"Shang che, shui jiao; Xia che, pai zhao; Jiao dao, bu zhi dao"

This past weekend we took our midsemester trip out of Beijing. We had the choice of going to either Xian or Datong. Since I had been to Xian five years ago with my dad, I figured I ought to go to Datong. It ended up being a great decision! Before I get into this blog post, I should explain that the trip itinerary was posted on the bulletin board in the classroom, all written in Chinese. So basically I had no idea where we were going. To my surprised, we ended up going to three different cities! First Datong, then Ping yao (my favorite), then a third which I don't even know the name of...our teacher taught us a funny saying in Chinese: "Shang che, shui jiao; Xia che, pai zhao; Jiao dao, bu zhi dao." It means "sleep on the bus, get off the bus and take pictures, but when you arrive you don't know where you are." Yes, it's another one of those sayings that only really works in Chinese (because it rhymes). But you get the idea. 


We left Friday afternoon at 12:30 after our exams to head to the Beijing train station. The train station was CRAZY. So many people, just everywhere. There were not even close to enough seats at our gate, so everyone was either standing in a huge clump or sitting on the floor on top of newspaper. Also, seemingly everyone carries these bags full of snacks when traveling. Snacks, or xiaochi (literally "little eat"), are very popular here. Each city, region, province, whatever, has their own special snacks that feature a local flavor or ingredient. In Beijing, one of the snacks is a small cookie/candy hybrid that has a chalky consistency. There are many different flavors: green tea, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, etc. We tried a couple of these in the train station. Pretty good! Anyways, back to my point, their snack bags contain other small snacks like this, and my personal favorite, fangbian mian. Fangbian mian translates to "convenient noodle" and is basically Ramen in a disposable bowl. Just add hot water and eat! The train (actually everywhere) has hot water, so it is indeed quite convenient. I have yet to eat one of these bowls, I just like the name. You can buy them in every convenience store here, so I'm sure I'll have one soon enough. Moving on, our train ride to Datong was more or less six hours. We were on a sleeper car, which means there were triple bunk beds (three levels), plus tiny folding seats in the aisle that attach to the wall and fold down when you sit on them. We all had tickets for the actual beds, but some people just get tickets for these tiny seats for the whole six hours. However, when walking through the cars looking for the bathroom, we discovered that the cheapest tickets are not seats at all. People just stand in the aisles next to bunks. Wow, six hours is a long time to stand.
Anyways, after I tried unsuccessfully to sleep, I descended from my middle bunk bed and joined a couple of my friends sitting on a bottom bed. We started talking to a moshengren, or stranger. His Beijing accent was very heavy, and he spoke pretty fast. Needless to say, I couldn't understand a lick of what he was saying. But my two friends (who I should mention are white) are third years, so they had a little more success talking with him. Eventually the conversation shifted to me, the silent kind of asian looking one. He asked me if I was Chinese. And after awkwardly asking him to repeat himself multiple times and then eventually looking to my friends to help me out, I told him that my Dad was Chinese. At which point this man got really excited and asked why I spoke Chinese badly. So I told him that my Dad couldn't speak Chinese because he moved to America when he was very young (which isn't even true but I don't know the word for "born" so I couldn't say he was born in America). He became very offended, I guess is the best way to describe it. He started speaking very loudly (borderline yelling) and pointing his finger at me, saying that these white people can speak Chinese better than me...the conversation moved on, but sometimes he would make a point, and ask me if I understood. When I said no, he would point his finger again and speak loudly. A couple of classmates came over who are in even higher levels of Chinese, and they were slightly embarrassed for what he was saying to me. But of course I was nice and oblivious because I could just tell that he was frustrated. Granted, I realize he was  just poking fun at me, as the other moshengren sitting in an nearby seat kindly pointed out, but my friends said that he was starting to get legitimately frustrated. Whoever thought Chinese heritage could be a limiting factor in China...

sleeper car, folding seats were in the little hallway on the right

train station...now that's a lot of people

We arrived in Datong without further incident, wandered around the streets for a little, looking for some dinner. While searching for a suitable restaurant, we stumbled upon a restaurant with a foreigner in it. We talked with him briefly in English. But then I decided that dinner there would be awkward because the restaurant was empty. So I loudly said "THIS IS AWKWARD." I'm so used to being surrounded by Chinese people that I forgot the English guy could understand me. Oops. We left. Or should I say backed away slowly...we ended up eating at a restaurant with all its chairs and tables outside. Allison and I got some yummy local noodles. The sauce had eggs and tomatoes and some other things probably. Not completely sure...sometimes when eating street food you eat and then just don't analyze too much what you've just eaten. It's the best policy. I also had meat on a stick...my friends said it was chicken, but there was a piece that was certainly not the consistency of chicken. I just ate it really quickly and tried to forget about it. But later one of them said they were mistaken and it was actually pork. Thank goodness. The next morning we headed out to a series of caves located in Shanxi Province (province we were in). This was an hour and a half bus ride. Let me take a little time here to explain the unfortunate tour guide situation. We had a tour guide for the trip. Which was great. She was nice. However, we are under a language pledge, so we aren't allowed to speak English. Which means the teachers didn't want the tour guide to speak English to us. So basically we couldn't understand anything she was saying, and consequently were very confused about many things at the places we visited. For instance, I know literally nothing historically about the caves. All I know is that there are were a lot of Buddhas carved onto the walls. And that I know because I saw them. Later in the weekend she started speaking a little English, I think because the teachers realized we couldn't understand her. But it was frustrating for sure. So the caves...sorry, don't have anything historically interesting to report. After the caves, we bused another hour and a half to lunch at a restaurant located near the Hanging Temples. Let me also say here that I consistently thought our bus rides would be shorter than they were, because I kept on getting "yi ge ban xiao shi" and "yi ban ge xiao shi" confused. One means half an hour, the other means an hour and a half. But don't ask me which. The Temples were pretty sweet, but once again I don't know why they were built, or when, or who built them, or if people actually lived in them, etc. The highlight of this part of the trip occurred while Allison and I were walking around in the temples. We heard someone behind us say "wai guo ren, ting bu dong" which means "foreigners, they don't understand Chinese." We kind of half turned, and then Allison mumbled "ting de dong" which means "we understand." Haha they were surprised at first, but we had a little conversation with them. Later on, another man walked up to us and asked where we were from. In English. We answered him in Chinese, which he thought was amusing. There happened to be a teacher standing nearby, so thank goodness we used Chinese. They take the language pledge really seriously. For example, later in the trip when we had free time in the city they said "Di yi ge: bie shuo yingwen, di er ge: zhu yi an quan" which means "first: don't speak English, second: be safe." 

caves

lots o' Buddhas, big and small

Allison and I in a cave

Hanging temples!

view from the temple

After visiting the Hanging Temples, we were all standing in the parking lot waiting for the bus. One of my friends said I might want to use the bathroom because we had a four and a half to five hour bus trip ahead of us to get to our hotel. EXCUSE ME WHAT? Literally everyone else knew we were driving to a different city. I spent the whole weekend in the dark apparently. Ping yao, our next city, was absolutely awesome. There is an inner city and an outer city. The inner city is contained by a large wall, and preserved. All the buildings are one or two stories, streets are stone and narrow. For anyone who has ever been to Toledo, I found it eerily similar. We wandered a little at night before our hotel closed for the night, but we did most of our exploring the next day. We spent a little time up on the city walls, and then visited an old courtyard which used to be a bank. Which is literally the only information I got from the guide. Took me a significant amount of time to even realize it had been a bank. Anyways, what came next was the highlight of the day. We got an hour of free time! When skyping my parents, I accidentally told them that we got to go without "the guard," instead of saying "the guide." Freudian slip for sure, because while teachers are great, its also nice to be out from under them for a while. So we browsed the countless shops lining the streets. I bought a couple xiaochi, as did Allison. A good time for all. 

Ping yao at night

view from the city wall

some parts of the street were real crowded

street performer

After Ping yao, we drove another hour and half (once again thought this was going to be thirty minutes) to another city. City will remain nameless, because I have no idea. We visited a park/temple area which was beautiful, but it was raining, but it was still beautiful. There is a tree there that is really old (I forget how old, the guide said the number in Chinese, in one ear and out the other). One of my classmates was wondering out loud (quietly, because there are always teachers lurking!) how they knew how old it was...to which I said dendrochronology! Thanks Patrick for that knowledge, knew it'd come in handy one day.

old tree

More than once on the trip, my camera said "blinking eye detected." Nope we're just asian.

"He isn't wearing clothes!"

Highlight of the evening happened while Thanh-Ha, Allison, and I were walking to the cafeteria for some dinner. Here at the university, the boy's dorm doesn't have showers (I guess?), so they all carry their toiletries/clothes to a large bathroom/locker room (once again I'm not sure, never been in there) where they can shower. Here's an unrelated thought to set this story up a little better...anyone who knows me knows I'm not a huge fan of kids. I mean they're cute sometimes I guess, but they don't really do it for me. I've discovered here that the exception is little kids speaking Chinese. MOST ADORABLE THING EVER. Even cuter when I can actually understand them. So back to the story. We were walking to the cafeteria and some guys were walking next to us and one of them had his shirt off because he had just showered. A mother and her probably 4 or 5 year old daughter walked toward us, and when they got closer the little girl said "他没穿衣服！" which means "he isn't wearing clothes!" Hahaha so funny to hear her say it in her little voice. Everyone, the guys, us, her mom, started laughing. It was a great moment.


Another busy, busy week (surprise) has gone by, and we find ourselves facing the daunting task of studying for our final exam this Friday. It will mark the halfway point of the course, one semester of Chinese learned! To properly study, we'd have to study the first week's material on Monday, second week on Tuesday, etc. plus the four new chapters we are learning this week. Which sounds almost doable, until you realize that each week here is equivalent to approximately a month of Chinese at Duke. And then it's no longer feasible. I wish I could follow this up with a clever way I've thought of to study errything. But no such way...


On Wednesday a group of six of us went to the Houhai area after classes. We took the subway, which is by far my favorite mode of transportation here, or should I say 交通工具. We got subway cards a couple weeks ago, so now I just feel like a pro when I walk past the people struggling with their single ride tickets and use my card. Before coming to Beijing, I'd heard horror stories about the crowded-ness of the Beijing subway. However, I've found it to be not that bad. It's pretty comparable to the Duke buses at class change time, so we're accustomed. The subway stop is not too close to the heart of Houhai, so we walked for about 15-20 minutes to get to the hutongs surrounding the lake that make up the beautiful area. There were countless cute small shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars. We had a great time checking out a few of the stores, and eventually settled down in a cafe to work for a few hours (yes, we brought our backpacks sightseeing, we're so cool).  We found a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, and enjoyed pho (3rd tone! or so Thanh-Ha tells me) on the rooftop. We later found out (via the interwebs) that the Vietnamese restaurant we went to is one of the best in Beijing. What a great find!

a cute stationary/postcard/notebook store

hutong opens up onto the lake

Houhai

On Friday it rained and was actually a little chilly. Thanh-Ha and I woke up at 5 am and went to the 24 hour bakery next to campus to get coffee and study about 2 hours for our test at 8. At some point during our studying, Thanh-Ha made the insightful comment "wait, doesn't it rain every Friday?" Basically, Beijing is dripping with pathetic fallacy (see what I did there: Friday = test day = gloomy). 

For Chinese table on Friday, our teachers took us to a hot pot restaurant close to school. For those of you unfamiliar with hot pot, it’s a delicious Chinese tradition where you cook your own meat, noodles, and veggies in a large pot of broth set in the middle of the table. The meat is brought to the table raw and thinly sliced. At this particular restaurant, each person got his or her own small pot of broth. I opted for spicy, because so far here in China I’ve been embracing the spicy. Before coming here I was pretty ambivalent about spicy food, but for the past month I’ve really been eating a lot of it. For some reason, hot pot amplifies spicy, I think because the broth is both temperature hot and spicy. Couple that with the fact that Chinese people don’t really drink beverages with meals, and you got yourself a pretty hot situation. Whenever I eat hot pot, I end up sweating my way through the whole meal. But lunch was great. My friend Anna’s mom and sister were visiting Beijing this past week, so her mom wanted to take some of us out for dinner. Where did we go? Another hot pot restaurant. That’s right. Hot pot twice in one day. When does that ever happen? Never. This time, we cooked all the food in one communal pot in the center of the table, which had a spicy side and a not spicy side. This spicy side was quite spicy. Let me tell you. Nonetheless, we (by we I mean two of us) ate it and it was great! Here’s an unexpected fact I’ve discovered about hotpot. You might think that the beef would be really spicy after cooking it in the spicy broth, or maybe the tofu. No, false. It’s the cabbage you have to watch out for. That damn vegetable soaks up all the spiciness and heat and burns my tongue every time. 

Angela, Anna, and I

yum gotta love hotpot (check it out I'm eating the cabbage like a champ)

that's spicy

Saturday marked a trip to another out of town destination. This time? Long Qing Xia. We asked our teachers beforehand what we would be doing there, etc., and all they told us was that there were mountains and water. Haha. That proved to be correct, but Long Qing Xia was a much better trip than our time last weekend at Shidu. First of all, we got to escape the teachers and go off on our own. Always a plus. Also, I enjoyed the scenery a lot more. We took a huge escalator up to a lake at higher elevation (pretty neat), then took a ten minute boat ride to a different area, where we got to hike up to a pagoda with an amazing view. Gotta love the variety of transportation though: ginormous escalator --> boat --> legs --> boat --> downhill drippy tunnel. 

some of the group

we're on a boat

(Thanh-Ha on) steps on steps on steps

pretty sweet views

Well, I need to head off to bed to get ready to tackle what will undoubtedly be the most difficult week of the program thus far. 


Know what I realized yesterday? I haven't used a fork since May...