Yangshou

Despite our desires to get to Yangshou as quickly as possible so we could shower, we stopped in Guilin to eat lunch and hear a lecture on Chinese painting. For the lecture, we went to the art studio of a well-known local artist. He spoke in Chinese and told us about the differences between Chinese painting and more Western style painting, the main one being that Western paintings generally depict things as they are, while Chinese paintings portray images as they appear in the mind. The lecture was very interesting, but it was very hard to focus because we were so tired and incredibly anxious to get to Yangshou.

After almost close to two more hours on the bus, we arrived in Yangshou. When we got off the bus, we were disappointed to realize that we had another long walk ahead of us with all of our bags in order to get to our hotel. My friends insisted on helping me carry my bags since my back was still bothering me from our hike in Long Sheng.

Our hotel was located on West Street, a very famous pedestrian area in Yangshou known for dining and shopping. We were really excited to be staying in this area at first, but by the end of our time in Yangshou, we had determined that staying on West Street was the equivalent of living in the gauntlet of the Silk Market for a few days.

When we got to the hotel, we were happy to unpack and do some laundry in the bathtub, as most of our clothes had gotten pretty dirty and smelly in Long Sheng. After freshening up a bit, Molly, Cara, Brittany, Gill, Jon, Aaron, Jay, Richie, and I headed off to dinner at a café on West Street, famous for American food, called Meiyou’s. Meiyou is one of our favorite words in Chinese, probably because our friend Brooks likes to say it all of the time with a bunch of funny accents. The world Meiyou translates to mean without.

We were able to sit at a long table outside on the street, which was a great location for people watching. This area was full of tourists, not only from all over China or the West, but from a bunch of different places all over the world. Most of us ordered cheeseburgers, which were delicious after nonstop Chinese food up to this point on the trip.

After dinner, we walked around West Street and tried to do some shopping. It seemed that most of the things they were trying to sell could be found in the Silk Market in Beijing and were not incredibly unique to this part of China. Also, because this area was very touristy, it was very hard to bargain for low prices. After a whole semester in China, we had all become pretty cheap. After shopping for a bit, we found another café on West Street called Drifters, where we sat and enjoyed a drink or two while people watching. Then, we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up excited for a day of bamboo rafting on the Yulong River. We suited up in bathing suits and sunscreen and headed downstairs to the hotel lobby, only to discover a heard of bicycles waiting for passengers. After all of the hiking we did in Long Sheng and walking with our luggage in Yangshou already, the study trip was beginning to feel a lot like fat camp.

Riding the bikes through Yangshou was actually pretty cool. Riding across the main streets was somewhat terrifying though, as the traffic from cars, carts, motorcycles, and other bikes was crazy. However, before we knew it, we were biking into the beautiful mountains of the Guilin area on dirt roads. On our ride, we stopped to buy crowns made out of fresh flowers to wear upon our heads.

At last we arrived at the banks of the Yulong River to find bamboo rafts, built for two, lined up and waiting for us. Cara and I boarded our raft and immediately went into Hawaii mode, stripping down to just our bathing suits and our shades.

The scenery was absolutely stunning and we drifted down the river, down small waterfalls and through minor rapids. Our raft driver was convinced that Jon and Aaron were our boyfriends and did a great job at making sure our rafts went down the river together at the same pace. Molly and Brittany and Gill were also on rafts nearby.

At different points throughout the river, they had floating snack stands where you could stop the raft to buy beer or fried fish right out of the river. We stopped to buy our driver a beer and I think that’s when we became best friends. After that, our driver let us dive off of the raft and swim in the Yulong River. The water was calm and refreshing. Cara, Brittany, and I all dove in and swam. Gill, who is a swimmer and forgot to bring a bathing suit on the trip got so jealous that she stripped down to just her underwear, which were white might I add, and dove in after us.

Once Cara and I got back on our raft, our driver decided to let us attempt steering the boat, which was much more difficult that I thought at first. He steered the raft with a long bamboo pole, which in shallow areas, he pushed right off the floor of the river and in deeper areas, used just like an oar. He helped us with our strokes at first and after a bit of practice, Cara and I were able to steer our bamboo raft down the river on our own.

Overall, our rafting adventure consumed close to two hours. In the course of that time, we went swimming several times, had splashing fights with our friends, and steered our raft further and further down river. Our rafts were the last to arrive at the downriver bank, I think because we were having the most fun.

Once we got off the rafts we decided we were going to continue biking into the mountains to explore some natural caves. Not knowing what to expect, we all purchased $2 Asian fun time shorts to wear on this adventure.

After biking a little further we stopped for lunch in a little town in the mountains. This town was awesome because it had a view of Moon Hill, one of Yangshou’s rounded peaks with a natural moon gate eroded into its very highest peak.

After stopping to eat, we jumped on a bus that took us right to the mouth of the caves. We had to check all of our belongings and all of us stripped down to just our bathing suits. We were given rubber shoes to wear for stomping around in the caves and then we set off on our adventure.

To get into the caves, we had to take small boats over water. As soon as we got into the caves, it was dark and cold and there were stalagmites and stalactites everywhere. It took two boats to get our entire group into the caves because there were 17 of us all together.

When we got off the boats, a guide led us for a hike through the caves that ended at a natural mud bath. There were no hesitations about getting drenched in mud and we all just dove right in. The mud was cold and a lot thicker than I thought it would be. I got my whole body covered because the mud is supposed to be good for your skin. There were natural rockslides that led into the mud bath, so we all took turns sliding down those. There was also a photographer at the mud bath taking pictures of us. The pictures were hilarious and we bought a few after we got out of the caves. Because we are all covered in mud, it looks like a lot of us, especially the girls, are completely naked in the pictures!

When we got out of the mud baths, we were able to rinse off a bit, but there was still mud everywhere. We then hiked, half clean, to another part of the caves where there was a natural hot spring. It felt so good. Too good in fact because when we got in, we thought it might be a good idea to skinny dip and take off our bathing suits in order to clean off most of the mud. It was definitely another bonding experience in China! We relaxed in the hot springs for a while and then we hiked back to the exit of the caves and took the boats back out into the open air.

Outside of the caves, a bunch of us bought some bamboo sandals from some of the local people. They shoes were so cool and the only cost five kuai, which is about 70 cents, so I bought two pairs, one in orange and one in black. I can’t wait to wear them back in the United States.

We then found our bikes and rode back to West Street. At this point, we were much farther from our starting location and we had a nice 45-minute bike ride ahead of us. We were all biking in our bathing suits and wearing our flower crowns. We must have been quite a sight! The ride was beautiful. We got to see more of the mountains and we entered town from a different direction, which allowed us to see a bit more of the surrounding area.

After a full day, by the time we got back to the hotel, it was already 5:40 and we had to be downstairs in the lobby for dinner by 6:00. Because we were already in our bathing suits, Molly and I jumped in the shower and took the quickest showers of our lives. The water in the showering was running brown from the mud and to this day, mud is still coming out of my ears!

Dinner was pretty good. Yangshou is located so far south in China that it is very near to Vietnam. In southern China, the Chinese food resembles more the taste of American Chinese food than northern food, such as what I have been eating in Beijing. However, authentic Chinese food is still better than what we get to eat in America.

After dinner, Brittany, Jon, Aaron, Kaity, Heidy, Amanda, Richie, Cara, and I, went on a night river cruise on the Li River to watch the local fishermen use commarant birds to fish. It was pretty impressive. The fishermen rode on bamboo rafts similar to the ones we rode earlier in the day. Attached to his raft, he had five commarant birds tied loosely by their necks. The birds would dive and catch the fish, but would not be able to swallow them because of the ties around their necks. When the birds’ mouths looked full, the fishermen would pull them on to the raft and empty the fish from the birds’ throats into a basket. He would then feed one or two of the fish to the birds as a reward and then throw them back into the water.

At one point, our boat pulled up to the riverbank with the fishermen on his raft. We got to check out the birds up close. All of a sudden, the fishermen put one of the commarants on Richie’s arm. After that, we all got to hold the bird. The bird was a lot calmer than I thought and its feet were a lot less slimy than I expected. Perhaps I can learn how to use commarants to fish in the canal in my backyard at home in America!

After our nightcruise we went back to the hotel. I caught up on some episodes of Grey’s Anatomy with Jon, Heidy, and Brittany and then went to sleep.

The next day, we had a free day, so for once on our crazy trip we decided to take a day that actually felt like vacation. Molly and I slept in, got up and showered, and went to brunch. We did some shopping, including buying matching Chinese t-shirts for our dads, and got manicures and pedicures. Later in the afternoon, we met up with some of our friends at a café on the river for drinks during happy hour.

We had dinner with the program and then went back to the hotel and watched Kung Fu Panda, which was actually a really cute movie. Because it was our last night before heading back to Beijing for a few days before going home to America, we decided go out and hit up some of the bars on West Street. Even Joyce came. Because most of the places were expensive and the music wasn’t all that great, a few of us ended up back at Drifters for a night of leisurely drinking and people watching. Then we went back to the hotel ant went to sleep.

The next morning we were able to sleep in a bit and then the Spring Break team met up for Western style breakfast. We went to eat at a café on the river and we all had omelets, juice, and coffee, which was really delicious and hit the spot! We then headed back to the hotel, hiked back to the bus and were headed back to the Guilin airport and on our way back home to Beijing!

Long Sheng

Although the trip to Long Sheng was only supposed to be a two-hour trip, it felt like much longer. I would say that it took us about two hours to get only to the base of the mountain and then the bus started to climb the windy roads. As the bus drove round and round the mountain, we listened to a playlist of Disney songs, including the Mulan soundtrack.

After driving a ways up the mountain, we needed to switch to a smaller bus that would be able to make it up the mountain on narrower roads with tighter turns. The bus was so much smaller that not all our luggage could fit underneath, so most of us were squished next to each on the bus with all of our bags in our laps.

After being on the small bus for what felt like an hour, but was probably only actually twenty minutes, we piled off the bus with all of our luggage and all of our snacks, as ready as we were ever going to be to hike up the mountain in the rain to our inn.

We started off on a muddy trail with little sense of direction and not even a clue as to where we were going or how long we would be hiking for, of course carrying all of our bags for a two week trip. Some of the locals were hiking with us and offered to carry our bags for a fee. Because I thought the inn was closer than it actually was, I thought I would be able to hike up the mountain with my duffle bag without a problem. However, I ended up straining my back less than halfway up the mountain and had one of the local women help me.

There is a very interesting ethnic minority that lives in Long Sheng. The women of this particular ethnic minority only cut their hair at major rites of passage in their lifetimes, such as marriage or child birth, and then weave the cut locks back into their hair and style them on top of their head. I was amazed how quickly these women flew up the mountain with our heavy bags, while we struggle just hiking uphill on the rocks in the rain.

Forty-five minutes later, we arrived at the village where we would be staying for the next few days, and by village I mean three wooden inns. The inn we were staying in greatly resembled a log cabin. There was a giant balcony out front, projecting right into the rice terraces and offering break-taking views. The first floor of the inn was completely intended for socializing, with large wooden windows opening to offer views of the rice paddies, with tables and chairs for eating and relaxing, a computer for surfing the web, and a projector and screen for movies and music.

The rooms where we were staying we located on the second and third floors of the inn. We were randomly assigned keys and brought our things upstairs. I was not expecting much, but I was surprised to find that the two sides of the hallways upstairs were vastly different, so much that we referred to Molly and Brittany’s side of the hallway as the first wall because of its picturesque windows, western toilet, and slow Internet connection, meanwhile, our side of the hallway, or the third world as we dubbed it, had no windows, no Internet, and most different of all, a squatty potty with a water pipe over it as a shower.

Because we were already wet, dirty, muddy, and covered in livestock poop and sweat from the hike up, we decided to do some more exploring and do some hiking. We hiked through the village and up further into the rice terraces. We got some great pictures, although we all looked pretty gross from our hike up the mountainside.

The coolest part of our hike was our interactions with the local rice paddy farmers. At one point, Brittany, Jay, and I climbed down into the terraces to talk to a farmer who was working there. We obviously spoke in Chinese and he seemed so excited to speak with us. He allowed us to take pictures and even traded his traditional Chinese farmer’s hat for Jay’s adventure hat in a photo op.

As the sun went down, we hiked back to our inn, which was one of the only places we found food on the mountain. We ordered dinner and then we all went upstairs to shower. Cara got in our shower first. She was in and out real quick, and didn’t have any problems with the squatty potty, so I felt pretty optimistic.

Armed with my travel size toiletries and my shower shoes, I headed into our third world shower. Once I got in, it wasn’t all that bad. While I was washing my hair the water pressure kept going in and out. At first I didn’t think anything of it until the end of my shower, as I was straddling the squatty potty washing my face and the water pressure went all the way out so that no water was coming through the pipe. I froze and waited a second for the water to come back on. When it did, it came out in full force, so hard in fact that the pressure caused the shower pipe to burst from the wall. At this point, I was so startled as I stood over the squatter, that I accidentally rubbed soap in my eye. In all the confusion in the midst of water spraying, and now plaster from the wall flying everywhere, I stepped in the squatty potty in an attempt to regain my footing and to shut the water off. Thank goodness I was wearing shower shoes! At last I managed to turn the shower off. I looked at myself in the mirror, only to find that I was covered in tiny flakes of white plaster. After trying to wash off in the sink, I went downstairs to report the incident in my bathroom. My friends laughed at me and continued to pick pieces of plaster off my arms and out of my hair. The inn owner was very apologetic and explained that my experience was a frequent one, as water pressure on the side of the mountain was often testy and unpredictable. I guess fortunately, the inn owners did not have the part to fix my shower, so I got to use Molly and Brittany’s first world shower for the rest of our stay in Long Sheng.

After the shower over the squatty potty that almost killed me, we ate dinner downstairs in the inn. Later that evening, the inn owners lit off fireworks for us in the rice paddies below and gave us three foot sparklers, similar to the ones we had on Chinese New Year, to play with. What else do you do to entertain yourself in the evening on the side of a mountain? That night when we went to bed, Cara and I were able to have pillow talk with Jon and Richie, who were living next door to us, because the walls were so paper thin.

We had the next day completely free after having a group breakfast at the inn. We decided to do some more hiking, but this time took off in a different direction. We didn’t get too far before it started to downpour. At that point though, it didn’t matter. We continued hiking and to be completely honest, the scenery was just as beautiful, if not more so, in the rain.

I was really proud of us. We ended up hiking for about four hours and we were completely dirty and soaked by the time we were through. On the hike back down, we stopped at a different inn for lunch. The food was delicious and so inexpensive. As a matter of fact, I thought it was better than the food at the inn where we were staying.

After lunch we all showered and changed right into our pajamas for the rest of the day. I spent some time reading upstairs and then brought my book downstairs and sat gazing out at the rice terraces while reading and sipping tea. It was quite possibly the most relaxed I have ever felt. Later, we had some intense card games before dinner.

After eating dinner at the inn, the inn owners became excited to learn that we had brought our Ipods with us up the mountain and put our music on the inn’s speakers. They cleared all of the tables from the first floor, gave us some Tsingtaos and a microphone, and let us have a party. It was really cool because we got some of the locals, along with their children to dance and sing with us. Even Joyce and Hong Li were a part of this crazy, mountainside, pajama party. I guess music and dance really is a great way to break cultural barriers.

The party went on through all hours of the morning. Even when I went upstairs to go to sleep, I could hear the music and laughing through the floor. I think it is so cool that we were able to have such a good time in such an isolated place. It just goes to show you that you don’t need much to make quality times with good friends.

The next morning, we woke up early, ate breakfast, and prepared for the hike back down the mountain. I was in a very strange mood. It was like preparing to leave the third world and paradise all at the same time.

It figures as soon as we stepped out on the balcony of the inn with all of our bags that it started to downpour, harder than it ever had rained during our stay on the mountain. Fortunately, the woman who had helped me carry my things up the mountain had come again to help me and gave me a poncho. Before our climb down, I bought some silver bracelets from my new friend. I love them and I can’t wait to wear them in America!

The hike down the mountain was just as bad as the hike up. It was raining so hard and the rocks were muddy and slippery. Rain and mud were running down my poncho and sweat was causing the plastic to stick to me. My jeans were soaked through to my skin and my sneakers were ready to kick it at the base of the mountain after just a few days of intense hiking. I was one of the first people down the mountain and so we had to wait for the whole group to get down safely. Despite the ponchos, we were all drenched, except for Joyce, whose umbrella seemed magical.

Two more winding bus rides later, we were at the base of the mountain and on our way back towards Guilin and on towards Yangshou!

Guilin

We arrived in Guilin in the evening, despite any airport troubles this time, and jumped on a bus to our hotel. I was a little unsure about Guilin when riding to the hotel, because the area surrounding the airport seemed really rundown. However, as we got closer to the water and to the hotel district, the city became beautiful.

By the time we checked into our rooms, we were all starving. Molly, Jon, Aaron, Richie, Jay, and I decided to walk around near our hotel in search of food. We found a really cool pedestrian area about a block away, filled with outdoor cafes, bars, nightclubs, and fast food. We ended up eating at an outdoor café, which was really delicious and really inexpensive. I ate fried Guilin noodles, a specialty of the area.

After dinner, we were so tired from traveling, that we all went back to the hotel and crashed, despite the relatively lively nightlife scene. We were so tired in fact that we slept in the next morning and slept right through breakfast. It was a much desired and needed rest to recharge for the second half of our trip!

Before leaving Guilin on our bus to Long Sheng, we had a huge meal, perhaps one of the biggest on the trip so far. Joyce Li and Hong Li told us it was because there was no food on the mountain where we were going. Little did we know they weren’t kidding. Sarcasm is not actually understood at all in China.

At the lunch table, Joyce read all of our palms, which ironically she says is not a Chinese thing, but most Chinese people know how to do and are superstitious about anyway. Believe or not, I received the best reading out of most of my friends. I have an incredibly long life line with no complications, leading Joyce to believe I ill die peacefully of old age. I also have an incredibly long wisdom line that intersects with a stable career line, meaning that I will have a good, high status, and challenging career. Joyce also told me I have one of the most complicated love lines she has ever seen, but according to my palm, I will eventually get married and have two children. It was all very interesting.

After lunch, Joyce and Hong Li took us to a super market nearby, really forcing us to believe that there was going to be no food on the mountain and encouraging us to buy snacks to bring with us. After stocking up on a variety of goodies we were back on the bus and off to Long Sheng after our brief stop in Guilin!

Chengdu

What an experience in the Chengdu airport! Since this was the first time I was flying domestically in China, I really had no idea what to expect, but I figured that getting through airport security would be pretty quick. Boy, was I wrong!

Believe it or not, we had a lot of trouble with our checked baggage in the airport. While my bags were just fine, I felt so bad for our friend, Damien. At the Shaolin Temple in Luoyang, a bunch of my friends bought souvenirs including swords, knives, slingshots, etc., and placed them in their checked luggage to avoid trouble at the airport. Damien bought brass knuckles, as a prank gift of course, and was pulled into police custody in the airport. My program directors went with him to explain how the brass knuckles were just a souvenir. At first the police wanted to charge Damien a 500 kuai fine, about $75 and throw him into jail for 10 days. Joyce and Hong Li continued to argue with the police and haggle down Damien’s sentence. At last, he got away with fingerprints and a warning. Ironically though, the brass knuckles were considered a weapon while all of the knives and swords that made it on to the plane were considered art tools.

We arrived in Chengdu in the afternoon and were thrilled with our hotel. Not only did it have air conditioning, but it also had spacious rooms with Internet! At this point we were so tired from traveling that we took the afternoon to relax. First we went on a mission for snacks and settled on some street food consisting of bread and twar and then we went back to the hotel and watched a movie.

That evening, we met up with the other group of students traveling from our program in Beijing for dinner. I was really worried about the food in Chengdu because it is located in the Sichuan Province, which is especially known for spicy food. However, the dinner we had was hot pot. Although I am not a huge fan of hot pot, the hot pot we had was pretty good. Half the hot pot was spicy and half of it tasted more like a chicken broth. Hot pot is fun because you get to cook all of your food in the soupy pot on the table and then fish for it and dip it in all different kinds of sauces on the table. After dinner we called it an early night to rest up for the visit to the Panda Research Center the next day.

After breakfast at the hotel the next morning, we headed out to the famous Chengdu Panda Research Center. Unfortunately, the weather was overcast and misty, which made it seem like a jungle walking through the research center.

We got to see a bunch of pandas, including the rare black and white pandas, red pandas, adult pandas, and baby pandas. I event got to hold a baby red panda named Hao Hao after making a donation to assist in preventing panda extinction. Before holding the panda, I had to put on scrubs and gloves. The panda was so cute and playful. He sat in my lap and played with an apple wedge while I held him. My friend Jon made a $150 donation and held a baby black and white panda.

After visiting with the pandas all morning, we went to lunch in Chengdu and then went to walk around Jin Li Street, a very famous antique shopping market in Chengdu. I was surprised Jin Li Street was not more crowded. There were several cool things to look at, including sugar candy blown in to shapes, jade and jewelry, and Sichuan Opera masks.

Later that night, we went to a famous Irish pub in Chengdu called the Shamrock. Ironically, Shamrock was hosting a Cinco de Mayo party, so we celebrated Cinco de Mayo at an Irish bar with Asians wearing sombreros on May 8th. It was a bit funny and ironic, but I am not going to complain about cheap and delicious margaritas.

Our last day in Chengdu was supposed to be a free day, however the majority of us were dying to see the Le Shan Buddha, the largest Buddha in the world, located about two hours outside of Chengdu. According to most world travelers, seeing the Le Shan Buddha is the equivalent of seeing the Sphinx in Egypt, so we could not justify being so close and not being able to see the Buddha. Fortunately, Joyce helped us organize a small, private bus to take us to the Budda, or as we said, “Buddha bus to biggest Buddha.”

When we arrived in Le Shan, we had to hike to where the Buddha was located. It was again misting a bit, so the stone steps we had to climb were a little bit slippery. Overall, it seemed pretty quiet on the mountain.

Finally, we discovered the Buddhist Temple, and at the exit of the temple, on the side of a cliff over the water, we found the world’s largest Buddha. The Buddha was built during the Tang Dynasty in China and carved out of the side of the cliff in the year 731. The Buddha is 233 feet tall and has remained incredibly well preserved, despite the Sichuan earthquake last year. The Buddha also has 1000 buns on his head. Apparently, six large adults can stand on the Buddha’s big toenail.

We were able to hike down the side of the cliff, which was a bit terrifying, to the river level at the feet of the Buddha. It was breath-taking to look up at the biggest Buddha in the world. We then continued to hike the mountain. We saw some more tombs, some other cool, smaller buddhas, and a fishing village. In this fishing village, I bought a jade Buddha necklace for good luck for 12 kuai, less that two dollars! Eventually we arrived at the sleeping Buddha, 171 feet long and carved into the side of a mountain, which while not record-breaking, was still pretty cool.

Before jumping back on the bus to Chengdu to meet up with the rest of our group and fly to Guilin, we grabbed a quick lunch at the base of Le Shan, mostly consisting of delicious noodles. We then took the bus back to Chengdu. Because we had some time remaining before needing to leave for the airport, Molly and I sat in Tian Fu Square, the city center of Chengdu, and people-watch for a bit. Shortly after, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed out belongings and boarded the bus on the way to the airport!

Xi'an

We got up early this morning, checked out of the hotel, grabbed some McDonald’s coffee and headed to the train station on our way to Xi’an!

Instead of taking an overnight train to Xi’an we took a train during the day. This was not an express train, meaning one of the fast trains I have become accustomed to taking when traveling around China. This was a slower train, a double decker that took six hours to bring us from Luoyang to Xi’an.

Our tickets were for the lower level of the train. On this kind of train, the seats are four seats facing each other. Luckily, I got to sit with Aaron, Molly, and Brittany. I napped for the first part of the trip, listened to my Ipod, and read some of my book. Before I knew it, we had arrived in Xi’an.

When we left the train station, we had to walk really far to find our bus. It was so hot and humid outside that I was covered in sweat by the time we finally got on board and headed for the hotel.

Xi’an reminds me a lot of Nanjing. It’s definitely a southern city with a very laid back feeling. It definitely looks like there is a lot more going on here than there was in Luoyang and there is a lot more history in this area. Xi’an is generally known as the China of 2,000 years ago.

On the way to the hotel, we drove along the Xi’an city wall, one of the oldest city walls still standing in the world. The Qing emperors built this wall almost 2,000 years ago to guard their territory.

Our hotel in Xi’an was located in a great area, right in between the old drum tower and bell tower and not too far from the city wall. The hotels rooms here were smaller than the rooms and Luoyang, but still relatively nice. There was also no air-conditioning still, which we probably could have used even more so in Xi’an than in Luoyang.

After checking into our rooms, we went to the conference room to hear a professor from a local university in Xi’an lecture on the Qing Dynasty. The lecture was given in Chinese and I was surprised how much of it I could actually understand. Hong Li translated about after every sentence.

The lecture was very interesting and I definitely felt more prepared for our visit to the Terra Cotta Warriors the next day after learning a bit about the Qing dynasty. The Qing dynasty gained their power and worked their way up in social status from local farmers. The Qings restored the dynastic system to China after an era of great decentralization. The most perplexing thing about the Qing Dynasty is that their rule only spanned 15 years over two emperors. The demise of their rule is likely to be linked to Chinese culture at the time.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are a part of the elaborate burial of the first Qing emperor, whose mausoleum is located near the terra cotta pits but has yet to be unearthed. Of the nearly 8,000 Terra Cotta soldiers, only approximately 1,000 of them are available for viewing by the public. The warriors, horses, and chariots where meant to protect the emperor after death. Buried with the emperor are allegedly also several scholars, poets, and artists. The emperor has yet to be unearthed because there is a large amount of mercury surrounding his tomb, making his unveiling unsafe at this time.

After the lecture, we went to dinner near the hotel. Xi’an is very famous for its dumplings, which we definitely enjoyed at dinner. Dinner consisted of an 18-course meal, each course consisting of a sampling of a different kind of dumpling. I tried them all, however my favorite dumplings by far were the pork and mushroom ones.

After dinner, we walked a few blocks to the Xi’an city wall, which was all lit up at night. On and along the wall, there were performances going on, including music and dancing. On the wall we were able to rent bicycles and ride up and down the wall in all directions. Molly and I rented a bicycle built for two, which was difficult to ride at first, but really fun once we got the hang of it. Being on the Xi’an city wall felt very symbolic for the rest of China. There we were riding on a wall that was so old in the middle of a city so modern filled with the latest technology and music. This paradox is the essence of China.

After exploring the Xi’an city wall, we went back to the hotel and changed to get ready to go out. Joyce Li was actually coming out with us and knew of a really good dance club called One Plus One. A whole bunch of us went and it ended up being a lot of fun. They played a lot of techno music and had bubble machines and fog machines installed in the ceiling. We danced with a lot of people are age from Xi’an, which was a lot of fun.

After breakfast the next morning, we headed to the Terra Cotta Warriors. It was very hot again. The first building we went into was a museum, where we were able to see some of the horses and chariots that were best preserved up close. We then moved on to the third pit of terra cottas, which was the most destroyed. We saw the remains of what used to be Terra Cotta soldiers, and then moved on to pit two.

Pit two was a lot smaller, but better preserved. We saw some horses and some soldiers, however, they were all headless and their weapons had been removed.

The most impressive pit was obviously pit number one, which most people have seen on the discovery channel. Some of the Terra Cotta warriors are actually on display right not at the National Geographic Museum in DC. It was a site that I have seen on the discovery channel, but never thought that I would see in person. Now I can say I have seen all of the remaining manmade wonders of the ancient wall.

After seeing the Terra Cotta warriors, we went to see the Great Mosque of Xi’an. China actually has a relatively large Muslim population and our hotel was located very close to Muslim street. It was interesting to see a mosque in China compared to some of the more traditional mosques I saw when I was in Egypt last year. The mosque looked a lot like a temple, including a minaret that looked more like a pagoda. The farthest point in the mosque, where Muslims could actually worship, looked a lot more like a traditional mosque than the grounds surrounding it.

On the way back to the hotel, we walked through Muslim street, where there was a lot of shopping and street food. I bought a rope bracelet with jade stones. It’s a really great souvenir.

We had a group dinner at the hotel and them some of us went to Starbucks to use the Internet for a bit. After dinner and our Internet break, we decided to go out to one of the famous streets in the area with a bunch of outdoor bars and cafes within walking distance of the hotel. We met up with some other friends from our program and hung out for a bit and then went to a place to dance closer to the hotel. The dance floor was like a trampoline. It was so much fun!

We didn’t get back to the hotel too late, so we packed, and went to sleep!

Off to Chengdu in the morning!

Luoyang

We left for the study trip on Saturday night around 7PM. Saturday was a really crazy day because I was trying to pack up my room as other people were trying to move things into my room to store while on the trips. By the end of the afternoon, I was really stressed out, but really looking forward to vacation.

The overnight train was a lot of fun. While I have been on the overnight train several times before, it was really cool to have almost a whole car to our group. Because we were broken up into small groups for the trip, my group, which included Molly, Cara, Brittany, Jon, Aaron, Richie, and Jay, and I were all able to sit together. We had only top and middle bunks, so luckily the boys were nice enough to give sleep in the top bunks so us girls could sleep in the middle.

By now, I have gotten really used to traveling on the overnights trains. Before we knew it, it was 7AM and we had arrived in Luoyang, the first stop on our study trip. After leaving the train station, we went straight to our hotel, which was located in the center of town. The hotel was pretty nice, however the air conditioning had not yet been turned on. In the relatively northern parts of China, the air conditioning does not get turned on until June, however the temperature outside was in the 80’s and it was incredibly humid.

Luoyang is a relatively small city compared to Beijing. It is really well known for breeding peony flowers, which can be seen all over the city. After checking into our rooms, we ate breakfast at the hotel, grabbed a quick cup of coffee and McDonald’s and were on our way to do some sightseeing.

Still smelly and wearing the same clothes from the overnight train, we headed to the Shaolin Temple, about an hour outside of Luoyang, known as the birthplace of Kung Fu. The temple itself was fairly ordinary by Chinese standards, but the surrounding area was really cool.

The best part about the Shaolin Temple was the Pagoda forest. It’s exactly as it sounds: tons of pagodas all together. The temple was also really cool because we were able to watch a Kung Fu show. Some of the things we saw were unbelievable. We saw everything from traditional martial arts moves to men breaking swords over their heads. Apparently, it takes 20 years to learn that skill.

There was also a lot of shopping at the Shaolin Temple, very touristy items of course. While I only bought a t-shirt, some of my friends bought souvenir weapons used in Kung Fu training such as brass knuckles, swords, and knives.

After seeing the Shaolin Temple, we jumped on the bus on our way to the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China. What was really cool about this temple was that the Buddhist monks still practice there.

At this point in the semester, I think I am just about done with temples. We have seen several and they all look just about the same with some minor differences. I am really looking forward to getting to see new things later on in the trip.

After seeing the temples, we got to take a quick shower and then went to dinner. The restaurant we were taken to was in a pedestrian area. The food was very similar to the food we often eat in Beijing, especially since we have not traveled too far south yet. Tired from traveling, we hung out in the hotel that night.

The next morning we woke up early to get our breakfast at the hotel and our McDonald’s coffee before heading out to see the Longmen Grottos. It was so hot and humid.

The grottos were really cool. Basically, there was a cliff side along the river, filled with caves, with over 3,000 buddhas carved into the sides of the mountain. We were able to climb up the cliff and see all of the buddhas. In addition to the grottos themselves, we saw another temple, some hills, and some caves. The views were exquisite.

After seeing the grottos, we went out to lunch at a restaurant not too far from where we had dinner last night. After lunch and after freshening up at the hotel, Cara, Damien, Aaron, Richie and I went for a walk around Luoyang. In our travels, we found Peony Park, an amusement park and zoo where we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and meeting up with some more of our friends.

At Peony Park, I went on a Chinese roller coaster and the whole group of us went on the bumper cars, which was a lot of fun. We also got to see the zoo animals. The monkeys were my favorite because there were so many baby monkeys who were playing.

Later that night, we were so tired that we decided to get Pizza Hut and hang out at the hotel again. Luoyang did not have such a great nightlife scene and we were leaving for Xi’an early the next morning, so I think it was a good idea that we decided to take it easy.

Off to Xi’an in the morning!

The Final Days In Shaoyuan

Our final days in Shaoyuan have been bittersweet, excited for the study trip, sad to leave behind life as usual, stressed to the maximum, but still having a blast.

This finals week has been the most stressful of my college career. After having to turn in little work this semester, having tons of massive papers concentrated at the end of the semester was rough. I wrote over 100 pages, composing three different papers, and still had time to spend with friends and have fun. I also had a Chinese final to study for.

On Tuesday night, Wang Qian came over so that we could make jiaozi, or dumplings, together. I think everyone in the program living together had some hand in make dinner. We spent hours chopping different ingredients and folding and rolling the jiaozi dough into the perfect shapes. Three hours, two kitchens, 400 jiaozi, and a mess later, we were all full! I think everyone played a part in eating too!

We made pork dumplings and vegetable dumplings. Both were delicious. Wang Qian trusted Gill and I to cook the vegetable dumplings on our own upstairs, while she cooked the pork dumplings downstairs. I think we did a great job because the dumplings were all gone by the end of the night!

For dessert, Wang Qian made us a hot rice wine drink, which was really good, yet ironic that it was the night before our Chinese final, not to mention the baijiu she brought us to go along with dinner!

After cooking and cleaning up, Wang Qian came and hung out in mine and Marie’s room for a bit. It’s so nice to have a teacher who is such a close friend. Wang Qian has, since finishing her thesis, become one of my girlfriends in China. I’m going to miss her a lot when I leave China, but she has promised to visit me in New York, possibly for Thanksgiving, and make jiaozi for my entire family!

I’m glad finals are over, but packing to leave for the study trip has been stressful. Our room was chosen as a storage room for the study break, so I technically don’t have to pack, but it’s probably a good idea because everyone will be moving all of their stuff into my room. Based on my preliminary packing, I’m sure I will not have a problem getting everything back to America, but I might be a tad heavy!

I’m excited for the study trip! It will be a ton of traveling, but worth it I’m sure!

Gong Cun Village and Migrant Elementary School

On Wednesday, Gill took us to visit the migrant elementary school where she has been working all semester teaching English. I was really interested in seeing the school, especially because I had done a lot of reading about migrant villages in my Chinese Women’s Studies course. My experience exceeded all of my expectations.

When we arrived at the school, we had to walk through the village. It was amazing. The roads were all dirt. The street was lined with shabby buildings composed of one-room apartments. There were street food vendors and outdoor billiards tableseverywhere. And even more so than anywhere else in China, the people were curious and welcoming.

The school had a huge open courtyard with a flagpole in the center. The classroom buildings looked like small houses. Another small house served as the office and hangout for all of the teachers.

When we arrived at school, Gill took us to see some of her fifth grade classes. The students were so excited and they just kept shouting “hello, hello!” All of the fifth grade students had English names, some of whom Gill had named after us. Unfortunately, no student was named Georgette because my name is very difficult for Chinese people to pronounce. Gill’s classes performed B-I-N-G-O for us and some of them did the chicken dance or the Macarena.

Later, Gill’s co-worker, the Chinese English teacher, named Judy met up with us. Judy was awesome! She loved having us in the English classes and had us all participate. We went to some of the fifth grade classes and some of the second grade classes. In some of the classes the students asked us questions about life in America and we answered in Chinese or English. Some of the classes taught us some of their favorite words or Chinese sayings. We helped the second graders prepare for a quiz on English vocabulary words and then they sang Beijing Yuanying Ni to us.

In one of the classes, Molly and I got to teach the class the names for different parts of the body. We taught them a song in Chinese with both English and Chinese vocabulary. I think the kids really liked it and they were screaming it at the top of their lungs.

The students had five-minute breaks between classes, which gave us time to interact with them. They loved having their pictures taken. Several of the students tried to offer us food and gifts. One of the brightest second grade students, named Wang Jie, gave me a gemstone as a gift. It was so adorable.

On the whole, the students were so bright, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. As the sons and daughters of migrant workers, their strong work ethic shone through. The same was true for the teachers working at the school. They seemed so dedicated and eager to impress. While several of the teachers spoke English, they were nervous to do so in front of us because they were afraid of making mistakes.

Towards the end of the day, we got to meet the headmaster of the school. She only spoke Chinese, so I had the opportunity to use my Chinese. Overall, she was impressed with our ability to speak the language and communicate.

The headmaster was so grateful for us sacrificing our day to volunteer at the school. She explained to us that parents at the school were so happy to see foreigners teaching English, because they felt they were better teachers. She also explained to us a little bit more about how the school works. The school is completely run on tuition, which is 400 kuai per year, less than $60, and donations. It is hard to believe that a school can function on this budget.

The headmaster was so grateful towards us that she demanded that we allow her to take all of us out to dinner, which is typical of Chinese custom. After watching the students line up and leave school for the day, happily and carefree with their parents, as is the true nature of a migrant village, the headmaster had the school driver drive us to dinner at one of the nicest restaurants nearby, outside of the village. On the way, we passed the theme park in Beijing designed to mimic Disney World. It was pretty cool.

The restaurant we went to was probably the nicest restaurant I have been to in China and I probably ate the most I have ever eaten. The headmasters and the teachers who came with us barely ate themselves, but instead chose to keep serving us food, everything from soup, to roast duck, to dessert pastries, to tea. It was almost like being force-fed. I was stuffed by the time we left and the private driver drove us back to Beida.

I really wish I would have discovered the school earlier in the semester. I would have certainly volunteered my time when I wasn’t in class to assist with teaching English and to play with the kids. The whole experience made me feel grateful for the education I have received and has completely changed my perception of migrant villages as slums as offered by several of the books I read for class. Instead, I now view these places as towns of hardworking, happy people who need the help of people who are more fortunate, like me. Perhaps someday in the future I will return to China and find myself working or volunteering in a school, such as the one in Gong Cun.

Camping on the Great Wall

Finally it’s the weekend again and a much anticipated weekend at that!

Friday was Sports Day for the Chinese students at Beida, so none of them had class. While we were in Chinese, we could hear the students cheering at different events. When I got out of class, I went down to the track to watch Olivia run in the 1,500 meter race that she has been training for.

When I arrived at the track, I should have known to expect something crazy. The men’s races were still underway. It’s a good thing I was sitting in the bleachers alone, because I had to try to keep my giggles to myself. There were some competitors in the races wearing appropriate gym attire, but most were bizarrely dressed. Some competitors were decked in all out matching sweat suits and sweatbands, while others wore jeans and dress shoes, and some were even wearing full suits with their racing numbers pinned on. What was funny was that in most of the races, the runners in suits and dress shoes did not only win, but lapped the last place runner by the end of each race. Also, each runner seemed to have a cheerleading team following them on the turf, cheering and motivating them, of course to the sounds of cheesy music crackling over the PA system.

Olivia did really well in her race, although she was very nervous! She sent me a text message the day before the race, expressing her worry that if she did not do well in the race, that she would “lose face.” This is a common expression and a common concern in China, as many Chinese people worry about their reputations and their family honor. Olivia, however, has nothing to worry about, as she finished fifth out of about 20 other girls in her race.

Later in the afternoon, Olivia came over to Shaoyuan to hang out and watch the Princess Diaries. Last week, Olivia watched The Devil Wears Prada and loved it, so I decided to show her another great Anne Hathaway movie! I was also able to share some of my dwindling supply of American snacks with her. Olivia tried a Rice Krispies treat and absolutely loved it!

Later Friday night, Richie invited a few of us to go out for Sichuan food with his tutor, Hua Si, whose English name is Grace. I had met Grace once before at Propaganda. She is really outgoing and fun to be around. She works for a company right now, but wants to travel and teach Chinese to foreigners.

The Sichuan restaurant we went to was really nice. Sichuan food is typically known as being incredibly spicy and exotic. At this restaurant, the food certainly lived up to its expectations. I also tried new things to eat, including frog and blood. Although spicy is not generally my preference, I have certainly built up a high tolerance to spice since living in China. Dad, you must try Sichuan food, you would love it!

After dinner, we went to Pyro’s for happy hour and then Richie, Cara, Grace, and I ended the classic Wudaokou night at Propaganda.

On Saturday morning, I woke up early to work on final papers. After a delicious lunch at West Gate, we left around 2PM for the Huanghuacheng Great wall. After about two hours on the bus, we arrived at a local farmer’s house. We still had some time before the farmer served dinner, so we decided to go for a walk and do a bit of hiking.

The area was beautiful. This part of the Great Wall is known for the beautiful yellow flowers on the mountainsides. The wall in this area is also divided across a river, with a beautiful waterfall. We were able to walk across the waterfall to the other side of the mountain and hike a bit more near some ruins of the wall.

After walking around for a bit, we went back to the farmer’s house for dinner. The food was actually really good. It was really nice too because we were all able to eat together, including everyone in the program who made the trip, our Chinese friends from Beida, and Dr. Sun, Hong Li, and Joyce Li.

After dinner, we built a campfire in the farmer’s yard and played some games. Joyce Li asked me to host the games with Ben, which was a lot of fun. The games included Chinese telephone, a song and lyrics game with both Chinese and American songs, a Chinese trivia game, a balloon popping game, and best of all, a game called “who’s the drunk,” which involved drinking baijiu, Chinese rice alcohol that tastes like fire water.

After the campfire, the farmer led those of us wanting to camp up the side of the mountain to the Great Wall. Some members of our group chose to stay at the farmer’s house, where they would be warmer and much more comfortable.

The hike was much harder than I thought it would be. When I saw the trail the next morning, I had no idea how we made it up the mountain at night. First of all, it was so dark. The only light we had was the stars, of which I have never seen so many, and maybe five or six flashlights divided between about thirty of us. After hiking up a steep trail in complete darkness for about an hour, we could finally see the Great Wall in front of us.

When we climbed up the wall, we were so hot from the hike and from carrying our backpacks and sleeping bags. Most of us stripped down to just tank tops, which in retrospect seems crazy because it was so cold. We used the flashlights on the wall to scope out the area and find the best place to camp out.

Jay, Gill, Nick, Wang Qian (my Chinese teacher who now refuses to let me call her Wang Laoshi because we are such good friends) and I chose to sleep in the highest tower on our section of the wall. The top of the tower was completely open, so we were able to set up our sleeping bags so we could literally sleep under the stars.

We were able to build a campfire in our tower on the Great Wall, which definitely helped with the cold. Some of our friends who slept in lower towers told us they could see the glow and smoke from our tower on lower parts of the wall and were jealous. Wang Qian also brought a ton of snacks and we were actually able to heat some sushi over the campfire. I don’t usually like sushi, but this kind was delicious!

I had brought my Ipod and my speaker and Jay had brought a deck of cards, so we were able to hang out in the tower, listen to music, and play cards. At one point, fireworks were set off from the farming town below the Great wall. It was amazing standing in the pitch black, open air, on the Great Wall and watching these huge fireworks explode below us.

Our fire went out around 1AM and we decided to try to go to sleep. The embers from the fire kept us warm for about an hour and I think we all slept just a bit. However, about an hour later, we were all freezing! I was wearing three pairs of socks, three pairs of pants, four shirts, and was snuggled in a thermal sleeping bag and I was still freezing. I had my hat on, but it was so cold that I had to pull my sleeping bag completely over my head. It was so cold that I don’t think any of us slept!

Around 4:30AM, we decided to stop trying to sleep. It was so cold that we couldn’t get out of our sleeping bags, so we literally potato sack hopped outside of our tower in our sleeping bags to watch the sunrise. It was impressive that we were able to hop over the ghost doors of the tower, which have an extra step because Chinese legends claim that ghosts cannot bend their knees. Because we had the highest tower on the wall, we had the best spot to watch the sunrise. It was absolutely amazing. I honestly don’t know how many people can say that they have see a 4:30AM sunrise from the Great Wall of China.

Shortly after the sunrise, we packed up to hike back down the wall and back down the mountain to the farmer’s house. I have no idea how we made the climb in the darkness. The side of the mountain near the wall was so steep. I actually fell several times and ended up sliding down the mountain on my butt in the firt for most of the steep parts. I was so dirty by the time I reached the bottom of the mountain. However, the hike down was pretty cool, since we couldn’t see anything the night before. We were actually walking through a farming village. The houses were scattered and we walked by farmer’s houses and farmers in the fields wearing pointed hats and tending to their crops.

When we got back to the farmer’s house, we were all still pretty tired and pretty cold. Once we got back on the bus to head back to Beida, I think everyone fell asleep right away because I don’t think anyone was able to sleep on the wall. However, it was totally worth it and something I will remember for the rest of my life!

Mao’s Mausoleum, Temple of Heaven, the Beijing Acrobats, and the Silk Market: A Jammed Packed Weekend!

Since we only have about a week and a half left in Beijing, we are certainly taking advantage of every spare moment we have, starting this weekend!

This weekend was my good friend, Cara’s, 21st birthday. On Friday night, we went out to one of our favorite bars/dance clubs in Sanlitun called Tun. Tun is really cool because it is actually a really old firehouse converted into a bar, dance club, and lounge. They also play really fun music and a lot of our “China Jams,” our inside joke songs that we have made into a playlist.

When we got back from Tun on Friday night, Molly and I made a collage of pictures from this semester on Cara’s door and hung up balloons. Looking at the collage when it was finished, we noticed how young everyone looked at the beginning of the semester. The even better realization though, was how close we have all become and how many unforgettable memories we have from just three short months in China so far!

We got up really early on Satuday morning, and Jay, Aaron, Jon, Molly, and I left Shaoyuan for Tiananmen Square around 9:30 AM headed for Mao’s Mausoleum. We made remarkable time on the subway, especially since it was early in the morning on a weekend. Usually, commuting anywhere in Beijing on the subway will take at least an hour, but often longer.

When we arrived at Mao’s Mausoleum, we checked our bags and got on line. The line was incredibly long and wrapped all around the Mausoleum and through Tiananmen Square. We were some of the only foreigners on line.

We waited on line for about an hour before we made it to the front steps of the mausoleum. Just being on line was an experience. The strangest thing to me was how when you speak to most people in China individually, they have come to understand that Mao and his policies were essentially evil and not the best choices for China. However, all of the people on the line to see Chairman Mao seemed incredibly reverent, excited, and respectful. At every checkpoint on the line, all of the Chinese people would run to the next checkpoint, which was just funny and bizarre to me. I am wondering if seeing Chairman Mao now is more of a spectacle than a humbling experience for Chinese people.

When we entered the mausoleum, we went through a giant memorial hall, with fresh flowers and a giant statue of Mao. It was so quiet inside the memorial hall. Once we made it through the entrance hall, we were directed into a much smaller, glass room, where Chairman Mao was at rest. The room was very strange. It was dimly lit and there were armed guards everywhere. Chairman Mao laid in the center of the room in an elevated bed covered by a Chinese flag. The strangest thing was that the armed guards basically rushed you through the room, so you didn’t really get a good look at Chairman Mao.

I think the Chairman looked pretty good for a man who has been dead for about thirty years, especially since he was not a very healthy man in life and there were a lot of complications with his preservation. When Mao was first preserved, his body was infused with the wrong chemicals, causing his body to blow up. A Vietnamese doctor was then summoned to fix the body. I think Mao still looked a little bloated, but overall pretty good. However, rumor has it that about 70% of the time the mausoleum is open, that there is actually a wax dummy in Mao’s place, but you would never know it. Also, the mausoleum is open at random times and often Mao is not there. I am really glad I got to see him.

After seeing Mao, Molly, Jay, and I jumped on the subway and went to the Temple of Heaven to meet up with Gill and Sarah. When we arrived, we had a picnic lunch and watched all of the Chinese people who were dancing, listening to music, and playing jianzi, or Chinese hacky sack in the park.

We then walked to the Temple of Heaven. This temple, and the other sites within the Temple of Heaven complex, was often visited by the Ming and Qing emperors for annual ceremonies of prayer to heaven for good harvests.

After climbing the Temple of Heaven we went and visited another smaller temple called the Temple of Heavenly Fault. The coolest thing about the Temple of Heavenly Fault was the echo wall surrounding it. The echo wall worked exactly like the whisper in statuary hall on Capital Hill, where you can whisper and someone else standing in front of the wall can hear you loudly and clearly. We tried it and it worked. The last thing we saw on the grounds of the Temple of Heaven was called the mound and, a prayer platform also used by the emperors as early as the 1400’s.

After seeing everything at the Temple of Heaven, we took a cab back to Beida to get ready for the evening. For Cara’s birthday, we all had tickets to see the Beijing acrobats and we all got dressed up in suits and dresses for the performance and nicknamed the evening China Prom! Of course the four of us from Spring Break insisted that we were “dates!” Molly and I were actually able to buy cheese at a store called Carrefour (which is literally hell because it’s so crowded) and hosted a cocktail hour with cheese and crackers before leaving Beida for the performance.

The Beijing acrobats were amazing. I could not believe my eyes and was on the edge of my seat for most of the performance. The funniest thing about the show was that it was all about birds, which is ironic because it was Cara’s birthday and Cara is petrified of birds. Overall, I’m really glad we got to see the show!

After the show, we went out to a really fancy restaurant, all dressed up for dinner. By fancy, I mean dinner cost $8 or $9 as opposed to the usual $2 or $3 that I spend on dinner. We ate traditional Shanghainese style food, including noodles. According to Chinese legend, everyone should eat noodles on their birthday to guarantee their lives longevity.

After dinner, we took the subway back to Wudaokou and went to Pyro’s, one of our favorite western-style Wudaokou hangouts. We were able to dance and the owner bought us all a round of drinks for Cara’s birthday. After a long day, it was time to go home, sleep, and rest up for Sunday’s Silk Market adventure.

On Sunday, we made our final trip of the semester to the Silk Market. I was on a mission to buy all of the gifts for my friends and family at home, which I did successfully, but a new set of pearls did happen to fall into the bag for me. Our pearl ladies, who Molly and I bought pearls from all semester, were so sad that we were going back to the United States that they gave both Molly and I pearls for free! I am definitely going to miss the haggling and bargaining that the Silk Market offers!

Now, we are in the final stretch leading to the last week of class, which will be next week. My Chinese final is also next week and I have three major papers due. I have already finished a 50-page paper for my communications independent study and the other two are started and a work in progress. The goal is to get all of my work done by the end of the weekend, so I can truly enjoy my last full week in Beijing!

The Laoshe Teahouse

Since we are running out of time in Beijing, we took advantage of a Monday night to visit one of the most famous teahouses in Beijing, the Laoshe Teahouse. There are teahouses all over Beijing and China, as drinking tea, tea tasting, and tea ceremonies are extremely popular and common cultural experiences in China.

What makes the Laoshe Teahouse so famous is that it is located right across from the Old City Gate of Tiananmen Square. Also, several famous people, including several famous Americans, such as Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan, have attended performances at the Laoshe Teahouse. The Laoshe Teahouse also has the reputation as putting on the best performance to get a real taste of Beijing culture.

We had two tables at the teahouse. Of course, Team Spring Break could not be separated, so Molly, Jon, Aaron and I all sat together. We were served bottomless green tea and traditional Beijing tea snacks consisting of seeds, egg rolls, and some relatively bland teacakes. As we learned during the performance, there are different teas and tea ceremonies performed for each season. Luckily, the springtime tea is green tea, or in Chinese, lü cha. Green tea is one of my favorites, although all of the tea I have tasted in China has been great! At Laoshe, the tealeaves were put into special teacups with a lid that filtered the tea and kept the water hot. I drank so much tea during the performance, which is probably a good thing because Chinese people believe that tea is great for you help and can prevent and cure all kinds of illnesses.

The show put on was very interesting and included several different kinds of traditional Chinese performances, including singing, traditional instruments, kung fu, Beijing opera, the color-changing mask performance, tea ceremonies, acrobatics, magicians, and Chinese fast talk. It’s honestly hard to say which part of the performance was my favorite because they were all so interesting in unique. Some of the acts even called for audience participation, which was a lot of fun. I’m really glad that we got to go to the teahouse! Now, I will not feel bad if I don’t make it to the Beijing Opera.

John McCain At Beida

This incident actually occurred about two weeks ago, but I completely forgot to mention it in my blog!

So, on Thursdays, I don’t have class all day and I usually take advantage of the day by sleeping in for a bit in the morning before skyping with Mommy, Daddy, and Lauren. However, on this particular Thursday, I woke up early to the sound of my cell phone going off.

Molly was on the other end telling me to hurry up and come outside because John McCain was outside the doors of Shaoyuan. I really thought she was joking, but decided to throw pants on and go outside to see my friends since they were on break from Chinese class.

When I went outside, there was a huge banner hanging from the School of International Studies, located right across the street from my dorm that said, “Peking University Welcomes Senator John McCain.”

When we rounded the corner of Shaoyuan, we saw John McCain getting off of a typical, rickety, Chinese bus, with surprisingly no security. There actually were very few people around, so we actually had a pretty good view. Plus, it was basically John McCain’s white hair sticking out of a sea of black, Asian heads. He actually looks a lot older in person than on television. Apparently he was in Beijing to host a round table discussion with some of the professors in Beida’s School of International Studies.

The funny thing about this whole incident is that I live in Washington, DC and this doesn’t happen. Only in China will you wake up to John McCain outside your door!

Wanfujing and the Summer Palace

So the weather has stayed just as warm and just as humid, but unfortunately this weekend has gotten kinda cloudy.

Because we all planned on waking up early on Saturday morning to visit the summer palace, we decided to plan a relaxing Friday night walking around Wanfujing. Wanfujing is a pretty popular tourist site in downtown Beijing. The highlights of course are the Wanfujing snack street and the Wanfujing night market.

We left campus hungry and made the Wanfujing Snack Street our first stop. All along the sidewalk were small stands serving up all different kinds of exotic foods. It was so overwhelming at first that we decided to walk up and down the street to check out our options and watch other people’s reactions as they ate. We saw some normal foods such as fruit, meat twar, and friend dumplings, but we also saw some strange choices such as silk worms, cricket, and starfish.

As a group, I have to say that we were pretty daring when it came to trying foods and we all shared to we all got to taste a little bit of everything. Aaron bought two huge squid twars and Nick bought a baby shark. Both were actually delicious! Jay brought a dog meat twar, which of course I love my dog too much to try!

Most importantly however, almost all of us chowed down on scorpion! When we picked out our scorpions, they were all already skewered, but still alive in moving. Once we picked out our twar, the whole skewer was dunked in the deep fryer and seasoned. I have to say, the scorpions were not bad at all. They just tasted really greasy and crunchy. The strangest thing was the shape of the scorpion in your mouth, but once you got past that, it tasted just fine!

After satisfying our cravings for the weird foods that you can only eat in China, we moved on to some of the Wanfujing shops. We found this really cool bookstore that actually had a lot of material in English. I found a really funny picture book called Chinglish, that had a bunch of pictures of poorly translated sign in China, a few of which I have actually already seen! I am so glad that my friends here are the kind of people that can spend ages in a bookstore, just like me!

After haging out on the bookstore for a bit, we moved on to the Wanfujing night market, which has more of the crazy food that we found on the snack streeet, as well as some other really cool booths and shops selling all sorts of things. It was really fun to walk around and try to haggle. A bunch of us bought panda hats, simply because you cannot leave China without one. We also found some Chinese toys to play with and had a lot of fun playing and talking with some of the shop workers.

The night market began to close around ten thirty. Believe it or not, most things in China are already closed by this time. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that everything shits down so early. Anyways, by then we were all so tired that we jumped on the subway and went back to Beida and turned in for the night.

I woke up early on Saturday morning so that Molly, Brittany, and I could run to Paradiso, the coffee shop on campus, for coffee and to pick up sandwiches and snacks for a picnic lunch at the Summer Palace. I was disappointed that the weather was overcast because I was hoping for a clear day to enjoy the beauty of the Summer Palace.

Fortunately, the Summer Palace is very close to campus. When we arrived we split up into smaller groups because there was an overwhelming amount of tourists. We got to see the longest corridor in the world, according to the Book of World Records. We also decided to climb the Buddhist Incense Temple Mountain, which granted us a beautiful view of the entire summer palace. We also got to see the residence of the Dragon Lady and the stone boat that she used military funding to build.

One of the coolest moments of the day was when Brittany and I decided to do taiqi on the top of the mountain. We must have been doing a pretty good job because all of the Chinese tourists recognized exactly what we were doing, watched us, and some of them even joined in!

Later in the day, we all bought really funny Chinese hats. Brittany, Molly, and I bought concubine crowns and Jon and Aaron bought queue hats, which I think made all of us even more of an attraction for all of the Chinese tourists. So many people wanted to take pictures of and with us!

Around lunchtime, we decided to take a dragon boat to the other side of the big lake in the Summer Palace. We were able to sit in the back of the boat and enjoy our lunches while enjoying all of the scenery around us. By this point in the day, the weather had cleared up some, which made for a really enjoyable afternoon!

Once crossing the lake, we were able to cross the seventeen hole bridge to another island in the Summer Place. We were able to climb some rocks and listen to music and hang out for a bit, which was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we got to walk around the rest of the Summer Palace. We wanted to take a boat from the Summer Palace to Beihai Park, but by then it was already almost four in the afternoon. This is definitely something we will do another day!

On Saturday night, I was able to spend the night with just a few of my closest friends in Beijing. Me, Molly, Jon, and Aaron went to Sanlitun for an evening of fun where we had a rooftop dinner, played pool, and went dancing! It was a very fun night!

I am just beginning to realize how limited my time in Beijing is. I have only about two and half weeks left in Beijing before I leave for my two-week study trip. Just five weeks from this very moment, I will be on a plane en route to the US! It really is amazing how quickly time flies when you are having fun!

The Olympic Stadium

We are so lucky that the weather has been absolutely gorgeous in Beijing for the past week. It’s been about 80 degrees and sunny just about everyday. Everything is in bloom and campus looks exquisite!

Last Saturday, we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and went down to the Olympic Village. It took us forever to walk from the Metro to the Bird’s Nest, not because the walk was very far, but because so many Chinese tourists wanted to stop and take pictures of us.

The best part about the Olympic Stadium was that “Beijing Yuanying Ni” or “Beijing Welcomes You,” a very popular song in China recorded just for the Olympics, was playing everywhere! I know that I have mentioned this song before in your blog, because it gets stuck in my head all the time!

We were able to actually go inside the Bird’s Nest, which was really cool because we were allowed to go down on the turf field. The group of us sat around chatting and tanning on the green, which was ironic because so many athletes had competed there and meanwhile, we were having a very relaxing day!

I was actually surprised by how small the Bird’s Nest was in person. After watching parts of the Olympics on television, especially the opening ceremonies, I would have thought the stadium, or at least the turf field would have been much bigger. Regardless, it was still very cool to see!

While we were relaxing on the turf field, some inflatable characters of the Beijing Olympic friends mascots came out on to the field and did a choreographed routine, which was pretty funny. The mascots were inflated so big that they frequently kept bumping heads during the routine. The music was also very catchy and cheery.

After we left the Bird’s Nest, we bought kites in the Olympic Park and flew them in front of the Water Cube. I picked out a kite with all of the Olympic mascots on it. It was perfect weather for flying a kite and many of the Chinese tourists also bought kites and were flying them. It was only a matter of time before my kite got tangled. Fortunately, Marie was able to untangle it for me when we got back to Beida and we hung our kites from the ceiling in our room. They look awesome!

Next to the Olympic Village, there is a small amusement park, so when we were done flying kites, we walked over to check it out. We then went back to Beida, grabbed a bite to eat on campus and went out for another fun night on the lake in Hou Hai!

Cuan Dixia and More

Last weekend we visited the Cuan Dixia Village. Cuan Dixia is a restored 18th century village in the mountains just a few hours outside of Beijing. The village, to this day, is still self-sufficient, which is what makes it such a cool tourist attraction.

The drive to Cuan Dixia reminded me a lot of driving through the mountains in Croatia last summer. The roads were just as winding and steep. Our bus driver was also slightly crazy. On a two-lane road going up the mountain, he would switch lanes into oncoming traffic to pass the slower agricultural trucks in our lane. While we were on the bus, we saw the driver in the car in front of us start vomiting and swerving in the lane. Apparently, a lot of people on our trip between our two buses got carsick as well.

After about two and a half hours, we arrived in Cuan Dixia. The village was a lot smaller than I anticipated it to be. However, there were lots of different trails and paths through the village and the mountains surrounding the village, which we were able to hike while we were there. We were able to hike to a temple above the village. When we were walking on the paths through the village, we saw mostly inns where a decent amount of tourists now spend a night when visiting Cuan Dixia. We also saw many of the villagers going about their daily lives cooking, building things, and making crafts to sell to tourists.

In Cuan Dixia, Brittany and I found a mountain that we wanted to climb. The trail was really obvious at the base of the mountain and actually led us to a small farm where we found some baby goats. They were really cute, but absolutely terrified of Brittany and I. As Brittany and I continued to climb up the mountain, the trail became a little less clear and we began to blaze our own trail. Once we got higher up the mountain, we had the most beautiful view of Cuan Dixia and the other surrounding mountains. It was also a beautiful day for hiking. I wish we could have had a bit more time at Cuan Dixia. We spent more time traveling back and forth from Beijing than we actually spent in the village.

When we got back to Shaoyuan, we all rested up in order to go out and celebrate Gill and Jay’s 21st birthdays. After grabbing dinner at the Medicine House on campus, we jumped on the subway and rode to Hou Hai, a very famous and scenic part of Beijing. Hou Hai is located on a big lake and surrounding the lack are many cafes, bars, and nightclubs. We had a blast going from place to place and hanging out by the lake.

Most of my friends have been really busy with schoolwork this week. Fortunately, I still have a few weeks before I need to start worrying about final papers, although I am still finding it hard to believe that we have just four weeks of class left before our two week end of the semester trip!

My friend, Molly’s parents and their friends are also visiting this week. Yesterday, Molly and I took them to the Silk Market to show them what shopping in China is really like. I left the silk market with two new sets of pearls, a new spring jacket, a pair of shoes, and a wallet. What a fun and successful day!

Later, Molly’s parents took a whole bunch of us out to dinner, which was so nice of them and very delicious! Last week when Jay’s parents were visiting, they took us out to dinner as well. It’s so nice to meet everyone’s parents and I have to admit that I am incredibly jealous that my family will not be coming to visit me in China, however I certainly cannot wait to tell them all about my experiences abroad. I also can’t wait for them to meet all of my friends from China who go to AU!

This morning I woke up at 4:30 AM to see Lee Lee off to prom. I am so glad that I woke up to see her because she looked absolutely stunning and I am sure she will be the prettiest girl at her prom! I think its so cool how modern technology allows me to share these special moments with my family even though I am on the other side of the world. I also had the opportunity to speak to Grandma and Grandpa Bellmore and Grandma and Grandpa Jersey today. I love telling my grandparents all about my study abroad experience and I know that they really miss me!

I am a bit disappointed because I was supposed to go to Qingdao this weekend and now I will be unable to go. Qingdao is a city about 7 hours south of here. It is located on the water and has beautiful beaches, as well as some cool German architecture, and the Tsingtao beer factory. When I tried to buy train tickets, I learned that this weekend is a Chinese holiday and so there are not as many trains running to Qingdao. In Chinese culture, people do not frequently visit the graves of their ancestors. However, on the holiday that will occur this weekend, literally translated to “grave sweeping day,” all of the Chinese people will visit the graves of their deceased relatives. Most businesses will be closed on Monday for this occasion.

A lot of my friends decided to go to Inner Mongolia this weekend to ride camels across the Gobi desert. Because this trip is incredibly expensive and I have already ridden camels through the Sahara in Egypt, I opted not to go. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous in Beijing this weekend, about 70 degrees and sunny, so I hope to do a lot of sightseeing here, which I haven’t done too much of yet. Tonight, I am having dinner with my language partner, Olivia, so that should be a lot of fun.

I will write again soon! I miss everyone at home!

Spring Break Shanghai!

We left Nanjing on a bullet train and arrived in Shanghai two hours later. The bad weather had yet to hit Shanghai, which was a pleasant surprise. After getting off the train, we took cabs to our hostel.

If Beijing is the Washington, DC of China, then Shanghai is definitely the New York equivalent. Shanghai is also a huge and bustling city with tons of people, tons of noise, tons of skyscrapers, and a beautiful modern city. The analogy also works because there is a part of Shanghai that is called Times Square. Our hostel was actually located just a few blocks away from Times Square. Shanghai is located right on the river and the name of the city literally translates this way. Shang means on or above and hai means sea or water.

In Shanghai, we were staying at the Captain’s International Youth Hostel, which we were all very excited about because of its sailor theme. The outside of the hostel looked like a ship and the inside was decorated with all sorts of nautical pieces. The door to our room looked like a cabin door and the bunks in our room all had portholes in the headboards.

After checking in at our hostel, we walked around the area on our side of the river. We found some street food, which I think really grew on all of us over break. We really enjoyed eating “twar” as it’s called in Beijing, or “twan” as it’s called in southern China, which is meat on a stick.

On our walk around Shanghai, we found the Pearl Tower, which is one of the most famous buildings of the Shanghai skyline. We also found a really pretty park, which was a very unexpected green patch in the middle of the city. We also found an eight-story shopping mall, where we played in Toys R Us for a bit. Shanghai is relatively well-known for its shopping scene.

After walking around for a bit, we walked back to our hostel to get ready to go to dinner and go out. For dinner, we found the West Gate equivalent of Shanghai. West Gate is our favorite restaurant in Beijing. We had the most delicious jiaozi, or dumplings. Soup dumplings and friend dumplings a traditional part of Shanghai cuisine.

After dinner, we walked to the river promenade along the water right near the Pearl Tower and the International Convention center. The view was breathtaking. From our side of the river, we could see the Bund, one of the most famous parts of Shanghai all lit up at night. There were also a bunch of small cafes located along the river, which along with the warm weather, made for a really pleasant walk.

Later, Jenn and Sarah went back to the hostel to go to sleep and Molly, Jon, Aaron, and I caught a cab across the river to the bund to check out the nightlife scene for which Shanghai is so well known. As soon as we got out of the cab, it starting pouring probably harder than rain I have ever seen before. By the time we were able to run under the awning of the nightclub we had selected, we were all soaked! It was pretty funny though because we unexpectedly met up with some other guys from our program who had spent all of Spring Break in Shanghai. We all had an awesome time, so much fun in fact, that we didn’t get back to the hostel until nearly 5:00 AM on Sunday morning.

We had to check out of hostel by noon on Sunday and shortly thereafter, we went back to the restaurant where we had eaten dinner the night before and filled up on delicious jiaozi. We then took the ferry across the river to walk around the bund. There were lots of shopping areas. The one thing I will remember most about our walk around Shanghai was the terrible smell of stinky tofu, which is apparently a street food delicacy in Shanghai. Due to the pollution problem in China, we have become accustomed to walking through what we refer to as “air pockets,” but the smell of stinky tofu was by far worse!

In our travels, we happened to stumble upon a Dunkin Doughnuts, which was a terrific discovery! We were still tired from the night before, so we took the opportunity to relax, enjoy a real cup of coffee and some Boston Crème doughnuts.

After this pit stop, we walked along the river on the bund side of Shanghai on the water near a lot of the financial buildings and the architecture that looks relatively European. Later, after walking for hours and taking more pictures of the skyline, we took the Shanghai subway system back to the other side of the river and went to our hostel to pick up our bags and head back to the train station.

Our train left Shanghai around 8:30 PM. This time around, we had all top bunks in a row, which actually ended up being a good thing so we were all able to sleep because we were all pretty tired. The lights went off pretty early too, probably around 10:30 PM. I slept pretty well on the train and didn’t wake up until 9:00 AM. We arrived back in Beijing around 10:00 AM and then took the subway back to Beida.

We had an awesome break! I felt that I really made the most of my break because we saw a lot of really cool things, got to travel a lot, relaxed a bit, and spent some time with some awesome friends. We came home with tons of inside jokes, pictures, and memories that I know will last a lifetime! The best part is that all of the traveling, hostels, food, and entertainment over the course of break cost us all only about $200! You definitely can’t beat that!

Now that we are back from Spring Break, I really feel like I am coming down with a serious case of spring fever. The weather is getting warmer in Beijing and flowers are blooming everywhere! I know in just a few weeks campus is going to look absolutely stunning! We are also at the exact halfway point through the semester. As of yesterday, we have been in China for 55 days and now have 55 days remaining.

I am very lucky because I have a few weeks of down time before I really have to start worrying about finals and papers. I also got my Chinese midterm back on Wednesday and my teacher announced that I had gotten the highest grade of all the beginner Chinese students!

This weekend will be a lot of fun. On Saturday, we will be traveling a few hours to visit the Cuan Dixia Village, which is an old village from the Ming and Qing dynasties that had remained fairly well preserved. This weekend is also two of my close friend’s birthdays, so we will be doing a lot of celebrating. We are also working on planning a weekend trip to Qingdao for next weekend, which will be awesome if everything goes according to plan!

More to come soon!

Spring Break Nanjing!

So we have been back from Spring Break for a few days, but I still feel like I’m stuck in Spring Break mode! I could definitely use a vacation from my vacation, since the entire time we were busy sightseeing! I could not have asked for a better Spring Break! We barely got any sleep, but we got to see everything we wanted to and then some! I also could not have asked for better friends to spend break with!

We left Beijing on Wednesday night. We took an overnight sleeper train from Beijing central station to Nanjing. Our train left around 11:30 PM. The train ride was very much like our train ride to TaiShan a few weeks ago. Since there were six of us traveling together, we were able to get a whole cubby of bunks all to ourselves, which ended up being incredibly convenient for the long ride. Shortly after the tickets were collected, the lights went out, which was around midnight. I woke up around 8:00 AM, when the Chinese people on the train started waking up and making noise. I woke up to the sounds of “Beijing Yuanying Ni,” or in English, “Beijing Welcomes You,” which was a song created right before the Olympics. It’s very popular all over China. They play it in KTV, they carry speakers around and play it on the streets, and it’s so catchy that it gets stuck in your head and you end up singing it yourself. I am glad I got up early, however so that I could look out the window for the part of our trip through southern China in the daytime. It was really cool to see the farms and rice paddies, which is so different from the city life of Beijing.

After about 14 hours on the train, we arrived in Nanjing. While Nanjing is a major city, with a population of about 3 million people, it has a very different feel from Beijing. It appears just as busy as Beijing, but a lot more laid back and slower paced. It’s definitely a southern city. The weather is warmer, there were tons of flowers, and it was a lot more humid since canals of the Yhangtze River flow all throughout the city. It was also a quieter city with a lot less honking than Beijing, which I really appreciated!

After arriving in Nanjing and buying our next set of train tickets to Shanghai, we checked into our hostel, which was located right on the water of Fuzi Mao. Fuzi Mao is the pedestrian only shopping area surrounding the Confucian Temple. The hostel felt a lot like a summer camp. The six of us stayed in one room with bunk beds and one western style bathroom for the six of us to share. It was a real bonding experience! This is the first time I have ever stayed in a hostel. I couldn’t believe that we had a place to stay for only $7 a night!

After checking in at the hostel, we walked around Fuzi Mao. We visited the Imperial Examination Rooms, where we jumped over the dragon door for good luck on our exams. We also got to visit the Confucian Temple, which was decorated specially for the spring festival. The Fuzi Mao area was very cool. There were tons of rickshaw drivers, shops, and street food. As it got dark out, all of Fuzi Mao was lit in colored lights, which were really neat to see!

Because all of the restaurants in the Fuzi Mao area were really fancy and expensive, we walked outside of Fuzi Mao to a “hole in the wall restaurant,” which in China is where you will usually find the best food for the cheapest prices! The restaurant owners were so welcoming. I thought it was funny that they were able to pick up on the fact that we live in Beijing because we all speak Chinese with a Beijing accent. In Beijing, a lot of words are pronounced with what is called a retroflex ending, which basically sounds like “argggh” at the end of every word. This type of pronunciation is very uncommon in southern China. Dinner was delicious! We tried the specialty of Nanjing duck, which was served cold. I have to confess though I like the Peking duck in Beijing better!

After dinner, because we were tired from traveling, we went back to our hostel. Our hostel had a pool table, so we actually ended up having a pool tournament, which was a lot of fun. Jon and I, the underdog team, came out on top to win the tournament! After pool, we went back to our room and played bullshit with two decks of cards, which is something I probably haven’t done since the lunch table in high school. It was so nice to just hang out all together and play games at the hostel.

We went to sleep relatively early. The comforters on our hostel beds were really funny because they seemed really juvenile and were some excellent displays of “Chinglish.” For example, Aaron’s comforter had puppies on it labeled as “xiao pengyou,” or “little friends,” and Jon’s blanket had teddy bears labeled as apples.

On Friday morning, we accidentally slept in because we accidentally set the alarm for PM instead of AM. It was 10:30 AM before someone woke up and noticed the time. It was not a big deal because the six of us were able to quickly get ready and head out to Purple Mountain. For all of us history nerds, Purple Mountain was a major highlight of Spring Break. Not only is the mountain picturesque, but you can also hike all around the mountain to a ton of different historical sites.

Our first stop on Purple Mountain was Dr. Sun Yet-Sen’s Mausoleum. Dr. Sun Yet-Sen was responsible for ending the traditional dynastic system in China and promoting democracy. It is also ironic because as a child, Dr. Sun Yet-Sen was sent to the United States to study and actually attended the same school as Barack Obama in Hawaii. When Sun Yet-Sen died of liver cancer, his body was kept in Beijing while the mausoleum was built and then moved to Nanjing. Unlike Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing, Sun Yet-Sen’s body is covered by a plaster mold. His mausoleum is also surrounded by beautiful gardens with an impeccable view of the city.

After seeing the mausoleum, we went to Sun Yet-Sen Memorial Hall, which was a museum all about Sun Yet-Sen. It was really cool because the museum had primary documents and writings of Sun Yet-Sen as well as the authentic furniture from his study. There were also pictures of famous world leaders coming to visit the mausoleum, including President George Bush Sr.

After seeing the Memorial Hall, we hiked to the Lingguo Pagoda and Temple. We climbed all the way up to the top of the pagoda where we had a beautiful view of several of the sights of Purple Mountain, as well as the Nanjing skyline in the distance. At the top of the pagoda, a tradition has been started that it is custom to write your name on the wall of the pagoda at the top. I was able to write my name in Chinese characters on the pagoda wall to prove that I had made it all the way to the top!

Our next stop on the Mountain was the Outdoor Music Venue, which was beautiful. There were fountain choreographed to music and plum trees blossoming all around the amphitheatre. The worst part about the Outdoor Music Venue was the pigeons everywhere. There were white pigeons, which in China were clearly dirty, who were just landing on people’s arms, heads, and shoulders. One pigeon got awfully close to me and I swatted it away, but I have to say that I was a little bit freaked out. Molly has a really funny picture of me swatting the pigeon, where the pigeon is just a big, white blur in the picture.

We then hiked to the Ming tombs housing the bodies of the royalty of the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, a lot of the tombs are undergoing renovation, but what we were able to see was pretty cool. What I thought was even cooler was the Ming Tombs spiritual walk where there are giant statues of mythical creatures intended to protect the tombs. Of course, we had a blast climbing these giant stone creatures and taking pictures!

By the time we left Purple Mountain, it was already 6 PM. I think we really took advantage of the day and got to see some really cool, historical things! We decided to take the bus back to Fuzi Mao from Purple Mountain, which ended up being a really good choice. It cost only two kuai, which is about 30 cents, for an hour bus ride that really allowed us to see the entire city. I’m always fascinated by how everything in China is always lit up and so colorful at night!

When we got back to our hostel, we freshened up and went out to dinner. The food we had was absolutely delicious. When we walked out of the restaurant, we saw some fire dancers with torches dancing in the distance and decided to go and check it out. The fire dancers were on the other side of this gate and there was a huge crowd of Chinese people watching. There was a huge performance going on inside the park on the other side of the gate in honor of the last day of the spring festival. All of a sudden the guard at the gate turns to us and says “nimen xiang jin lai ma?” which means do you want to come in? The guard snuck all six of us into the performance for free by letting us in through the backstage gate. We were literally on the stage with all of the lights and the actors. There were people dressed up like Huns that we ended up running from because we didn’t want to end up actually being a part of the show. We found some rocks to sit on by a Confucius statue and watched the rest of the show. There were sword fighters, and plate spinners, and boats, and dancers, and the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen. It felt very much like a Disney Epcot show.

After the finale of the show, which ended with about 15 minutes of straight fireworks, we were able to walk around the garden and check on the canals, some pretty cool statutes, and another beautifully lit pagoda. Jenn and Sarah went back to the hostel to go to sleep and Molly, Jon, Aaron and I went to a video game arcade near Fuzi Mao, which was a great way to spend all of our jiao, which are coins that are worth even less than a penny. We then went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up really early so we could all be ready to be at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial as soon as it opened at 8:30 AM. We actually got ready so quickly that we were able to grab a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin before heading down to the Memorial. The weather was really overcast and it looked like it was about to rain.
Outside of the memorial, there were fountains and statues. The statues were of emaciated Chinese people carrying their dead children and wives. In both English and Chinese, the statues were captioned with slogans such as “Family Ruined.” Outside of the memorial, I made a Chinese friend. He was a young boy who came up to me and was so excited that we were at the memorial. He could not believe that I was able to speak to him in Chinese. He told me that I was very beautiful and that he liked my blonde hair and took a picture with me. The guards outside of the memorial actually did not allow people to enter the memorial until a little bit before 9:00 AM. When we entered the memorial, the guards had us, as foreigners, sign the guest book for the memorial. I assume they track the number of international visitors. I found it very odd that there were not more foreigners at the memorial.

To start the tour of the memorial, we went into the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum. When you first enter the museum, you walk into this dark room. All of the walls are black and reflective and there is a big screen hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room. Every five seconds a bell was rung and the portrait of another victim flashed across the screen.

The museum was three or four floors and it was so well done that it completely blew the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC out of the water. The museum housed so many primary documents, including a ton of Japanese propaganda and testimonials from survivors as well as Japanese soldiers reflecting on their involvement in the attack. The thing that gave me the chills however, were letters from Hitler to different activists, praising them for the work in helping the women and children who were wounded and raped in the attack. Note here that the Nanjing Massacre took the lives of 300,000 victims as a part of the War of Japanese Aggression Against China from 1937-1938, just a few short years before the start of World War II and the Holocaust in Germany. As we were going through the museum, the Chinese tourists came up to us and asked us how we knew about the Nanjing massacre. They were in disbelief that we had actually studied the Japanese War of Aggression in school because in Japan, this era of history in not ever discussed. I think several of the Chinese visitors really appreciated our presence and our respect. I could have spent the whole day in the museum. It was really unfortunate that our time was so limited.

When we came out of the museum, it was thundering and lightening, which really helped to set the tone for the memorial. We walked passed bells and a big wall displaying the number 300,000 to honor the victims. We then walked through a garden with stone walls, with scenes from the Rape of Nanjing carved into the garden’s walls. The next part of the memorial, the open mass grave, was the most moving and terrifying thing I think I have ever seen. The mass grave is so tastefully done, that it feels very much like a museum and it becomes difficult to believe that you are looking at the actual piles of skeletons of the innocent Chinese women and children killed during the Nanjing incident. When we came out of the mass grave, we walked into a reflection hall, where a single flame was burning in absolute silence. When we left the reflection hall, we reached the final section of the memorial, a huge outdoor reflecting pool with the statue of peace at the far end. As soon as we stepped outside, the clouds opened up and it started to rain, culminating are experience at the memorial. The memorial was definitely one the things I was most looking forward to seeing and it by far exceeded all of my expectations.

We then went back to Fuzi Mao, checked out of our hostel, and were on our way to the second half of our Spring Break adventure in Shanghai!