Chinese in Space, Golden Week

Recently a few of my classmates and I have taken a liking to a local cafe owned by an outgoing Buddhist man, Mr. Zong, for studying and tea.  He loves talking about religion, politics, economics, and anything under the sun, and it seems like he's discussed these things with many a patron over the years.  Tonight we watched the launch of China's third manned space mission (this time to feature the first Chinese spacewalk).  The patrons, and especially Mr. Zong, were very excited, and it was a very cool experience to share with them as they all waved goodbye to the astronauts on the screen.

Tomorrow we begin our 10-day independent travel break (5 of which occur during China's Golden Week holiday, during which roughly 300,000,000 people will be traveling; this should make things more interesting).  My friend Natan and I are hitching a night train to Beijing, where we'll be seeing the sights and sipping the tea for four days or so.  Then, after consultation with Mr. Zong and the internets, we'll be heading on down to south-central China to visit Luoyang, a several-thousand-year-old city and former capital of China (Eastern Han dynasty, if you were curious), and a site famous for a network of thousands of caves and rock faces filled with ancient Buddhist stone carvings (around 470 C.E.) , ranging in size from an entire cave full of fist-sized buddhas to a cliffside with stories-high bodhisattvas.  Natan and I are both somewhat of Eastern religion enthusiasts, so we're pretty psyched.  

I'll probably be more or less out of contact for a while (though Natan and I are making every effort to see the Presidental Debate in Beijing, if it happens), but should have some great pictures for my next post.  

Culinary Adventures

Today we went to the Jiangsu New Eastern Culinary School for an introduction to Chinese cooking.  We made a variety of dishes, pastries, and soups, and almost nobody got hurt in the process.

Upon arriving, we saw dozens of young Chinese men doing military drills outside the school in camouflage uniforms.  Upon inquiring about this, we th

en learned that freshman recruits for the culinary school must first undergo 4 weeks of military training before touching a wok.  These cooks are pretty intense.

Afterwards, the recruits drilling outside were taking a break around some outdoor ping pong tables.  Our local ping pong champ, Daniel, showed them how it was done in the USA and thoroughly embarrassed the Chinese army.

Next week (starting Friday the 27th, in fact) we have our 10-day independent trip.  A friend and I are trekking out to Beijing for the first three days and then are going to wander around somewhere, more likely rural.  We're looking at Inner Mongolia, but it has crossed our minds to head on up to the North Korean border and ask them if they've seen their authoritarian dictator lately. 

Pictured below 1) The head chef having me learn how to make sweet-and-sour sauce, 2) the culinary school's militaristic intensity on display and 3) a brief video of Daniel kicking Chinese butt at ping pong. 

"Your Health Rests With Your Civilized Behavior," or Suzhou (not Wuzhen)

This weekend we originally intended to head out to Wuzhen, a scenic, 7,000-year-old canal town (known as the "Venice of China"). Despite its beauty, it is a town of only 6,000 people, where which we intended to spend a quiet few days around the Mid-Autumn festival. Fate had other ideas.

Upon arriving at the Nanjing train station, we booked a train to Suzhou, a regional hub from which we would then take a bus to Wuzhen. Upon arriving in Suzhou we booked our bus ticket and rode a bit over an hour to Wuzhen. Looking around and seeing no scenic canals or thousand-year-old bridges (rather, strip malls and highways), we figured this wasn't our intended destination and soon found out it was a different, but similarly-pronounced Wuzhen. The bus driver encouraged us to try out Tongli, another canal town that happened to be nearby. We boarded another bus, rode another hour or so, and then arrived in Tongli. Much larger than Wuzhen, Tongli was not the quiet getaway we were hoping for, and matters became worse when we discovered that we had to pay 80 kuai to even get into the city center (though from the gate we could see it was intensely touristy). We opted to cut our losses and boarded another bus alllll the way back to Suzhou.

We spent the night visiting Suzhou's own canals nestled among a rather large and bustling city before crashing at an unusually nice local hostel. The next morning we went through some shops in a surprisingly old and beautiful part of town before going on to visit Hushan (Tiger Mountain), scoping out its gardens and 1,100-year-old leaning pagoda. We FINALLY found a nice little tea shop in the Hushan mountain to sit down and read for a while sampling the regional tea that had been picked literally not more than 50 feet from the teahouse. We then made our way home to Nanjing, having salvaged a pretty darn good weekend from a pretty big travel mishap. Thankfully, all of our wanderings cost us around $10; even the largest of mistakes in China are pretty darn cheap.

Pictured below: 1) Nighttime canal viewing in Suzhou, 2) morning canal touring and shopping (primarily antiquing, very cool stuff), 3) a rather threatening piece of tourist signage and 4) me in front of the 1,100-year-old Yuyun leaning Buddhist pagoda.

Fuzi Miao, Zhengshen Lake

Fuzi Miao is Nanjing's premier Confucian temple. Big, old, and stunning, its majesty is well complimented by the county fair that surrounds it (including a children's archery course right outside the entrance for 10 yuan). Of course, beyond this fair is a beautiful and pleasant pedestrian commercial area (in fact, the first pedestrian commercial area I've been to yet in China). It cost us a total of around two dollars for cab rides to and from the Fuzi Miao area on a Saturday night, so it is a great candidate for multiple returns.

One of the first things an American notices during an extended stay in China is that you will eventually encounter many Chinese people who want their picture taken with you (especially if you are tall and/or blond). Apparently the spectacle of a "Lao Wai," or "Old Foreginer," is just that entertaining. When I originally declined the first request I got for a photo (back at the Dai Temple), the man looked absolutely heartbroken, so I relented. This past weekend at Fuzi Miao, a friend of mine turned the tables and requested random Chinese people pose for a photo with him. Awkward hilarity ensued, as not a single person agreed unhesitantly. America: 1, China: 0.

Yesterday, all of us program participants and our roommates whent out to Zhengshen Lake ("Pearl Springs Lake") for barbecue and bamboo rafting. After learning we would only be supplied with wood and a firepit (no charcoal of any kind), we quickly discovered that the vast majority of Amerian and Chinese students had no idea how to construct a sustainable fire. Luckily, there are three Philmont alums in our program, and we successfully saved the day.

Pictured below: 1) Part of the Fuzi Miao commercial center 2) the Fuzi Miao temple illuminated at night 3) a mistranslated sign I prefer to read as "Take care--off the kids," and 4) me steering a bamboo raft at Zhengshen Lake.

Attention Your Head, Pandas with Guns

Brief picture-post. Today we jumped the metro down to Xinjiekou, one of the trendy new downtown shopping areas of Nanjing (which is simultaneously deeply under- and impressively above-ground). It provided ample opportunity for us to ogle at further examples of entertaining mistranslations and hilariously odd cultural imagery.

Below are two mildly funny signs from Xinjiekou, a Pepsi bottle sporting a teenaged Shredder, and a Beijing Olympics panda-ish kind of character who happens to have a gun.

Lingual improvements

Coursework have finally begun in earnest around here, and it's fairly intense. Out of four classes, I ended up testing into the highest one, though I am the most inexperienced member of said class. Everyone else there with me either just finished a separate summer program or has been studying Chinese since high school, so my participation is usually stumbling and halting in comparison, but improving. In fact, my speech recognition is getting better by leaps and bounds; the first week I could barely understand maybe 10-15% of what my professors are saying. Now, I'm easily catching closer to 60-70%, on par with most of the others in my class.

Our Chinese roommates moved in this week; mine, Fentong, hails from a rural areal northeast of Nanjing, has a very, very heavy accent and speaks very little English. While I despaired over this to begin with, I have again been surprised with how quickly I've been able to get used to it and start to understand him these past few days. We still can't have a real basic conversation without the aid of a dictionary, but at least I'm starting to be able to understand what syllables he's saying. My own peaking and writing are still very much works in progress, but at this rate I feel by the end of the program I'll at least be greatly improved in recognition.

Many Chinese people will tell you: the vast majority of Chinese cuisine is the same from restaurant to restaurant, and it is largely true within a given region. The greatest variation (and flavor, I've found) comes from street vendors. While there are definitely moments of "I don't know what this is, but it's on a stick so it must be edible," the stuff is often mind-blowingly good. This isn't to say that all is sunshine and roses--I definitely spent most of the afternoon today in bed writhing in abdominal pain, but such things are common for foreign students and pass quickly enough.

Three-day weekends and an upcoming 10-day independent travel break are providing us with ample opportunities for adventure. After last weekend's Shandong province escapades, most of us are taking it easy this weekend, planning on exploring Nanjing a little more (the city is deceptively huge, and many of us have yet to travel to the primary downtown shopping and cultural districts). Next week a few of us are thinking of spending the weekend in Shanghai (which will hopefully become something of a monthly adventure). For my independent break, I'm thinking I'll hike around Beijing, Xi'an, and (don't tell my mom) explore the practicality of venturing into Tibet and snapping some photos of angry-looking Chinese military police.

Pictured below is a shot of my group and I doing our weekly scavenger hunt, an assignment that forces us to go out into the city and interact with people in Chinese instead of just sitting in our rooms doing homework. Here we're in front of Nanjing University's other campus cafeteria. Exciting, I know.

Also, I happened to run into a Grinnell graduate in the elevator. On Friday we're having lunch.