The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace, a palace built by the Empress Cixi, is a gorgeous spot in the northwest of Beijing and way bigger than I expected with a huge lake at the center of colorful gardens... too bad British and French burned down the original.

Xi'an and Shanghai

Yesterday I got back to Beijing from a week-long trip exploring around some new places in China. On Friday we had our end-of-semester exam and at 6pm that day I boarded an overnight train with 5 classmates to Xi'an, China's ancient capital city and home to the Terracotta Warriors. Xi'an is a beautiful city, and much more preserved than Beijing in terms of old architecture as shown by its city walls (and the traditional architecture in the photo below). We spent the weekend there and then took a plane to Shanghai, where we spent the rest of the week. Shanghai was a shocker. After spending a month in Beijing, I could not believe how modern and westernized Shanghai is. Beijing and Shanghai are like night and day. I'm even tempted to say that Shanghai is hardly a Chinese city, especially when you consider that it was founded and then governed by foreigners for so long. Essentially, in Shanghai it is easy to forget that you are in China, you can eat at Western restaurants, only have Western friends, live in Western houses, whereas in Beijing the reminder of being in China is there every time you bite into your pork bun for breakfast or breath in the thick suspiciously-foggy air.

The Peking Opera

The Peking Opera is not really an "opera." It's more of a circus, with characters who juggle, kick swords and spears around in the air, jump over each other and do back-flips across the stage. Nonetheless, it's pretty awesome and definitely better than any circus I've ever been to. In addition to all of the tricks, there is an intriguing plot to the performance (albeit a slow-developing one). The style of singing is often considered "ugly" by Western standards, but I didn't think it was bad at all. All in all, I felt that it was a pretty a touristy experience. Definitely worth going to see, but touristy.

T'is a Great Wall

Last weekend we took a hike up the Sima Tai section of the Great Wall. I felt that it was actually hard to appreciate how incredibly long the wall is when you can only see one small section at a time. One thing that surprised me though was how steep the wall is (which you can't tell from the photo below). It's by no means a stroll along a wall, it's more of a hike up a mountain, which I didn't realize and so was wearing flip-flops. Another thing that surprised me was how many people there are on the wall trying to sell things. These women would come up to us to fan us, follow us all the way up the wall for an hour offering hats, postcards and trinkets for outrageous prices. It took me a while to bargain a fan down from 60 to 15 kuai, and at the end I'm sure she still thought that she was ripping me off.

"Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting"

Last weekend we went to see a performance of Chinese Kung Fu, or as the Chinese say "Gong Fu." It was an impressive spectacle. The plot was enthralling, the guys were incredibly jacked, and the special effects were frightening. But there were a few parts of the performance that surprised me (aka 沒想到). First, there was very little actual fighting, most of the performance was dancing. As you can see from the photo, they often used elaborate props like umbrellas, drums or plants as opposed to weapons. Because of the popularized song by Carl Douglas, most people think of Kung Fu as fighting, but it more has to do with getting in touch with the inner "qi force". Second, there was a legit plot to the performance, that followed an ancient Chinese poem. I just didin't realize there was a going to be a plot. Third, the lead of the show was a 10 year old boy. Because you are more flexible when young, I guess this is an advantage. The kid was amazing, but I think a lot of the Americans were thinking child labor. All in all, it was a great performance, so thanks to Liu laoshi for the tickets, and for giving us a better understanding of what Kung Fu actually is.

the SF Beijing exchange

Every once in a while, you come across a photo that just seems to summarize an entire trip. Below my host brother, 34 years old, and I hold very touristy items from Beijing and San Francisco. Despite the triteness of these symbols, this photo to me represents the exchange of ideas and culture between our homelands... gotta love it.

In Beijing after 24 hours in the air

Normally a flight from San Francisco to Beijing is 12 hours. My flight had two stop overs, leaving me with a trip that was well over 24 hours door to door and I slept maybe 30 minutes max because I was sitting in an exit row where the seats didn't recline. My cab driver from the airport was an extremely animated guy who asked me dozens of questions about myself and America. What do you think of Bush? Which countries have you visited? What do you want to be when you are older? How much does oil cost in America? I had a lot of trouble understanding him because of his thick Beijing accent that covers a lot of the ends of words in "r" sounds, but using sign language we could communicate basic ideas. Since I didn't understand the word for oil, he explained by putting his hand to his mouth saying "the thing that cars eat..." It was a very fun warm welcome to China. Classes started yesterday and they are definitely intense, but also a lot of fun.
As you can see above as we squint into the sun, last weekend I went to Tiananmen with some friends, where we bought some "green bean ice cream." It is unbelievably hot here, but to tell the truth it's a nice change from San Fran weather, which is never very hot in the summer. There were two things that surprised me about Tiananmen square. First of all, for some reason I thought Tiananmen was red, but it's not, it's just a huge, wide open, gray, Soviet-style sqaure. The only red part is the wall behind us. Second, even though it's a major tourist spot, it didn't look there were many tourists. I was actually expecting there to be few Chinese people there, just like there are virtually no French people at the Eiffel Tower, or no English people at the Tower of London. Then, the thing that surprised me most about Beijing is how cheap it is. I mean, a 20 minuted cab ride split between 4 people is 1 dollar each. It's unreal. All in all, I'm having an amazing time and will try to post more frequently, it's been hard setting up the internet connection.