Chongqing

Chongqing...quite a booming river city. Like the rest of China's cities, it's experiencing a huge influx of people coming in from the country--the whole country is undergoing a massive urbanization movement. So, cities like Chongqing are building hundreds of apartment buildings to compensate for the inflow; and these aren't shanty, poorly built apartments...they're actually very, very nice places to live. But yeah, this was just one thing that we noticed as we traveled around the city. Our hostel was very nice; situated across the street by the Yangzi River and had a hang out room and bar.

That first day we took a city bus to a somewhat touristy village called Simenkou. It was basically alleyways of peddlers selling trinkets and local snacks. We walked around a bit and found a more authentic village behind the scenes. It was raining a bit but still really humid so we were sweating even as we were walking. After getting enough free snack samples we headed back to the hostel and met some people going to "hot pot" for dinner. Every region in China has it's own version of "hot pot" (huo guo in Chinese), but the common factor is that it's spicy. Basically, hot pot is a pot filled with boiling water, chicken broth, and other spices. Then you order raw food and cook it yourself in the pot. The food can be anything from raw vegetables to raw meat. Chinese people like eating in exciting places with lots of noise and movement; so since with hot pot everyone at the table is reaching for food to put in the pot or take out of the pot it's really appealing to Chinese. We had a nice mix of people that night: us 5 Americans, 4 Chinese, and a woman from the Netherlands. After following our new Chinese friend Huhu to the restaurant, we sat down, ordered tons of food and started the festivities. If hot pot is done right, everyone should be sweating while they eat because the food is so spicy. I was definitely sweating. One of the more exciting times of the night was when the waiter brought out small anchovy-size fish, and although the heads were cut off they were still squirming! The amazing thing is that even this nice meal only cost 25 RMB a person (3 bucks). We walked off dinner a bit and looked at the city's night lights.

The next day we took another bus to the city's museum. China is in the process of opening hundreds of new museums, and Chongqing's was not only very new but also free! It had exhibits on the ancient peoples who had lived on the Yangzi River, and also one on the World War II Japanese Resistance Period. Most the exhibits had signs in English, but even those that didn't I could figure out the meaning from some of the characters I could read. Overall, Chongqing was a nice city to hang out in for two days, but it was time to leave and head to our next destination. So, after coming back to the hostel we packed our huge bags again (we were quickly becoming experts in stuffing things into the backpacks) and headed to the train station via taxi to take our 4 hour train to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.

We Prefer Zero Star Boats.

On the morning August 23rd we left Wuhan by a series of vans and buses and ended up in Yichang, another Yangzi riverside city. We had talked to our Wuhan hostel staff and they booked us on the cheapest possible river tour possible with somewhat complicated directions; we'd go from certain cities by bus, then boat, then hydrofoil, then bus, supposedly to meet random people who were hired to help us. I know, it seemed kinda shady to us too, but we had to simply trust that we'd get through it somehow. That afternoon in Yichang a random lady met us as we got off the 3 hour bus ride and said she was to take us to our boat...we were a little wary about trusting her, but once she got us onto the boat we thought it would be ok. And now for the boat...When we first saw it, we all just laughed out loud. By American standards, this thing was a piece of...well, just a piece I guess. It'd appall any normal American traveling abroad. It was a three floors, each floor having about 15 or 20 rooms I suppose. It was pretty dirty and cramped, and if I was an inch taller I would have had to duck throughout the whole boat. Our room was about as wide my wingspan and twice as deep; I don't know how they fit two bunk beds in there. We had a small closet like thing in the corner with a squatty potty and sink, so I guess technically that qualifies it to be called a bathroom. They had cut a hole in the upper call of our room so that they could fit an air-conditioning unit that could blow out air into our room and the room next to ours. Since the boat was full of Chinese tourist families there were cute kids running everywhere; made it quite an exciting little boat. Don't get me wrong, this boat was pretty dingy, but we hadn't paid very much for it either and were totally loving the experience, calling the boat "mei you xing" (zero stars). The boat had a lookout deck in the front so when we left the small city of Yichang around 6 PM we went up front and enjoyed watching the sunset behind the huge hills that were forming on both sides of brown-watered Yangzi River. As night came we entered the locks of the infamous Three Gorges Dam, one of the hugest dams in the world that is surrounded in controversy.
The Chinese government finished building it in 2006 to help meet the country's growing energy needs, but it came at a cost: displacing millions of people and as the water behind the dam rises each year some people fear it will erase the beauty of the gorges along the Chang Jiang (the Yangzi River...means Long River in Chinese). In case you were wondering, a gorge is composed of two huge cliffs that usually are on both sides of a river. There are many along the Yangzi with different names, but the most famous are a series of three gorges called The Little Three Gorges, though I don't know why they call them little because they are no where near little. This is the main attraction of the Yangzi and we were to get there the next day. Oh yeah, so the locks: so we'd go through huge gates on the side of the dam (couldn't really see it from the boat), the gates would lock behind us, they would fill the huge cement cubicle with water, we'd rise with the water (along with tons of other boats, these gates and locks are the biggest in the world), go through the gates in front of us, and do the process all over again. In this way we could go up in elevation to get to the river behind the dam. When we went to bed (smelling like sweat and hoping that there weren't any bugs in the blankets they gave us) it was about 11 pm and we were just coming out of the locks.

We got woken up at 6:15 AM with a pounding at our door saying we had to get off the boat in 5 minutes. Scrambling to stuff all our things into our backpacks we groggily woke up and got off the boat at a small riverside town called Wushan with the hired lady who had got us onto the boat. She said we were to leave our stuff behind the counter of this random shop on the port and get on a smaller tour-seeing boat that would take us up a Yangzi River outlet to the 3 Little Gorges. Keeping our cash and passports with us, we put our big bags behind this lady's counter and got on this two story tour-seeing boat, finding a table on top in the open. The next 2 hours were just a peaceful cruise up this smaller river off the Yangzi; the scenery was just incredible: going on this river with huge cliffs on both of sides that seemed to reach to the sky and I'm having to crane my neck back to see the tops. We got on an even smaller boat at an even smaller outlet to go through the 3 Little Gorges and see their awesomeness. I feel like I'm using the words awesome, incredible, insane, beautiful, etc. a lot in this blog, but that's really the only way I can describe doing all these things. It was just having my mind blown away day after day. I could try to describe the 3 Little Gorges more, but I'll have to let my pictures do the talking. I do wanna mention that as we got back on our medium sized boat from the 3 Little Gorges we witnessed a full on Chinese fist-fight/brawl that involved six people and a man getting thrown down a flight of stairs. Apparently they were fighting over the same table. Lesson learned: never fight a Chinese dude over a table. Anyway, by the time we made it back to Wuhan it was about 12:30 pm and our random tour lady took us to buy hydrofoil (a fast boat) tickets to Wanzhou, a city farther up the river.

We entered the hydrofoil around 3 PM and 2 hours later got off at Wanzhou, just another riverside city covered factories (there's a lot of coal production along the river). Pretty exhausted we got onto another bus that took us through some, again, amazing countryside (this time with cliffside farms and lush green hills) and 4 hours later finally ended up at our final destination: Chongqing. Chongqing is riverside city too it's a huge metropolis with millions of people and skyscrapers. So, after not showering for 2 days and surviving on instant noodles (a traveler's staple food) and peanut butter sandwiches, we showered and feel asleep in real bunk beds, wondering what lay next for us in this city.

From to Huang Shan to Wuhan

The next part of our trip called for waking up around 7:30 AM and being rushed by the hostel's van (imagine being in a small van going at break-neck speed around cars on the other side of the road facing oncoming traffic, I'll admit I closed my eyes a few times) to the local long-distance bus station, where the bus left as soon as we got on. Talk about close calls. This being our first long distance bus ride on our own, we didn't know what to expect. We had bought tickets for this 10 hour bus from Huang Shan to Wuhan. Once we got on the bus and found it air-conditioned and only half full, we concluded that it would be a 10 hour comfortable ride. And it was...the first 3-4 hours we drove through open country with hills around, having a couple seats to ourselves and just enjoying the scenery outside. Chinese long distance buses have an interesting system: onboard there is the driver, who obviously drives (crazily most the time, but I'm still alive so it works), and then there is the "lao ban" (boss). This person is in charge of the passengers but also will pick up random people on the side of the road to make some extra money. Long distance buses in America don't stop to pick up hitch hikers, but in China this is not the case. We couldn't help but laugh as sometimes we'd stop literally on the side of this country road, and suddenly two farmer people would come out of the bushes and get on the bus (later the lao ban would talk with us and say that people had her cell phone number, I don't know how). Besides being randomly told to get off the bus half way through the ride underneath a random freeway overpass and being reassured that we would be picked up by another bus (which luckily we were), the ride was overall pleasant.

We arrived in Wuhan around 6 pm and after a little trouble with the taxi driver found the hostel that we had booked. Since I'm writing this blog after completing my trip, I can tell you that Chinese hostels are all awesome places to stay. For a six person dorm-like room (bunk beds), rooms usually cost around 20 to 35 RMB (3-5 US dollars), and have awesome facilities to relax and hang out. Hostels are a relatively new concept in China, so all of them do their best to provide backpackers the best possible service possible.

In all honesty, Wuhan is simply just a transportation hub along the Yangzi without much tourist appeal. We stayed there for two nights, meeting up with our two other friends, Andrew and Adi, the 2nd day, and walked around the city a lot. The city is on both sides the brown-watered Yangzi River, but is covered in factory smog and and not too appealing to the eye. Nevertheless, the hostel staff was one of the best in our trip and helped us book our next part of our travels: the famed Little Three Gorges on the Yangzi River.

The Beginning of the Journey: Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain)

August 19th began like any other day for me, except that it was this day that I began my 30 day trek across all of China. Originally there were four of us who had researched places online and using our Lonely Planet (the ultimate travel guide for all travelers going anywhere in the world), so me Kaitlin and Alice got on a 20 hour train and left Beijing around noon, planning on meeting up with two other people two days later at another city. You might be wondering, what does one pack for 30 days of travel, and how? Well, I can tell you know that it's not as much as most people would like. We had all gone to various open markets in Beijing beforehand and bargained for huge backpacking backpacks, usually getting them from $8 (US dollars) to $20. I had got mine for free from a friend who was going back home. We all were secretly praying that these cheap things would at least last a month (some of us weren't so fortunate, but those stories will come later). So I stuffed 2 pairs of shorts, 7 T-shirts, 7 pairs of socks and underwear, toiletries and a towel, and basic medicinal needs. Just to give you an idea our backpacks were probably at least 50 pounds each. I also wore a smaller backpack on my front to carry other random stuff, a book to read, Bible, etc. Anyway, so once on the 20 hour train we settled into our bunks and tried making friends with the locals, read, or slept. I wish I could share everything that went on during these travels, but that would take a novel, so I'm gonna just cover the more amazing parts.

The next morning around 7:30 AM we arrived in Huang Shan City, which has about 1.5 million people but is pretty much a stopping point for tourists visiting Huang Shan. After checking into our hostel we boarded a bus that took us an hour out of town and to the famed mountain. Mountain is probably a misnomer for this place...Huang Shan isn't just one mountain...it's more like a collection of several peaks, cliffs, etc. When you go to Starbucks or bookstores and see those huge picture books of China with surreal looking peaks with clouds swirling around it...that's Huang Shan, the Yellow Mountain. Lonely Planet had said to climb the eastern steps because they were easier and to go down the more difficult western steps, but since we only had one day to visit the mountain (most people do it in two), we decided to try to save time and climb the western steps because they have better scenery and more beautiful peaks to climb. Looking back at it now, we were idiots...but it paid off, I know that sounds weird. I can't properly describe to you how hard that climb was. Huang Shan is a national park, so the whole way up there were stairs to climb, no beating of your own trail here, but when I say stairs I mean thousands and thousands and thousands of stairs. Add in the fact that we had just gotten off a 20 hour train ride, hadn't had a real meal in a day, and the humidity was probably around 90%, and you can see where this is going. Luckily I had brought protein bars and electrolyte powder (thanks, Mom), otherwise I might still be halfway up that mountain. We chose to climb Tian Du Feng, Heavenly City Peak. The Chinese people at the bottom said it would take 4 hours...but we were determined to do it faster. It was two and half hours of sweating, to put it simply. I've never done anything as physically demanding as that climb. As we got towards the top the stairs began to go from underneath trees (and Chinese booths trying to sell you everything from water to souvenirs) to cutting through crevices in the mountain; at point I had to wiggle sideways through the rock, the path was so narrow. We always felt like wimps whenever we saw the older Chinese workers climbing up and down the path with a pole across the shoulders, balancing heavy loads of different supplies for the shops along the path. These men were probably around 70 something years old, and here they were, climbing these step steps in sandals balancing huge loads. It was really quite incredible. We'd try to encourage each other and other Chinese climbers we'd see with "Jia you!" (the Chinese cheer for sporting events), and "mei you bu ke neng" (Adidas's slogan, impossible is nothing). Anyway, with our T-shirts completely drenched and our shorts getting there too, we finally made it to the top of the peak. It was simply breath-taking: we were on this rock thousands of feet--oops, I mean meters, feet don't exist in China-- in the air with the clouds swirling around us and below, yes, below us. We could some other parts of the mountain, and I wish knew more geological terms to properly describe how they looked, but the pictures will just have to do. In simple words, it was like huge jagged rocks coming out of the ground, and we climbed straight up one of them. After admiring the view for a while we climbed to another part of the mountain to get to a cable car that would take us back to the bottom, all the way turning our heads every which way to admire the beauty that was surrounding us. It wasn't one of those "Oh, this is a sweet place, it reminds me of (fill in the blank)," No, none of that. These were looks of admiration that made me wonder, how the heck did God create this place, it was really that unique. Even with all the Chinese tourists around (I've noticed that some Chinese women will wear heels no matter what they're doing, even if it's mountain climbing). As we took the cable car down the mountain we were astonished at how high we had climbed in such a little time. Amazingly, that one peak was probably just 15% of the whole Huang Shan mountain top; we had to catch a bus to another city the next day though so we didn't have time hike more. If I ever come back to China later in life, I definitely want to see more of Huang Shan. Two bus rides later we arrived at our first Chinese hostel, coated in dry sweat and our muscles super sore. After showering we found a little restaurant and had our first real meal of the trip. Just for future reference, when I say we found a restaurant to eat, don't think of American fine dining...think of a room with tables maybe with clean table clothes, and maybe air conditioning. But these kind of places usually had awesome food (as long as you can read the Chinese characters, which most the time we did). Just to give you an idea of what a meal like this costs, we'd usually order 2 or 3 dishes and rice and it would usually come out to about 10 RMB a person; with 1 US dollar= 6.8 RMB that's about a buck and half per person. Awesome, I know. This is one of the reasons that I'm so glad I decided to study abroad in China, and throughout our trip my friends and I would just be blown away at the things we were able to do with the money that we had; it was quite a blessing. Alright, so after we came back from dinner sweaty from the humidity already, we decided that we would always try to make showering the last thing to do right before bed...it was a good lesson to learn at the outset of a trip like this.

We settled into our comfy beds and easily fell asleep, exhausted from an awesome first day of traveling.

School's Out and One More Olympic Event

So the middle of August came around and suddenly we found ourselves ending our summer Intensive Language Program. After finals the EAP staff took all us students and our teachers to this 4 star hotel (would have been another hotel, 5 stars, I'd been told, but since it was the Olympics more important people were at that restaurant, so we had to settle) and treated us to this incredible buffet. While I was stuffing my face with sushi, chinese food, fruit, salad (hadn't had salad since leaving America), and an assortment of meats, the Korean women's Olympic basketball team walked by...just another day in Beijing during the Olympics, you never know who you'll bump into. It was fun hanging out with our teachers outside of the classroom setting. That night most of my class hung out with our teacher more and went to KTV (karoake), the popular thing to do with friends here in China. She insisted in treating us to snacks and drinks; it was definitely the first time a teacher had boughten alcohol for me. KTV's are all over China in ever city, and are usually take up a couple whole floors in tall buildings. Each floor has a bunch of private rooms that act as lounges with a big flat screen TV on the wall and people hang out and do karoake, English and Chinese songs. 2 am came around and we students, not the teacher, were the ones who insisted that we needed to get some sleep. I was stoked to get some sleep to prepare for the next day, 'cause I had tickets to the U.S. vs. Japan Women's soccer Olympic semi-final.

So two friends and I had bought these tickets before the Olympics began, not knowing who would be in the semi-final, but fortunately for us it ended up being the U.S. vs. Japan. We took the subway to the venue, the Workers' Stadium, to find the sidewalks crowded with fans of all nations walking to either the soccer game or to the boxing matches that were going on in the venue next to the stadium. There were a lot of scalpers too, which kinda made me wish I had waited to buy cheaper tickets, but it's alright...our tickets were really good, around the 10th row up front (and we because we bought the tickets from a guy who works for the U.S. embassy we were sitting mostly around Americans, although there was that funny couple from Austria sitting behind us). The game itself was really exciting: the fans were into it (Chinese people will always cheer for the team that's playing Japan, so the U.S. had plenty of fans), the venue was beautiful, and the game was exciting. At halftime the U.S. women were up 2-1, and in the second half added two more goals to end up winning 4-2. To add the experience, one of the U.S. players, Lauren Cheney, is a 3rd year student like me at UCLA, so I got to give her a shout out at the end of the game; I'm hoping to get one of my friends who's on the UCLA women's soccer team to get her to sign my ticket when I get back to LA. After watching the teams come off the field to the cheering of thousands of Americans, we made our way out of the stadium and headed back to the BNU. School was done, my Olympic experience was done, what was I to do now? Oh yeah...go travel across China for 30 straight days...

My Olympic Experience

Hi Again Everyone!

So I know it’s late September but here in Beijing the Olympic banners are still proudly up (Paralympics just ended a week ago), so I don’t feel bad about reminding you all about that great event that happened here in August, and which I got to personally experience in several different aspects: the Olympics.

So basically August 7th-9th were an awesome three days. August 7th not only was my birthday (Mom couldn’t throw any surprise parties here in Beijing, thank goodness), but that was also the first day the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team came to BNU to practice at the HPC. While they would continue to come every other day during the Olympics to practice that first day was the coolest because we waited by the fence after class and got to cheer for them as they got off the bus and walked into the gym. They didn’t sign any autographs, but it was still pretty cool to see these athletes that I normally see on TV in person.
August 8th: the day that China had been anticipating for the past 7 years, the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies (also 8 is a lucky Chinese number, so I guess having the ceremonies start at 8 pm on 8/8/08 must have just been as lucky as humanly possible). That day, a Friday, was a holiday for most people in Beijing, so it was a little eerie to wake up and not hear the normal amount of honking or other car noise outside my dorm, and to look out the window from my 6th floor room and see a noticeably less amount of people and bikes on the large street outside. It was like the quiet before the storm. Everyone in our program was chattering after class where to go to watch the Opening Ceremonies. I was personally torn between wanting to be in the mix of it all and go straight to the Bird’s Nest and try to see it on the big screen outside (despite warnings from our Chinese teachers that it’d be so unbearably crowded, and the warning from CNN.com that talked about the bomb threat), and wanting to relax and watch it on TV. Most of us left in the late afternoon for different locations to watch it: some went to different parks that were designated as Olympic cultural sites and would have big screen TVs showing the ceremonies, others went to the Bird’s Nest (they ended up leaving because it was blockaded off), others to friends’ apartments or local bars at an area called Houhai, and I went with four other friends to the international church I attend to watch it on their big screen. From a theatrical perspective, it was an absolutely beautiful ceremony, and I don’t think I need to describe it as you all probably saw it for yourself. Later finding out that the little girl lip synced, that the “minorities” were actually Han actors, among other things, diminished it’s initial awesomeness. Nevertheless, watching it in a room full of people from all over the world, hearing cheers from people when their respective nation’s athletes walked out, it was definitely a unique experience. Also, toward the end of the show someone in the room announced that they had cheap Olympics tickets for sale, so my friends and I went over to take a look. I had already spent some money on women’s soccer semi-final tickets, but after seeing these decently priced ticket I bought a ticket for women’s volleyball and badminton. They were for the next day, Saturday, so by the time we got back to BNU around 1:30 am I set my alarm clock for 9 am and crashed.
Saturday, August 9th was the first day I got to experience Olympics events firsthand, and but since it’s been a while and I can’t remember the details right now I’m going to copy and paste a journal entry from that day to let you guys into my experience:



Dang, it was a long a day today, but really, really fun. With two newly bought Olympic tickets I was ready to see what it’s all about. This morning I left BNU around 10:30 am and caught a bus to the Capital Indoor Stadium to see a match of women’s volleyball. On the way there I noticed that the other side of the freeway was completely empty…then I noticed that the Beijing police and stopped all traffic to clear the way for either the French or Russian head of state and it’s entourage. I guess you never know who’ll you see during the Olympics. After twenty minutes on the bus I go off and immediately found myself right by the security check. The colors and the different people got me excited right away. Security didn’t take too long, but unfortunately they took away my nalgene water bottle, oh well. While standing in line some Brazilians started to hit their drums and entertain the surrounding Chinese…only a hint of what was to come. Once inside I wandered around and admired the well-air-conditioned and brightly-Olympic decorated venue, somewhat in awe of all the different nationalities present. I found my seats were somewhat high, but decided to wait and see if the venue would be too packed to move to better seats. The match still had a half hour ‘til the first serve when a Chinese cheerleading team, and then a sword dance team, and then a street dance team, tried to entertain the crowd. It was amusing to see Chinese people dancing to Mariah Carey (I think) in traditional American cheerleading outfits. Once the Brazilian and Algerian teams came out the Brazilian fans went wild and didn’t stop the entire match: draped in the Brazilian flag, wearing green wigs, and banging small drums, these fans definitely got some energy in the crowd. Throughout the match they even walked around to different sections to get Chinese people to cheer for “BRASIL!” (or, in Chinese, Ba-Si 。) Halfway through the match I moved down to better seats and watched the Brazilians dominate the Algerians in three straight sets. Fortunately my ticket was good for two matches, so I waited for the Cuban and Polish Women’s teams to come out. I don’t know why, but the Chinese seemed to like Cuba a lot, doing the government-originated cheer, “Jia You, Cuba!” ( a country plus "jia you" is the way to cheer in China). The Poles in the crowd started chanting “Polska!” Throughout the match I looked around the mostly-Chinese crowd and couldn’t help but notice how new this whole sports-environment seemed to most of them…if the Brazilians hadn’t gotten things riled up I think most the crowd would have been a little quieter, as if they were little afraid to cheer loudly or something…I could be wrong. Oh yeah, during the match some people taught the Chinese around them “the wave,” and soon the whole venue was doing it. The funny part, though, was seeing on the jumbo screen, “Let’s do the Mexican Wave!” I don’t know even know. The match was pretty good…and in the end Cuba won in four sets.
I had to leave a little early to make my next event, badminton, which was on the completely other side of town. After two hours on two busses I finally got to Beijing University of Technology Stadium. The crowd here wasn’t as big, but the air was just as humid and sticky, so I was thankful to get inside the air-conditioned circular-roofed gymnasium. I’ve seen badminton on TV a couple times, but in person it’s so much cooler. The stadium had three courts, and there were all always three matches (best 2 out of 3 sets, first to 21) going on at once, so you could never get bored. Just looking into the rafters and seeing all the flags hanging made me realize that this really was the Olympics. Before this coming to this event, I had always assumed that badminton players were the skinny guys who couldn’t do anything else, but the first men’s match that I saw blew this notion out of the water. Villes Lang, from Finland, and Some-Guy-With-A-Long-Name, from Ukraine, both had to easily be 6’3”, 215 pounds. The way they jumped up and just smashed the birdie at each other was really fun to watch, and then they’d break up the rallies with a little drop shots. The crowd here was a little more refined then at most sporting events I’ve been to in my life, but towards the end of the session a match featured a player from Hong Kong, and suddenly it was a whole new gym. Huge chants of “Zhong-Guo, Jia-You!” echoed through the arena with every point the Hong Kong girl won. My friend Bernice speaks Cantonese and said the little Chinese girl sitting behind us was yelling “Finish/kill her!” during the Hong Kong match…the Olympics apparently affects everyone a little differently. Overall, I think we probably saw fifteen different singles matches, men and women, over a span of three and a half hours. One bus and two subways later we got back to BNU, where I now need to get some sleep.

I realize this is an incredibly long post, so thanks for taking the time to read it all. I’m gonna end it here; next time I’ll write about the end of my summer program and the preparations I took to get ready for my month long trip around China.

The Great Wall and Inner Mongolia

Great Wall and Inner Mongolia Trips
So as a UCLA student I’m part of UC-run Education Abroad Program (EAP) here in China. Meaning, that during the summer everyone in the Intensive Language Program was from one of the UC’s (Berkeley, LA, San Diego, etc.), although there were some Michigan and Wisconsin students in the program as well. Anyway, so the excellent EAP staff sponsored two insanely awesome pre-paid field trips during the month of July. The first one was to Chengde and the Great Wall of China, and the second was to Inner Mongolia. I already wrote an email to some family concerning the trips, so to save myself some time I’m going to copy and paste the emails here:

So last weekend we had a sweet little weekend trip to Chengde, a city of about 400,000 four hours outside of Beijing and went to some temples and other ok touristy stuff. On Saturday night we went to this place called Jin Tai Ling and got to climb the Great Wall of China...the following is an excerpt from my journal about the experience:

After a long day of getting on and off the bus we were already to go to our hotel for the night, looking forward to sleeping on the Great Wall. An hour an half drive later, we arrived at the JinShanLing hotel/part of the Great Wall. Unfortunately, while checking into the hotel (more like motel quality), we learned that the Chinese government had just issued an ordinance that morning banning anyone from sleeping on the Great Wall until the month the September. Apparently they feared terrorist attacks to disrupt the Olympic Games. We were all real pissed and our feisty group director did her best to fight for us by arguing with the two unkempt Chinese cops were the only ones reinforcing this ordinance. After much heated Chinese arguing, our travel agency and group director said that while we couldn’t sleep on the wall, we could get up at 3:30 am and begin climbing the wall by 4 am to catch the sunrise. Our travel agency felt so bad that they tried to put together a makeshift party that night with music a bonfire in front of the motel. This motel is situated out in the wilderness in a little valley, to give you an idea of where we were. I went to bed around 10 pm after watching the China-Japan women’s volleyball match anxious to see the Great Wall for the second time in my life.

Five and half hours later I woke up with my roommate and packed seven water bottles, a dwindling bag of Costco trail mix, two Zone protein bars, a zip-loc bag of sesame-covered almonds from the restaurant, and toilet paper into my backpack. Out of the 120 people in our group there were probably around 90 of us who had decided to get up at 3:30 am. We met in the restaurant lobby and ate the little breakfast packs the hotel had graciously prepared for us. At 4 am we set out for the twenty minute walk from the hotel to our starting point on the Great Wall. Let me give a little background on this part of the Great Wall. We were to hike about 14 km from Jin Shan Ling to Si Ma Tai, and we were told it’d probably take four to five hours of grueling step cimbing and descending. Let me just start off by saying this has by far been the best part of my time in China. This part of the wall has not been renovated for the most part, unlike it’s Beijing Ba Da Ling counterpart, and thankfully lacks the thousands of tourists that can be detrimental to any China experience. I was just in awe to be climbing this colossal piece of human workmanship as the sun began to rise over eastern hills. On both sides of me were the greenest hills and mountains I’ve seen in long time. With each tower (：louzi) that we went through another beautiful section of the wall was unveiled to us. It was just so picturesque the way the dawn light caressed the landscape; so picturesque, in fact, we actually saw some professional Chinese photographers taking Great Wall pictures on a hill adjacent to the wall. By 4:30 am it was already pretty light out, which was fortunate for us as most of the five hundred-year-old wall wasn’t renovated at all and caused some slippery slopes. Nothing too bad, but we did have to be careful as we began to sweat profusely up and down the steep, steep inclines and declines. It was one of those unique hikes that allows you to constantly have a gorgeous view of your surroundings, and I tried to picture ancient Chinese soldiers fighting off invading Mongolians. It was mind-blowing. Around 5:30/6 am we caught up to this seventy-ish year-old lady who claimed that she climbed this part of the Great Wall every morning at this time. This was incredible because even for us, healthy, young college students, climbing this wall was taking a major amount of physical strength and endurance. After a while we found she really climbs this wall everyday because she stops halfway between Jin Shan Ling and Si Ma Tai to peddle stuff to climbers. This is China: everyone has something to sell you. Most of the time I was walking with four friends of mine and one of the Chinese-college student staff, named Eric. He said he’s been to other parts of the Great Wall, but he said this climb was his favorite thus far. I had to agree, comparing it to my Ba Da Ling high school experience. Of course, it wouldn’t have been a complete Great Wall experience if we hadn’t peed off it. I’ll leave that experience at that.
Around 7 am we reached a gap in the wall and had to cross a modern rope bridge over a river to get to the other side. By this time some of us were beginning to cramp up and were soon relieved to find out that we had reached the Si Ma Tai, the end of our trek. By now the sun was beginning to scorch down on our sweat-trenched backs, so all in all we were all glad to have gotten up so early to do climb the wall. Even as we climbed into our buses that would take us back to the motel most of us began to doze off in exhaustion.


So that was the email about the great wall trip, the following email was written a couple weeks later in late July after our trip to Inner Mongolia:

Last weekend we had a weekend field trip to Inner Mongolia, so our entire program (about 115 people) took a sleeper train last Thursday night and woke up the next day in Huhhot, the capital city (pop. Approx. 2 million) of Inner Mongolia. For the politically curious, Inner Mongolia is a province of China, while Outer Mongolia is under it’s own control, or maybe Russian control, not sure exactly, but Inner Mongolia is definitely China. I could go into detail about the random touristy things that we did, but I’m going to jump straight to the two big highlights: 1. Going to the desert. This desert was like making Aladdin real life, sand as far as the eye could see, dunes rising and falling with the skyline. There were some different “sand activities” we could pay for, so I decided to ride a camel. It was interesting, besides the fact that the camel behind me practically ate my water bottle out of my pocket. We also got to go “sledding” down this giant sand dune, a descent of about 200 feet. Felt like sledding in snow…without the snow…and more sand. The next day we trekked by bus for about 3 hours through some mountains to get to the famous Mongolian Grasslands, where Ghengis Khan and his armies made names for themselves. The following is an excerpt from my journal about those two days:
We arrived at this obviously tourist-oriented Yurt (Inner Mongolian tent) camp. The Mongolians welcomed us off the bus with shots of baijiu (Chinese hard alcohol) and singing some Chinese song with an accordion. After dropping our luggage in our yurt (a Mongolian tent) we heard some cheering and saw a circle of people in the field by the yurt so we went over and tried to see what was happening. Our tour guides had said we could wrestle the Mongolians if we wanted to, and that’s what was happening. After watching a friend of mine wrestle one of them I figured I gave it a try. My friend said the rules were a little weird: 1. You can’t grab the other person’s legs, and 2. The person whose shoulders touch the ground first loses. The guy I wrestled ended up being the boss or something, cause he came out of nowhere and was wearing a polo and slacks. The first time he got me on the ground first but then I rolled him over on his back…but by Mongolian rules he won that round. Second round I threw him down on his back, and felt that we needed one more to settle it. I should have quit after I had won that second round though ‘cause he tripped me up and got me down first. I could make excuses and say because he was a little shorter than me he had a lower center of gravity or something, but in the end he won by his rules. The wrestling ended soon after and they took us into their dining building. For dinner they played music (strange Mongolian fiddle with electric techno style keyboard accompaniment and singing) while other Mongolians in traditional dress walked around all the tables giving everyone another shot of baijiu. Then they brought out the main course: three whole lambs in life like kneeling stances…but fully cooked. It was quite a scene to behold: the lambs had horns still and looked ready to pop off and go run through the grasslands. They cut up the three lambs and gave each table a good amount; it didn’t taste too bad, just a lot of fat. {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMElXF5iyQhEuk4fW6KfYJNxRrIHXQb0B9JP8PMkebgcCiMVOpZJQ_dCUabBjT6eSZzz5L-_fjQSftDOvO87yvn7H0Qv3QLW-pOZA1P3NqRXTZcCBIZLVy9XXYlThkoojMemocBjlolAg/s1600-h/IMG_1027.JPG">That night they put on a sweet party for everyone there, us American students, Mongolian workers, and Chinese tourists also visiting. Once again, strange music ensued (e.g. Alvin and chipmunks rendition of Queen’s We Will Rock You). Add a large bonfire, Chinese people drinking alcohol, and lot of fireworks and you got yourself a fun time. I tried the baijiu a couple times and it didn’t taste so bad, but other people didn’t seem to agree.
I didn’t really sleep at all that night, as I was real uncomfortable in the yurt and then woke up at 4:30 am to see the sunset. It was a real cool sight to see this giant red ball rise over the Mongolian grasslands and burn off the low-lying mist. Most people who got up to see it went back to sleep, but I just found a rock overlooking this big grassland bowl thing and sat down to just admire God’s creation and pray a bit. That day wasn’t too exciting: we had the chance to ride horses or ATVS (at a price) or just hang out. I chose to go walk with some friends across the grasslands. The grasslands look like they could be in a scene from Braveheart or that one battle scene in the second Lord of the Rings movie, but everywhere you walk you hear and see locusts. Big ones with red and white wings. By the time we left I was ready for a good sleep, but the bus ride back was horrible as the driver again felt it was his duty to prove that he could driver faster than anything else on the road, even if that meant passing vehicles on the opposite side of the road with oncoming traffic closing in. We reached the Huhhot train station by early evening, and I made sure to take a Nyquil to sleep well; it worked.

So that basically sums up my two awesome field trips. Next time I’ll write about experiencing the Olympics and it’s events.

Coming to Beijing....Three Months Later

So after 3 months of living in China I've finally decided to make a blog. This way everyone can keep updated with my studying abroad experience; it'll reduce the time I spend sending emails and I can also show everyone pictures of the things I've done and places I've gone. Since it has been three months since I came to China Ihave a lot to update on, especially on the month-long trip I took with four friends across all of China. So, although I just got back to Beijing Normal University and will be starting classes on Monday, for the next week or so I'm going to try and give a summary of what I've done the past three months, then I'll be caught up and can share about what I'm doing in the present time. I hope that through this blog you'll be able to share my experiences with me and become exposed to a China that you can't fully get in the Western media. 

June-July: School and Beijing Life

I landed in Beijing on June 27th on a humid and rainy night and spent my first night in a nice hotel trying to comprehend the fact that I'd be spending the next six months of my life in China. It was a little overwhelming. The first couple of weeks at my new home, Beijing Normal University (BNU), were spent acquainting myself with my fellow summer Intensive Language Program (a University of California program, though some Michigan and Wisconsin students are here too), getting to know the neighborhood, and checking out Beijing. Having visited Beijing once in high school I had a small idea of what to expect, but a lot had changed in those 3 years, and it was totally apparent. It's hard to describe the Chinese anticipation for the Olympics that seemed to

 permeate every aspect of city life in Beijing during those summer months. Everyth

ing on TV was Olympics related, everyone I saw was wearing some sort of patriotic Chine

se or Olympic clothing, and there were the actual physical changes going on in the city: the "clean-up" of street-vendors, the sending away of millions of migrant workers, the Olympic signage appearing from every light post and bridge, I could go on and on. Then t

here were the environmental changes: from July 22nd onward certain factories closed, all construction stopped, the number of cars allowed on the roads was cut in half, and I'm sure there were more changes that I wasn't even aware of. Oh yeah, and how could I forget the rain-making. Summers in Beijing are usually incredibly hot and humid, not to mention a lack of blue sky and sun (pollution and haze creates grey skies that can last for weeks). I'd heard of the government "seeding" the skies (shooting up silver nitrate rockets to make the clouds empty their moisture, resulting in rain and clear skies), and the first week of July I finally got to experience it . During that week the weather was really strange: normal grey skies would suddenly turn dark and just downpour for twenty minutes or so, and the next day would be beautifully clear and sunny. This happened every other day and we had really nice weather for a stretch. We'd hear stories from our Chinese teachers saying how it had only rained in one district of the city while the rest of Beijing was dry. Sometimes I couldn't help myself and would just laugh as I walked to class under my umbrella with the huge raindrops coming down; it was as if we were living in a weather machine experiment. For those curious, the Chinese government supposedly shot up approximately 1100 "ran rockets" the night of the opening ceremonies in certain parts of the city to prevent rain over the Bird's Nest. Anyway, whether it was the palpable pollution, the huge rain drops, the overall Olympic excitement, or a combination of all three, there was definitely something in the Beijing summer air that made it an exciting place to study. 

Speaking of studying, we all did a lot of it those summer months: 5 days a week, 8 am-11:30 am, plus two hours of private tutoring a week. We did a chapter in our book everyday and learned 25 words a day. To be completely honest, I don't feel like my Chinese improved as much as I would have liked over the summer month program. Granted, we had a lot of class every week, but we were still living with other Americans, speaking primarily English outside class, and anyone with language learning experience will tell you that the best way to learn a language is complete emersion. This was sadly not the case for us. Despite my initial frustration, I studied my hardest and had an overall enjoyable time learning Chinese from a set of extremely dedicated and caring BNU teachers. Besides learning from these hard-working teachers, I also learned a simple but powerful lesson from the local Chinese on the streets, in the stories, in the restaurants, on the buses, etc: studying Chinese for two years at UCLA means jack until you start using it with these real Chinese people, who, unlike my kind professors, will make you so embarrassed that your pronunciation is wrong, even if just by a little bit, that you want to learn fast. It's this daily humbling experience that will both bring you down and motivate you to study harder and speak more. 

I'll admit, though, it was a little hard to study with the campus going at light speed to prepare for the Olympics. Because BNU was going to be the living and training facilities for a majority of the U.S. Olympic athletes during the Olympics, the campus was undergoing a complete facelift during our entire summer program. It was really quite amazing to witness how within weeks every campus road was newly paved, every building newly painted, Olympic decorations were put up, thousands of flowers planted, and, of course, the incredible increase in security. By the time the U.S. Olympic Committee delegation arrived at the end of July to install all the sports and weightlifting equipment in the newly built "High Performance Center" (HPC), the campus was closed to all outsiders, and we students had to scan our student IDs into a computer to get on campus. Hundreds of security guards walked around campus or stood at different posts...don't think these were trained delta forces or anything, these "guards" were simply teenage boys following orders (I doubt they would know what to do if someone did try to harm an athlete or student), but I think their main purpose was to give the American Olympians an image of security, which I can personally say was accomplished. Besides guards, hundreds of feet of wired fence went up around special buildings around campus, like the athletes' living facilities and the HPC. As we witnessed these changes and finally saw the U.S. Olympic Committee (wearing Nike products head to toe, of course) come to prepare for the athletes, I can guarantee you that each of us began to imagine our dream scenarios of walking around campus with U.S. athletes, getting free tickets, becoming their best friends, maybe getting into Michael Phelps' will, you know how it goes. Unfortunately, none of this happened. During a break in class some of us would go to the East Gate of campus and see if any new athletes were being bussed to the HPC for training, but for the most part that was as close as we came to seeing athletes. They were vanned from their fenced off living quarters to the fenced off HPC and track, so it didn't go according to our imagined plans. It was a mix of both worlds I'd say: on one hand, it was so awesomely surreal to be living and studying at the campus as the U.S. Olympians, seeing the U.S. Olympic presence everywhere. On the other hand, the security and fences were a major nuisance, it made the school really inconvenient to get across practically all of it (small shops, bookstores, libraries, public basketball courts and track, etc.) was shut down for security reasons. 

Alright, I don't wanna make any of you bored by writing too much at a time, so I'm going to stop here. Next time I'll talk about the two incredible program-sponsored field trips we took in July.