Zan's Birthday & Halloween & More!

The last week has been crazy busy! Here we go...

Last Tuesday I went to part of the final Presidential Debate watch party at Kro's Nest Pizza, but actually ended up not really watching the debate because my Fulbright friend, Allie who will be living in Xi'an with me next year, was there. Instead, we took the opportunity to catch up and talk about Xi'an. Yay future friends! And then I went to an IUP Alumni Happy Hour at Q Mex, and met some nice people. Afterwards, we went to hooters to celebrate my friend Rebecca's birthday. As this was my first trip to Hooters, I was totally horrified by the tiny outfits and the whole scene. But the wings were pretty good I guess. 

Wednesday after class, I met up with a woman from the Beijing Anti-Domestic Violence Network for an informational interview. She explained to me the DV situation in China, what their organization is doing to alleviate the issue, and the main challenges they face. She has explained a little bit about being an "NGO" in China and their relationship with the government, which she described as a "partnership". This was probably my first real-live, on-the-ground Fulbright research activity so it was really exciting! Even though my topic isn't about DV, it's still important to understand the issue because many of the women's rights issues in China (and most places) effect each other. We spoke mostly in English, but also a little bit of Chinese, which I felt pretty good about! I even used a lot of my vocab from my IUP classes! :) Then I headed to a cute cafe to do some homework before my evening event, a lecture totally in Chinese about gender-based discrimination in China. It was hosted by FSYE, an organization that promotes and mentors young social entrepreneurs in China (SO COOL). When we arrived, the organizers frantically asked my two Fulbright friends and I if we could understand Chinese and we reassured them that we'd manage through it. In fact, I think I understood about 70-80% of the actual presentation with the help of the picture-filled PPT (the discussion and Q&A was a bit harder to follow). I was even able to laugh at the jokes they made! The two lecturers were activists/scholars from Taiwan so they used traditional characters (I use simplified) in their PPT, and had Taiwanese accents. They lectured about a few major examples of gender-based discrimination and some of the activist movements that have come out of them: "Occupy" men's bathrooms movement (in order to achieve a more appropriate male-to-female bathroom stall ratio & gender neutral bathrooms) that has actually led to many Chinese cities enacting new legislation to meet those demands; Sexual Harrassement on Subways (a global issue); the gendering of children through color, names, toys, bedroom furniture, etc; school uniforms for girls vs. boys; and breast-feeding spaces in public places. Overall I came away from the day totally excited to begin my research in earnest in January, and feeling pretty confident about my Chinese (and I still have 8 more weeks of IUP!). NERD FREAK OUT DAY!!!!!!

Friday was my roomie and bestie, Zan's, 23rd birthday! To celebrate, we went to lunch at Grandma's Kitchen (more on this later, but DO NOT EVER GO THERE) and had a delicious lunch of pancakes, eggs, and sausage. Then we went to a Korean Spa, which was a very unique experience. I've been to several of these types of Spas before but it was new to Zan and Sophie. Basically, you go into the single sex locker rooms, get totally naked, and then go soak in a hot tub with lots of other naked women (or men if you're a guy). From there, we got a hard core body scrub- no of that lightly exfoliating your skin with "sea salts" or anything, this was scrub-as-much-skin-off-as-you-can style. Zan freaked out from all the scrubbing cuz it was tickling her and it was pretty hilarious. Afterwards, our skin felt amazingly soft. Once we had soaked our skin to recover a bit, we put on our pink silk PJs and weird oversized disposable underwear and ventured out into the unisex area of the Spa. Zan and I got 1 hr full body massages, which were actually pretty good and not like the normal painful Chinese kind. Next we visited the "ecological" saunas, which were different rooms made out of various minerals and stones that all supposedly had different benefits for your health, and were very hot or cold. After covering ourselves with some hot rocks in a random rock pit, we moved onto the all-you-can-eat buffet that was included in our spa entrance fee. I wasn't feeling too well so I skipped out on the food. It looked pretty weird in my opinion. Then we headed home. For Zan's birthday night, we decided to go out for drinks and dessert in Sanlitun. Unfortunately on the way, my food poisoning from lunch at Grandma's Kitchen hit me and I had to hastily exit the subway car halfway through our journey to vomit all over the floor of the subway station, very pleasant. I felt much better so we got  back on the subway, but had to get off again to throw up two more times. Eventually I made it home and was sick a few more times that night. Blah. Gross. Nobody likes eggs, sausage, and bread coming out of your nose. Ewww. 

By Saturday morning, I wasn't sick anymore, but still didn't feel great. After I spent the day recovering, we started getting dressed to go out for Halloween night and Zan & Rebecca's birthdays!!! I was dressed as a Zombie Bride (I'm terribly sorry, but I don't have any of my own photos from the night. Check Facebook now or in the near future once some people load them), and Zan was a flamingo (EPIC). We started the night with a Photo Shoot at Wayne's apartment, where he had prepared adorable rummy gummies, and jack-o-lantern jell-o shots. Then we moved on to my friends Gordon and Thomas's house party, and then ended the night at Element Club, which had some crazy Halloween performances going on. 

Yesterday and today were work days spent catching up. This friday is our 1st module final (not commulative from the whole 8 weeks, thank god), and then I'm off to the US for a week for vacation!!! :) That's right, I'll be back in the old 404 so you can text/call me whenever you want!!! My plan: EAT, EAT, EAT, EAT, Shop, Yoga, EAT, EAT, EAT, hang out with a few friends, EAT, EAT, EAT, EAT, and eat. 

Also exciting, just got my classes for next module, and they're exactly what I wanted! Monday, Wednesday, and Friday my first class isn't until 10am, which is luxurious compared to my 5 days-a-week 8am current schedule. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have an 8am individual class in which I will be reading articles I've found in Chinese relevant to my Fulbright research so I can start working on my vocab for my project! Because I'm doing the this independent material class, I am not able to take two of the other classes that I'm supposed to take at my level so instead I'm condensing it into 1 and doing it alone with a teacher. It's actually great because then I get to only study things that are most interesting to my from that class and I get more personal attention from the teacher. So excited to sleep in (or maybe even go to the gym!) 3 days a week! 

That's about it for now! My next post will probably be from the US! Woah!

A weekend in the "real" China

This weekend we had an IUP trip to 东北, Northeast China. Our trip began on Friday afternoon with a subway ride to the train station. Someone on the subway had a box labelled "dog meat" in Chinese- ahhh! So awful! Then after waiting around at the train station for awhile, we boarded the train and got settled in our nice "soft" seats. On Chinese trains, there are usually 5 kinds of tickets (ordered from most to least luxurious): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, and standing. During a regular weekend, I'm too busy going out with friends to do various things that I don't get to read, but this weekend I finally got back into my 2nd Game of Thrones. It was so nice to read for the whole 5 hour train ride! (And now I'm almost done with the 2nd book!) Then we arrived around 10pm in 盘锦 (Panjin), a small Chinese city of about 1.3 million people. It was pretty ugly, hugely industrial, and very polluted. After arriving at the hotel, Kate (my roommate for the weekend) and I just went straight to bed. Apparently some people tried to go out and get some food and a drink, but even finding a restaurant was hard.

The next morning, we had a surprisingly decent buffet breakfast at the hotel. Then we hopped on our bus for our first activity, visiting the Red Beaches of the Liaohe River Delta. On the way, we saw lots of wind mills, oil rigs, and agriculture. Our tour guide presumably gave us an introduction to the city, but I couldn't understand anything she was saying and was distracted by her fake eyelashes (she wore them everyday) and her enormous eyes (a lot of people wear these giant colored contacts that make their eyes look huge so they can look more like an anime character/be more attractive- it's funny how those two things are the same here, right? haha). Then we arrived at what we thought were the Red Beaches, but was actually just a stop along the way. I think the tour guides were buying tickets for us, but I'm still not totally sure. While waiting, we checked out the wedding that was about to happen in the parking lot of this buidling along a river. It was probably 50F with the wind chill so not really an ideal day for a wedding in my opinion, but apparently a lot of people consult various ancient Chinese calendars to pick the most "auspicious" day for marriage based on their astrology, so it's possible this couple didn' t really have a choice for the day, haha. Anyways, the entrance to wedding was graced with a beautiful blow up arch:

Yes, it actually say "WEDDING", in english. And has the names of the bride and grooms in the middle.

Apparently these are quite popular, as this was another blow-up wedding arch we saw outside our hotel on Sunday, complete with a picture of the happy couple.

Unfortunately because of the strong winds, everything set up for the wedding kept blowing over. In the midst of the wedding chaos, my friend Jake stole a rose and gave it to me, which prompted a series of photos taken by both my friends and the official wedding photographer (who was seriously LOVING the huge crowd of foreigners hanging out by the wedding venue). My friend Wayne and I (even though Jake gave me the flower) took a number of "proposal" and "we're so in love" photos together. Unfortunately I only got this one:

 

After the brief photo shoot, we explored the scenery nearby the wedding, which included a number of strange animal displays: 

I think this is a jellyfish?

Sheep

My personal favorite, the deer

45 minutes later, we re-boarded our bus to go to the real Red Beaches. Of course just as we left the wedding, the firecrackers started going off and the Bridge and Groom arrived, so we missed most of the actual wedding. To get to the Red Beaches, we could either take a car or a boat so obviously we chose the boat. The scenery wasn't spectacular, just cruising through a river delta surrounded by tall sea grass-like stuff. Pics from the boat ride:

 Then we got on car/train thing to go the last bit of the way to the Red Beach (it was soooo cold). The beaches are red because of the kind of seaweed that grows there. In the fall, the seaweed turns red with the seasons.

Kate and I, Roomies for the weekend!!! <3

Awesome chinglish translation: "Besides footprints and smile, not leaving anything here"

After that, we thought we were going to lunch, but we dismayed when our bus stopped at a random bird reserve. However this is what happens when you're on a mass tour with no control. The lunch was not delicious, again typical with a mass tour. Then we drove for a little over 3 hours to our next stop, Shenyang 沈阳, your typical 2nd tier Chinese city of 8 million. Driving through the city, we thought, "wow, it's a real city with subways, shopping malls, high-tech rainbow light-up high rises, even a Chanel store!" But of course our hotel was in the middle of nowwhere next to the biggest construction site ever. They were rebuilding the major street our hotel was on, which was a 4 to 6 lane avenue. The entire street was torn up for miles, leaving a 20 foot deep pit in the middle of the avenue. Charming really.

After checking into the hotel, we went out to dinner, which was hard to find because we were trapped in the maze of construction. Finally we ended up at a dumpling restaurant that was supposedly famous. I didn't think it was that good, plus it was smoky and the service was abysmal (it took us an hr to get food and there were only a few other tables). From there, my table of people went to a bar called 88, which was recommended to us by the concierge as "where all the foreigners go" in Shenyang. It was the definition of tacky, as most true Chinese clubs are, with almost no foreigners, which was actually preferred anyways. The waitresses were wearing pink fur dresses. The decor was industrial, but not in the typical New York/Berlin industrial way, more a movie set "industrial" with lots of gears, pipes, screws, wheels, etc. scattered throughout.

Live Performers

We made lots of Chinese friends, who insisted we mix our own drinks (thankfully I had a long island, already pretty mixed up as it is) with their own vodka-tea concoction that seems to be the standard bottle service drink. (My friend Kate's mojito was not improved by this new addition). We danced on the stage a few times, but were kicked off by some performers- 3 foreign girls and 1 foreign guy, all wearing skimpy clothes. Most of the songs in the earlier part of the night were performed live by various Chinese singers who worked at the club, but most of them really had trouble singing english lyrics such as Usher's "Scream", haha. Quite entertaining. The highlight of the night was definitely getting an aiyi (cleaning lady) to do the Gangam Style dance with us.** Also a great night because I went out with different people from IUP so I made new friends and danced for almost 4 hours straight!On the way home, Kate, Alex, and I got lost in the maze of construction at 3am in the freezing cold for about an hr, not such a fun end to the night. Thankfully our wonderful friends left the warmth of the hotel to come rescue us. 

The next morning we had a disappointly disgusting breakfast at the hotel, and then went to the 故宫 (Imperial Palace) of Shenyang, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. I actually think it is a lot cooler and more authentic than Beijing's Forbbiden City. In Beijing, the Forbbiden City has been "restored", which actually involved them rebuilding and changing a lot of it; whereas in Shenyang, they left things looking closer to how they actually were. Plus I thought of lot of it was much more ornate.

Throne

We also saw, outside the palace, a guy doing water calligraphy. They use a bring stick with a calligraphy brush shaped sponge on the end and they just draw on the ground with water. It's really pretty. 

Then we went to Marshal Zhang's Mansion. Marshal Zhang was a warlord who controlled most of Manchuria (Northeast China) post Qing Dynasty, pre-PRC founding (1911-1949 approxiametly). He partnered with the Communists during WWII to defeat the Japanese so he's kind of a national hero now, even though he fled to Taiwan with the Guomingdang (Nationalists) in 1949. His mansion was cool because it was a combination of European style and ancient Chinese architecture.

Then we hopped back on our bus and drove to the train station. However our tour guide didn't realize the train station was under construction (like everything else in Shenyang) so we almost missed our train because we had to wait for the buses to come back and take us to the correct entrace. But don't worry, we made it. Got some homework done on the train and almost finished my book, plus napped! Went out for a burger and a drink last night to unwind from the trip.

Today we didn't have school so that we could recover from the weekend so we went shopping for Halloween costume accessories (I'm being a Ghost/Zombie Bride- we have 2 nights to dress up for so I need two costumes). I bought a variety of tacky sparkly jewelery, tights, a veil, jeweled head piece, fake eyelashes, spider and cobb webb fake nails, etc. So good. The best part was that the market we went to was in the Russian district of Beijing (who knew that even existed?). When we first got there, I thought, "wow, everyone's Chinese here is really weird. There must be some strange regional dialect within Beijing". Then I realized they were speaking Russian. Frequently I am mistaken for Russian (like this weekend on our trip) so of course the salespeople's go-to language with us was Russian, which was hilarious for us.

Anyways, now I've seen Dongbei, and am all set for Halloween! Lots of exciting things happening this week so stay tuned!

**NOTE: If you've been living under a rock for the last month and don't know what Gangam Style is, first watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0 . Then watch this parody my friends made about life in China as a foreigner (it's gotten over 300,000 views!!!): http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDYwMTg3ODQ0.html

A boat, a debate, and one speech later...

Hi everyone! I haven't posted in awhile because I don't have that much to say, but here's a quick summary (even my summary will probably be long...):

- Last friday, some friends and I rented a boat on Houhai, a lake in the middle of Beijing. It was pretty touristy (kinda like renting a boat at Central Park), but soooo fun. We brought a bunch of beers on board with us, and quickly discovered that none of us could really drive this boat (no relation to the simultaneous beer-drinking). Good times.

-Last Saturday, we went to Kro's Nest, our fav Pizza bar in Beijing, again to celebrate my friend Dylan's birthday. Afterwards we KTVed (karaoked). For those of you who have never had the joy of KTVing in China, it's very different than in the US. Instead of being in a big room with lots of strangers laughing at how bad you are at singing, you're in a private room with all your friends, crazy flashing lights, made-up (or sometimes real) music videos, and a personal waiter. KTV might be one of my top 5 favorite things about life in China. When you ALL come visit me, we will definitely go KTVing.

-Over the weekend, our hot water went out. Still not sure what was wrong but after 3 different visits by repairmen (who got our house super dirty with their big work boots RIGHT after our Aiyi- a cleaning lady- had come, so annoying). Now it takes about 10 minutes for the hot water to warm up, but at least it's fairly consistent afterwards. Today I had to pay our gas bill for the last 2 months, which totaled to about 15USD. Pretty good deal huh? Unfortunately I had to go to 3 different banks to pay the fee (because that's how you pay bills here apparently, just go to a bank) because none of them would take cash (I don't have a chinese credit card and my american one is almost never accepted).

-Had sushi for the first time on Sunday, and didn't get sick! #smallvictories

-Tuesday it rained and the weather was miserable. The day before, the pollution was moderately bad, but I decided not to wear my face mask (sidenote: the filters are starting to turn grey, which means it's actually working! so cool!). Due to this poor choice, I woke up Tuesday with a terrible sore throat. Then, I got pretty soaked on my way to class, despite my raincoat. In China, heat is nationally regulated so it doesn't come on until November 1st or 15th (the date is unclear) throughout the whole country. So right now it's not that cold, but at night it can be freezing because we have no heat. Anyways, once I got to school Tuesday morning, I was wet and freezing and shivered through  my first two classes. After that, I decided it was best to go home because I was too cold and distracted by my congested nose and scratchy throat to pay attention. It was a good decision. For the last three nights, I've actually slept 8 hours (unbelievable, right?!) so I feel much better now.

-Wednesday night was the presidential debate viewing party. It was super crowded and pretty fun because Obama did well. Post-debate, I scanned the internet to see what people were saying about it, and here's what I found:

• Serious article about the debate
• Social Media Analysis of the debate
• And a variety of memes about Mitt Romney's "Binder of Women":
• For the mean girls lovers
• The Binder's Twitter
• My favorite
• And the Game of Thrones reference

-Today I had to give a speech in Chinese on whatever I wanted as my oral exam for this module. I decided to talk about my Thesis topic, the Role of Social Media on Chinese Social Movements. I had to greatly simplify my topic in order to explain it in Chinese so I didn't really get to say all the nuances of my argument, but oh well. I think it went well. I didn't forget anything, but everyone looked pretty bored. Maybe I should pick an easier topic next time? Oh well! It's over!

Now I'm headed to Shenyang for the weekend with IUP! Should be fun, although I'm bummed I'm missing a Sean Kingston concert in Beijing tonight. :( But I'm headed home to the US for a short 5 day trip in 15 days!!!!!! wahhh!!!!!!! so excited to eat macaroni and cheese, butter, leavened bread, pasta, real pizza, tortellinis, steak, baked potatoes, sour cream, pancakes, blueberries, mexican food, mashed potatoes, and more! Basically I'm just going to go back to the US and eat for 5 days straight. It will be glorious.

The Excitement of the "Unknown"

One of my favorite things about China is how fast and unexpectedly things happen. People here just make things happen. One moment you're walking down the street, and the next you have a job offer. Stuff like that happens all the time. And the best part is, you never know when something amazing is about to happen to you! Of course, this happens in the US too- you get some random email out of the blue from an old friend or someone you don't even know who offers you some amazing opportunity, etc.

So my big exciting "unknown" this week occurred last night when I met with a friend of my parents', Barrie. My mom had emailed me last week saying one of her friends was coming to Beijing and that we should meet up. Barrie is in charge of Aubade (omg check out the website- this stuff is so beautiful I could die), one of my favorite Lingerie vendors, in Asia. Barrie and I had wonderful conversations about women's place in society in Asia, and China specifically. Returning to Chinese classes this week after last week's vacation was very frustrating because I had already begun to forget some of my Chinese. If I can't go 1 week while still in China without forgetting my Chinese, how will I ever manage keeping up my Chinese post-IUP, and definitely post-Fulbright? Is my study of Chinese a total waste?! Why am I even here?! ...Ok so I know, a little dramatic. But these were my thoughts. And then I went out with Barrie last night, and she reminded me how important my project is, and how much I've already accomplished already just by being here. It definitely made my week, re-inspired me, and now I have a new friend!

Other "unknown" excitements of the week (sorry, I can't really speak English anymore, I'm pretty sure that grammar is wrong...):

-another trip to Haidilao, Beijing's best Hotpot restaurant. The service is just unbelievable, especially for China. We arrived with a group of 5, and they told us maybe a 30-40 minute wait (and this is a random Tuesday night!). We had made the journey (only a few subway stops away, but still) so we decided to wait. They seated us at a "waiting table" and wrote down our number so they'd know where we were sitting. Then while we waited, they brought us snacks, games, and hot soy milk (a very normal thing to drink here). We also got to order while we waited so that once we got to the table, our food would be almost ready. After only about 10 minutes, they seated us in a private room with our own waitresses who were never more than about 10 seconds away when we pressed our "call waitress" button. One of them even spoke English! Of course all the food was delicious as always.

-yesterday, I went to Ricci Cafe, my friend Wayne's favorite coffee shop and study hangout. It's relatively new so it's not usually that crowded. Upon returning from the bathroom, I found Wayne sitting at his table with two giant plates of spaghetti bolognese in front of him. While I was gone, the manager had brought out the spaghetti for Wayne to taste test, as they are still perfecting their recipes. We then proceeded to chat with the manager for almost an hour and "taste tested" 3 desserts! It was amazing. And now we're basically VIP.

-Not really an "excitement", but on Monday my electricity ran out. I'd been waiting for this day to come for awhile so I wasn't that suprised when it happened. My general philosophy about stuff in China is just keep doing it/using it until you encounter a problem. This mostly applies to my phone plan and my utilities. When I moved in, my landlord said, "don't worry about the utilities. Just call me if you have a problem. You have to pay for them, but it's too hard to teach you how to do it so I'll take care of it when the time comes." Of course she didn't explain how I can monitor the utilities either so I had no idea our electricity meter was low. So because we had no electricity, I decided to shower at the gym because I was afraid we wouldn't have hot water (turns out we did because our hot water is gas-powered). By doing so, I discovered that the gym showers are so nice! Mostly because 1) you don't have to hold the shower head up yourself; 2) the temperature stays at the same temperature you put it at and doesn't swing violently without your control; and 3) I didn't have to reach over my washing machine to get my toiletries. It was great. So now I know that something good can come out of loosing power for a day. (I'm feeling very Pollyanna today.)

That's about it for the week. :)

A Week (or Two) in Review

What have I been doing? Where have I been for two weeks, other than at the Beijing Open? Well I'm sorry to have kept you all in suspense. Get ready for an epically long post I suspect...

Ok so last week was very busy with dinners and preparing for my midterm for our first module (our semester is broken into 2 "modules" so that we get to take twice as many classes, but also means we move really fast). Tuesday night I went out to dinner with Beijing Fulbrighters at Lost Heaven in Beijing. I walked in and they checked my coat (it was raining), and then personally showed me to the bathroom. This level of service is unheard of in China, at least at the places I frequent, so I was in reverse culture shock, haha. After accidentally walking into the men's restroom because I couldn't decide which old person pictured in front of the bathrooms was a female, I had a great dinner of Yunan food. Yunan, a southern Chinese province, has very distinctive food, with a lot of Thai influence. It was a great night of eating and schmoozing with other Fulbrighters and our US embassy hosts. Thanks US government for dinner!

The next night I went out with Wayne and his mom, and a bunch of our friends to a spicy Sichuan restaurant. Wayne's mom is visiting him for 2 weeks and they're travelling together this week. It was great meeting his mom, but I think the spice might have been too much for her as she was crying and sweating during the whole meal. But then again, so was I, haha.

Last Friday was our midterm. I did pretty well, and overall felt it was pretty easy. The afternoon after the morning exam, we all met with our teachers to discuss our grades, which was nice because we got to give feedback on the classes. After meeting with my teachers and giving them all mooncakes as a token of my appreciation for their teaching (and in accordance with the traditional practices of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival) , I officially began my week long break!

This week is National Holiday Week, kind of like our 4th of July but for a whole week. It's crazy busy everywhere, most businesses shut down, and everyone goes home so travel is insane. I had hoped to go to Guilin but I couldn't get tickets so instead we had a "stay-cation" in Beijing. Friday afternoon we celebrated Wayne's birthday. That night we went to the Digitalism concert, which is part of Beijing's Design Week festivities.

Saturday evening we got dressed up and went to the Tang Contemporary Gallery, the gallery where Zan is interning, and UCCA at 798. UCCA was having a fashion show and had lots of free wine so we enjoyed that a lot. Also the crowd at these openings was made up of Beijing's most trendy and beautiful Chinese, and expats (about half Chinese, half expat). Great people watching. After that, we went to a great mexican restaurant called Sandy Peebles. While I say it was "great", it was expensive (as in cost the same as it would in the US) and had something weirdly Chinese about it. Then we continued our evening at Temple Bar, where a Chinese drum-electro punk concert was happening. The band, called Jungle Mico Project, was made up of 3 guys: one drummer, one keyboardist, and one bass player. Again, great people watching. Most of the crowd was punk/goth Chinese, and 40+ white men. Not sure where the latter group came from, but they were there in force. Then there was us, a group of pretty foreign students all dressed up for our art gallery openings, haha. But we worked our way to the front row and all the press cameras kept photographing and taking videos of us so I guess we were exciting. After the concert ended, we got to meet the band because Zan's friend who invited is friends with them.

Sunday Zan and I went to Wangfujing Snack Street for lunch. This is where you bring foreigners to show them all the crazy things Chinese people eat:

Yes, those are starfish.

The entrance to the snack street

whole pigeons

scorpions. They were still moving.

Street Decorations

A great shop with funny coin purses

After we wore ourselves out there, Zan and I met up with some friends to see Looper, a new American movie (or new here at least). My favorite part of this experience was the movie ticket itself:

"The Diaoyu Islands belong to China"

The typical "I 'heart' China" on the ticket didn't really phase me, but on the back of the ticket (the second photo) was a very interesting phrase...So as anyone who's been following the news knows, Sino-Japanese relations are very tense right now due to controversy over the Diaoyu Islands**. Especially on September 18th, the day the Japanese invaded China during WWII (or the "Japanese War of Aggression" as the Chinese call it), there have been many Anti-Japanese protests. In order to protect themselves from boycott, or worse, many Japanese companies and stores have been hanging Chinese flags and banners that proclaim: "钓鱼岛是中国的“ or "The Diaoyu Islands belong to China", as the movie ticket does above. As I understand it, this is a move by the store or company for protection and not truly as a political statement. It may seem strange that a Japanese company would come out in support of the Chinese government, but, from my perspective based on articles I've read, many Japanese themselves do not feel passionately about this issue; whereas the majority of Chinese people are extremely passionate about the issue. Instead the issue remains because of extremely conservative members of the Japanese government, who refuse to compromise on the issue. On the other side, the Chinese people, in addition to the Chinese government, do not wish to compromise on this issue and have been expressing their feelings through large protests throughout the country. Despite some suspicion that people are being "bused in" or paid to participate in these protests, I do not doubt their passion about this issue.

Anyways, enough about politics before I get deported (just kidding Mom and Dad, I'll be fine)...Monday I went to the shopping markets by 动物园, or the zoo. I got a silly Chinese hat, a halloween costume, and some body glitter.

check out the panda heads on the shoes

my silly hat with ears

Tuesday, I went to the Beijing Open (see last post). Tuesday night, I went to another concert as part of design week- Nova Heart. They're soooo amazing. It's electro-pop, but on the chill side. It reminded me most of Class Actress, who I've seen a few times in New York and played at Vassar last year.

Wednesday I discovered that my phone was about to shut off due to fees that I hadn't paid (hadn't even known about actually...). So in China, phones work very strangely. You buy a "plan" that provides for a certain portion of what you're going to be paying for, but you still have to add money onto your phone like a regular go-phone. Unfortunately, when you run out of money or exceed the max amount of MB (data usage) or something, they just start secretly charging you and allow you to accumulate huge fees. Then they tell you right before shutting off your phone service that you have to pay them or they're shut you down. It sucks. After this shock, I needed a DQ blizzard to recover from the fees.

Thursday, a few friends and I explored one of the hutongs near the Lama Temple. A hutong is a series of small alleyways consisting of 1-story buildings that still exist in a few parts of "Old Beijing". This hutong had lots of really cute vintage clothes and knick-knack stores. Last night we went to a debate watch party at Kro's Nest, a really cool pizza bar. It was fun watching the debate with lots of other democratically minded expats.

And that's about it. Did I go a little link crazy?

**DISCLAIMER: I am not taking sides on the issue by using the Chinese name "Diaoyu Islands" as opposed to the Japanese "Senkaku Islands". I chose the Chinese name since I am looking at this issue from China and the Chinese perspective.

Beijing Open!

Today I went to the Beijing open! I didn't even know this tournament existed, but I like tennis and the tickets were cheap, only 30 RMB (less than $5!). I only stayed for one match because it was unexpectedly hot, and I got hungry. The match we did see was super exciting though! It went into a tiebreaker in the final set! The match was between Jurgen Melzer (Austria) and Pablo Andujar (Spain), each ranked in the 30s or 40s. SPOILER ALERT- Melzer won in the tiebreaker. So intense!

Definitely one of the best parts was the accent of the Swedish announcer. In Chinese. He kept asking people to sit down by saying "请坐一下，谢谢“, which he pronounced more like "qing dou sha, che che" (with no tones whatsoever). Then after he spoke in Chinese, all the chinese people would either 1) clap, 2) laugh, 3) repeat what he said mockingly and/or 4) yell at the person still standing up themselves. It was hilarious. 

Here are some highlights:

Sophie and I

Sophie and I

Andujar

Andujar

Melzer

Melzer

 More blog posts to come soon!