Departing Dalian

Maybe it's because my grandparents are also coming to Beijing. The remains of our last meal still lie out on the table. I imagine the housekeeper will be back to clean it up after we're gone. It feels like we're making ready for a long journey. They even gave away the excess perishables.



Or maybe it's knowing that I won't be back here for at least another year. There's a feeling of departure and goodbye that lingers in the air. I guess it's my goodbye to the apartment, finally. It's not a "see you later, in a week or two." My bags are packed. My temporary room put back into order. And we make the shuffling noises of double checking that everything is packed.



It makes me a little melancholy. But maybe that's just me and my lack of sleep.

P.S. I'm currently in the VIP lounge and just saw a fellow passenger, dressed neatly with a sports jacket, flip to a webpage that contains an online game I'm pretty sure I saw my roommate's boyfriend playing when he visited over the October holidays.

Yes, It's Called Chartreuse

I got this garish pretty thing at a Chinese market the other day. At approximately $10, I think it's alright... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will match a dress or two in my closet. I've been told that it will go with white and black... but what colors might it go with?

Field Trip: Aquarium

I am, at the moment, in Dalian visiting my grandparents for the third time so far this trip. The weather is pleasant, and while decidedly chill, still warmer than Chicago right now I believe. I can get away with just a light sweatshirt during the day time.

Today my grandparents took me to the aquarium. Although, now that I think about it, it was not THE aquarium, it was a building with fish in it. Themed after a submarine. Or something. There were many small "portholes" with a few fish residing behind them. Such as a lion fish, and puffer fish. There was also a whole slew of jellyfish.


However, the main attraction of the place was supposed to be the sharks.


The sharks themselves were normal, and fairly small as far as sharks go. But the shark themed deco was really something to see. There was a wall full of movie posters that had featured sharks--from Jaws to Finding Nemo--as well as many short video clips showing enraged, bloody-toothed sharks. I found this sign particularly amusing, though.



We spent the second half of the trip being swarmed by lower school children. And by swarmed, I mean that at one point we had to stand still and wait for 5 minutes so the first wave could pass by. It was to no avail, though. The second group soon caught up and we were surrounded. SURROUNDED!!!!



We went for a walk afterwards. The area was sort of a seaside amusement park. And I came across this disturbing statue. It's Zhubajie from the Monkey King stories (a.k.a Journey to the West) for those unfamiliar with Chinese stories.

Class Trip, Day 4: Shanghai

Had to get up early again today. :( We had a 8:30 am check out time (imposed by Elliot, I think, not the hotel).

To get to Pudong (aka the other side of the river--the east side/new side/side with the tallest buildings) we took the... whatsitcalled tourist tunnel thing. Think... the tunnel from Charlie and the Chocolate factory (i don't remember, does the new movie have one too?). It was seizure inducing and actually really scary. Especially the blow up people... *shudder* It has no cultural... anythings. It just happens to lead almost directly from our hotel to the Pearl (东方明珠).

Went to the pearl. Was generally unimpressed because the window was not very high and the day was hazy... and I'd seen a similar view from higher up in the financial tower.

Then I discovered the other viewing floor. It had a deck, of which the outer 2 feet or so was floored with glass! I confess to a moment of vertigo when I stepped on that thing, and even after getting used to it, walking on it was disconcerting. It amused me to notice most of the visitors sticking to the granite lined interior of the deck. I was daring and just walked around staring down. It was really frickin' awesome.

We ate, and then went to yet another copy mart and went shopping. More successful bargaining occurred. Actually, I didn't buy that much, but had fun helping a friend bargain a purse down. The first time she found it, the guy told her ~500 RMB or so. She started at 100, then went up to 110, but they wouldn't go past 120. We left and eventually found it at another stall. This time the starting price was 1550 RMB(!!!!!!!!!!!!). We got it all the way down to 120 (we figured if the other guy didn't call us back after we wouldn't give him 120, 120 was a half decent price for it). We were like, whaaaat? That's way too expensive, this guy at the other store blahblahblah. The woman acted pissed about selling it to us, but she did sell it to us for 120. (It was a grey Chloe purse, btw).

I, on the other hand, keep on experiencing buyers remorse. I keep on forgetting to walk away... I did a good job yesterday, but today... I don't know. I just forget! The prices I get are reasonable (25RMB sunglasses, 80RMB clutch that started at 200RMB).. but they still could have been lower (15-20 for sunglasses, maybe as low as 60 for the clutch.. at least 70 I think, though).

Also, found knockoff Louboutins!!! OMG they were really high quality shoes as well! I really wanted a pair, if only to own a pair! They were really way too high of heels for me to walk in, though. And they were pricey. My starting price at 700 (medium high, it starts higher for westerners, and lower for native chinese I imagine). Mimi got a pair for 350... which is standard shoe price. And these were well made and probably actually worth that much in the US (350 = ~$50) maybe a little less... *sad* I would have gotten them if i could have bought them for 100 RMB or less, but I don't want to drop $50 on a pair of shoes I won't be able to wear. <.< But I will drop $10-15 on it just so I can say I own a pair of "Louboutins." I know I'm being silly. Shhh...


This mall featured a new (to me) type of store: the INSANE knock off purse stores. Purses were the main feature at this mall, I think it's safe to say. There were stalls of them everywhere! Chinese stores/stalls are usually just a single small room with an open front. These purse stores had about 3-4 hidden rooms in the back, all with "hidden" doors... which locked! They had magnetic locks that you could only open with a controller... so we'd occasionally get locked back there. Granted the women always opened the door when we asked, but... ahhhh! God, I have to say, being in a store like that with endless rows upon rows of bags sort of hypnotizes you after a while. It's like, they're everywhere, so I have to get one!

On a different note, I got to ride the Maglev to the airport. It's a high speed train that uses magnetic levitation. If you took physics, the teacher would almost definitely have mentioned the concept during E&M (or at least, mine did!). I'm too lazy to right now, so I refer you to wiki pedia

You can be a nerd and calculate the acceleration of the train from the photos I took of the speed vs time (heh)... although it will have to be approximate since it wasn't constant (and I don't think you can calculate the rate of acceleration from given info). This is the top speed, but the rest of the photos are in the album.

:(

I lost all of my photos from this morning. These are pearl photos and bund sightseeing tunnel photos. I don't know what happened to them. :(

Class Trip, Day 3: Shanghai

Sunday morning we went to the Shanghai City Planning Museum, by People's Square (人民广场). I start all my mornings here in a daze because we get up so early (had to meet at the museum by 9:30 am). It was a pretty decent museum with 4 or 5 floors. There was a scale model of the city that made it look absolutely enormous... I think the intimidating thing about it is how many high rises there are, combined with it not being laid out in a grid system. The scale was also a big larger than the model of Beijing, so all the buildings looked huge. Right next to the current two tallest buildings in Shanghai is supposed to be built another higher building. Being a planning museum, this building was already in many of the city models.





A great deal of the museum was dedicated to the 2010 expo. I doubt anyone outside of China has heard of this, but apparently it's a similar event to a world's fair? I actually have no idea, I just see signs for it everywhere. The planned/current construction is reminiscent of what happened to Beijing for the Olympics. There are many new permanent structures being built, with a few central ones, like a HUGE red pavilion type of building.



The top floor was the most interesting. It was filled with 50-60's era propaganda posters. I really can't even describe them, you have to go check them out on your own. (i.e. go look at the photos)

Afterwards one of my classmates and I went to one of the "copy markets." I could not find these in Beijing (to my dismay) so I was thrilled to find out about them here. Apparently there are a whole bunch of them. The most popular items at this one are shoes, sunglasses, and watches. Bags are also a big thing, and I saw some coats/sweatshirts. Men's dress tops (esp Paul Smith) is also everywhere. I keep on being drawn into sunglasses stores, despite having already bought myself 2 pairs and knowing that I almost never wear sunglasses since I'm almost always wearing glasses.

I'm enjoying shopping more and more... especially since the items there are a higher quality. I"m also getting better (slightly) at only getting stuff that I want and like, instead of being sucked into buying it because of the price. It was also fun because we were two Chinese girls and therefore (I think) got lower prices, both initial and final, that the obviously foreign. We had fun listening to the English bargaining, too. "You killing me!" "I make no profit!" The English bargaining would occasionally get loud and somewhat belligerent. I think some of them get frustrated and annoyed at the persistence of the vendors.

Went with a few friends to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner (one of them was vegetarian). We managed to get somewhat lost, which seems to be a theme for Shanghai traveling. After much walking, we eventually found the place. It was totally vegetarian, but its menu had stuff like beef, chicken, crab, etc. We ordered squirrel fish, curry chicken, greens + mushrooms, taro balls, and crab roe. The squirrel fish was so funny!! it was mashed potatoes shaped into a fish. Inside were carrots and mushrooms and other veggies, and it had a semi-realistic skin (some sort of fried dough?). The chicken was thin slices of tofu (i think). I'm not sure what the crab roe was... carrots and other stuff. I was a little disappointed. I was expecting them to realistically recreate the dishes using only vegetarian products. Instead this was a sort of mockery of the dishes... and it wasn't even that great. But I suppose it's a great place for vegetarians? He really liked the food, which I guess speaks for the difference in taste.

Class Trip, Day 2: Shanghai

Shanghai is so different from Beijing, but I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's because we're staying on the Bund (sort of the waterfront, but also a very European architecture filled area) or because we're being tourists here rather than long term visitors. It feels more aggressive here, and less friendly. There are a ton of people on the streets who have a little card or laminated piece of paper with pictures of brand name products who go up to all the foreign looking people and shout out brand names at them. It doesn't sound that bad... but it quickly becomes really obnoxious when they are literally every 10-15 steps. I'm very glad I have an Asian face.

Also, everyone is getting ready for the expo. I image Beijing must have been like this in 2007... but it's gross here. There's so much construction, and the Bund is closed! We can't see the river from our side (west side) unless we go up on a building. Can't walk on the water front. *sadface* There are also millions of pictures of the shanghai expo mascot, who is this blue gumby-esque character, but with a large curl on hair on its head. It's so not endearing in any way!

So the Bund refers both to the actual walkway by the water front, and the street/area that goes with it. The buildings along there are all historical sites now, though they're all filled with banks or well known western boutiques. It throws me off though. Despite it being gorgeous architecture... it's so western!



So far, Shanghai days have started very early for me. And by very early, I mean I'm-supposed-to-be-on-vacation early, not school early.

One of our classmates had some knowledge of Shanghai, so we followed him around for the day. We started off by going to a famous xiaolongbao place near the Yuyuan (a garden/park). The area itself is old and well known, although now it consists of many restaurants and shops. It's not necessarily aimed at westerners, but it is slightly kitschy. Since the cheaper place had a line, we ended up at a more expensive place, 60RMB per person was the minimum order. Translated into USD, that's not expensive given the food, but it is rather a lot for breakfast. The food was really good, though. We had a sort of spring roll samosa esque thing--shaped like a samosa but other essentially a spring roll. It was crab roe + tofu and veggies. YUM! We also got crab roe, crab, shrimp, and normal (i.e. pork) xiaolongbao. So these differ depending on the region, but in Shanghai, where they originate from, xiaolongbao have thin skins (the thinner the better) and often are tangbao, or soup dumplings. You eat them with vinegar and ginger. Mmmmm...



There were two rather... interesting types of these baozi, though. One was a huge one that came in its only litter steamer tray and had a straw through the top of it! We didn't get it... and I'm not entirely sure how it worked, because when we saw them taken away, no one had really eaten them. It looked like it was just supposed to be drank?

The other is that Brian (the one who took us there) noticed that there were foie gras xiaolongbao. I've never had foie gras, but my impression is that it is very rich (correct me if i'm wrong) and that would make an awesome xiaolongbao.

I followed one of those people with the card of brand name items into a store that was kind of in an alley, or at least, not on the street. The alley had clothes hanging to dry and stuff... It was kind of sketch, and at one point they closed the door. To make the shop less obvious I assume? All the watches were brand-name (I only looked at watches, but they had bags and other stuff too). Gucci, Calvin Klein, Omega, other stuff I don't remember... The price the woman quoted to me was 300+RMB. O.o. Since I didn't want it, the price I gave was probably waaay too low. I'm confused as to how legit of knockoffs they are. If they are knockoffs that work, I'm willing to way 100 or so RMB. If they're going to break in 2 months though... Not more than 50 (if even! I said 30RMB lol. She was appalled). There was an american(?) guy who was enthusiastically poring over the watches.

Afterward we explored nanjingdonglu, which is a large shopping street. Just one looong pedestrian street lined with brandname shops (zara, manga, uniqulo, chinese malls, etc). It was also full of street sellers. The most popular one was this jelly pig thing that you could throw onto the ground and it would spread out like a puddle, but then it would slowly gather back up and resume it's sphere shape. It was SO AMUSING. And every time some one walked by and looked over, they would throw one down-->SPLAT!< and then it would wriggle back into its sphere again. Next we went to the top (or one of the top floors) of the highest building in Shanghai--so far. There are plans to build an even higher one. We decided to skip the official observation room and go chill in a cafe instead. However... we found out that we had to pay an 100RMB table charge--each!! (Aghhhh!!) we stayed. and even got something (expensive) to drink. And the view was really stunning (despite haze)... but oh that was so much money!

The one with the pointy top is actually shorter than the one with the flat top, as you can tell from the window shot. The one in the middle is the Pearl.



For dinner we met up with everyone and went with the professor to the Bund Brewery. It was... ok. I had a 58RMB burger which was good... but felt like an unnecessary splurge. They did indeed have their own beers, which some of the kids ordered. It was a nice change from Chinese beer. Wow, quality/dark beer in the US is going to be so weird to drink after all the Chinese beer I've had.


Burger!

Followed the professor to a nice rooftop bar afterward. Also pricey. ›.‹ I'm regretting all the money I spent just in that one day. However, it was nice to see the river from our side... and it was a gorgeous night. There was wind. And the boats and buildings were all lit up. I could have hung out there all night.


Pudong, across the river.



The Bund (or part of it).


The bar.


Southern Chinese style architecture. The roofs are not as long, and are more upturned. It's a cheerier style.

Random photo of the day.


DQ!!

Class Trip, Day 1: Suzhou

Yesterday morning marked the end of our first Civ class, for that was when we handed in our second and final paper. The next 2.5 hours hardly counted. Most of us were too sleep deprived to make more than a feeble attempt at seeming engaged. And I doubt any of us had actually done the readings. We'd all been working on our papers.

Then, after some frantic packing in between Chinese classes, we got on a bus, double checked we had our passports, and were off! Professor, TA, resident director, and a Chinese teacher in tow.

And I had what was oddly, a new experience: a "fast food" dumpling house. Or moderately quick food. Or something. The place had 凉菜, or cold appetizers (i.e. chunks of vinegared cucumber, or cold cooked string beans) and all sorts of dumplings! Well, kind of.. but there were at least 25 different kinds. It was a moderately priced meal, depending on how hungry you were (dumplings go down really easily).... I wish the US had stuff like this! I don't eat dumplings nearly often enough! These are so much better than the frozen ones I eat at home, and my mom never makes meat dumplings. :( I gorged myself on 12 pork dumplings. Mmmmmm...

Other people complained about the discomfort of the train-beds, but I personally love traveling by sleeper train. The bathrooms/bathroom courtesy of my fellow passengers could use some improvement, but the cubby-mates were nice (we'd all gotten top berths, so we had 4 other beds in the cubby occupied by strangers, who happened to be friendly [retired?] women from Suzhou. Their mandarin was a little difficult to understand). They chatted us up in the beginning, making somewhat strange remarks like how the non-asians "looked like foreigners" and the how Chinese students among us "looked like Chinese." Only the way she said it made it seem like she was being very observant or something. Like, she'd be like, yes, I knew you looked like a foreigner/chinese. She also complemented the "white" people among us on their noses.

I also discovered the dining car for the first time. Somehow I wasn't expecting them to serve real food--as in it was a mini restaurant with a kitchen and stuff. Granted, it was a very bad restaurant (at least for the one dish we tried)... but I wasn't expecting to see other tables with stuff like...a chopped whole duck/chicken. Etc. I'm apparently too used to airplanes/prepackaged prepared meals.

Awoke at 6am to painfully bright light in my eyes. Being on the top berth means that the ceiling light is right above your head. ADSFADSFsdfdsfadf. I wanted to break the thing! And we didn't even get off until 8am! I could have slept in for at least another hour if not nearly 2. ROAR.

Suzhou was nice. It was really warm, as though time had been turned back a month in Beijing. We visited a lot of gardens (it's well known for gardens), got to drink real coffee, got temporarily lost/stuck in a rock maze, and even bought some souvenirs. Perhaps most fun and most unexpected was a ride down a canal--almost a la Venice! Although with a Chinese touch, in more than one way.

We have a black guy in our group, the site of which is fairly uncommon in China. On the way over to the canal to hire a boat, a guy walked straight up to him and barely asked if he could take a photo with him before putting his arm around him and smiling at the camera. On the boat, my classmate decided to sit on the helm/deck. This meant that every single time another boat passed with passengers, at least one of those passengers took a photo of him. Once, when we were nearing a bridge, a crowd of people formed and I saw at least five cameras pulled out and aimed at him. He later told us that his roommate had found photos of him on Renren (chinese facebook)--which means that some of his roommate's acquaintances have taken photos of him!!

Also, our boat driver, a woman, found her dinner (or part of it) during our ride. We were on the way back to the dock when she noticed a mostly dead fish (the others insisted that it had moved. I was skeptical) lying in the shallows, practically completely out of the water under a stair over the canal (imagine the backdoor opening onto water, and the steps leading down to the water). She stopped the boat, backed up, and excitedly collected the fish. In the process she 1) caused a minor collision with another boat (the other guy wasn't even fazed) and 2) nearly lost her hat. She then, with renewed vigor (borne perhaps from impatience to go cook her fish, some of us speculated) finished rowing us back. Needless to say, we all found this hysterical.


The fish.


Maneuvering boat closer to above fish.


Collecting the fish.


The fish (secured).

Eventually, completed exhausted (I don't think anyone slept much on the train), we returned to the station and hopped a 1hr train to Shanghai. We had standing tickets, but some of us (like me!) were lucky enough to snag a seat. I'm still not sure if mine was empty, or if the guy who stood over me talking to his friend in the middle seat the whole ride just happened to be nice enough to let me sit in it. I think I heard him say he had a standing ticket, though...

And now I'm lounging in a pretty nice Shanghai hotel room :) More details about Shanghai to come later!


A (highly stylized) stone lion in front of a modern Chinese garden-museum-thing) and a canal.


Boats on Canal.


Mandarin ducks!!! This photo does not convey how absolutely adorable they are. In Chinese they are called yuanyang (鸳鸯). According to a only semi comprehended crash course in Chinese by a fellow tourist, yuan is the male, yang is the female. With there being some sort of importance to this... According to wikipedia:

A Chinese proverb for loving couples uses the Mandarin Duck as a metaphor: "Two mandarin ducks playing in water" (simplified Chinese: 鸳鸯戏水; traditional Chinese: 鴛鴦戲水; pinyin: yuān yāng xì shuǐ). The Mandarin Duck symbol is also used in Chinese weddings, because in traditional Chinese lore they symbolize wedded bliss and fidelity. The reason for this metaphor is because unlike other species of ducks, most Mandarin drakes reunite with their females along with their offsprings after the eggs have hatched and even share scout duties in watching the ducklings closely.

Doesn't this look like a huge tree?


Psyche! Bonsai FTW!

And I leave you with one of the most hilarious and uninformative pieces of Chinese English I have ever seen. Feel free to translate if you can. I have yet to try, and the complicated forms slow me down.

All Written Out--or not?

Bleh. Writing papers chews me up and spits me out completely lacking in any desire to write. But we've been so long without an update that I feel obligated to upload a snippet, at least, about my past week.

So I left you last at the beginning of what promised to be a crazy weekend. It was indeed quite crazy (although without the frisbee on sunday, it proved to be survivably crazy, if only barely).

Dinner was yummy. Free food always is, especially when it's Chinese food! We went to a Hunan restaurant, so much of the food was spicy, which I enjoyed immensely, but which a few of my classmates were less than thrilled by.

The promised cocktail party was lacking an important component: cocktails. It was held at the fancy Shangri-la hotel, in one of its many little hosting rooms. There were hors d'oeuvres that were... less than thrilling. The highlight were the desserts. Mmmm... Western goodies :)


There was also beer (tsingdao), wine, and coke (served in a big red wine glass that deceived a few people into thinking it was wine before taking a sip). And alumni. Who were interesting... I chatted with a few, but mostly they were in business or other professions about which I knew nothing. A lot hadn't even been to UChicago for undergrad (they were GSB grads) so there wasn't even that to talk about. I was also informed that I sounded like a southerner (i.e. south china, and Hong Kong) and needed to work on my Chinese. :( I assume I got picked on because of all the students who are actually Chinese, my Chinese is the worst. Cory's roommate later informed me that they probably meant that my tones were imperfect. *siiiigh*

Heh. I also neglected to mention that it was unusually cold outside that evening and somehow none of us had dressed appropriately. And I was wearing flats >.< That walk back was enough to make me never want to wear anything but sneakers ever again. I may have gotten pre-shinsplints in my right leg from that... somehow.. if that's possible. Ugh.

After that escapade was Karaoke. ^_^ The crowd was surprisingly small, but it was really fun. I generally made a fool out of myself through my inability to sing, but I was buzzed enough to not worry about it.


Well... that fun lasted until 3am. I think(?). And we had a meet-at-8am to go to the Great Wall that very same morning. Can't say enough about power napping on the 2hr bus ride to the park, though. Being outside and doing something physically demanding is also a good way to boost energy (oddly enough). We trudged along the wall at a brisk enough pace to climb the extra portion (up Simatai) by the time everyone else had finished. It was really fun, but my knees were rather mad at me afterwards. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, though. Totally worth it.

Despite being tired to the point of exhaustion after all this, I couldn't resist going to hang out with the frisbee people that evening. They'd just held a successful clinic for Beijing and Tianjin players that I was really sad to miss, and were just finishing up their dinner (BCD?) when I arrived. We eventually relocated ourselves to a few places, and I ended up back in my dorm at... oh... 2am? Pretty early as far as those things go.

Mmm... what else? not much else. Sunday was spent recovering/hibernating/working in my room. We yet again visited the City Planning Museum on Tuesday, during which point I managed to shock myself about 10 times. Beijing gets really fucking dry in the late fall/winter. My hair has this weird dry/static-y texture all the time now, and it's annoying. Made it to Frisbee on Tuesday too :) Frisbee is always the highlight of my week. I'm sad I've been missing so much of it lately (read: two weekends in a row = a lot). There's still so much to learn, but we're quickly approaching indoor season (or so I'm told) and running/throwing inside is not the same...

Off to Suzhou tomorrow! Yay for another train ride! It should be similar to the Dalian ride. Similar length of time, and I assume we're on hard sleepers, although I actually have no idea. Just minus the good company (JK) and the boozing and shenanigans. Ah well, maybe i'll actually get to sleep this time. And it will be fun to have what essentially amounts to a mass sleepover with the whole class.

After Suzhou (2 days, I think) we'll be in Shanghai, and then I'll be going to Dalian to spend the first few days of my week off with my grandparents. Yay for the end of my first Civ class!

long, long, long ass wall.


old part/not yet rebuilt part




newly repaved.


Gorgeous fall foliage.


So. Many. Steps. -.-


On top of the world!