Day 3

Day 3- Xiahe

We started our day with breakfast at the hotel- bread, butter, watery honey. We then walked 15 minutes until we got to the LeBrang Monastery. As we walked the conditions of the building began to deteriorate. The road turned into a dirt road and the houses were made of cement. Everything was much more muddier and dirtier. We went to several different temples in the LeBrang monastery with our Buddhist monk tour guide- who was strangely attractive with great teeth. He was the only one in the monastery that spoke English. As you may know- I am typing up everything from my journal/ captain's log onto this blog. When I was writing this journal, most of the time...I was riding through rural China on a rickety bus on some steep hill and mountain sides. My handwriting in this journal is truly terrible...worse than usual. At the monastery, our tour guide filled us in with little nuggets of Buddhist knowledge. For example, in Buddhism- there are 1000 different Buddhas. Four Present Buddhas. There is Compassion Buddha, Tantra Buddha, Beauty Buddha..etc. People pray to different Buddhas for different things. In the LeBrang Monastery, there are 2,000 monks. 1,000 different Monks study inthe different colleges and have passed the Buddhist exam. The other 1,000 did not pass the Buddhist exam and put in their 5-6 years before they can enter the college. Most students study philosophy , but some study medicine. There are three ways to categorize people at the monastery- most people living at  the monastery are monks...then you have masters then llamas- llamas are chosen by the masters as early as 3 years old. They are then brought up in the monastery.
I could only take pictures in one of the temples, but I took lots of pictures outside of the temples. I will provide a brief description of what it's like to be in a Buddhist temple.
Here we go.
There are huge copper statues of Buddha everywhere and in the center there is a at least two story tall golden- but copper- statue of Buddha. The whole temple is smoky and hazy because of all the incenses and candles. The incenses are predominately coming out of two incense burners which is on a table with a donation box. There are thangkas on the walls with pictures of Buddha and protectionist guards-(A "Thangka," also known as "Tangka", "Thanka" or "Tanka" is a Tibetan silk painting with embroidery, usually depicting a Buddhist deity, famous scene, or mandala of some sort. The thankga is not a flat creation like an oil painting or acrylic painting. Rather, it consists of a picture panel which is painted or embroidered, over which a textile is mounted, and then over which is laid a cover, usually silk.) A protectionist guard looks something like this: (I really wanted to buy it, but it was wicked expensive).

We went to the Philopshy college/temple. It was also very smoky from the incense and it was a little difficult to breathe-but it's super sacroreligious to cough. There was rows of mats-type seats for the monks to pray on. We passed one room that they were beating gongs and drums and chanting, but we were not allowed to go in.Xiahe was definitely my favorite city on the trip.

After the monastery, we all went to Lunch. I bought hiking boots and Dave bought this rather sexy black capri pants because there was a big gaping hole in his jeans near his special region. I put these hiking boots to good use. We climbed this big hill/mountain type deal and got a beautiful view of the city. It was our third day in Xiahe and the elevation was quite high- 9,512 ft above sea level and the air is much thinner. This climb was  much more difficult than it normally would have been say in Georgia- I was breathing heavily, my heart was pounding, and my adreline was racing. When we finally reached the top, it was worth it.

After some hiking, we all went horseback riding. The scenary was breathtaking- blue skies and rolling hills. At first, Tibetan women led us and then eventually me, Katie, and Dave were let go to ride the horse by ourselves. Syd and Nicole were mad because they actually had riding experience. Eventually Syd got to ride a horse by herself.

Then we met up with the Xian group and had dinner on the grasslands. We all danced around a fire and roasted marshmellows with Tibetans. The best part of the night was our singing contest. We kicked the Xi’an group’s ass. We started off singing the circle of life-led by our Resident Music major Henry. Oh it was great. We also sang Silent Night, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Star Spangled Banner. Also-when you are off the grid in Western China- the stars are breathtaking. It’s most definitely the most beautiful sky I have ever seen. We drank in Spencer and Elias’s room with a bunch of the Xi’an people.

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Journey to the West- Gansu and Qinghai province in China

I am copying most of what I wrote in my captain's log or journal during my travels throughout Western China. Here's a map of the Chinese provinces- the B on the Coast is Beijing and my group traveled all throughout the Gansu and Qinghai provinces. I wrote most of this on a bumpy bus on a dirt road-some of it on a train and in my respective hotel room. Some of its not chronological.
Regardless- here we go:


 Friday, September 23rd, 2011
On the front cover of my journal it says : My whole life seemed to begin and end with you. No Darlings, this is  not a love story involving a man or boy or anyone in particular. Rather a love story about the experiences that are gained and the knowledge that is learned through travel. I want to spend a lot of my twenties adventuring-exploring different cultures and really discovering who I am as a person.


Gansu Adventure:
Our Gansu adventure started with another train station nightmare. I have zero fond memories of train stations. I would literally put my train station experience in Shanghai as on the list of the ten worst experiences of my life. Two huge suitcases and two other duffle bags through narrow escalators and stairs on a hot, muggy Shanghai day. But as miserable as train stations are, I think I will look back at the other events of my 17 hour train ride. First of all, we are on a soft sleeper which fits four people. It's like an overnight bunk bed party haha. We boarded at 2:30 and the usual crew- Antoinette, Syd, Dave, Rudy,Jeremy, and I created our own Madlibs and filled them out. Our topics included Gansu train trips, Beijing nightlife adventures, Jeremy's Crazy Canadian...shenmede (etc in chinese).I am in a cabin with our program director Marketus and two absolutely delightful Chinese people.They were husband and wife. Muzili was a sociology professor at Langzhou University and his wife Zheng is a P.E. teacher. We talked with them for a while. Marketus translated the stuff that I did not understand. Muzili and I discussed the hukou sytem which is what I am writing my capstone project on . He discussed the inequality that the hukou system creates between rural and urban Chinese. These Chinese people were so lovely and friendly. Muzili told us the story of the frog in the well. He told Marketus and I that: There was once a frog that lived in a well and all he did was look up at the sky.He glorified the sky until one day a bird flew into the well. The bird told him that there was so much more to the world than what he saw. Chinese people say 坐井观天 zuòjǐngguāntiān when someone is being narrow-minded or arrogant which is roughly translated to sitting in the well view of the sky. Chinese people understand that it is in reference to the proverb. Well friends...I am definitely no longer sitting in the well. For nine days, I was off the grid. Google maps could not have found me if it tried. When we first left Beijing, we saw so much scenery-fields, mountains- lots of open space with no pollution. Living in Beijing with millions of people everywhere-cars in crazy traffic, polluted air in your lungs- open space and clean air is rather refreshing. Also- before I part- this server (fuwuyuan) on the train tried to swindle us- brought us the food we ordered and then also "accidentally" brought us two of the most expensive meals of the menu and then tried to make us pay for it. This is not uncommon in China and you get used to it after a while. Bargain for everything you buy and use as much Chinese as possible because a lot of Chinese people will try to rip you off or swindle you at any given opportunity. I don't hold a grudge against Chinese people for it- Chinese history exemplifies on several occasions why Chinese people should distrust foreigners. There's 100 years from the opium wars to the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) called the century of humiliation because for a century China was occupied by foreign powers and torn apart by imperialism. Chinese people throughout the last 70 or so years have gained back their pride, but there are still many Chinese people who look down upon foreigners.
On a less serious note- our train ride included the writing of several ridiculous haikus- here are some of the ones that were written:


Rudy sleeps above
Her hair like J-Horror Hangs
Sydney is afraid


Write Madlibs all day
On the Gansu crazy train
What is an adverb?


Canada breeds love
Jeremy does not realize
This bitch is crazy


Chuar So Cheap and Good
How can drunk me possibly
Resist to indulge


Train station nightmare
Too hot to trot or to sit
too many renmen ( Chinese for people)


Many of these are based on inside jokes


 I digress onto Day 2


Day 2 September 24th, 2011


Gansu Haiku:


Mountains and Old Mosques
Beauty and Poverty Mix
Bittersweet Gansu


Toto, We are not in Beijing anymore.


Today, we rode all throughout the Gansu province. Mountainous terrain all the way through. The scenery was amazing, but it was evident that the living standards were no where near the conditions of coastal China. I noticed how dilapidated and run-down everything was. Globalization had not yet touched the many miles of villages we passed today. After a month in Shanghai and a month in Beijing, I literally felt like I was driving through a different third world country. We needed to use the restroom, but there was nothing in sight for miles so we stopped on the side of the road and relieved ourselves under a muddy bridge. It was a magical Western Chinese experience to say the least.

We went to see this beautiful mosque in Linxia, Gansu province, but we could not go into because we are not Muslims. Linxia has a prominent Hui minority population. Huis are Chinese speaking Muslims and all throughout the city, you could see elements of Islamic culture. Right outside of the mosque, there were two Hui men and two male children. One of the men was holding his holding. They were so picturesque. To me, they represented Hui culture. I got a strong sense of family just from their composure. They would not let me take a picture, but   the image is ingrained in my mind when I think of Linxia. On our way from Linxia to Xiahe- another town in Gansu, we saw a bunch of donkies walking down the street on the road. Random-yes. Rural-definitely.

Xiahe

We have arrived in Xiahe. We are staying at this beautiful Tibetan hotel. In typical Chinese bathroom style, the shower and toilet are connected. Unfortunately for us, there is no shower curtain either. The luke warm or “hot” water is only from 8-12 pm. Our rooms are not heated and at 3,000 m above sea level- the temperature gets rather cold. Regardless of my complaints, our room is beautifully decorated. There is golden wallpaper and a beautiful tapestry for the ceiling. I am still acclimating to the elevation and I have a pretty serious headache. Marketus instructed us to be in the hotel by 8pm tonight. Before 8pm, we walked around and shopped. I bought a really pretty scarf and Dave and Jeremy bought furs. These furs smelled terrible (but Jeremy left all of the furs and his soccer ball at the airport!). We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant and as we walked back to the hotel-the whole city began to shut down. Lights turned off and businesses closed. The city became eerie and I realized the reason that we were given such an early curfew. Xiahe was no place for foreigners to be wondering around at night.

             In retrospective: Xiahe was probably the purest form of Tibetan and Chinese culture that we saw on our trip. There were monks in purple and maroon robes walking around everywhere. It was not westernized and it was a true example of rural, developing China. Most of the buildings were written in Chinese and Tibetan, while in Beijing- if something’s bilingual-it’s in English and Chinese. There were no fast food chains like KFC or Mickey Dees. Houses on the poorer part of town were made of cement and mud. I will go into Xiahe a lot more on Day 3-5.

Beautiful Xiahe-perfectly nestled in the mountains

Our hotel

Buddhist Monks in Xiahe- there were lots of them

Peppers being sold on the street along with Cinnamon down below

Pimpin All over the World

So! I had a quite adventurous day yesterday! But lets start from Thursday. Thursday, Jeremy, Elaine, and I along with our new Hong Kong friends went to a beer pong tournament. We lost to German people. It was horrific. Yesterday was a really adventurous day.I  went to the Black Rabbit Music Festival and saw Ludacris and 30 seconds from Mars. I went with my friend Jordan and one of her friends. Ludacris was awesome and we were basically on the second row. Up yonder is Jordan and of course Ludacris. Rudy said you could make a drinking game of everytime I mentioned Ludacris last night haha. We went to Bar Streeet in Beijing which is called Sanlitun or Sanlituar. Also we ate one of my favorite things in Beijing...Chuar.
It's when they grill meat and or veggies on a stick. Here's some good old Beijing Chuar for you!

Chuar is very beijing. Up there is Medieval Dave. We have two Daves on our trip so one of them is nicknamed Medieval Dave because his hair makes him look like he could joust or something. It was a lot of fun. Our friend Ross got rather drunk and bought like 3 rounds of tequila shots for everyone. His explanation at the time was that he had too much money and needed to buy everyone shots. haha. It was just good times with good people last night.

Oh!

Oh!

Okay, So on Friday our program is leaving for 9 days to go to Qinghai and Gansu. These are both cities in Western China with high populations of minorities. This will be such a great opportunity to see what western and rural China daily life is like. I am so excited about this trip because I know it is really going to give me a new perspective on rural China that is outside of the glamour of the capital of Beijing. Some of our activities will include visiting several mosques and monasteries, meeting with Tibetans, exploring several National parks,and really getting to know Western Chinese culture! 

I'm not going to lie to you. I have the flu now. It's quite unfortunate...I'm getting better though. 

Elle croit que tout change, et seule elle a changé

So I have several things to discuss today. I am pretty sure that after my culture class on Tuesday and my Chinese foreign policy class on Wednesday- I will generally have a lot to say. Today in my Chinese class, we gave presentations about landmarks and famous places that we have been to. Because I had my pink life scrapbook, I retrieved some photos to use to discuss my trip last summer to Shanghai. This is when it really sank in how much my trip to Shanghai, Hangzhou, and a little bit of Beijing affected me. Marketus told us at orientation how different our first trip to China would be from other trips. He also said that every trip to China would be different from each other and that is important to never think you know everything about China. I feel like Beijing can never be like Shanghai. I have such a special place in my heart for Shanghai and all the adventures I had there. My experiences in Beijing will never compare to my first visit to China, but they will be amazing in new and different ways. I also don't know how I will reflect on the experiences I am having right now in a year. Maybe, it will have the same tone that Shanghai does now.


It's funny my friend Andrew Salsberry told me something about the day that he left for Spain for a year. He told me that he looks back on the day as a happy day. When I left for China, I cried from Concourse A to Concourse E at the Atlanta airport and it was really sad at the time...rather it was bittersweet. It was my first, I'm sure of many, international flights by myself. I was literally traveling to the unknown with no real friends, no concrete idea of what I was getting myself into, and with blurred expectations about what the next few months would mean for my life and my career. But Today, I look back at the experience as a really good experience and a new beginning to my life in China.


Oh also....I WANT TO CLARIFY!
Many of my friends are reading this thinking my life in Beijing is just crazy party fun yay! Well...not really. Sunday night through every other thursday is more like this:

This is me studying until I fall asleep with my books in my bed. I have at least two hours of Chinese class Monday through Friday with three hours on Tuesday and Thursday. I also have homework and a vocabulary everyday. I have also have a three hour Chinese foreign policy class on Wed and a three hour Chinese Contemporary culture class on Tuesday. After all of these classes, we've got a nice 2-3 three of studying to do.

So friends and (my mom) this is not just one big Beijing party. It's a lot of work and then we go out on the weekends and rage.

I'll write more later- I have to go meet my language partner!

The past and the pending

First of all, this song is my favorite Shins song. It's a really beautiful song. Today, I had my Chinese culture class and we discussed Mao Zedong once again. For all of you who may not be extremely international affairs savvy- he is the founding father of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He started as a revolutionary in the 1920's and was extremely influential in shaping Chinese society politics, and economy up untill he died in 1976. Just Wikipedia him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong. As I have said before,  Mao did a lot evil things during his political career, but he brought the country together after the Century of Humiliation( the time period from the Opium wars to the Japanese occupation to the founding of the PRC in 1949). The unification of the country trumps all of the atrocities that Mao and his government committed.

Anywho.
Everything in Beijing is going well. Yesterday was really my first day of kind of missing America, but I'm really glad to have this experience. I really do see a huge cultural difference between our American, Irish, and English friends. I'm not just talking about different slang that we use. Sometimes they say slang terms and we just look at them like What did you just say? There's a different sense of normality and a different sense of humor between the different people. One English boy got so pissy because I asked if they celebrated Halloween in England....I did not know if it was a big deal like it is in America. But of course, they don't play beer pong. And then again, I don't know if it's the sample size of the British people we are exposed to or if it is a cultural thing. I mean other than Canada- I would say the United States and the UK have the most cultural similarities. It makes me think what about what will happen when I can go there in Chinese. I mean if I am already seeing these cultural differences between Brits and Americans- how crazy is it going to be when I can have those conversations in Chinese. I am kind of getting there. I am at that terrible stage in my path to learning the Chinese language where I'm just really awkward. I have a decent amount of vocabulary, but I want to form complex sentences and discuss substantial topics.It's just a struggle. I'm definitely at that pre-teen stage of learning a language. I want to say more than just I want this. How much does that cost? I am American. I want to discuss culture, economics, and politics with my language partner, not just talk about the weather.

It's weird and interesting when you visit a place and it's so different than you remembered...or your preconceived notions about the culture are not exactly spot on. For example, I had these preconceived notions that freedom of speech was so scandalous and not to talk about uncomfortable subjects, but it seems a lot less severe in Beijing than I imagined. Like we talk about controversial subjects on campus in a university or just in public.I am not going to go protest for human rights or anything in Tianan'men Square naturally. Urban Chinese people have access to technology and information- yeah it's monitored by the government but a lot of Chinese have VPNs which allows them to search the entire world wide web not blocked off by the Great Firewall of China. I am really interested to research the limitations of freedom of speech in China. One crucial element of life that I noticed while working at Bahama Breeze- serving tables and dealing with corporate bullshit buercracy is that some things only matter when they need to matter....or Some things only matter when they have strategic importance in the case of China. In certain instances, speaking your mind does not really matter...but in other cases it does.

It's a nasty day of pollution. Today, I was thinking- What are the health implications going to be in the next few years for China's population. I almost want to compare it to processed foods in America and how that's effected America's obesity crisis and how children are hitting puberty at 8 years old. What are the health implications for urban citizens to breathe in smog everyday?! Look down and you can see Beijing on a nasty day on smog.

It's crazy how it works out. I was really apathetic to environmental concerns when I lived in the United States. Seriously...I was like let the hippies take care of it, but I don't want my children one day to grow up in this shit. It's such a wake-up call....but in all fairness Beijing on a good day is beautiful. There are mountains like 5 miles away that we can only see on a clear day.

Spotted!

Antoinette and Sydney are in my room studying  and there's a beetle. We just called Jeremy in here to destroy the beetle. Mission accomplished. Sydney was like this is the first bug I've seen in here except for the spiders. I was like the spiders? We had spiders in here!?! Well no we didn't. Dave does two "mechanisms of torture" using his hands kind of like puppets".The first one is talons where he uses a talon hand gesture to tickle people. The second one is spiders where naturally, he's makes a spider hand gesture to tickle us. He's such a silly bastard. Our little group on the trip is Rudy, Syd, Antoinette, Dave, and me.

Antoinette

Me Syd and Antoinette

Dave and I

 We hang out with the British people and these two Irish guys. Today, I met a boy from Afghanistan. He worked at the U.S. consulate in Kabul and as of tonight I've decided to tutor him in English. His English is good enough to the point that I can explain what a complex word means in simpler words.I also met an Auburn graduate today. He is Southern and I have high hopes for our friendship. I am just so relieved to meet another southerner ahhh! Syd and I also made friends with a girl from Hong Kong who speaks California-esque English. She's a sweetheart and I can tell we are going to be friends! She's 18 and going to Cambridge next year. She's me and Syd's asian baby.

I'm still waiting to see if I am getting an internship or not. Hopefully, I'll be an intern at this research institute at one of the local universities. It would be delightful especially since I completely rewrote my resume. It's really sinking in that A. I'm graduating next spring. B. This is my last year of my undergraduate C. This is my fourth year of college. They seem to all go hand and hand, but literally the reality of all three of those things has hit me at different times.It seems really trivial, but I'm just like wow- I actually need to start making some decisions.  Then of course the big question- What am I going to do with my life?

I've started writing notes on my Iphone at random times in the day. Weishenme (Why) you might ask...Well because sometimes especially in China you are overwhelmed by some type of cultural experience and at that specific time you really want to write down your sentiments towards this experience right when it's happening. I started this yesterday- so it's a new deal...but I mean there's nothing worse then going to write my blog and having nothing particularly interesting to say...like oh Today in Beijing I ate jiaozi. They were sooo delicerse (spelling totally intentional...Chinese people can't ever say delicious or famous. It's so fucking precious.) I mean when I look back on my blog in a year or two years- that's not the kind of shit I'm going to want to read about. 

Like something very small happen yesterday that I found very interesting. We were riding in a rickshaw yesterday in the Hutong area of Beijing. Rudy and I were making small talk with the Chinese guy who was peddling us on his bicycle. He was telling us where he was from some region in Central China. He told us in Chinese that he was not Beijingren because Beijingren don't do this kind of work. It's such a little slice of how the hukou system in China works. I don't know if you know about the hukou system, but it basically segregates rural and urban Chinese into two different classifications of citizenship. Urban citizens reap the social benefits of city life through free educations and other social services, but rural Chinese do not. The hukou system is part of the reason for China's economic success because the Chinese government does not have to provide social services to rural Chinese and that saves them quite a bit of money. Migrant workers come to the city and work for nothing because their rural citizenship does not guarantee them any type of social welfare. More or less, China's economic prosperity rides on the backs of underpaid migrant workers from Rural China. They are the one doing all the dirty work that urban citizens would never do.

Rudy and I and of course the man who bicycled us around

Also..while we were watching a video about Mao in our culture class. Dave wrote me a note telling me that I was a counterrevolutionary who needed to go work in the fields.

Here's one little note that I wrote on my Iphone especially for my blog!

September 10th, 2011

So it's noon in Beijing and we are sitting on a bus in the most intense traffic. It's been like an hour just sitting in Beijing traffic. There are people walking around near the street and Dave commented on how everyone was walking around like a zombie movie.  We proceeded to talk about how everyone would happen if we were in fact in a zombie movie...You know who would die first, who would survive, and how the movie would start. Dave would be the narrator of course. We got into a fight about which was better New Jersey or Atlanta.We walked around Traditional Hutong district in Beijing. I bought a Mao propaganda poster for our dorm. It says Everything will be better after the Cultural Revolution...if you don't know what it is...look it up. It's so ironic, but I think it's really interesting or...you yi si. The Cultural Revolution is a really dark time in Modern Chinese history and Chinese society is still dealing with the consequences and implications of that time. We went and saw a traditional Hutong household and walked all around the city. We learned how to make Jiaozi or dumplings at this Chinese woman's house. Here's some pictures from Hutong. They are not clutch quality because I forgot my camera and just used my Iphone!

Also Spotted is the title. It's a little game I created. It's pretty much about objectifying International and Chinese male students alike. When one of my American friends or I spots a good looking chap-we call out spotted! A new dimension of this game has been added tonight. When a hipster asian is spotted, one must say Spotted....HA! HA as in Hipster Asian. What can I say- I am a genius.If you don't know what a Hipster is....google it.

love you!

Wo ai Ni

Food poisoning buhao.

Well...It happened. I got food poisoning. I had really bad stomach cramps that were different from any other cramps I'd ever had. I went to the hospital and they told me I had food poisoning. Thankfully, it hasnt been too terrible. My cramps are still pretty bad and I threw up once, but that's about it. It was from a pork dish I got at a cafe in my dorm. I'm feeling better now though.

We started our culture class today. Our prof is getting his P.H.D. at Yale and writing his thesis on the Chinese and Burmese border clash. We watched this video on the Mao years in my class. It's really interesting since the beginning of the founding of the PRC, the Chinese government has always put the economic interest of the state before the well-being of it's citizens. From the Great Leap Forward's creation of the largest man-made starvation to the current disregard for environmental and labor standards, the Chinese government has consistently cut corners in order to boost profits or bail themselves out of economic crises. Mao Zedong is such a cult figure in China and it's really difficult to paint him as one person or another. Don't get me wrong. He did a lot of really horrific, terrible, and monstrous things to say the least , but he also unified China. He took a country that had been beaten down for years by foreign occupation and humiliation and gave it back it's pride. Now China's the second largest economy in the world. I was thinking about this today : Is the juice worth the squeeze in regards to China's economic prosperity? China's economic growth has lifted millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class...but it has costed countless lives, exploited millions of migrant workers and Chinese people, and tremendously polluted the environment to the extent that people are inhaling loads of smog with each breath they take. Most Chinese people agree that Mao did what he had to do at the time to unify the country. Would China even be the economic powerhouse they are today if they played fair in the global economy? Doubtful. All these question bounce around in my head. China really is amazing though. It's so crazy to think that they have came so far from a agriculturally based and politically weak society to the second largest economy in the world in a little over 60 years. It's fantastic... It took the US almost two centuries to become the global hegemony...post WWII. Well I'm getting dinner now with the Brits of course.

TATA for now loves...

and btw make a skype date with me soon.