain appeared on my shower, and I managed to get the window fixed, but not the outlet for the water heater. I found myself standing on the toilet (it was plugged into the ceiling) fixing the plug about twice a week. There were also three light switches in the room, one of which turned on all the lights (bathroom and main room), one of which turned on the fan in the bathroom, and one of which did nothing. This made it extremely frustrating to pee in the middle of the night.

As far as sanitation goes, it doesn't really exist in the Hua Kai. Our program director told us we were supposed to have our rooms cleaned every day and sheets changed once a week. The first week or two, they were pretty good about emptying the garbage and taking the dirty towels (but not giving us clean ones), but then it slowed down. They will also come into the room while you're sleeping on weekends and just do such things without even recognizing your presence. Anytime you need anything, you need to go downstairs and ask. This includes: toilet paper, new sheets, new water, towels, a broom to sweep your room (I'm sure none of you are surprised I would ask for this), etc...

Since we've been here, the hotel staff has set up a convenience store in the lobby, which is relatively convenient (duh!). It sells cold drinks including 3 kuai beers, bowls of instant noodles, cigarettes, sanitary napkins, condoms, etc...

Onto the hotel staff: The two women who work in the hotel most definitely live there 24/7. One of them sleeps on the bench in the lobby every night, and I'm not sure where the other sleeps. I'm assuming the owner, Lao Li, lives elsewhere since he's usually not around at night. A new woman started working there a few weeks ago who wears dresses all the time and looks a lot less rugged than the other two. The other two also got into some sort of catfight last week, and are both covered in scratches and bruises on their faces and arms. It's kind of absurd, and we've all been somewhat scared of them since.

About the other people in the hotel: The second floor of our hotel we're all pretty sure is some sort of brothel/KTV (karaoke television). We all pretty much avoid it by taking the elevator, but noises from there definitely float up to the third floor. Additionally, there are a bunch of Chinese drama students who live in the hotel. One of them in particular is probably the most dramatic and rude person I've ever met. She borrows people's phones and laptops all the time, and will use them for hours without getting up. She had 2000 kuai stolen from her room at one point and accused one of the guys on our program who ended up getting taken to Chinese jail and questioned for a couple of hours (luckily he's Chinese and speaks fluently). She has also on two occasions had extended screaming/crying phone conversations, the first of which was at 5pm, and the second on which woke us all up at 3am.

This past Monday morning, at 9:30am, I was on skype with my parents when the power went out. I went out into the hall and in my best Chinglish asked when it was coming back on. I was told to wait a little bit, and then about 15 minutes later, the woman comes back to my room, wakes up my roommate, and informs us that we need to move upstairs because there's no power on the fourth floor. When do we need to move? RIGHT NOW!! It's 9:30 in the morning, and we'd lived in this room for 6 weeks! She then reasoned with us and said we could move at 10 or 11, but she wouldn't give me the key to the new room. After packing all of our stuff up (luckily Callie and I are pretty organized), we moved it all upstairs, and then I managed to explain that the hotel woman had to give me the key to our new room before I gave her back the old key. She finally gave in...

Our new room is on the opposite side of the hall, so it has the different bathroom, and we now have three beds. It also has the central air, but it's worked out so far (the two nights we've been there that is). Our group now is awkwardly split between the 5th and 3rd floors with four people still on the 4th floor (somehow they didn't have to move). My stuff is still somewhat in suitcases, but I guess I'll be a bit more organized when I leave in three weeks now...

A Better View Out My Window

Kevin and I figured out that we could open the window and stick our hands out with the camera in order to get a non-reflecting picture, so here it is! This setup is generally how a family in this area lives. There is an entrance in front as follows (the red door on the right):

Each family member then lives in one of the rooms off the courtyard. There is a specific layout as to where the parents, grandparents, and kids are, but I don't remember it now. Interesting insight into Chinese culture...

Olympics Tickets

I have to start this entry with: OMG I'M GOING TO THE OLYMPICS!!!!!! That's right...aren't you all jealous...

Beijing announced on Tuesday that the fourth phase of Olympic ticket sales would begin on Friday, July 25th at 9am. Tickets for the 5 main venues would be sold at the main box office, and all other tickets would be sold at their respective venues. The beijinger, a really popular ex-pat blog about Beijing said that anyone wishing to buy tickets should get there really early, and that some people would even be camping out. The remaining 820,000 tickets were being sold, 250,000 of which were for events in Beijing proper (as opposed to the co-hose cities). I did a bunch of research online into whether I was actually allowed to buy tickets, as the website states:
"Any natural person who has established domicile in the territory of People's Republic of China (except Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province) and possesses a valid ID is eligible to order Olympic tickets"
We had a long group discussion about said issue Thursday night, and decided it was worth giving it a shot. Four people from our program including my roommate Callie (and not myself) skipped class and went to try to get soccer tickets at 8am. I wasn't there, but I'm told the line was absurd and very organized up until the end, where it turned into a huge mob. Callie left to go to the second part of class, and then went back with another guy from our group. They'd moved "less than a city block" since 8am according to Callie (it was now noon), but they stuck it out. Here's Callie's description of what they went through:
"waiting in line for 6 hours, dodging policemen, and sprinting in a free-for-all race against the citizens of Beijing across a parking lot and standing entirely pressed up against 4 other people for 15 minutes within a ring of guards who were holding hands to keep us in. Basically no other way to describe it really..."
In the mean time, being as each person was allowed to purchase two tickets and there were five of them there, Risa, Kristyn, Stephanie, and I went over to Chaoyang park to try to purchase beach volleyball tickets. We stood outside the gate to get in from about 1:30-2:30, but there were people who'd been standing there since 11am. We also got a call from the other group that they'd successfully gotten women's soccer tickets for 150 kuai each (that's about $22). They apparently hadn't let anyone in since 9am. At about 2:30, the guard informed us they'd be opening the gate in a few minutes, and everyone formed into the most packed crowd I've been in...every man for himself...Risa and I managed to get towards the front and were in the first couple of groups into the gate. Once inside the gate, they put us all in a single-file line and started letting small groups in at a time. I was in the first group in and Risa in the second. The other two were a bit behind us. The lines at the box office were separated by date, so I got online for the 13, 14, 15th tickets and about half hour later (about 4:30) had tickets in my hand for beach volleyball on the 13th at night. They cost 50 kuai each, i.e. $7...isn't that absurd?! I still can't believe that I have tickets...

This is what one woman's shoes looked like after running for tickets:

And here's a good picture of the crowd: