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.