Alex in China

From my last post you might have gotten the impression that I was having a rough time in Beijing. Well, I was. But lucky for me, things have been going uphill since then. I’m recovering very speedily from my cold (thanks to my arsenal of drugs) and my hotel still hasn’t kicked me out even though my real physical passport hasn’t arrived in the mail yet. I think they’re just afraid of dealing with the wrath of Tio again, which is fine by me!

Beijing is much more interesting than I originally gave it credit for. At first glance Beijing has the appearance of an overcrowded city covered in smog (which it is). But in reality it’s a city with an abundance of culture and history…and smog. You really have to get away from the touristy spots to see the real culture but you’ll still get your fair share no matter where you go.

And then there’s the shopping. Prepare to blow your life savings like it’s no one’s business. You’ll be pleasantly deceived by the fact that you can get anything you could possibly want for 1/8 of the American prices. You’ll also think that you’re a master haggler and buy things just because you think you’ve found “the perfect deal”. I know we did, and I loved every minute of it!

We’ve all been waiting for weeks to finally make our way to the mecca of all markets, the pearl market. This place is four levels of non-stop, low price, haggle till you die shopping. I’ve been holding out on buying much before we went to the pearl market and I’m glad I did. We all made a quick stop to the ATM machine to load up on cash before going in. Four hours later we came out with empty wallets and suitcases full of goods.

Of course in all the hub bub about shopping I’ve forgotten to mention our morning at the Temple of Heaven. This place is like the Central Park of Beijing. It’s beautiful, it’s big, and everywhere you go people are enjoying the day. There’s something going on everywhere. There are people dancing in groups, singing old songs, and playing games. Even the elderly Chinese are out having fun, they’re actually probably the most energetic people out there.

To finish off an already eventful day, we went to a Kong Fu show being put on by a very large theater in the city that evening. When I think of Kong Fu I usually imagine ninjas jumping around smashing cinder blocks with their heads and yelling loudly. Needless to say, the show was nothing like that, it was actually extremely artistic with lots of deep meaning.

(But they did smash things on their head at the end, so I wasn’t completely off!)

Overall, Beijing is turning out to be an amazing city. The people are full of energy and fun to watch, it’s different than what I expected.

Well, it’s getting late here and I hear Joel starting to snore so I think I’m gonna go pass out too. Expect a new post in the next few days! -a

(note: that blog title is for my parents…remember that book!?)

So I hit a bump in the road today and made a mistake that has caused today to be one of the toughest days on the trip so far. Today was the day we were scheduled to leave for Beijing and Xi’an for ten days. We left early this morney to catch a 7 hour train ride to Beijing.

No big deal, right? Wrong.

I forgot my passport.

That’s right, I broke the cardinal rule of traveling abroad. As we’re boarding the train I suddenly realize that my passport is sitting on my desk back at the university and there is nothing I can do about it. I need this passport to fly back from Xian to Qingdao so this is not good.

And just to make things more fun, I woke up with a cold this morning! So I spent the seven hour ride blowing my nose and loading myself with Tylenol.

I know I sound like a complete debbie-downer but the story get’s better so I’m going to go ahead and finish!

We get to the hotel we’re staying in which is a special hotel owned by the Ministry of Education. And they ask for our passports. Uh oh! Turns out they can’t let anyone without a passport stay in the hotel. They insist that I’m not allowed to stay here until I get a passport. We spend about an hour at this point arguing with them to let me stay. I try to produce as much proof as I can about who I am but they won’t budge. At this point I’m starting to wonder how much it would cost me to grab a room at a nearby hotel on my own when Tio comes to the rescue. Tio is able to get a hold of the passport copies from the study abroad office just in time and the hotel grudgingly accepts them.

I’m glad it’s over, thanks Tio.

But on the bright side, I managed to get some strong medicines in after that and we enjoyed a fancy Peking Duck meal (including a nice dish of duck heart). Things are running smooth again and I have my passport in the mail.

Beijing is huge, expect my more posts in the next few days about it. My nyquil is kicking in so I think I’m gonna stumble my way to bed -a

We are constantly stared at here in Qingdao. It’s probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever experienced. The first few days here it was kind of intimidating but since then we’ve gotten used to it (some of us even enjoy it now). Anywhere we go you can see people pausing conversation or stopping what they’re doing to watch us go by. It seemed rude at first but I think Tio explained it best by pointing out that most people here never see Americans.

In a way, it’s kind of like being a celebrity. Whenever we go shopping people always look into our carts to see what the Americans are buying. If we’re in a restaurant, we’re usually the center of attention. Last night a group of us decided to eat at a small restaurant in town and we were seated in the only table that was directly in the middle of the restaurant. It was like we were putting on some kind of show. All the tables around watched as we tried to eat noodles with chopsticks and whenever our servers weren’t serving they would gather up some chairs and watch to see if we’d eat the chickens head they gave us (we ended up skipping on the head but ate the feet!).

Oh, and then there’s the cameras. It’s pretty normal to be walking down the street and watch someone pull out their phone to take a picture of you. It’s especially big when we go to a touristy area, like Mt. Taishan. At Mt. Tai we had this creepy guy that would follow us around and try to film us. He would put his camera up as if we were just checking his pictures but then walk and forth past us pointing the camera point blank at our faces. Later that night, Joel, Aaron and I were at a night market where we had a pair of old men follow us for around 15 minutes. They never said anything, they just walked right behind us and whenever we stopped they’d look over our shoulders to see what we were thinking of buying.

Overall, it really gives me an insight into the difference between America and China’s diversity levels. In the US we’re used to different races, skin colors and cultures. We are a nation of many cultures while China is a nation of one. The people here are not used to large scale immigration or really anything more than tourists. Even tourists are rare once you start to leave the city and head out into the rural area. None of this is really a bad thing, just different from what we’re used to. The Chinese even seem to be embracing this concept based on the slogans I’ve seen posted across the city for the Olympics… “One World – One dream”.

So I guess it just comes down to a difference in history and culture. As far as I’m concerned there are pros and cons to each nations situation. Neither is better, they’re just different. -a

I realized today that I haven’t really written anything explaining our living situation in Qingdao or our daily life. It’s true, we actually have a “daily” life in between excursions and traveling- well, kind of.

We live in the international dorms at Ocean University which are considered luxurious compared to the Chinese dorms but don’t compare at all to dorms in America. I don’t mind though, I think I’d feel like I was losing out on the experience if I was staying in a 5-star hotel. The rooms are nicely furnished and extremely small (some would said “cozy”?) and the beds aren’t exactly what you’d call soft (yet I still fall asleep the minute I lay down). Our AC is amazing and our room has quickly gained a reputation as the Arctic zone. The bathroom is an interesting situation, it’s about 8×3 and it’s just a sink, shower head, and toilet lined up with a drain in the middle of the bathroom. But all in all, we have it really good compared to most living situations in China so I’ll take it! Also we’ve got this cool old lady who lives at the bottom of our building who speaks no english but loves to say “ni hao” to us as we go in and out.

Every day we have Chinese Mandarin from 8am till noon so we all meet go as a group and get our morning dumplings before heading to class. Four hours is a long time to study a language everyday but we get small breaks so it’s usually handleable. After class we all head out for lunch on the town at whatever restaurant seems good. We’ve all gotten into this weird habit of eating ice cream after every meal because it’s so cheap and it’s every 20 feet.

After lunch it’s back to the university for Intercultural Communication with Professor Lapastina. Most of us actually call him Tio which is Portuguese for uncle. It’s a very casual professor-student relationship. Which is awesome because we don’t have that usual professor barrier with him. It makes the learning environment much less intimidating. Tio is part brazilian, part Italian and is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and Italian (not to mention, he’s picked up some Chinese since he’s been here). The class itself is extremely interesting and like no class I’ve taken before (which is probably due to the fact that I’m a business major).

And then for the rest of the day/night we have freedom! We can head downtown and walk around the city or go to a local restaurant or even head over to the beach (if you feel like freezing to death). Tonight I think we’re all heading over to the night market to do some shopping.

So enough about “life”…I’ve got good news (or at least it’s good news for me). For our second communications course we’re supposed to be doing an independent research which means we pick a topic that interests us and research it extensively in China and then produce a large paper on it. I was having trouble thinking of something that interested me enough to where I’d actually enjoy spending hours upon hours working on it. So I thought to myself “Self, what do you already spend lots of time doing?” and then it hit me, this blog. So I presented the idea to Tio (Professor Antonio) and asked for his advice on how I could turn this passion into something presentable. We talked today and came up with something that really seems amazing. From now on I’ll be doing bi-weekly posts that are focused on independent subjects of Chinese culture and analyzing them through my own experiences. It’s kind of hard to explain, and it’s not exactly set in stone how I need to go about doing this, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. The first week will be more casual as I get in the groove before we leave for Beijing. After we get back I’ll be getting more in depth with the subjects, comparing them to articles or research and really diving into it.

So in summary, there’s going to be an increase in posts from now on. Some will be my cultural writings and some will be just about daily life. Hopefully both will be equally exciting, that’s what I’m aiming for -a

Hey-oh! We’ve just returned from a four-day trip to Hong Kong which is the reason it’s taken me so long to get a post up. I had this plan to find internet and write up posts daily since there was so much going on but it didn’t work so I’m writing it all up tonight!

Hong Kong is most likely one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to. Take Hawaii and New York City and combine them and that’s pretty much Hong Kong (except I think Hong Kong is bigger than NYC). Even with some rainy weather every once in awhile, Hong Kong totally blew me away. Plus we had our own amazing tour guide, Ben Petty, who is a director at the new Confucius Institute of A&M and also one of the funniest guys alive. Ben lived in Hong Kong for 25 years so he knew how to navigate the city with ease.

After arriving in Hong Kong and grabbing some lunch at a restaurant, Ben brought us up to a famous place called The Peak where you have a birds eye view of the city. We arrived around dusk and were able to watch the skyline light up like a laser show until the entire city was glowing. Afterwards we went out for Korean BBQ and strolled through a local night market (the first of many) and passed out for the night.

For anyone who’s a Jackie Chan fan, we actually were living right down the street from Jackie’s HQ and got to admire it’s large walls on a daily basis. We never actually ran into Jackie, but I guess that’s the next best thing!

Hong Kong is a crazy place with a very interesting situation. Back in 1997 it was handed over from the British to the Chinese (I’m giving the very abridged version of the story) and is now officially considered part of China. In actuality, it’s pretty much a completely separate country. We had to go through international customs going into Hong Kong and it was pretty obvious that the people there considered themselves slightly above those in mainland Chinese. There were also the obvious legacies that the British left behind like double decker buses, driving on the wrong side, and a large number of English people.

Our next day in Hong Kong seemed like it was going to be rough as it started raining and wouldn’t stop but ended up working in our favor. We were visiting temples and the rain helped get rid of any crowds there normally would have been. The Buddhist temple we visited first was one of the most peaceful places I’ve seen in this crazy country. It was built only three years ago and had some amazing architecture…no nails used on any building. The next temple we stopped at was Taoist and almost the complete opposite of the first, hectic and chaotic (yet still beautiful). There were idols everywhere and people running around with incense to give to the god of their choice.

Now here comes my favorite part of the day, our excursion to a wild monkey colony outside of the city. We took numerous buses to get here but it was well worth it. As soon as we had gotten off the bus and hadn’t even entered the colony yet, we were greeted by two monkeys chasing each other down the sidewalk. The thing you have to understand about these monkeys is that the males can get extremely aggressive if they feel like you’re challenging them and apparently staring them in the eyes is the sign of a challenge. Well after a nice ten minutes of watching the female monkeys and looking away from the male monkeys we found ourselves walking into a very large crowd of them who had just eaten. Everything was going fine until we saw the alpha male raise his back and slowly start to trounce over to us. We all started to back up against a stone wall, looking at various bushes and clouds to avoid his gaze but apparently it wasn’t working. I look down and see the monkey making his way faster for Joel, Aaron and I. This is right when things go crazy. Joel grabs me and throws me in front himself (thanks roomie!) right as the monkey makes a noise and starts to thrash his arms. I try to jump away as I feel a furry hand hit my arm and turn to see the monkey grab Aaron’s poncho and violently pull it away. Luckily this seemed to make him content as he checked out the poncho for a moment and then backed away (not without taking his eyes off of us). We decided it was time to go as we were “escorted” out of the area by our new friend and a few of his cronies.

We finished the night at a formal restaurant where we were being treated to Peking Duck, a delicacy in China. Wow! Peking duck has this amazing flavor that is amplified when you wrap it with this special sauce and onion they give you. It was an impressive meal with good entertainment and even better food. My grandpa asked me recently what the most exotic food I’ve eaten so far is and I think I have a better answer now after this meal…chickens foot. I’ve been pretty good about not being grossed out by foods here but that just threw me over the edge. It’s literally a cooked chickens foot, you can see the claw shape! I ended up eating one just to say I did but I don’t think I’ll be ordering it again any time soon

Our last day proved to be just as exciting as the others except with a new theme for the day, markets. Markets are one of the coolest things about Chinese culture, you can buy anything you can imagine for prices you’ll never find anywhere else in the world. But like I said in another post, you really gotta know how to haggle or the merchants will destroy you. We had five markets on the agenda and each one had it’s own unique personality. The first two were pretty self-explanatory, the bird market and the flower market. Old men in Hong Kong love to buy birds, teach them how to sing, and then compete on who’s bird can sing best. The flower market was a street covered with merchants who sold all kinds of exotic flowers from around the world. I love to garden our backyard in college station so I was having a blast checking out all the plants, even though I knew customs would kill me if I tried to bring one back.

The Jade market is famous for selling…well, Jade. Jade is very common in China so it sells for an amazing price compared to the US where it can get pretty pricey. I picked up some things that caught my eye (maybe some gifts?) and had a good time haggling with the merchants who were pretty good sports. After Jade, we headed for Stanley Market which is known for clothing and also it’s large masses of British people. This was the first time I’d actually seen more Caucasians than Asians and it was kind of weird. I didn’t buy anything at Stanley but it was worth checking out just for the British accents. Sadly, I don’t remember the last market we went to but it was a night market (only open at night) and was probably the most fun of all of the them. At some point Joel, Aaron and I got pulled into a shady apartment to check out a selection of fake designer goods and had to make a run for it as the merchants were getting too aggressive with rocket prices. Several purchases and angry merchants later, we were heading back to the hotel to get some rest (but not before watching a Jackie Chan movie).

And now we’re back in Qingdao! It’s good to be back on the coast again, I was starting to miss the 75 degree weather. We just took out Professor LaPastina (we call him Tio, but that’s for another post) and Ben Petty for a nice father’s day dinner. Being on the subject of Father’s day….Happy Father’s Day Dad!!! Dad is actually in Greece right now with my mom on a cruise so I’ve got no way to communicate with them till they get back but I’m planning on writing up an email anyways once I finish this post. Actually, that seems like reason enough to finish up so thanks for reading! Also, thanks to everyone who’s been writing comments, I always look forward to reading what you all write after I put up a new post! -a

(I just uploaded this video of us in Hong Kong and also put a video of the monkeys up above, let me know if they don’t work)

Alright! So we’re finally back from Qufu and Ti’an (I only say “finally” because the drive was a nice 7 hour trek with little to no air conditioning!) and it was an amazing excursion. Even though the drive was long and sometimes tough I’m really glad we made it because we had a beautiful view of rural China and the general landscape of the area. It’s funny seeing how quickly the environment changes once you leave the city. One minute you’re driving through the streets of a well developed city and the next your tumbling down a gravel road weaving your way through farmers and carts. China is very unique in the sense of how rapidly it’s progressing. To put it into metaphor form, it’s like a dog whose legs are growing faster than the rest of it’s body. The cities are like the legs growing at an extreme rate and pushing the country forward while the rural area is like the body, trying to keep up and take in all the new changes. Well…at least that’s how it seems to me, I could be wrong.

So back to the trip, we arrived at Ti’an in the evening and crashed pretty early after getting some food and exploring the streets for awhile. I was definitely thankful for the full nights sleep as we woke up at 5:30am to get ready to leave for Mt. Taishan. What’s so crazy about climbing Mt. Tai is that you don’t climb it by walking a nice dirt path, you climb over 7,200 stone stairs all the way to the top. Standing at the bottom and looking up at this mountain sized staircase was extremely intimidating and slightly discouraging but we went for it anyways. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of intense burning sensation all throughout my legs before (and hopefully never will again). They say that climbing Mt. Tai is supposed to lead to “spiritual enlightment”, but the only enlightment I felt was realizing that I should have spent some time on a stairmaster before leaving!

But as bad I as I’m making it sound, I actually had a blast climbing Mt. Tai. Being with a group made it well worth the challenge as we were all soaked in sweat and gasping for air together. It also made me feel more connected to the Chinese people around us because they clearly were having just as hard of a time doing the climb as we were (although there was the occasional crazy old man who would go sprinting up the stairs). There was also lots of stuff to keep you entertained along the way. A group of men half way up insisted they would carry you up a few flights of stairs for a good price. Apparently a good price is 500 yuan ($80) as our poor friend Derrick found out three flights later. To top it all off there was this guy somewhere along the climb that was selling pictures with his monkey for really cheap. Despite the little voice in the back of my head warning me about monkey diseases, I couldn’t resist and got this awesome picture of me and ChangChang the monkey. If you look closely you can see ChangChang searching through my hair (unfortunately for him I shower daily, so there wasn’t anything there!)

At the top of Mt. Tai (the “South Gate to Heaven”) there were several temples that you could visit and pay your respects to the gods. Personally I don’t believe in the god of longevity or sky so I went ahead and just watched the locals on the side. I can see why the people put these temples up on Mt. Tai though because the view was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time and definitely “worthy of the gods”.

After leaving Mt. Tai later that day we passed out as the hotel for a little and then a few of us went out to eat with the local street vendors. You’ll never find food as cheap as you can from a street vendor. They pile meat onto a stick and then you chose the meat stick you want and they cook it for you right there with their own special spice blend. It’s usually 1 yuan per a stick which is about $0.15. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to handle US prices for food after I leave China!

After climbing a mountain the whole day, there was clearly only one thing we could do to finish the night off. Get a massage. Five of us headed over to the massage spa after taking a shower and paid $10 (US) for an hour and a half massage. To be honest the place was a little shady and we were told to make sure we didn’t get the “special massage” but it turned out to be legit and well worth the cheap price. They even walked on our backs which I really don’t think most masseuses can do unless they’re as small as these ladies were!

To finish the trip off we headed to Qufu the next day which is the hometown of Confucius. His home and temple were extremely beautiful and filled with Chinese history. I don’t really have any exciting stories about anything crazy that happened in Qufu, it’s more like one of those places that you have to see to appreciate. To make up for my lack of description I’ll put a few pictures below to give you a feel for what it was like.

(thanks to Joel for that last one)

And now we’re finally back home in Qingdao. Today is a national holiday (Dragon Boat Festival, I think?) so we’re all catching up on our blogs, emails and sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be back in class, which I just realized I haven’t written about but I think I’ll save that for another day -a

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Originally uploaded by Alex McQuade

We’ve only been here a short while and we’re already leaving to go to Qufu for a few days. Qufu is famous for being the home of Confucius. We’re also climbing Mt. Tai which I’m looking pumped about. I’m packing light for the trip so I won’t have my laptop… but expect a post with lots of cool stories and pictures on monday or tuesday!

Until then, here’s a pic of Joel and Tori teaching a few Chinese guys how we play b-ball down in the states

Last night we ended up eating at this cool little place that had you pick out your food and then they kill it in front of you. Being the brave little Americans that we are, we decided to go with an eel so our server promptly brought us to the aquarium, caught an eel, and smashed it on the head with a hammer.

And of course I caught it all on camera (except for the hammer part, just use your imagination)

Normally I would just load the video on to the blog directly but I’m stuck behind the Chinese government’s internet blockade so I just put the link here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoS7Y2fHco

Also, here’s the video of us weaving through that construction zone I mentioned yesterday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNhpNwULwHk

I just got internet connection today so I’m gonna make this post a recap of yesterday in the form of "culture-shock experiences".

Dumpings

Let me start by explaining that dumplings are the food of gods in China. There’s this old lady who sells dumplings every morning down the street from where we live. I’ve got a picture below of me trying to get some from her. I say "try" because apparently she misunderstood that morning and thought I wanted also wanted some weird soup that I still haven’t figured out. But the dumplings were cooked to perfection and that’s all that matters. I’m pretty sure this is going to be a morning ritual.

Transportation

We basically can get around three ways…walk, taxi, and bus. The bus system is exactly what you would expect of China, crowded and aggresive. But on the bright side it only cost 1yuan (about $0.15) to travel anywhere. If you’re feeling a little more "upper class" you can grab a cab and hope they understand what you want which will usually cost about 14yuan ($2). I’m still working on getting the bus system down since I’ll be taking it downtown to my internship later in the summer.

I’ve also figured out that you don’t mess around with Chinese bus drivers. On our first bus ride I ended up being the last on in the group to get on which made me the receiver of the drivers wrath when he realized not all of us had paid. He starts yelling at me in rapid Chinse,I have no clue what he’s yelling, it was a big scene. So I ended up throwing 10 yuan at him and yelling back "Shi ren! Shi ren!" (10 people! 10 people!) which calmed him down enough to start driving again.

Haggling (a Chinese pasttime)

The Chinese love to haggle. Well, actually, they love to rip off Americans and call it haggling! I’ve got a small list of over-priced American goods that I wanted to buy in China so it worked out perfectly when we headed out to a local market. We ducked and dodged our way through a very open construction zone to get into a shabby building that obviously hadn’t been given enough TLC for the past 20 years or so. I found a pretty remote shop that was selling north face backpacks within seconds had a merchant grabbing my arm and shoving every backpack he could into my arms. He told me he wanted 180 yuan for it, I replied with a over-dramatic laugh and "Tai gui le!" (too expensive). I tried to be funny and offer 70 yuan which he growled at and tried 160 yuan. After going back and forth for a few minutes I finally managed to get the bag for 100 yuan ($14) when I threatened to leave (thanks to Aaron). In all honesty the bag usually sells for over $100 so the chances of it being real are slim to none. But as my house always says "Aye dios mio, no me importe"

Food

Apparently you can’t survive off of dumplings alone so we had to eventually find another food place. A small group of us decided to try out our stomach willpower and go eat at the one place the University had warned us not to…the street vendors. It’s not that these people are bad or anything…it’s just that they’re hygiene is very questionable and so is the source of their food. This is the stuff that usually only locals eat, but what fun is there if you’re not eating with the locals? We ended up getting some meat on sticks and something else that tasted like fried omelettes. Out of the five of us, only Joel got sick. Honestly I was expecting all of us to be in the bathroom all night so I think we did pretty good. On a side note, Joel is much better now!

That’s about all I got for the first day…except this picture of live scorpions some lady was selling on the street. You fry them and eat them, Bear Grylls style! (Grandpa Jack, this one is for you)

Sweet! So we just landed in Hong Kong about an hour ago. I’ve got some limited internet access before we depart for Qingdao so I thought I’d write something up real quick

Our flights through the US went real smooth with little to no delays and a good time overall. At about 11:45pm (california time) we departed LA for Hong Kong…14 hour flight! I had this brilliant plan for how I was gonna fight jet lag and sleep at a certain point in the flight for a certain amount of hours and wake up all fresh and ready to take on the world. Of course it didn’t work at all and I ended up sleeping at all kinds of odd hours and positions. One thing I learned for sure is to never eat anything an airliner offers you that has the word “spicy” in it…especially if it’s Chinese.

Right now we’re all sitting in the Hong Kong terminal, yawning and kinda stumbling around in a daze. We should be in Qingdao later today (1:35pm their time, 2:35am TX time) and the weather is supposed to be sunny around 75 degrees I think. I’m looking forward to living on the coast for this reason alone.

The internet is really slow here so I’m gonna hold off on pictures until I get a better connection. I see a burger king across the terminal and I think I have a few bucks I can convert to Hong Kong currency so I’m gonna eat up while I’ve got the chance. Expect a post from Qingdao in a day or two! -a