Day by Day, Back in The Bay: October 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Back From Xi'An and Feeling the End of China's Honeymoon Period

It's strange. Everyday here in Beijing, I struggle to think of a Chinese food area, local or far, cheap or expensive that I would like to go to. Everyday, before we find ourselves walking to the same place for dinner, which alternates between three places that are nearby the school, I think about how bored I am with Chinese food and the Chinese options here. Strangely enough, I think I would, just about now, prefer to eat Chinese food made in America, namely "American" Chinese food. For example, I would die just about now for food at Shen Hua on College Ave. or some place else in the Bay Area. Maybe its because I crave creature comforts of my home town and the cleanliness standards that I'm looking for that can only be had in America, the Bay Area. And this, is what I mean by exiting China's Honeymoon Phase, a phase in which everything you see is exciting and every food you see smells good and tastes so good because it's been made in the motherland. In actuality, it's not like this anymore and it doesn't taste THAT much better than America. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating and maybe its because I've been going to the small dirty joints where all the local people go and eat as a group, but aren't these small hole-in-the-wall places supposed to taste the best and represent what Chinese food means most? Cheap and good eats? I have to admit, even after that rant that the Chinese food here is good and it is cheap, but I might just be saying this for the fact that there is little for alternatives and not very much variety in the selection. While one day I could be eating jiao zi (dumplings), the other day I can eat fried rice, etc. But I feel like even if I alternate or exchange what I eat between days, I still feel like I'm eating the same things everyday. The occasional escape to Western food does help sometimes, but the price and the extreme greasiness or feeling of eating way too much or eating some thing that is bad for you (french fries, sandwhiches, or pizza) makes me miss the sandwiches at Genova or at A.G. Ferrari or at the GBC, where you feel like even the cold sandwiches are good, and the most important, you feel clean.

I hate having to say this about China, but things are so dirty. Tammy just asked me the other day, "How do you feel knowing that you've stepped on just about enough pee on your entire trip to flood your street back home with urine?". Yeah, it's that bad, but this is also taking into consideration the bathrooms, which has standards of cleanliness that match that of outhouses back in the day, even then I think those may have been cleaned more often. I've been to nice establishments in China as well that fail to meet cleanliness standards of just smelling neutral. Every bathroom has to smell like urine here, THAT is the standard. Well, unless of course it's a really expensive place that, with the intention of catering to Western people specifically, make the bathroom and restaurant cleanliness by those standards.

Even right now, as I go to open my front door for the fuwuyuan, she tells me people are doing stuff for the phone line and they come into my room with their shoes still on and walk around the floor and move things and step on my shoes to do their job, all the while giggling and laughing, saying things that they don't think I understand. Anyway, it's just hard to deal with, I'm thinking that it's more the blue collar employees that act and work in this fashion, nothing you really see from people that are white collar employees.

Anyway, Xi'An was pretty tight, but the entire trip, we were thinking or wondering about whether or not the Terracotta Warriors were actually real...My friend, when going there before us, told me that it wasn't real and the real ones were preserved somewhere else, China just made this and put fake ones as a means to establish a place for tourists to make money, without having to risk damaging the real thing. Not only that, but the presentation of some of the uncovered soldiers seemed a little too played out or dressed up, leading me to think that it was maybe staged for tourist appreciation of some sorts, "Wow, it's so preserved they didn't even dig up some of the buried ones!". Maybe its just my cynicism or my feeling that it couldn't be like that, but if they were really real, then why does China not try to uncover the hundreds of thousands that are said to exist. Why do they build a hangar around one of the areas, not fearing that there might be some under the area they built. Maybe they had a tool that could show where they were underground, but then why do they not just continue to uncover the rest of them, they were, after all, discovered in the 1970s, how could they not have found all of them by now!? Ah HAH! I believe the actual soldiers are real, but the fact that they display them as such and make no visible attempts to uncover the rest plagues me. They say these soldiers are the "8th Wonder of the World", though I feel like China's Great Wall, which isn't even ranked in the 7, should be considered #8 (a good number for China at that). However, thinking about the Wonders really makes me want to go see the rest, if something as magnificent and vast as the wall wouldn't make the cut.

Here are the old as compiled by Wikipedia:

And here are the "NEW", which I found while looking for the old (compiled by this site:http://www.new7wonders.com/):

The Pyramid at Chichén Itzá (before 800 A.D.) Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico	MEXICO
Christ Redeemer (1931) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	BRAZIL
The Roman Colosseum (70 - 82 A.D.) Rome, Italy	ITALY
The Great Wall of China (220 B.C and 1368 - 1644 A.D.) China	CHINA
Machu Picchu (1460-1470), Peru	PERU
Petra (9 B.C. - 40 A.D.), Jordan	JORDAN
The Taj Mahal (1630 A.D.) Agra, India	INDIA

Xi'An was awesome, the food was bleh, but the group of all people from summer condensed into the 100 left was fun. The train rides were fun, the one over being a cool 4 person soft sleeper and the one back as a whole cabin full of EAPers in the same area. It was fun because we bonded with a lot of people we didn't really know during the summer and it was all through forced vacation and a good ole introduction of Mafia. HAHA. It was fun, but the highlight of my trip was going to the City Wall, which Xi'An is enclosed in and riding bikes on wall (which was 12-15 meters across on all parts of the wall, a gigantic square). I had fun with the bikes and the weather was cool (around 15 Celsius), we also took a lot of cool jumping pictures and "historical" pictures as well.

Pictures WEE!:

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Crisp Air in China

I'm going to try something new and write a sensory passage about today, and a guess yesterday.

I woke up this morning thinking that it was just going to be the same old routine: getting out of bed, looking out the window to a darkened morning sky, getting dressed, riding the elevator down to a room cigarette-smoke engulfed lobby, but today was different.

Let me explain. Last night, out of nowhere I begin to hear the familiar sound of raindrops hitting against my window. This was something that I hadn't heard for a while, at least to this degree, since I was on vacation in Yangshuo. The thought of rain always brings me back to the East Bay just because weather in SF and Berkeley is just like this for weeks, even months. Although it had already rained in Beijing a few times since I'd arrive from summer vacation, it hadn't been to this degree of wind and downpour. The rain persisted through the night and I continuously heard it through my studies, a ceaseless repetition of dialog I was supposed to answer questions about. After my nightly routine of getting ready for bed, I was still surprised by the length of the downpour, but again that familiar sound allowed me to get to sleep even faster and more rested than usual nights in China. It was because of this persistent rain that the weather today was able to be as crisp and as cool as I've ever felt China.

The weather really does make an impression on your day. Well you know how people say that an overcast day can make you more depressed than a sunny day, it's true. A website that a friend sent over to me a couple days ago has this depiction:

It was taken from a blog that featured the "Differences Between Eastern and Western Culture: Moods and Weather." But if find this interpretation really wrong. After being in China for nearly 4 months, I can forwardly say that having good weather really CAN brighten your day. I like the rain, but not when I'm outside. Rain in China does not make for clean streets, especially since China has a reputation for not being the cleanest of all places.

The weather did surprise me. It had an unusual skip to my step today walking to class, which is usually replaced by a dull walk to class, with my headphones in and my hood on. Not only was the sky as blue as I'd ever seen, even for American standards, but the air was so cold and so crisp, it felt like I was actually back. Don't get me wrong, the weather standards in China right now far exceed the weather during the summer, but today just had an extra punch that I can still feel right now through the window right in front of me. I couldn't waste it so I took a picture outside my room to show you guys just what I'm talking about:

But as is always said with pictures, the view in person is much better. Not only that, but last night I had a dream, which was the first that I remember in a long time, though it was one of those short lived clips that you remember just as you wake up and promptly forget 10 seconds later.

Oh, the sensory thing kind of went away. The temperature today is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, though it felt like much colder today, when I was walking back from the cafeteria to my apartment through a windstorm that nearly pushed me backwards. The wind is persisting and the temperature is remaining as cold as it was earlier today, but I really don't mind at all. If I could choose, I would keep it this way until we leave, of course with the exception of the last couple weeks when it would rain and I could get pictures of a snow laden Forbidden City, of course I would have to go on the first snow because the next day, it wouldn't look as much like snow as it would brown slush.

Monday, October 20, 2008

A Normal Day in Pictures

I was bored today, so while messing around with my camera I decided to do a day (a very normal and boring day) in pictures.

This is where I wake up, and it is always this messy.
This is what it looked like outside my front door today, I guess they were fixing something that looked like ethernet wiring.
Here's a view down my hall, which looks the same the other way down. I'm very happy my room is very close to the elevator.
For lunch today we went to a Japanese Restaurant, which is A LOT more money than we usually spend on lunch. It is usually around 10 kuai for lunch, but today it was around 20, even with the 50% off student sushi discount.
This is where we met up with our friends to eat. The restaurant was pretty nice and clean, something that we're not used to going to for lunch. We usually eat really cheap, but today I guess we decided to go a little overboard.

The salad. For 4.
The restaurant's daily special, though today's (Tuesday) looked like a butt hair roll.
My roll was called the Sony Ericsson Roll.
Tiny desert which came with two tiny slices of orange, a nasty grape (because grapes in China are nasty), and a 1/4 slice of a cherry tomato.
XinJieKouWaiDaJie (the street we live on), which is packed full of stores that carry sports equipment and school supplies to beer, booze, and fake clothing brands. A normal day walking to class consists of walking by these stores.
Stop by a local store which contains all the necessities of Chinese life: a million brands of cigarettes.
Ramen. Instant Noodles of all flavors.
AND Booze! and drinks I guess, which a surprisingly large amount of my money goes to.
The opening of our school at East Gate (Dong Menr).
Our friends' apartment lobby, LiYun Apartotel. The decoration on the pole was left from the Olympics.
The NEW Library in construction. I have a view of this building from my room.
An area near classes that is blocked off because of the construction.
XinSong Apartment, where the PiB students stayed during the summer (also a very crappy apartment).
The walkway and grass that separates Building 2 and Building 4 of classes.
The front area, in front of the Old Library where the students park their bikes. There are usually 1 Million each day, but today there were less.
Confucius.
He is in the middle of a very peaceful lawn, where it is forbidden for anyone to walk on. It looks so clean.
The bike parking lot, though this time I can't seem to see the attendant anywhere.
The Old Library, which is mostly administration now. It is the symbol of our school Beijing Shi Fan Da Xue right now. I pass by the building everyday and the size never ceases to amaze me.
Some men on lunch break playing a hackisack game, look at the little birdie in the middle of them. Everyone plays this game, and at all times of the day. The eye clinic I pass by everyday to get to school.
The gate to the eye clinic and also to the school, it's called Xiao Dong Menr (for small East Gate).
This is my building from the outside, my room is near that gigantic circle glass thingy.
The street that I walk over everyday, XinJieKouWaiDaJie, surprisingly empty today. It's usually backed up and with double parked cars. The only reason it isn't so busy is because people can't run across the street because there is a divider that would stop them from crossing the middle.
A normal site: seeing a salesperson on the bridge, though there are usually 5, selling anything from toys to books, dvds, and a service of putting on clear skins for your phones or iPods (fake brand of course, from Peach not Apple).
The bike AND car parking lot in front of my apartment, though people sometimes get confused and do the opposite. People really like parking their cars on the sidewalks here, especially since they are so much smaller than the average car in the states. The entrance to my apartment's lobby, which is always full of middle-aged workers.
The waiting room for the elevator, one for students and one for working people. The students live on the 8th to 11th floor, the workers live and work on all below 8, some even live in the spare rooms scattered throughout 8-11. There is always an attendant here sleeping and/or smoking, which he is not supposed to do. The desk they work at is to the left of the students (also to the left is a sign that says "No Smoking" in two languages).A fish in the fish tank sitting on the attendant at work's desk. The recently changed the fish because I guess they all died.

That's my day, well I guess half a day.