It's back to the land of porcelain toilets for me!
Here's a semi-appropriate and hilarious video that some of us on this trip have gotten a kick out of:
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Last Night in Beijing
It's hard to believe, but tonight is my last night in Beijing. But before I'm done I still have to pack, do a blog entry for class, go to our banquet dinner tonight, and sleep enough so that I make up for staying up all last night to finish a paper that was due this morning. Ahhhhh.
Since I last updated, I visited the Temple of Heaven, haggled for $8 (59 yuan) fake Converse at the Pearl Market, ate at Pizza Hut, had Little Sheep hot pot for the second time, revisited the hutong between Ghost Street and HouHai, went the State Council of Information Office, had dance battles at Propaganda, heard William Farris from Google give a presentation, wrote a paper, gave two in-class presentations, had some quasi-dim sum, and visited some Olympic sites, not necessarily in that order. And I'm sure there's a bunch that I forgot.
Lots of interesting stuff, especially at the SCIO (basically the state's PR/propaganda machine) and the Olympic areas (specifically the International Broadcast Center and the Main Press Center). In terms of the SCIO, it was interesting to see how their spokesperson strategically used the language barrier, which seemed largely manufactured since he spoke to us in English by the end of the info session, to sort of carefully control the flow of information as we asked him questions. Definite highlight of talking with the Olympics spokesperson was when someone asked him what would be the sort of worst case scenario for him in terms of managing the two media centers once everything is in full on Olympic mode, and how would he respond? His answer was power outage, which, while simple, makes perfect sense. And how would he respond? He pointed to the window behind him and said he'd just end it. It sounds kind of morbid writing it, but it was hilarious at the time, I guess mostly because of his tone which I won't even try to replicate here.
And now, of course, for photos.
Outside the Silk Market (not where I bought my fake shoes)
Temple of Heaven
State Council of Information Office press conference room (not to be confused with PRC)
International Broadcast Center (IBC)
Fuwa at IBC!
Cafeteria at IBC
Escalators in the middle of IBC
Inside the Main Press Center (MPC)
800 (I think?) person press conference room in MPC
Since I last updated, I visited the Temple of Heaven, haggled for $8 (59 yuan) fake Converse at the Pearl Market, ate at Pizza Hut, had Little Sheep hot pot for the second time, revisited the hutong between Ghost Street and HouHai, went the State Council of Information Office, had dance battles at Propaganda, heard William Farris from Google give a presentation, wrote a paper, gave two in-class presentations, had some quasi-dim sum, and visited some Olympic sites, not necessarily in that order. And I'm sure there's a bunch that I forgot.
Lots of interesting stuff, especially at the SCIO (basically the state's PR/propaganda machine) and the Olympic areas (specifically the International Broadcast Center and the Main Press Center). In terms of the SCIO, it was interesting to see how their spokesperson strategically used the language barrier, which seemed largely manufactured since he spoke to us in English by the end of the info session, to sort of carefully control the flow of information as we asked him questions. Definite highlight of talking with the Olympics spokesperson was when someone asked him what would be the sort of worst case scenario for him in terms of managing the two media centers once everything is in full on Olympic mode, and how would he respond? His answer was power outage, which, while simple, makes perfect sense. And how would he respond? He pointed to the window behind him and said he'd just end it. It sounds kind of morbid writing it, but it was hilarious at the time, I guess mostly because of his tone which I won't even try to replicate here.
And now, of course, for photos.
Outside the Silk Market (not where I bought my fake shoes)
Temple of Heaven
State Council of Information Office press conference room (not to be confused with PRC)
International Broadcast Center (IBC)
Fuwa at IBC!
Cafeteria at IBC
Escalators in the middle of IBC
Inside the Main Press Center (MPC)
800 (I think?) person press conference room in MPC
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Great Wall, etc.
Oh boy, I feel like I haven't updated in a while, but I don't want to make this too long.
Last weekend, we went to the Great Wall, which was epic. We rode on a bus for about two, maybe two and a half hours to get out to this particular section of the wall. To access the wall itself, we had to ride a gondola (essentially a ski lift) up part of a mountain and then climb what seemed like hundreds of stairs. And then more stairs once we hit the wall. Way too many stairs. But it was worth it, and people were selling popsicles at the top, so that made everything okay.
In terms of more educational outings, a few days ago we visited CCTV's soon-to-be-old headquarters. As a guest speaker (Dean of Tsinghua's School of Journalism and Communications) described to us today, they have more money than they know what to do with, so they're building fancy new offices for themselves. Many say the new building looks like a pair of pants. The tour of the old building was largely uninformative and very short.
As for guest speakers, we heard from Dean Xiguang Li today, along with Yong Wang, a lawyer in Beijing who deals with copyright and has worked with the Motion Picture Association of America. Earlier in the week we had Stan Abrams, another lawyer, who works at a foreign firm in Beijing and specializes in IPR.
And I'm going to stop there for today!
Last weekend, we went to the Great Wall, which was epic. We rode on a bus for about two, maybe two and a half hours to get out to this particular section of the wall. To access the wall itself, we had to ride a gondola (essentially a ski lift) up part of a mountain and then climb what seemed like hundreds of stairs. And then more stairs once we hit the wall. Way too many stairs. But it was worth it, and people were selling popsicles at the top, so that made everything okay.
In terms of more educational outings, a few days ago we visited CCTV's soon-to-be-old headquarters. As a guest speaker (Dean of Tsinghua's School of Journalism and Communications) described to us today, they have more money than they know what to do with, so they're building fancy new offices for themselves. Many say the new building looks like a pair of pants. The tour of the old building was largely uninformative and very short.
As for guest speakers, we heard from Dean Xiguang Li today, along with Yong Wang, a lawyer in Beijing who deals with copyright and has worked with the Motion Picture Association of America. Earlier in the week we had Stan Abrams, another lawyer, who works at a foreign firm in Beijing and specializes in IPR.
And I'm going to stop there for today!
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Blogosphere
Oh yeah! And Blogspot is no longer blocked in China as of yesterday. Wordpress still is, though.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Hallo Priddy Lady! Take a Looka!
Unfortunately, I have no good pictures for this post. Lately our field trips haven't been quite as scenic as they once were. On Thursday, we went over to China Radio International, another state-run media outlet. We got a tour of the building, poked our heads into various departments on the English-language floor, and then had a Q&A session with one of the guys that worked there. It was pretty standard, but especially interesting to hear him respond to questions about censorship.
Today's field trip took us just next door to our hotel, into the Sohu.com headquarters. Sohu is basically like Yahoo! in the states - it's a sort of all-encompassing news, entertainment, search, whatever-other-crap-you-want source. This year, they also happen to be the designer of the Beijing Olympics website. And unlike CRI or CCTV, Sohu's not run by the government. We took a tour of the building and then had a presentation and Q&A, only this time the presenter opted to speak in Chinese, so the whole thing was interpreted by a student we brought along from Tsinghua. By the end, it was all pretty painful to sit through.
Once all that was over, a group of us headed to the Silk Market in two cabs, blasted for about an hour in mid-day heat and traffic. We all were a bit moody upon arrival, but once we got into the market, we were so overwhelmed that we forgot about the cab ride. The market is set up inside a huge building, with 6 or 7 total floors of rows and rows of tiny shops, selling everything from toys to silk gowns. We split up into small groups based on who had cell phones, so my friend Stephanie and I set out to see what there was to see. As we walked up and down the aisles, there was a constant barrage of shopkeepers yelling at us in broken English phrases, employing their perfectly practiced marketing techniques to lure us into their shops. Techniques before and during bargaining include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Complementing appearances ("Pretty lady!" "Sexy lady!" "Beautiful hairstyle!")
2. Other forms of more subtle flattery (asking if you're shopping for a boyfriend/girlfriend)
3. Assessing what you're wearing and what's in your bags, then pulling out similar items in their shop
4. Trying to take advantage of noobs by starting out at a price that's marked up about 1000%
5. Claiming that their shop will give the "best price"
6. Telling you that you're getting the "Chinese" price
7. Telling you that you're getting a better price for being a student
8. Telling you that you're getting a good price because they like you
9. Telling you that the low price you set is "impossible" and would cause them to lose money (aka guilt-tripping)
10. Building a false sense of confidence by telling you that you're a very good bargainer
11. Playing good cop/bad cop with another shopkeeper
12. In the case of my two friends shopping together (one being fluent in Chinese), using another shopkeeper to block the Chinese-speaking shopper and only dealing with the American
Of course there are many more that I can't think of at the moment. And of course, there are also techniques used by shoppers, as I will outline in the following true story of my haggling.
There are these little cloisonne fish that I have a freakish obsession with, and they're all over Chinatown in Philly (for about 6 or 7 bucks), so I knew they'd be at the Silk Market. But cheaper.
At one point I was walking to the bathroom, and on the way, I spotted the fish at one of the shops. I stopped to take a quick look, and of course the shopkeeper immediately comes over and asks me how many I want and offers me a starting price of 10 yuan (a little over a dollar) each. His fish were small and really crappy, but the price still sounded surprisingly low. I told him I'd come back after I went to the bathroom, which he interpreted as me trying to get him to lower the price while walking away, so he started yelling for me to come back so we could work out a price. I informed him that I really did, in fact, need to go to the bathroom (they just call it the toilet here), and kept on walking.
Once I was done peeing in the hole in the floor, I started looking for another shop with the fish to see if I could find bigger and better quality ones. I stumbled upon a shop after not much searching, and asked the guy for his starting price. Sixty-five yuan. And thus, the first buyer strategy: "What? I can get it from the guy over there for 10!" I probably could have lied here and said the other shopkeeper started at 5 or something, but alas. So then the guy proceeds to tell me that the other shopkeeper's stuff was poor quality (true) and probably made of plastic (false). "No, I felt them," I said. "They're metal, and he started at 10." "Okay, okay," he says. And here we go. He asks me what my starting price is, I tell him 10 yuan each, and he objects. He asks me how many I want (five), and then punches a number into his little calculator to show me. It was something like 180 for all five, so I said absolutely not. He punches in a price a little bit lower, and I remind him that the other shopkeeper started at 10. A pause, and then the second buyer strategy: walk away.
So Stephanie and I start walking until we here him say "Okay, okay come back!" We comply, and start again. He must have gone down to 80 yuan or something and then said it was his final price. I said that 50 for 5 was my final price, so we walk away again. And again, he calls us back. We go through the motions and he goes down to 60. "Final price," he says. "No lower." I reiterate my 50, and we walk away a third time. As we were walking I quietly counted aloud to Stephanie: "Five...four...three...two..."
"Okay! Okay!" the guy yells. "Fifty!" Finally. So we walk back, I pick out the ones I want, get ready to get my money out, and then he says, "Sixty." Stephanie and I just look at each other, amused and a little bit confused. "No! You said 50," I tell him, and he offers 60 again. I noticed he had some pretty big fish too, so I decided to offer him 55 for four little ones and one big one. He refused, I offered again, and then at last we had a deal. All that for some little wiggle fish.
I paid up and another guy working at the shop placed the fish into the bag I got from an official Olympic store downstairs. Being the perceptive salesman he was, he grabbed a tray stashed on a hidden shelf and quietly proceeded to offer me some fake Olympic gear in the form of Fuwa (the official Olympic mascots) keychains. While the production of fake goods is rampant in China, the government promised to crack down on counterfeiting as a part of Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games. Thus it's pretty difficult to find fake (read: much cheaper) Olympic gear because China has been pretty serious about "upholding the integrity" of the Olympic logo. Turns out, though, you just need to know where to look and who to bargain with.
SO CUTE.
Today's field trip took us just next door to our hotel, into the Sohu.com headquarters. Sohu is basically like Yahoo! in the states - it's a sort of all-encompassing news, entertainment, search, whatever-other-crap-you-want source. This year, they also happen to be the designer of the Beijing Olympics website. And unlike CRI or CCTV, Sohu's not run by the government. We took a tour of the building and then had a presentation and Q&A, only this time the presenter opted to speak in Chinese, so the whole thing was interpreted by a student we brought along from Tsinghua. By the end, it was all pretty painful to sit through.
Once all that was over, a group of us headed to the Silk Market in two cabs, blasted for about an hour in mid-day heat and traffic. We all were a bit moody upon arrival, but once we got into the market, we were so overwhelmed that we forgot about the cab ride. The market is set up inside a huge building, with 6 or 7 total floors of rows and rows of tiny shops, selling everything from toys to silk gowns. We split up into small groups based on who had cell phones, so my friend Stephanie and I set out to see what there was to see. As we walked up and down the aisles, there was a constant barrage of shopkeepers yelling at us in broken English phrases, employing their perfectly practiced marketing techniques to lure us into their shops. Techniques before and during bargaining include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Complementing appearances ("Pretty lady!" "Sexy lady!" "Beautiful hairstyle!")
2. Other forms of more subtle flattery (asking if you're shopping for a boyfriend/girlfriend)
3. Assessing what you're wearing and what's in your bags, then pulling out similar items in their shop
4. Trying to take advantage of noobs by starting out at a price that's marked up about 1000%
5. Claiming that their shop will give the "best price"
6. Telling you that you're getting the "Chinese" price
7. Telling you that you're getting a better price for being a student
8. Telling you that you're getting a good price because they like you
9. Telling you that the low price you set is "impossible" and would cause them to lose money (aka guilt-tripping)
10. Building a false sense of confidence by telling you that you're a very good bargainer
11. Playing good cop/bad cop with another shopkeeper
12. In the case of my two friends shopping together (one being fluent in Chinese), using another shopkeeper to block the Chinese-speaking shopper and only dealing with the American
Of course there are many more that I can't think of at the moment. And of course, there are also techniques used by shoppers, as I will outline in the following true story of my haggling.
There are these little cloisonne fish that I have a freakish obsession with, and they're all over Chinatown in Philly (for about 6 or 7 bucks), so I knew they'd be at the Silk Market. But cheaper.
At one point I was walking to the bathroom, and on the way, I spotted the fish at one of the shops. I stopped to take a quick look, and of course the shopkeeper immediately comes over and asks me how many I want and offers me a starting price of 10 yuan (a little over a dollar) each. His fish were small and really crappy, but the price still sounded surprisingly low. I told him I'd come back after I went to the bathroom, which he interpreted as me trying to get him to lower the price while walking away, so he started yelling for me to come back so we could work out a price. I informed him that I really did, in fact, need to go to the bathroom (they just call it the toilet here), and kept on walking.
Once I was done peeing in the hole in the floor, I started looking for another shop with the fish to see if I could find bigger and better quality ones. I stumbled upon a shop after not much searching, and asked the guy for his starting price. Sixty-five yuan. And thus, the first buyer strategy: "What? I can get it from the guy over there for 10!" I probably could have lied here and said the other shopkeeper started at 5 or something, but alas. So then the guy proceeds to tell me that the other shopkeeper's stuff was poor quality (true) and probably made of plastic (false). "No, I felt them," I said. "They're metal, and he started at 10." "Okay, okay," he says. And here we go. He asks me what my starting price is, I tell him 10 yuan each, and he objects. He asks me how many I want (five), and then punches a number into his little calculator to show me. It was something like 180 for all five, so I said absolutely not. He punches in a price a little bit lower, and I remind him that the other shopkeeper started at 10. A pause, and then the second buyer strategy: walk away.
So Stephanie and I start walking until we here him say "Okay, okay come back!" We comply, and start again. He must have gone down to 80 yuan or something and then said it was his final price. I said that 50 for 5 was my final price, so we walk away again. And again, he calls us back. We go through the motions and he goes down to 60. "Final price," he says. "No lower." I reiterate my 50, and we walk away a third time. As we were walking I quietly counted aloud to Stephanie: "Five...four...three...two..."
"Okay! Okay!" the guy yells. "Fifty!" Finally. So we walk back, I pick out the ones I want, get ready to get my money out, and then he says, "Sixty." Stephanie and I just look at each other, amused and a little bit confused. "No! You said 50," I tell him, and he offers 60 again. I noticed he had some pretty big fish too, so I decided to offer him 55 for four little ones and one big one. He refused, I offered again, and then at last we had a deal. All that for some little wiggle fish.
I paid up and another guy working at the shop placed the fish into the bag I got from an official Olympic store downstairs. Being the perceptive salesman he was, he grabbed a tray stashed on a hidden shelf and quietly proceeded to offer me some fake Olympic gear in the form of Fuwa (the official Olympic mascots) keychains. While the production of fake goods is rampant in China, the government promised to crack down on counterfeiting as a part of Beijing's bid for the 2008 Games. Thus it's pretty difficult to find fake (read: much cheaper) Olympic gear because China has been pretty serious about "upholding the integrity" of the Olympic logo. Turns out, though, you just need to know where to look and who to bargain with.
SO CUTE.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Update
I was going to start out by saying that not too much has been going on lately, but then I thought about it and decided that was a lie. I think I've just gotten used to lots of activities all the time, so it just seems like not much has been going on because things are at the normal level of perpetually busy.
Last time I gave a big update, I ended with Bon Jovi and the German beer garden, which was Friday night. Saturday was a free day, so a group of us ventured out to the Summer Palace (its concubine-laden history can be found at Wiki's Summer Palace page), which was absolutely gorgeous. I (along with many others) made the mistake of wearing flip flops, not realizing that getting around the gardens required a good bit of hiking/stair climbing. Nonetheless, it was great, and it was related to concubines, which automatically makes any location approximately 10 times better. Nothing too exciting happened there, save for some local guys asking to take pictures with girls in our group, which tends to happen a lot but is pretty much funny and awkward every time. Oh, and also, we saw some kid pee on the ground because people in China generally don't use diapers to potty train their kids. The little ones just wear pants with slits in the butt. So that was pretty funny.
On Sunday, we took a group trip to one of the hutongs in Beijing, which are these sort of old-style neighborhoods with narrow streets (generally too narrow for cars) and courtyard setups where families live in little compounds and share a common outdoor space. It actually reminded me a bit of the courtyards in between buildings in the French Quarter, but the houses in the hutongs are one-story, and some are in pretty rough condition. We traveled to one of the hutong houses in a rickshaw caravan, and one of the residents allowed us to come inside her house and check it out. She talked to us about her house, hutong life, and her family in Mandarin while our tour guide guy translated for us.
Two of the many family pets. The birds kept saying "ni hao" while we hung around in the courtyard.
Turtle tank inside the living room facing the courtyard
After the hutong tour, we went to Prince Gong's Mansion, which was near the lake (Houhai) where we had our banquet dinner. A bit of history, for anyone interested: Prince Gong's Mansion
While there, we got to see a short but apparently traditional Chinese opera inside the on-site opera house, which played out more like a talent act or magic show. We also had a tea demonstration in the government-run teahouse, where I may or may not have bought a tiny teapot with a dragon on the outside that changes colors when you pour hot water into it. The photo in the last post is from the teahouse.
After the Prince Gong excitement, we had lunch at a place that served Peking duck, which originated in Beijing (Peking = older Western name, replaced by "Beijing" after the formation of the PRC in 1949 and the introduction of pinyin). We came back to the hotel on the crowded subway and ate dinner later in one of the hotel's restaurants, which ended up being an ordeal despite the fact that one guy in our group speaks Mandarin. The main problem was that one person wanted cheese on their sandwich, and our native speaker can never remember how to say "cheese" in Mandarin because cheese just isn't used in Chinese dishes. Eventually we got it figured out, and the kid ended up with some nice Kraft American Singles on his sandwich. Three of us got burgers whose beef patties tasted like meatballs, and two got personal pizzas that smelled faintly of Sharpie markers.
Monday meant back to class, where we had two guest speakers - one was Limin Liang, a woman who used to work for CCTV (the state-run TV network) and is now working on her PhD at Northwestern, and the other was Li Xiaoping, who currently works for CCTV and is the woman behind the network's first-ever investigative news program.
That night after class, a few of us went to dinner (I keep talking about food, don't I?) at this place near the hotel called Lush. We were greeted by an American guy named Josh (I think) who apparently runs the place, so he talked us up while we waited for a table big enough for seven and cashed in on the bucket special - a bucket of 7 Tsingtao beers for 70 yuan. The whole time we were there, Top Gun was playing with Chinese subtitles on a big projection screen, which was hilarious. I got a burger that was way better than the meatball concoction I had in the hotel the night before, and the ketchup for our french fries didn't taste like pure sugar, so that was a plus. After dinner, I called it a night.
It rained today for the second time since I've been here, so everything seemed a bit more lazy than usual. Oh, and somehow I was just reminded that yesterday I accidentally threw my Tsinghua meal card away with my tray at lunch, so I had to mooch off of someone today. It was pretty smooth. But I got a new one this afternoon. My roomie and I are now off to dinner at Subway and then Starbucks to caffeinate in preparation for our homework.
Last time I gave a big update, I ended with Bon Jovi and the German beer garden, which was Friday night. Saturday was a free day, so a group of us ventured out to the Summer Palace (its concubine-laden history can be found at Wiki's Summer Palace page), which was absolutely gorgeous. I (along with many others) made the mistake of wearing flip flops, not realizing that getting around the gardens required a good bit of hiking/stair climbing. Nonetheless, it was great, and it was related to concubines, which automatically makes any location approximately 10 times better. Nothing too exciting happened there, save for some local guys asking to take pictures with girls in our group, which tends to happen a lot but is pretty much funny and awkward every time. Oh, and also, we saw some kid pee on the ground because people in China generally don't use diapers to potty train their kids. The little ones just wear pants with slits in the butt. So that was pretty funny.
On Sunday, we took a group trip to one of the hutongs in Beijing, which are these sort of old-style neighborhoods with narrow streets (generally too narrow for cars) and courtyard setups where families live in little compounds and share a common outdoor space. It actually reminded me a bit of the courtyards in between buildings in the French Quarter, but the houses in the hutongs are one-story, and some are in pretty rough condition. We traveled to one of the hutong houses in a rickshaw caravan, and one of the residents allowed us to come inside her house and check it out. She talked to us about her house, hutong life, and her family in Mandarin while our tour guide guy translated for us.
Two of the many family pets. The birds kept saying "ni hao" while we hung around in the courtyard.
Turtle tank inside the living room facing the courtyard
After the hutong tour, we went to Prince Gong's Mansion, which was near the lake (Houhai) where we had our banquet dinner. A bit of history, for anyone interested: Prince Gong's Mansion
While there, we got to see a short but apparently traditional Chinese opera inside the on-site opera house, which played out more like a talent act or magic show. We also had a tea demonstration in the government-run teahouse, where I may or may not have bought a tiny teapot with a dragon on the outside that changes colors when you pour hot water into it. The photo in the last post is from the teahouse.
After the Prince Gong excitement, we had lunch at a place that served Peking duck, which originated in Beijing (Peking = older Western name, replaced by "Beijing" after the formation of the PRC in 1949 and the introduction of pinyin). We came back to the hotel on the crowded subway and ate dinner later in one of the hotel's restaurants, which ended up being an ordeal despite the fact that one guy in our group speaks Mandarin. The main problem was that one person wanted cheese on their sandwich, and our native speaker can never remember how to say "cheese" in Mandarin because cheese just isn't used in Chinese dishes. Eventually we got it figured out, and the kid ended up with some nice Kraft American Singles on his sandwich. Three of us got burgers whose beef patties tasted like meatballs, and two got personal pizzas that smelled faintly of Sharpie markers.
Monday meant back to class, where we had two guest speakers - one was Limin Liang, a woman who used to work for CCTV (the state-run TV network) and is now working on her PhD at Northwestern, and the other was Li Xiaoping, who currently works for CCTV and is the woman behind the network's first-ever investigative news program.
That night after class, a few of us went to dinner (I keep talking about food, don't I?) at this place near the hotel called Lush. We were greeted by an American guy named Josh (I think) who apparently runs the place, so he talked us up while we waited for a table big enough for seven and cashed in on the bucket special - a bucket of 7 Tsingtao beers for 70 yuan. The whole time we were there, Top Gun was playing with Chinese subtitles on a big projection screen, which was hilarious. I got a burger that was way better than the meatball concoction I had in the hotel the night before, and the ketchup for our french fries didn't taste like pure sugar, so that was a plus. After dinner, I called it a night.
It rained today for the second time since I've been here, so everything seemed a bit more lazy than usual. Oh, and somehow I was just reminded that yesterday I accidentally threw my Tsinghua meal card away with my tray at lunch, so I had to mooch off of someone today. It was pretty smooth. But I got a new one this afternoon. My roomie and I are now off to dinner at Subway and then Starbucks to caffeinate in preparation for our homework.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Photo of the Day
Here's my favorite photo from our excursion today:
It was taken in the Tea House of Prince Gong's Mansion in Houhai, Beijing.
It was taken in the Tea House of Prince Gong's Mansion in Houhai, Beijing.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
From Banquet to Tiananmen Square
Today's our first day of no class, and we're done with our big group outing for the day, so time for an update. This'll probably be a long one.
Wednesday night we had a banquet dinner in another district, apparently known for its bars and clubs. We ate at a restaurant with outdoor seating that overlooked a lake. The food was pretty good, though some of it I definitely couldn't make a meal out of. The first two dishes that came both had this same pungent smell and taste, but one's texture was mush and the other's was rubber. It was looking like we'd all leave pretty hungry, but after that the food was fine. My favorite was actually a sort of fish soup, again with the full fish laying across the bowl, scales, fins, head, and eyes. It was delicious.
After dinner, we went for a boat ride on the lake once half the group was done haggling street vendors for laser pointers. Our group of about twenty split into two boats, each with its own driver steering with a massive wooden oar in the back, and musician playing traditional Chinese instruments in the front. Our drivers, or captains perhaps, kept our boats side by side for the ride, so the musicians played duets as we moved across the lake. Eventually, we came to this bridge which was wide enough for about a boat and a half. Our two boats were hardly the only two on the water - we were sharing the lake with hoards of those little boats that are powered by pedaling - so as we approached the bridge, it turned into bumper boat chaos. After ramming into several smaller boats, our driver, likened to Mario Andretti by some on the trip, threw his whole body into moving that oar in the back and proceeded to plow through the paddle boats and finally pushed us to the other side of the bridge. After some more music and cruising, it was time to go back under the bridge again, so we did so in much the same way.
Once we were back on shore, most of us headed to this club down the street called "Sex in Da City". We couldn't pass it up, for obvious reasons. It wasn't very exciting, more surreal than anything. Most of the people there were Chinese, and the DJ was playing rap music from the States. After some not-quite-recent songs, one of the girls in the group requested the classic "Fireman" by Lil' Wayne, which was hilarious. I think everyone in the place was pretty confused as to why we were all so excited. The only other song I can remember specifically was Khia's masterpiece "My Neck, My Back". Joe Malunda, if you're reading this, you better be peeing your pants.
After having a drink, three of us decided to head out since it'd been a long day. We hopped in a cab on the main street nearby and showed the driver our hotel's business card. After watching him stare at it for a few minutes, we figured out that he had no idea where the hotel was, so we thanked him, hopped out, and tried another cab. Apparently this is pretty common in Beijing since it's so spread out. The second cabbie knew where we wanted to go, so after about twenty minutes, we were back at the hotel, and I crashed for the night.
Thursday was pretty uneventful. We had two guest speakers in class - one was the first female to receive a PhD in Communications in China. The second was Dan Guttman, a lawyer and law professor who worked closely with Clinton during his presidency and is now teaching at Tsinghua. He had some interesting things to say, but he managed to mention that he was a Fulbright Scholar at least ten times in about thirty minutes, after bragging about his Peabody Award, so that was a pretty big turn off.
Once class was done for the day, some of us decided that we needed a break from Chinese food, so where did we go? Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut is classy as hell in China. There was a thirty minute wait for a table! The place has this fancy foyer with a spiral staircase that leads up to the second floor dining area where the eight of us sat down and ordered way too much pizza. The menu listed nine-inch personal pizzas along with twelve-inch pizzas, but our waitress told us that they didn't have the nine-inchers. Whether she was lying or not, I'm not sure, but regardless, we ended up with an enormous amount of pizza after each of us ordered. We couldn't have been happier. That is, until we noticed that the people hovering around the fruit and veggie buffet were making huge sculptures out of the food that they were piling into their bowls. It was insane. We asked our waitress what was going on, and she explained that each person only received one bowl, so they had to fit as much as they could into it. The results were highly entertaining. One woman was going at it the entire time we were at the restaurant. Eventually I think one of the waitresses gave her a time limit because things were getting out of control. Below is the fruit bowl of the guy at the table behind us, some shots of our table, and one of Stephanie in the foyer.
We all went to sleep pretty early on Thursday so we'd be ready for our early morning today. At 8 AM, we piled onto a bus and headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We all got Forbidden City audio tours which didn't work so well, so I didn't learn much about the place, but it's size was certainly impressive. When the audio tour did work, the commentary was all about concubines. Go figure.
Once we made it through, we walked over to Tiananmen Square. Between the two locations were tons of vendors, all of which were selling random knickknacks that included Mao pocket watches, along with wristwatches that featured his torso with one arm waving back and forth as the second hand ticked around. The Square was basically just a big open space with lots of people walking around and a big obelisk in the middle. No displays or text, of course, about what happened there in '89. The incident is essentially censored out of the Chinese collective memory, or at least that's what the government has tried to do. Near the square is also Mao's tomb, which I didn't have time to go into because half the group was reconvening for lunch. We ended up walking about two or three miles to find a place to eat, and we finally settled on this place with a window display advertising their "charming" English-speaking hosts. Our waitress was indeed charming, but it wouldn't have mattered either way - I was too hungry to care. I'd have to say the highlights of lunch were this delicious sweet potato dish (best thing I've eaten on the trip thus far) and the fact that the bill was 198 yuan - a little over $2 per person. And the fact that Penn is covering that $2.
I guess the last exciting part of the day (so far) is that I rode the new subway for the first time to get back to the hotel. It was way better than Septa, so I hope to be using it more pretty soon. Observation for the day: there's new construction across the entire city, but it's not just new buildings going up - a lot of the construction (at least in the area we were in today) seems to be various walls that were put up to hide parts of town that look a bit run down or generally unattractive. So while the Olympics are bringing all sorts of changes to Beijing, they're not necessarily lasting changes, and don't necessarily run any deeper than the surface.
Okay I lied...I wrote that before we went out to dinner tonight. The last exciting part of the day is as follows: a group of us took the subway out to a German restaurant (supposedly a beer garden, but I didn't see any outdoor areas) which featured live music by The Perfect Mates, aka the best band in the world. Three possibly Malaysian girls were up on stage in matching outfits, along with a male keyboardist, belting out US hits such as Shania Twain's "Honey I'm Home". Just when I thought things couldn't get much better, I start to hear "...jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo..." YES (anyone from Louisiana). That song "On the Bayou" or whatever it's called. They were singing that at a German restaurant in Beijing. And then AGAIN when I didn't think things could get better, we managed to convince one of our group members to request some Bon Jovi and get up on stage with the lovely ladies and sing "Livin' on a Prayer". What a night...
Wednesday night we had a banquet dinner in another district, apparently known for its bars and clubs. We ate at a restaurant with outdoor seating that overlooked a lake. The food was pretty good, though some of it I definitely couldn't make a meal out of. The first two dishes that came both had this same pungent smell and taste, but one's texture was mush and the other's was rubber. It was looking like we'd all leave pretty hungry, but after that the food was fine. My favorite was actually a sort of fish soup, again with the full fish laying across the bowl, scales, fins, head, and eyes. It was delicious.
After dinner, we went for a boat ride on the lake once half the group was done haggling street vendors for laser pointers. Our group of about twenty split into two boats, each with its own driver steering with a massive wooden oar in the back, and musician playing traditional Chinese instruments in the front. Our drivers, or captains perhaps, kept our boats side by side for the ride, so the musicians played duets as we moved across the lake. Eventually, we came to this bridge which was wide enough for about a boat and a half. Our two boats were hardly the only two on the water - we were sharing the lake with hoards of those little boats that are powered by pedaling - so as we approached the bridge, it turned into bumper boat chaos. After ramming into several smaller boats, our driver, likened to Mario Andretti by some on the trip, threw his whole body into moving that oar in the back and proceeded to plow through the paddle boats and finally pushed us to the other side of the bridge. After some more music and cruising, it was time to go back under the bridge again, so we did so in much the same way.
Once we were back on shore, most of us headed to this club down the street called "Sex in Da City". We couldn't pass it up, for obvious reasons. It wasn't very exciting, more surreal than anything. Most of the people there were Chinese, and the DJ was playing rap music from the States. After some not-quite-recent songs, one of the girls in the group requested the classic "Fireman" by Lil' Wayne, which was hilarious. I think everyone in the place was pretty confused as to why we were all so excited. The only other song I can remember specifically was Khia's masterpiece "My Neck, My Back". Joe Malunda, if you're reading this, you better be peeing your pants.
After having a drink, three of us decided to head out since it'd been a long day. We hopped in a cab on the main street nearby and showed the driver our hotel's business card. After watching him stare at it for a few minutes, we figured out that he had no idea where the hotel was, so we thanked him, hopped out, and tried another cab. Apparently this is pretty common in Beijing since it's so spread out. The second cabbie knew where we wanted to go, so after about twenty minutes, we were back at the hotel, and I crashed for the night.
Thursday was pretty uneventful. We had two guest speakers in class - one was the first female to receive a PhD in Communications in China. The second was Dan Guttman, a lawyer and law professor who worked closely with Clinton during his presidency and is now teaching at Tsinghua. He had some interesting things to say, but he managed to mention that he was a Fulbright Scholar at least ten times in about thirty minutes, after bragging about his Peabody Award, so that was a pretty big turn off.
Once class was done for the day, some of us decided that we needed a break from Chinese food, so where did we go? Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut is classy as hell in China. There was a thirty minute wait for a table! The place has this fancy foyer with a spiral staircase that leads up to the second floor dining area where the eight of us sat down and ordered way too much pizza. The menu listed nine-inch personal pizzas along with twelve-inch pizzas, but our waitress told us that they didn't have the nine-inchers. Whether she was lying or not, I'm not sure, but regardless, we ended up with an enormous amount of pizza after each of us ordered. We couldn't have been happier. That is, until we noticed that the people hovering around the fruit and veggie buffet were making huge sculptures out of the food that they were piling into their bowls. It was insane. We asked our waitress what was going on, and she explained that each person only received one bowl, so they had to fit as much as they could into it. The results were highly entertaining. One woman was going at it the entire time we were at the restaurant. Eventually I think one of the waitresses gave her a time limit because things were getting out of control. Below is the fruit bowl of the guy at the table behind us, some shots of our table, and one of Stephanie in the foyer.
We all went to sleep pretty early on Thursday so we'd be ready for our early morning today. At 8 AM, we piled onto a bus and headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We all got Forbidden City audio tours which didn't work so well, so I didn't learn much about the place, but it's size was certainly impressive. When the audio tour did work, the commentary was all about concubines. Go figure.
Once we made it through, we walked over to Tiananmen Square. Between the two locations were tons of vendors, all of which were selling random knickknacks that included Mao pocket watches, along with wristwatches that featured his torso with one arm waving back and forth as the second hand ticked around. The Square was basically just a big open space with lots of people walking around and a big obelisk in the middle. No displays or text, of course, about what happened there in '89. The incident is essentially censored out of the Chinese collective memory, or at least that's what the government has tried to do. Near the square is also Mao's tomb, which I didn't have time to go into because half the group was reconvening for lunch. We ended up walking about two or three miles to find a place to eat, and we finally settled on this place with a window display advertising their "charming" English-speaking hosts. Our waitress was indeed charming, but it wouldn't have mattered either way - I was too hungry to care. I'd have to say the highlights of lunch were this delicious sweet potato dish (best thing I've eaten on the trip thus far) and the fact that the bill was 198 yuan - a little over $2 per person. And the fact that Penn is covering that $2.
I guess the last exciting part of the day (so far) is that I rode the new subway for the first time to get back to the hotel. It was way better than Septa, so I hope to be using it more pretty soon. Observation for the day: there's new construction across the entire city, but it's not just new buildings going up - a lot of the construction (at least in the area we were in today) seems to be various walls that were put up to hide parts of town that look a bit run down or generally unattractive. So while the Olympics are bringing all sorts of changes to Beijing, they're not necessarily lasting changes, and don't necessarily run any deeper than the surface.
Okay I lied...I wrote that before we went out to dinner tonight. The last exciting part of the day is as follows: a group of us took the subway out to a German restaurant (supposedly a beer garden, but I didn't see any outdoor areas) which featured live music by The Perfect Mates, aka the best band in the world. Three possibly Malaysian girls were up on stage in matching outfits, along with a male keyboardist, belting out US hits such as Shania Twain's "Honey I'm Home". Just when I thought things couldn't get much better, I start to hear "...jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo..." YES (anyone from Louisiana). That song "On the Bayou" or whatever it's called. They were singing that at a German restaurant in Beijing. And then AGAIN when I didn't think things could get better, we managed to convince one of our group members to request some Bon Jovi and get up on stage with the lovely ladies and sing "Livin' on a Prayer". What a night...
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