A Month of Beijing!

Hi all! I know, I know, it's about time for an update. This took a rather long time and a lot of effort to update so all of you should be grateful! :)

Yayy! Minzu Daxue (Minzu University)! :) This has been my home for well over a month now. I really like it here! For those of you who are curious, I have 4 classes every morning: a "big class", a "small class", a discussion class and a one-on-one session. Usually that is from 8-11am, and then one-on-one sessions run for an hour sometime after that. We have a quiz every morning and a weekly test every Friday. After test time, we have Chinese lunch table and a language practicum. We learn/study close to 100 words a day and a couple dozen grammar points. On top of that, I am taking Tai Chi Sword and Chinese Painting. We are free on the weekends, which are mostly used to explore Beijing! I am having a blast! :D 

This is the building that I live in. It is, in every way, a hotel. The name on the building even says so. But a lot of it is used to house foreign students like us. We have two very sweet ladies that come and collect trash every day. Once a week, they more-or-less clean the rooms and change the bed sheets. Compared to the Chinese students’ living situation…. I think they detest us. :P 

My room! I was expecting a dinky dorm room that I’ve seen in the past, which are not all that bad. There is just not much space. The room is equipped with desks, closets, a mini fridge, and a TV. This room definitely took me by surprise! We also have our own bathrooms which has a shower. That is another major difference between our dorms and the resident students. They have to travel to a completely different building to shower. I share the room with one other girl. <3

The view from my room! This was taken on a decent day with slight pollution. When the pollution is really bad, I cannot see the buildings across the way. I REALLY miss the gorgeous Arizona sky. Looking down, there are three soccer fields. People here play soccer ALL the time. There are also a lot of people that walk the track, especially after dinner to burn those calories. There are tons of bball courts and even a sand volleyball court. More bball courts, tennis courts and badminton courts are located at different places on campus. 

Weekend trip #1! Destination: The Forbidden Palace. Photo credit goes to Alycia. Thanks roomie!! I have got to admit; running around with Alycia was one of the BEST mini-trips EVER. I have a decent amount of pictures to prove that. :D

In Beijing, ANY place on the weekend is PACKED with people. I hate it. But my roomie, Alycia, and I make it a habit to explore places with the least people. Result: some of the BEST pictures. :)

Shao Kao! Beijing BBQ. Okay, these are not exactly the safest things to eat. But I consider it a part of Beijing's (night/university) culture! Here is my first Shao Kao being made! 

They put this sweet and salty sauce on it and cover it with spices. I like bread too much and bought mantou (steamed bread) Shao Kao. Actually, I don’t think I would’ve dared to try it had I not seen the mantou. :P

Look at that BLUE sky!! Like I mentioned in my last post, Beijing has been raining A LOT recently and this is the result. It reminds me of Arizona days. :) This was taken at the Confucian Temple on one of our Language Practicums. 

Han laoshi's 402 students: Lookie what I found. :P Who still remembers the other 9?!

Two ACC students are assigned to one host family. Unfortunately, my host family has unexpectedly been rather busy and has not been in Beijing. But my host family mom is a teacher and one of her graduate students takes us out on adventures instead. :) I am REALLY grateful for her!! One Friday night, she took me and my "big brother" (the other ACC student that I share the host family with, I know him from last year because of IU! :)) to WangFuJin, a place known for its weird edible items and souvenir shopping. Someone remind me what this is called. I've seen these in Chinese movies since I was a little girl and have ALWAYS wanted to try it. Now I can cross that off my list! :) It is basically some sort of fruit and grapes covered in a sugar coating. YUMMMM!

 Something else that I tried... Before scrolling down to the next picture, can you guess what it is or see my reluctance in this picture? 

SCORPION. Yup, I did. x_X I only had a tiny piece of it, which according to my "big brother" above, I missed out on the best part: the juicy part. But I don’t think I could have….

 

The Saturday after was spent at the Great Wall of China. I absolutely LOVE this place. I’ve travelled to one other section 3 years ago and am already planning to hike the Great Wall again the next time I am in Beijing! 

Jumping pics. Need I say more?! We’ve had a lot of fails… but finally SUCCESS!

My favorite ACC girls: Tina and Alycia! <3

 

We went on a little detour.....Shhhhhhhhhh.... ;)

 

 Mini IU reunion & me (the honorary Hoosier)! :)

Best slide ever?! YES! I didn't know you could slide down from the Great Wall…. It was AWESOME!! There’s a lever that allows you to control your speed. All they ask is that you don’t stop before the end and you don’t go too fast. 

Climbed the Great Wall of China again. Success! Double check. :)

 I love this girl! Alycia is 18 and a Junior at Georgetown. Whattttt?! :) We’re sporting our I <3 Beijing T-shirts, but… of course you can’t see that. The two of us do almost everything together. :D

I would like you all to know that I can eat 20 jiaozi (dumplings) without throwing up. My roomie can eat 25. She bought 50 that night by herself and left the manager speechless. He first thought she meant 5 dumplings... not 5 baskets of it (one basket has 10). Hahaha. Also, I am still drinking too much milk tea for my own good, but I have found people who are even more addicted than I am! 

Speaking of food…… Beijing's famous edibles! I can't actually tell you what most of it is cause or their names... because I don't remember. ^^;; The bowl of white stuff is called Dou Jiangr… it is called the Coca Cola of old Beijing people….. because only they are able to tolerate it!! In my opinion… it’s kind of like soy milk gone bad… because it is sour and has a really weird consistency to it. That bowl was the only left at the end of the meal. But here are some pictures of more foods anyways! 

Two Sundays ago, a couple of us went to Prince Gong's Residence. There really wasn't much to see and it was packed with so much people. But I think the results of our trip turned out splendid! Haha. 

Crazy storms in Beijing!! We had another major one just two days ago... I’m pretty sure it hailed a little bit. There was so much flooding!! My mom says that it is flooding in a lot of parts of China… how’s the weather in Arizona?!   

To celebrate the end of our midterms (and surviving half of ACC), ACC arranged two paid destinations of travel. I chose LuoYang because there was a total of 14 people versus the 50 some that decided on the other destination. Both trips were weekend trips. We left Thursday night after our test and returned to Beijing on Sunday at 6am. It was a 10 hour train ride there and then another 10 hours back. Hard sleeper trains! 

I actually really like these trains. But it was definitely the people present that made the trip that much more enjoyable. :) 

Our 4 star hotel in LuoYang! It has a total of 25 floors…. The top floor is one of those rotating restaurants. Unfortunately, it moved so slow that nobody realized it was rotating. :P

Our hotel room! I got to keep my roomie! :)

 

Our window view from the 22^nd floor. LuoYang was so GREEN in some parts of the city. There are trees everywhere! :) There were a lot of elderly people dancing there in front and behind of the big screen the next morning. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good picture of it. 

We visited the Shaolin Temple! Obviously, the place is very well-known for its KungFu.

This is the Forest of Pagodas, literally there are so many that it looks like a forest. A pagoda is created for anyone of importance and then after their death, they are buried there. The newest pagoda has a laptop, an airplane and a subway etched into it. It was really weird to see.  

We got to watch a KungFu performance and learned some KungFu ourselves! That was rather interesting and very tiring!!

The rain followed me to LuoYang!! The streets were badly flooded. People still trodded through the streets… it looked like a dirty slip and slide except with higher waters and stronger currents. :P 

 The streets were still flooded late into the night, hours after the rain had stopped. :P

Red Bean Pancake fresh from the... grill? I've definitely eaten my fair share of delicious foods this summer!! 

On the second day, we went to the LongMen Caves. These are famous for the gigantic and not so gigantic Buddhist statues. There are some that are only about the size of my thumb! This pose… does not need to be explained. :P 

These pictures really don't do them justice... they were GIGANTIC. That feeling of awe right after I hiked up the flights of stairs…  is hard to capture in pictures or even words.... 

46 pictures and 1755 words later… I hope you like the slideshow! It was really hard to think about what to write... because so much has happened. I've been to so many new places... Pictures are definitely the most appropriate. Enjoy! Until my next post, no promises (or when I come home... whichever comes first :P)! I miss you all! Hope you are all enjoying the summer and I can’t wait to see all of you when I get back! If you want a post card or a souvenior, email me by August 1^st (cclau1@asu.edu)!

GO THANK JEFFREY TSAO FOR UPDATING MY BLOG FOR ME!!! <3

 

Fujian, Fujian, Fujian!

Catch up time! So after Guangdong, I traveled to the Fujian province. This is THE closest to Taiwan I will be this summer! I arrived in Fujian by plane on the 13th and remained there until the 21st. 

I flew from Guangzhou straight to Xiamen. On the 15th, I traveled to Wuyishan (Wuyushan on the map, at the very top) for two days. Then, it was down to Fuzhou for a day and back to Xiamen before I left for Beijing. 

This is my very quaint hotel room. The whole building had only 13 rooms and it was run by a very nice family of 4. The only problems I had with the room was that it sometimes lost electricity and that mosquitoes always found a way to get into my room, but they provided numerous mosquito incenses.   

 This is the University of Xiamen. Honestly, it is one of the prettiest campuses I've ever seen and one of the largest! Who else can claim to have at least three huge lakes, a museum AND a beach? 

This is my flagship tutor's girlfriend, Ivy. She is an unbelievably nice person!! She was my tour guide for most of this trip. 

The beach was technically returned to the government earlier on... but it is so close to the campus and so accessible that it doesn't really matter!

The next day, we went to visit the Buddhist temple that is also close to the campus. 

It was really pretty as well! There are a lot of monks and nuns that live here. This discovery made me curious about their lifestyle. Because, here in Xiamen, with the exception of living at the temple, they live just like normal people. They drive cars, go out to eat (vegetarian only), use cell phones, buy groceries, etc. 

My two favorite things about this place: the endless supply of fresh flowers of almost every variety and large ponds of turtles!

I had a staring contest with this one. He was cute. 
There are A LOT of turtles and A LOT of fishies in there! 

For some reason, some of them tried scaling the walls...   

We took a "soft bed" train to Wuyishan. I want to thank the inventor of playing cards. It is such a universal game!! It was such a great way to pass the time. ECG Peeps, I think we need to bust out the playing cards! Someone needs to teach me new card games soon!! :D

There are four types of trains you can take. Hard seats, hard beds, soft beds and fast trains. I've now been on all of them except hard seat trains! Soft bed trains are the "fanciest" and as clean as they can get. They usually are four beds to a room. Hard beds are definitely dirtier, without much privacy and noisy, these are 6 beds to a space. Fast trains make me think that I am on a flight... 

Our hotel at Wuyishan. 

This is us on the 2-3 hour ride down the river... in the year's worst rainstorm (In Wuyishan anyways). Lucky for us, it started right after we got onto the bamboo raft and ended right before we got off. Let me just say, it was definitely a very dangerous but very fun experience. Even with the rain clothing and umbrella... we were COMPLETELY SOAKED by the end.

This was at the beginning of the journey. Everything is still pretty much visible and very pretty. 

Then the rain starts to pick up. 

it starts raining so hard that the boat drivers are having a hard time maintaining visibility. Some boat drivers had stop to rest under cliffs, mostly because of the complaining passengers. We didn't stop at all, and missed a lot of the pretty scenery. :P

This is towards the end of the ride, when the rain was finally letting up. But it caused tons of waterfalls!!

The next day, we went to hike their tallest peak. This is about halfway. 

This is the view from the bottom. You can't even see the top. :P

This is one of the many places I rode through on my bamboo raft adventure. 

Oh no! Is it going to rain again...?!?

I'm going to let you guys in on a little inside joke. 

Ivy believes that I, somehow, have the ability to cause changes in the weather. Here are a few reasons why:

It rained continuously in Xiamen before I arrived. The morning of the day that I arrived, clear skies and enough sunshine that made me believe that it was much hotter than AZ. It rained again soon after I left for Beijing. 

I was caught in the year's heaviest rainstorm while at Wuyishan. 

Beijing's heaviest rainstorm in ten years, one which caused endless flooding in streets and subways, ... I got stuck in that too. 

Beijing has rained for the last two days. Even my teachers think that that is a very curious thing...

Below are a few pictures from Fuzhou and Xiamen:

Starbucks

Yes. Post-its. 

I haven't been diligent in takings pictures of my food as I should be, (all part of trying to fit in and not look like a complete tourist) but here are some Taiwan-style dishes that I tried when I was in Xiamen. 

Tomatoes are considered both a vegetable and a fruit. These small ones pictured above are fruits. The bigger ones are the vegetables. Makes sense to me!

I am doing very well in Beijing and will tell you all about it in my next post. There might be a few miscellaneous posts from here on out, because there are a lot of things that I want to show you and it didn't seem appropriate to throw them into these last few posts. Anyways, I can say that I have pretty much settled in. First week of classes is over! 7 more weeks to go! Woohoo!