Black Wednesday

22 December 2010,

Today we suffered the worst loss thus far. We lost three companions today to the American-istis disease. We lost one a week ago and another yesterday. Making our death toll five. We have another in the sick bay. I doubt he'll make it through, he'll probably be a goner by tomorrow. Leaving our home land with ten fellow adventurers, today we're down to half. I wonder how the rest of our expedition will go. We received word that reinforcements are coming, but they won't arrive for a fortnight's fortnight so we'll have to make do without.

Without our musician and our drunk it has been quiet camp. The eerie silence before the climax. On top of that, to keep our mind's off our losses we've devoted ourselves to our remaining work; which has isolated ourselves from each other.

It seems a fellow Kensei is convening a Samurai Council Meeting. I must take my ado.

Daimyo 梅

On a more serious note, it was really sad saying good bye to a few friends. Like the above section mentioned, it has gotten really quite. Everyone who is left has been buckling down preparing for their finals or writing their final papers or both. Today there was definitely a different atmosphere. For half the day it felt like I was the one going home. I just had that air of excitement, like you're about to do something new - similar to the experience of the drive from the airport in Dalian to our dorms. I wonder if that's what it'll feel like when it happens for real. Eventually it'll just be me, because everyone else is going back to the US and I've opted to stay in China over break. It's late, I'm tired, good night.

SEVERE WEATHER ADVISORY

*crackle* crr crrr *crackle*

We interrupt your usual broadcast for an emergency weather announcement.

The government has issued a severe weather advisory.

There is a impeding snowfall that will take place over the course of the day.

We advise everyone to remain in their houses.

As usual, the Chinese government announced that they will not shovel the snow to the best of their abilities nor will they salt.

We repeat, they WILL NOT use salt.

If you must leave your house, we advice everyone to take precautions so you don't slip and fall or worse break your head

That is all. We now return you to your usual broadcast.

Thanksgiving with some sides.

As promised, a post on Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of sides – pun intended. We had Thanksgiving on Wednesday, so two days ahead of everyone in America. It wasn’t the most traditional Thanksgiving, but nonetheless it was a delicious one. Danny’s apartment is comparatively large for China; however it isn’t really adequate to fit 15-20 people around a dinner table. Therefore, we all ended up eating in chairs, on the sofa, or on the floor with our plates in our hand. But the food….oh how delicious American food can be sometimes. We ordered the food from some a five star restaurant that cooked a Thanksgiving meal for Americans. Even still, I wasn’t completely confident it how well the food would have turned out. So I must admit that when we saw the food – and ate it of course – it came as a surprise that the food was delicious. They had all the staple foods: turkey, mash potatoes, gravy, etc. I took some pictures. As an aside, I promise that some sort of pictures will be up later this evening. But I think that my favorite dish had to be marshmallows and sweet potatoes yummy. They were home cooked and the marshmallows came from the US of A. They were cooked by some friends of Danny’s, people from Texas – as hard to believe as that is – who have fairly good Chinese. They are actually living in China and are semi-retired.

Now to the pun. I have a bunch of random topics I’m going to throw in to this post. The order of the topics will follow from least serious to most serious.

Seeing how I was just talking about food, I’ll continue that strain of thought. Two words: Brooklyn bar. The Brooklyn bar or an American consulate as we like to call it is well…a bar, to be exact an expat bar, but it also serves American food. When we went, I ordered a cheeseburger and that burger was probably the best burger I had in like four months. I gotta say, I sure do miss American food like a lot. But of course it is an expat bar so it was damn expensive. Burger 50 Yuan, cheese 10 Yuan, milkshake 35 Yuan, a good time and some good food priceless. 95 Yuan isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things (less that 15 USD), but when you usually get dinner for 5 Yuan, that’s a lot of money.

What I want to move to next is the weather in Dalian. It is freaking cold here…like really cold…like negative degrees cold…in Celsius of course. At the time of this writing, it is -3 degrees here, so like 26 degrees Fahrenheit. But what’s worse is the wind, recorded at 18 mph at this current writing. It was so bad, that walking back from dinner was difficult, we were having trouble putting one foot in front of the other and walking straight. Ugh, on another aside, I think that my main light just died.

This post has taken me a lot longer to write than expected because of work constraints, so I’m going to stop here. However, I would eventually like to cover North Korea and the wiki leaks debacle.

Very Robust Guanxi 101

So I must sound like a broken record when I say I’ve just been so busy that I didn’t have time to write a blog post lately. And yes, I know I promised to write more often – I’m working on it. It’s no matter though, because I was unsure of what I wanted to write about anyways until recently. What I want to touch upon is the notion of civility in China. Speaking in general, you can’t trust the average Chinese person - at least those you don’t know. That’s because every Chinese person is out for their own self-interest and they don’t truly care what happens to you if they don’t know you that is. Take for example this situation that I was in. I was walking down the street to get lunch and I hear screaming. I look around and in front of me there is this little girl being crushed by a table that accidently fell on top of her. All the other Chinese people just kept walking past her minding their own business. Luckily I was there and rushed and picked up the table. That is my own personal example. Danny has plenty of similar examples, but I think you get the picture.

This brings me to something that happened quite recently to me. It was raining outside and it was early on a Saturday morning, I figured most people were asleep so I decided to go out and get something to eat on my own. Once I arrive at the cafeteria, I order food, then sit down and wait for my food to be cooked. Eventually, my order is called so I get up – but I leave my umbrella on the table – I get my food I turn around and my umbrella is gone. Now to be honest, I was simmering with anger. I left my umbrella unattended for maybe a minute at most and someone had the courage to steal it. And of course, the week before Danny was lecturing to us about civility in class so my initial thoughts were damn Chinese Guanxi (relationship) culture.

I finished eating, still angry that I didn’t bring my umbrella with me, and was getting ready to go until one of the cleaning staff came up to me talking in Chinese – so for simplicity, I didn’t really understand what she was saying – she eventually gives up and tells me to follow her; I do, and we walk towards a pillar. At this pillar was my umbrella, apparently she thought someone forgot the umbrella and she set up her own lost and found box. This made me feel good inside. Because for all the rhetoric about how China is corrupt, selfish, etc, it showed me that there are some “good” people in China and that everything must be taken with a grain of salt.

On a different note, I’ve uploaded more pictures to facebook. The pictures continue in album one: China1; and then moves into album two. And think, in less than a week it’ll be Thanksgiving. Even though we’re in China, we’ll still be celebrating. Next post will be on Thanksgiving dinner. Peace.

Rural Farm and misc.

Hello again, so I have three things I want to get through this evening. We’ll start with what everyone probably wants to know, how was the farm??!?! Then move to pictures and finally heat. Basic itinerary: We left by plane to Qingdao – yes, where the beer Tsingdao is made; unfortunately we didn’t have time to sample any – at 7:30am (way too early) in the morning on October 22^nd; then took a four hour van-ride in a much too small van out into the countryside to be greeted like the circus came to town; finally leaving and heading home around 9pm on Sunday. A great excuse for not doing any homework that weekend!

So what did we do?...well what is there to do but work? Not much, so work was what entertained throughout the weekend – how sad for a birthday weekend I know. Putting that aside, we did three different activities: gathering sweet potatoes; digging up the roots of corn stalks; and peeling off the pieces of the corn on the cob. After a few minutes of trying to get the sweet potatoes out of the ground, we found out that we pretty bad at it. This is because sweet potatoes are quite fragile and sticking a pitchfork like tool into the ground slices the potatoes when wielded by inexperienced hands – which is bad. After we finally got the potatoes out of the ground, we separated them into the good piles which consisted of large potatoes that had very little damage and the bad piles which well had everything else.

After we killed enough potatoes they figured making fuel for fires would be better suited for us. We then moved to their corn field where we spent our effort digging up corn stalk roots and then beating them with sticks to get the dirt out. Thus, we didn’t have to worry about destroying it.

But what did for the better part of the weekend was pick off corn kettles from the cob. This type was for animals so it had to be de-cobbed? It is kinda hard to explain, so you’ll just the before and after pictures.

Talking about pictures…I think I found a way to get pictures up on the blog so hopefully you’ll see some soon! And the farm pictures have some interesting pictures of the local cuisine…

EDIT: Uploading pictures to the blog would have taken forever with a 8mb limit per post, but I have uploaded the first batch of photos on Facebook.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but if you have to know we ate…hah, you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of this blog.

Now on to the last subject, heat. So yeah, it is really cold in China and really really windy. It’s kinda horrible actually. But I’ve survived so far…I’ll let you know when we reach the coldest month: January. The interesting though is we have no heat. Yes, NO HEAT. That’s what I would have been saying, but national turn on the heat day was actually today! So the heaters all over China have started to turn on. Unfortunately it isn’t very warm yet still. But yeah, the heat in China is governed by the government. And no has heat until the government decides to turn on heat. This is called National Turn on the Heat Day – unofficially. Supposedly it doesn’t turn on until November 15^th, but it is especially cold this winter (China doesn’t have fall L) and so they turned it on. What was especially interesting though was that every class sent two representatives to meet with government officials and voice their concerns.

So the interesting we ate were: grasshoppers, rabbit, and chicken – we got to see them kill the chicken. Enjoy the pictures when they go up.

Address

For those who were interested in sending a package, I finally have an address for you. A fellow classmate has finally received a package, so we know the address works.

To: Jasun Moy, Foreign Students Dormitory Room 218
Dongbei University of Finance and Economics
Institute of Chinese Language and Culture
China, Liaoning Province
Dalian City, Shahekou District
No. 217 Jianshan Street
Postal Code 116025
CHINA

If you do send a care-package, something filled with some sweets, like chocolate, would be nice.

First Expedition

Sorry for the delay, but it has gotten quite busy on my side. Because of constant nagging and some advice from my father I will try and give you all more frequent but shorter posts so to keep you up-to-date in my life. But without further ado, I want to take you back to my Sunday night on October 3rd because this is the day when we started our excursion inside inner (central) China – to Yinchuan. What follows is a short itinerary of the week of October 3 to 8.

October 3rd:

7:26pm – we take a train from Dalian to Beijing

Because, unfortunately, there is no land bridge connecting these Dalian and Beijing the train must go around the small piece of water between these two cities resulting in a train ride of about 13 hours. Luckily, we took soft sleepers (or first class) so at least had “soft” beds to sleep on for the trip over. I suggest to anyone coming to China to travel by train at least one so that you can experience real China. No one but foreigners and the very wealthy ever take planes so I say travel authentic. Also, if you travel by day, it is also a nice way to see China.

October 4th:

Approximately 6am – we arrive in Beijing and travel hastily from the train station to the airport to catch our 10am flight from Beijing to Yinchuan.

Sometime around noon – we land in Yinchuan. We head towards the hotel to unpack and then get lunch

Lunch was interesting…there were ups and downs. Starting with the low: we ate some sort of animal’s (I think it was lamb/mutton) leg/foot – it tasted horrible. The high, however, was this delicious tea called babao cha (eight treasure tea) which was super sweet and did I mention delicious.

After lunch we went to our first site the Western Xia Tombs (or pyramids). Yeah weird, I know, I didn’t think pyramids were in China either. But eventually, once I get around to these pictures you’ll see that I’m not lying. It was a fairly short day because everyone was tired from a long day of traveling.

October 5th – 7th:

In between these days we like five or six different attractions in the surrounding areas. First we saw two different Buddhist temples – one was actually Tibetan. Then we went to the 108 pagodas (built in the Xixia period). Next was the great wall. This was pretty cool because it is near the Mongolian border so the wall was actually in use there. It is also not an official site, so the wall isn’t renovated and we got to see it in its original condition. Next heading to ancient troop hiding caves (I believe in the Ming dynasty). We got to actually go and travel into the tunnels very cool and scary because they are huge and contained hidden traps incase the enemy ever found the caves. And lastly, we traveled to the Tenggeli desert. This was probably one of the more interesting experiences because well I’ve never been to a desert before. We even got to ride camels! And then we got to eat them! Haha, not exactly, but we did eat camel meat. It tastes very similar to beef.

Then on October 7th we had train tickets at 4:26pm from Yinchuan back to Beijing – another long trek by train. First-class still, so it was at least comfortable. We arrived at Beijing at around 11am the next day.

October 8th:

We spent what was left of this day in Beijing. We went and saw all the traditional sites: the imperial palace, and then Tiananmen Square, the Silk Market, and some tourist street that sold exotic foods. What I’ve found out about Beijing is that days in Beijing are extremely short and quick, in part because of travel time, but just be prepared that either you can’t do everything you want or you’ll rush through things to get to the next site.

Then it was back home we go. With our plane taking off at 9:25pm we all sat down in our seats exhausted from a long week of traveling and a long day in Beijing and took quick nap before landing in Dalian.


Done. On to the next topic: this weekend. Tomorrow early in the morning we travel to rural China to some farm to huck corn and pull up squash and other vegetables and basically live the life of a poor farmer. I’ll let you know how that goes sometime after we get back.

Classes

This post is long overdue. But things have been chaotic and throughout this post you’ll see why. Let’s start with some housecleaning stuff. To my audience: we potentially have new members. My blog has been linked to my college’s website thus prospective study abroad students, et cetera, may be reading this blog and thus my posts will sometimes sound and will be oriented at them. So I’ll insert my apology and disclaimer now to my professors who will read this and see my horrible unedited grammar and writing as well as the slang that I use.

But nevertheless let’s get to the good stuff. Apparently people are interested in knowing what classes I’m taking. So without further ado…Classes started on September 8th but it took until September 17th for me to finalize my schedule – and even still it might not be finished, I’m not quite sure. The most interesting and of course the most intensive is Chinese language class. Four hours a day, five days a week, starting at….8am and finally finishing in time for lunch at 12pm. Now to be fair, it is more like three hours because we actually start at 8:10am and then get a break at 8:55am for ten minutes and then we start at 9:05am and another ten minute break at 9:50am – you get the picture.

This school has two sections: A and B or in my head Advanced and Basic. We have three students in our program who are in the advanced class. Two are from our very own Juniata College! The last one doesn’t count because he’s actually a Chinese citizen. His situation is complex and I don’t really want to get into. I was going to be in the advanced class as well; but after day 1 when I understood maybe 25-35 percent of what was going on I figured it was for the best to go down to basic.


Other fascinating classes include: Chinese Foreign Policy, China and Civil Society, and the mandatory class Modern China. Very Chinese if I do say so myself. I don’t think they require much explanation but I will provide one anyway.

Chinese Foreign Policy is very intensive survey of the surrounding issues regarding the foreign policy of China. Basically why they do what they do. We look at the themes, frameworks, and the origins of Chinese history and culture and how they play into their behaviors in the international community.

China and Civil Society is an examination of if civil society is in China and how it has adapted and modified to fit into contemporary China. The first question is what is civil society? This in itself is complicated because there are various conceptions and definitions of what civil society is. But the most generalized definition I can provide without over simplifying is that theory of the third sector or the individual distinction between self and society. The third sector is supposedly distinct from the other two sectors: the state and the market. But now this is sounding too complicated so I’ll stop there.

Modern China is a history class focusing on contemporary China – or post-Mao era. Here we are learning about current issues in China with special attention to state-society relations, the externalities of economic reforms, popular culture, Chinese society, the Chinese political system, and Sino-US relations.

I just want to take a step back and discuss a little about classes in general for prospective students. The first thing I want to say is Danny is really cool and flexible and will go out of his way to help you. So the way Danny does things is he had like four class options and as a collective we picked two that he would teach this semester. But on top of that, he is more than willing to set up individual or smaller group classes to fill in your schedule if the other classes aren’t your thing. For example, there are a couple economics majored students here and he is doing like a tutorial with them. Basically anything within reason is fair game. So for those thinking you might not be able to take classes you want; chances are you can convince Danny to teach it.

I also want to insert a rumor that I’ve been hearing. But there may be potentially another school partnership somewhere in Beijing in a few years. I don’t know how credible that rumor is, so take it with a grain of salt. But from what I’ve heard, economics students will be going to Dalian because it is an economics school (the English speaking economics teacher took leave this semester/year which is why Danny is teaching that economics class to those students). And everyone else will be send to Beijing instead.

So this is already probably too long, a problem that occurs quite commonly when I type. So I’ll stop here. Many more interesting topics that I want to cover…eventually. But I also want to write about things that interest you so if there is anything about China or their cultures that intrigues you let me know and I’ll try and fill your inquisitive minds.

First Impressions

It’s been almost four days living in the great country called China. So many things have happened and so many thoughts have crossed my mind I don’t really know where to start. I apologize now if this post jumps from idea to idea randomly. This is going to be like free writing with Timothy McGee. Oh yeah, and I apologize if this is really long.

Day 1:

I’ll have some pictures up later of my room, but it is a single with its’ own bathroom. A little small I think, but manageable. The bathroom is interesting with my own sink, shower, and toilet within one step of each other. The water smells horrible; very similar to metal. I have a fairly good view of the city from my room though, so I guess that makes up for everything. Outside my window I even I even get to see the national bird of China: the crane…get it! haha

Right after getting set up with our rooms and unpacking for a bit it was time for lunch and a little bit of shopping. For our first meal in China our program director, Danny, took us to a soup shop and ordered us all this spicy soup so that he could gauge our tolerance levels. For someone who doesn’t eat soup too much, it was really delicious. I took a picture of our first meal so you’ll all get to see it. There was this really cool spice called the numbing sauce which basically numbs your mouth completely if you use too much. I used enough that I couldn’t feel my tongue it was pretty cool haha. This is highly recommended for pranks on siblings.

First experience shopping was at a Walmart like shopping center, Danny basically just let us loose. Everything was basically in Chinese; luckily the aisles were also in English so I knew at least what aisles to go down. At the moment I feel like a child because trying to do basic things alone is impossible right now. Danny does everything. We are growing though; I have gone out with fellow students without Danny. The rule of thumb in China: always say hao (good) repeatedly, dui (correct), or zhe/na ge (this/that) – and then pointing at the object. This hasn’t failed me yet.

Day 2 & 3:

Basically Danny just took us around Dalian, nothing really special. We got to see the sites and the malls basically. Took the bus, only one 1 kuai! 1 dollar is like 6.7 kuai so very cheap for a bus ride. After today I felt like I could really handle this. I remember basically everywhere Danny took us and could get there on my own. So I feel like this I can handle this, this city is nothing compared to NYC. There is only one outstanding difference and that’s the drivers in China. I learned this today as I crossed the street: pedestrians never have the right of way – as I’m almost hit by a car. They are scary. I definitely understand the joke about how Asians can’t drive now.

So yeah, that’s basically everything that’s happened so far. Let’s see…oh internet that’s a fun topic. I get 2gb of bandwidth every month, so I have to use the internet sparingly. Good thing facebook and basically any other site you would want to look at is blocked. I guess this is a good thing to learn and live with for a bit: understanding the life of someone under an oppressive government. This is what PACs (Peace and Conflict Studies) students dream for: complete understanding of an oppressive government and finding ways to fight it. As I write this blog I am fighting the Chinese government and their Great Firewall! Viva la revolucion!

I think this is good for now and probably already too long for most so I’ll stop here. Next post soon hopefully.

Quick Thoughts

As I wait at Incheon International Airport in South Korea for the plane that will take me to Dalian, China with five hours to spare and nothing do I find myself being gravitated to finally starting this blog. After a few moments of spontaneous creativity the blog is named and the layout completed (for now) and I am writing my first post.

As I sit at the terminal in the dark because it is 5am here and with no lights on because I guess they're trying to be sustainable here as well; I just wanted to reflect on a few thoughts and feeling that have already crossed my mind.

So initial feelings...first anxiousness, then nervousness, next humility, and finally ending in confusion.

My first feeling of anxiousness comes from the wait and I guess the feeling of the fact that it is finally happening. After spending the entire sophomore year filling out forms after forms and attending meetings after meetings I was finally on my way to the airport. As excited as I am to be traveling and studying abroad I do worry about my proficiency of the Chinese language and my ability to communicate and function in society once I am over there. For instance, just trying to get a hair cut. It worried me so much that I just decided to chop off all my hair so I wouldn't have to worry about trying to describe how I wanted my hair cut.

Traveling to South Korea was an experience in itself. In the U.S. public announcements always go, with some exceptions, in English and then Spanish. On the plane however it went Korean and then English. This small difference struck me for two apparent reasons. First, it showed just how vast the world truly is. How no matter how big America is or tries to be English is not the most prevalent or most spoken. It shows how we are the secondary/foreign language. Second, just waiting and listening to the public announcements was longer. In the U.S. we could listen and then after it was all done we could just continue what we were doing. But for us foreigners we had to wait listen to it in Korean - to make sure we wouldn't miss it in English - and then listen to it in English. While I'm not attempting to make a huge deal and debate out of this, it does give off an air of inferiority.

Which has lead to confusion. Why have I attempted to do something so different, so outrageous and crazy? Why did I decide to go to a country that speaks a completely different language with only mediocre to beginning proficiency? Why am I here? To me that answer has always been simple: to become fluent in Chinese. But I guess I forgot to thing deeply about the actually learning process and how I will survive that. The question becomes what am I doing here? Why didn't I just take the easy route and go to school in central Pennsylvania? Am I the adventurous type? Do I like a challenge? I don't have an answer. Just a hope.

To finish, a quote from the movie Inception which describes my feeling pretty well:

You're waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter - because we'll be together....China here we come!