Tom Brown in Beijing!

2008-05-02T04:15:00.001-07:00

Apologies, again, for the long timespan between updates. Hopefully I can make it up to you all with this one.

First, as a note, China's well aware of what's been happening in France and Germany, of the protests there; China itself has been restless over it, both in support of that cause and against it. However, one major thing should be noted here - there's been very little problems toward foreigners as a result. In fact, it's almost been friendlier since then.

The reasoning's pretty simple: most Chinese are willing to accept that if you've come over here - for tourism, study, or business - you can't be that bad of a person. For them, it's the people who haven't seen and don't want to see what's going on in China, how it's changing and developing to meet up with the rest of the developed nations, that they aren't fond of, and even they aren't bad. But those who've been directly involved in the protests make them bitter.

They see the Olympics as a chance at proving this, really. They want to show that, while China may have its problems, they're quickly able to adapt to meet the needs of the people. Frankly, that's true, from what I can tell. It's not a universal trait, but most of them seem willing to work with what they have.

Speaking of change... There's been a lot going on around here, construction-wise. The street's been overcrowded due to them digging out ground for a new subway line, which will hopefully alleviate a lot of the traffic along what is one of this area's busier roads. In addition, the line will directly service a fair bit of the Olympic area.

And in our dormitory, I learned the reason for the bad internet access the past three weeks; apparently they've been working for a while on the wiring and electricity in order to set up a cafe and a restaraunt in the dormitory's spare rooms. I suspect they guess it'll be profitable; the cafe seems to be doing okay, the restaraunt, no one seems to be going to yet. I myself haven't tried it, but plan to with a friend tomorrow. Part of it is that, well, eating out - or even just eating - in China tends to be more communal than back in the States, so it feels more awkward going alone. That, and since right now is a mini-vacation on campus, no one's really around to go there.

The only downside of the past few days has been the weather; hot, smoggy, and generally unpleasant, but still not terrible, all things considered. I'm preparing for when Dad arrives, myself; he has some vacation time, so he decided he'd come out to visit. Trying to plan and find things around Beijing for us to do. Even riding the subway line 13 for the time it's above-ground could make up a bit of a day.

Going to end this update here; a lot of text. Next time I get an update out will likely be with pictures around Beijing as Dad and I tour around!

-Tom

2008-03-30T11:58:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

Ack, I know I said I'd get these out more often, but then China keeps me distracted for days on end. The weather here's been pretty bad; they've had thick pollution and sand storms from the Gobi on the same day, more often than not, and it's better to not go outside often, if at all, on days like that.

It's oddly not as common here as it is in other cities in China (Haerbin had a lot, notably) to see masks over the mouth to filter out dust and smog. I'm not really sure why they aren't as common here, though. If you're wondering what they look like, most are usually just white covers over the nose and face, though some are decorated fairly wildly.

Everything's been fairly peaceful in Beijing, so no worries there. On the clearer days I can see to the Summer Palace from my dorm room, I think - the largest building I showed, with the huge courtyard, is the building I refer to. Can't currently access Photobucket to show the one I'm talking about, irritably, but it should be in the pics there somewhere. At night, past a small courtyard outside the dormitory, there's a constant glow from the Wudaokou subway station and intersection, even bizarrely late at night. Seems like it's always busy; makes me wonder what the areas around downtown are like this late, but no real way to go see since the subway closes around 11:00 PM.

Really, most of my time has been spent trying to get internet to work more consistently here, and studying like crazy. My grammar class is fairly difficut, as is my reading class; listening class is going too slowly for my tastes. The main interest for me has been the science listening class - finally learning how to actually use numbers for more than just counting in Chinese (up until now, I could only say "add" - 加，jia) is rather nice, and since it's covering mainly vocabulary we wouldn't normally learn in our main classes anyway, it feels like it's what's helping me improve the most, despite being only once a week (Tuesday afternoons).

Not much else to say here. Rained today, first day it's actually rained all day; was nice to hear the rain against a window again for once. I'll try to get a bigger update out later this week, but with China's internet as it is right now and myself rather busy, I'm not promising much right now.

2008-02-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

Apologies this update, too, comes late; I had to move rooms due to not having hot water, and acquired a new roommate from Japan the same day. The end result is that I misplaced my connector cord from my laptop to my camera for a few days.

And, well, I went to Harbin. It's a colder city to the northeast of Beijing, and a big metropolis in its own right. In addition, it's incredibly famous for...

Ice sculptures. Harbin (or as the Chinese call it, Haerbin) has an ice sculpture festival every year. It's really incredibly impressive. This update will be very image-heavy; my apologies for this, but it's really the sanest method to do this all.

Bats!

A fish. This picture wasn't too clear, but the crowds were thick and it was cold (-10 to -15 degrees Celsius?), so...

Celebrating the Chinese New Year - Year of the Rat, we had this statue present. This is how it's commonly depicted - more of a Jerry-like mouse than anything else.

Praying mantis.

These divided the sections of the display. I actually don't think I ever saw what was behind this one, oddly... there were some that blocked off pay-to-see sections, so I didn't go those ways.

Faces and masks! I loved how intricate these were; simply awesome to see, especially with the light.

More abstract sculptures. Some of them are pretty cool, some which I avoided weren't as interesting.

And some animalistic ones.

And then there was the octopus grabbing random things. I found, and still find, this one undefinably hilarious to see. I believe the subtext was related to Atlantis.

Finally, humanistic statues. Please note that I only got about half, primarily the ones I considered deeply impressive.

A slight side note before I continue; Harbin is about the same temperature during the winter as Kalamazoo, Michigan, but is often far less windy. So while the temperature often dives down to -10 degrees Celsius, you can, since there usually isn't much wind, get away without hat/gloves that would be essential in Kalamazoo. Of course, if you come during a snowstorm or towards the spring end of their winter (when the northeastern winds begin to pick up), you really want the gloves and hat. I wore them all the time, anyway; Beijing's gotten me used to nice spring-like temperatures.

Little igloos!

Bigger igloos! About 50 people were in this at one point; I had to wait until most of them came out before I could go in and get a good picture.

And, for you winter enthusiasts...

They had slides carved out of ice. Two sets, in fact; the first two pictures were this really windy road that looked somewhat dangerous due to all the bends, and the second one was the traditional sledding type hill.

To wrap this up, I'm just going to let some of the buildings speak for themselves here. Yes, full buildings and ships made out of ice.

Sorry for so many pictures, but seeing all this was just... awesome. Next time will probably be pictures I took around Harbin itself, though on my main walk I didn't have batteries for my camera, irritably. There will also be some more talk on the Chinese New Year, which is supposed to be over but which I'm still hearing fireworks from five days after the fact.

Use Your Back Button

2008-01-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

Hey, everyone! Sorry it's been so long, but I've wanted this next update to be a visual one of sorts, and I finally got my camera and computer to work together, so.

Anyways, this is pretty much me taking pictures of some of the more oddball sights in the northwestern part of Beijing. I hope to get some pictures of the shops/stuff as well, but... it's a bit rude to take photos with people in them here, unless you know them. Nothing major, sometimes unavoidable (especially in tourist spots like the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square), but it's awkward most of the time.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture074.jpg

This sight was just confusing. It wasn't a park, it didn't seem like it was near anything really relevant, it was just there. This was on the way back home from the Summer Palace on a different trip, idly.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture075.jpg

Meanwhile, I just enjoyed the skyline on this one.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture086.jpg

Spotted around the northern side of Beijing. I saw this while eating a small pastry and almost choked. The Chinese translates better to "Do not stop and sell things here." I have -no- clue where they got the goose part from.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture078.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture080.jpg

East of Beijing Language and Culture University there's a huge construction site. These were the two best shots I got of the cranes working there - there weren't any good spots to try and get a shot of the construction, sadly, but it looked decently interesting from what I could see.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture082.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture083.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture085.jpg

Three shots of a rather large building on the northeast edge of town. The place has a bank, a preschool, what kinda looks like an elementary school, a gym... and it's supposed to be a business. I think. The place is huge, and the only thing I was really able to tell is that it seems like it was a structure for the Olympics.

The next shots are buildings on the main road north out of Beijing.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture087.jpg

See these blue... fences, effectively? They're everywhere. They're... commonplace. They're used anywhere and everywhere there might be danger, plus some cases where it's just amusingly inconvenient. But here, I was walking through a rather run-down area, and the horizon had these kinda cool buildings blocked off by the blue fences and the wires; there were construction machines behind the fence that I didn't catch, that were just digging down quite deep to lay the foundations. It was intimidating.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture089.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture088.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture091.jpg

All of these were near the end of the day, so the light was bouncing off everything. Especially liked this building, but taking a photo of how it looked head-on was impossible due to construction where I'd need to stand.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture090.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture092.jpg

This, on the other hand... I have no clue on. It was simply eye-catching. I'd guess, based on where it is, that it is either one of the Olympic offices or it's a large corporation of some sort.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture097.jpg

And behind it was this building.

It was bizarrely enough placed (large, urban-like building on one side, small ramshackle apartment complex on the other, that I felt it worth noticing.

To the southeast was this:

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture100.jpg

Again, not a clue what it was, construction was really heavy on this road so I couldn't go any further, but that excavator there? It was about next to the building, for a size reference.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture100.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture102.jpg

A shot of a larger east-west road in Beijing, as reference, looking west toward the mountains.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture105.jpg

Remember the comment I made when talking about the Chinese New Year and the bad pun about luck returning? Yeah. Here's the visual representation: fu （福）, upside down.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture108.jpg

The lobby of the dorm I'm staying in. For reference? This is the only one like it on campus, and it's where 95% of the foreign students are placed.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture109.jpg

Observant onlookers might note that the character the left boy ha is "fu", again. The right side's character is 财 Cai, which can roughly translate to riches or fortune.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture112.jpg

The outside of the dorm. Upside-down "fu", and one of the traditional lanterns.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Around%20Beijing/Picture115.jpg

Finally, a picture of a Chinese good-luck charm and the character "fu". Yes, that really is prevalent this time of year.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1010.jpg

Front of the dormitory during the day, a bit earlier in the year.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1012.jpg

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1014.jpg

Same building, back and front. This is where most of my classes are.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set1002.jpg

And this is the room when my first roommate was here. Aside from the laptop, the water bottle and the backpack on the floor? The entire mess is actually his. Yes, Dad, I'm actually decently-well organized here, compared to my usual. We'll see if this keeps up when I return!

A few words:

lai (来) (lie) come (toward the speaker)

qu (去) (cshoo) go (away from speaker)

jin (进) (gin) move inside (used with lai or qu; jinlai is come in, jinqu is go in)

chu (出) (choo) Yes, that's all the difference between chu and qu. It's confusing. move outside (used in the same way as jin).

2008-01-29T14:52:00.000-08:00

2008-01-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

Howdy all! Sorry this update and the next one will be so slow in coming, but here in China it's almost time for my final exams of the semester; they start this Tuesday. So there's a lot of studying, a lot of bookwork, and less time to get writing like this done, no matter if I want to do it or not. Still, there's no reason I can't get an entry in between now and then, so...

I got a bit sick with what felt like a mild sinus infection late December, so I ended up going to Beijing Language and Culture University's "yiyuan" (医院), or hospital, to get some medication. I chose to try some Chinese medicine (after clearing the medications with my teacher to make sure they were all both real and not harmful), and I'm still taking some of them. Let me establish one thing right now: Chinese medicine tastes really really bad. Worse than any Western medicine I've ever had. It's... They have three forms at the clinic I went to: pills (mainly vitamins), powders to mix into hot water like a sort of tea, and little doses of liquid. The pills are okay, the powders aren't bad. The liquids are simply noxious. Fortunately, they helped a lot - I've been doing well ever since.

It's interesting; I had expected the weather in Beijing to closely resemble Michigan, but that really hasn't been the case. We've seen less than an inch of snowfall here, and the weather has been consistently in the range of a pleasant fall. It was surprising especially since it got this cold far quicker here (around October), but it hasn't gotten any worse. Still, walking around in just my hoodie, jeans and sandals with socks is fine by me.

Finally figured out how to work the laundry machines here correctly - far more maintenance than is intuitively obvious from the design, as they shunt the hot air straight through the lint catcher. And no one here ever bothers to clean it. Still, knowing how to work it is half the struggle, in and of itself.

For those of you who are intrepid travelers, a few words in case you fall ill in China:

sheng bing (shung bee-ng) 生病 - sick, ill, fall ill

fa shao (fah shaow) 发烧 - fever

ganmao (gahnmao) 感冒 - cold

tou teng (tow tung) 头疼 - headache

duzi (dewzee) 肚子 - stomach ( 肚子疼 is stomach pain).

2007-12-06T16:02:00.001-08:00

There are a wide variety of celebrations that take place during the Chinese New Year, and multiple customs that are also observed along with it. Children are given hongbao (红包), little red bags with a small bit of money in them. Red represents fire, which is supposed to chase away bad luck (White is unlucky because it represents death in Chinese culture). Often, the character 福 (fu) is hung upside down on the doors of houses; this is related to 福倒了 (fu dao le), which means, in effect, "luck returns". However, this version of "dao" also means reverse or upside-down; so it's... kind of a pun, admittedly; may your luck be upside down/return this year. You avoid saying the number 4, which sounds like the word for death; you do not use knives, scissors or brooms, and do not wash your hair, as all of these could take away the luck of the new year.

One of the primary festivities is the Lantern Festival, held on the final day of the Chinese New Years celebration (a celebration that last fifteen days from beginning to end!). On the day of the Lantern Festival, there are a plethora of lanterns hung from every available surface, and children carry with them their own lanterns - either self-made or purchased fairly cheaply. Multiple dances are held all throughout the cities, and at night, firework displays are common and serve to accent the full moon in the sky.

2007-11-26T16:09:00.001-08:00

On February 7, 2008, the Chinese New Year will be celebrated. It will be the year 4705 according to the Chinese calendar.

The Chinese calender is called a lunar calender. This means that the Chinese calendar relies on the phases of the moon to count the months, instead of assigning a certain number of days and nights to each month as our solar calender does. One problem this calendar has, from the Western point of view, is that it does not follow the seasons accurately; as the years go on, the day on which the New Year is celebrated would slowly get later and later in the year, eventually beginning in summer or even fall! To keep it constant, on some years an additional lunar month is added for the same reasons we add a leap day, so that the Chinese New Year is always in winter.

There is a larger cycle within which the Chinese calendar operates; each year is assigned a property (wood, fire, earth, metal/gold, water) and an animal (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep/goat, monkey, dog, rooster, pig/boar). February 7, 2008 will be the beginning of the Earth Rat year. This year was the year of the Fire Pig. I was born in the year of the Wood Dragon (1988). It actually somewhat helps to know this if you're traveling China; many people, instead of asking your age directly, will instead ask what sign you were born under. Stating your age directly can get you some odd looks (fortunately, the Chinese also use our calendar, so it's not too confusing to state your age that way).

The order behind the animals has a story; one day, as the Chinese calendar was being created, there was a race to see which animal would get which year in the cycle. The story says that Rat tricked Cat by telling him the wrong time for the race, and then both Tiger and Rat hopped onto Ox as it ran. As the Ox was crossing the river right before the finish line, Rat pushed Tiger into the water, hopped off Ox and ran across himself. This is why he is the first year in the cycle, and Ox the second. Tiger quickly swam to shore and claimed the third year. Cat quickly figured out what had happened and ran to catch up; however, he was too late to claim a spot, as twelve animals had already finished the race. Cat always held a grudge against Rat for the trick. This is the reason cats always chase rats nowadays, according to the Chinese.

Rabbit was next; instead of swimming across the river, he jumped across on floating logs and rocks. After him came Dragon, Snake and Horse. Goat, Monkey and Rooster came in together on a boat, having worked together to get across the river on a raft. Dog came in eleventh, and the Boar came in last.

Next time, I'll talk about what actually goes on during the Chinese New Year Festival!

Some words:

nian (pronounced nyen) 年 - year

you (pronounced yo) 有 - have

mei (pronounced may) 没 - not; (negation)

lingqian (pronounced lee-ng chi-en) 零钱 - (money) change

ni you meiyou lingqian? (nee yo may yo lee-ng chi-en) 你有没有零钱？ - "Do you have any change?"

Zaijian!

-Tom

2007-11-12T18:00:00.001-08:00

Hello!

Sorry for the lack of posting, I've had some very large computer problems over the last week or so. That's over now, though, so now that I've got the chance...

There's actually a lot to do in China in your free time, if you're so inclined. Shopping is big here - there's tons of stores with clothes, food, books, electronics, and almost everything you might want. If you're looking for video games or reliable computer software, however, that is something this place does not have in abundance. Malls and small stores are everywhere, and you can bargain for larger purchases fairly easily, if you can speak just a little Chinese; enough to say prices. There are very few places that you cannot bargain; supermarkets are one such place. This being said, the supermarkets are also usually cheaper than you can bargain a lot of places down to, if not by much. They are also harder to get to; it's a thirty-five minute walk to the nearest one from my dorm room, which, compared to the little places around the dorm room, almost make it not worth going to sometimes.

You can almost always find a basketball game to jump into within about three blocks of where you are. There are two kinds of parks - one that pretty much only has basic workout/stretching equipment (treadmills made of rollers are actually fairly cool to watch), and places for basketball/other sports. The second type is rarer, and usually within the confines of a set of buildings. The basketball courts are constantly in use, even after it gets dark out. Soccer is the other big sport here, but it's much harder to jump into a game here - usually the field is being used by the official school team.

Then there is the ever-present TV. Dramas and news are on almost constantly, and there's English, Korean and Japanese channels here as well. In addition, there are tons of movies for very cheap. They're sold everywhere and cost very little.

And then there's just the sights around town; huge buildings, construction for the Olympics, the local schools, from elementary school to graduate schools, locals flying kites, practising any of the myriad of martial arts they've learned or doing an impromptu showing of Beijing Opera. If you're at all motivated, it's really hard to get bored here, except perhaps late at night where there's not much of this going on.

Some new words!

电视剧: Dianshiju (pronounced Dee-en shee ju). Dianshi is "television, and "ju" is drama.

块钱：kuai qian (pronounced kwai chee-en). The effective shorthand for RMB. It's used differently, however; a bit hard to explain in this regard.

篮球：lanqiu (pronounced lahn cheeou). Basketball.

商店：shangdian (pronounced shahng dee-en). General store.

Zaijian!

-Tom

October 29, 2007

2007-10-29T16:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I've had a lot of glowing things or at least fairly complimentary things to say about China lately. Of course, there have also been irritations, small and large. Today's post? Some things China/Beijing Language and Culture University need to improve on.

But before that... something I've neglected to say for a while.

I can't access my blog from here thanks to the Great Firewall of China. So I've been sending these posts to my Dad, and he's been posting them. He's the one who's made this even possible. So, Dad? Thank you so very much.

Back to the topic!

Firstly, the most recent irritation: Dryers.

It is not that hard to have a dryer that actually dries clothing, China. Even once you figure out that the hot air comes from behind the semi-difficult-to-clean lint trap, the dryer only -uses- hot air about 50% of the time (which is to say sometimes it just doesn't use hot air and just tumbles the clothes. Not the most helpful of methods). I'd be willing to dry my clothes naturally! But.

1) Beijing water -smells-. Seriously. It's really got a bad odor to it unless it's boiled. So letting it sit... yeah, the clothes reek after that.

2) There's no room to do it, really, especially with a roommate who has 3x the clothes I do (...I packed a full suitcase, how did he manage that?) and dryer racks in the laundry rooms that -never- have free space. Not ever.

So that tends to be an exercise in frustration, but one way or another I get dry clothes.

Second: Internet sites blocked.

Oddly enough, this is getting -worse- as Beijing gets closer and closer to the Olympics, which is slightly nonsensical. Sites blocked: blogspot (yo, Dad), YouTube (decently irritating), some American online newspapers (this varies on and off), anything related to sensitive political topics for China (including some stuff that isn't obvious). There's more, I'm sure. Google itself gets blocked half the time, although Gmail doesn't as often. It's just... uh, this is ineffective. I'm sorry, but it really really is, China. Quite frankly? I've found roundabout ways for all this except YouTube right now. I don't use any of them! But.

Third: Bureaucracy.

It took two or more weeks for my meds from America to get to me. And the post office system is really bizarre in that in theory, you should be notified of a package arriving for you. In practice? It was here for about a week, and I didn't hear about it. It's really hard to get them to let you check for your package if you don't have a notification slip, too. Plus, the package center where you have to go is only open on weekdays, 2:00-4:30 (although I think the sign said they'd start being open every day soon. Good).

Also, applying for anything here is a massive pain, even if you're fluent. It's a common joke for a lot of the foreigners that we're surprised we don't need to fill out a form in triplicate to order lunch.

Fourth: Friendliness.

Or rather, the lack thereof.

There are some Chinese who are willing to smile and talk to you if you want. Increasingly, however, especially in Beijing, you get either "scary American" vibes or even on occasion reactions bordering on hostile (those being rare, thankfully). Not much else to say about it. It's just unnerving.

Finally, not something about China, but rather a request for you all: Saturday morning, one of my fellow Western Michigan study abroad students learned that her father had just died of a heart attack. She is returning to America and will not be able to come back to finish the term. I would like to request for you all to keep Ashley Kloote and her father, Paul, in your prayers and/or thoughts. Thank you.

That's about it right now! A more cheerful update next time, I promise!

-Tom

Use your back button to go from picture back to blog

2007-10-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This will be a mostly picture-based update. However, since I can't test for myself what sort of imagelinking works, I'm just going to provide the links to my Photobucket account, with the pictures in there. Also, all the pictures are quite large; my laptop doesn't have much in the way of resizing capability, either. Sorry I can't make this any more convenient.

A (very brief) background on Yiheyuan, also called the Summer Palace: built during the Jin dynasty (1115-1234), it was the summer residence of the Imperial family during the Qing dynasty, primarily made into the wonder it is today by the Empress Dowager Ci Xi (who, admittedly, embezzeled money from the nation's navy to do so, thus causing many problems for China later).

Words barely begin to describe this place, so I'll let the pictures I took do it instead:

1) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2067.jpg

This is the primary section of Yiheyuan, as seen from partway across the lake. This part of the Summer Palace is called Foxiang Ge, or "The Tower Of Buddhist Incense".

2) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2016.jpg

Here's a shot of that main tower, from decently close.

3) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2024-1.jpg

And even closer!

4) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2026-1.jpg

5) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2025-1.jpg

Two shots from around the inside courtyard of the tower.

6) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2027-1.jpg

I should say at this point that there's a lot more tourists than it looks - the area in this spot is under renovation, and thus not viewable by tourists. That plus my tendency to aim away from tourists may make Yiheyuan look rather deserted, but I had my back against the wall most of the time. This shot is back in the direction of picture 2, but a bit further down.

7) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2030.jpg

The sign on the wall of Foxiang Ge (again, visible from 1)

8) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2031.jpg

The wall. It's a bit dramatic. Fortunately, I got to go down the stairs; I didn't have to climb up them.

9) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2034.jpg

This was the kindest set of stairs there. I think you get the idea of why I'm glad I didn't have to climb up them.

10) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2033.jpg

11) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2032.jpg

Two shots of other parts of Foxiang Ge not available to tourists.

12) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2010.jpg

And a shot from Foxiang Ge to two of the other main parts of the Summer Palace, the 17 Arch Bridge and Penglai, the island in the middle of the lake Yiheyuan sits on. The lake's name is Beihai.

On the way there, some of the things I saw...

13) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2015.jpg Another shot of Beihai.

14) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2037.jpg

15) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2039.jpg

Statue of a dragon and a ... bird of some sort. Feng Huang? Unsure. In wire mesh since people kept wearing them down by touching them.

16) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2040.jpg A building near Foxiang Ge - one of the satellite buildings.

17) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2020.jpg A tower in the distance. I didn't have time that visit to go out to it. I plan to next time - I missed a few places, most notably Suzhou Market.

18) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2021.jpg

19) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2023.jpg

A building closer to the top of the hill that Foxiang Ge's on. I wanted to take pictures of the inside, but there's a lot of no-picture zones here. Mainly because they're trying to raise money by selling their own photos, which I didn't want to buy.

20) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2046.jpg

21) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2045.jpg

22) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2043.jpg

Shots of the Dragon Boat. They've got three of these for tourists. I didn't bring enough money to ride one, they're kinda expensive. Besides, seeing it was enough.

23) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2048.jpg

The Marble Boat. Used to be open to tourism, isn't any longer. Got this picture of it, though.

24) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2050.jpg

I don't know what this is, honestly, other than a monument on the north end of Beihai.

25) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2052.jpg

Another building around there.

26) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2018.jpg

27) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2006.jpg

28) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2004.jpg

Three other buildings. These were closer to the top of the hill, but I walked past all three of them twice so it fits well here.

29) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2009.jpg

30) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2008.jpg

31) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2007.jpg

And three sections of Beijing from the top of the hill.

32) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2063.jpg

Chang Lang, the Long Corridor. This thing was so crowded I didn't even bother trying to go into it. I just took a picture above the crowd and made a note to come back later.

33) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2068.jpg

Finally, at that bridge. Oddly enough, the island itself wasn't too impressive, though a large part was under construction; I plan on going back and rewalking it later.

34) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2073.jpg

35) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2072.jpg

Two shots of the pavillion right next to the bridge.

36) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2071.jpg

One of the 500-odd lions apparently on the bridge, according to the tourist notes lying around. All of them are rather cool, but I liked this guy the most.

37) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2061.jpg

38) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2060.jpg

39) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2059.jpg

Three places I don't remember the location of. I believe 37 and 38 were on the island, while 39 was somewhere else.

And thus ends the sloppily organized tour! There's one other thing of note...

40) http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g168/Taishyr/Set2074.jpg

This was a decoration off one of the roads leading away from the bridge. No, I don't get it either.

If you want to see a more organized tour (but with smaller pictures), a great site's here: http://www.kinabaloo.com/summer_palace.html

Five new words!

ge (pronounced guh) 阁 - Tower.

bei (pronounced bay) 北 - North.

nan (pronounced nahn) 南 - South.

dong (pronounced dong) 东 - East.

xi (pronounces cshee) 西 - West.

东西南北 - East West South North. This is how the Chinese refer to the four cardinal directions. Southeast is 南东 , while Northwest is 西北。

再见！

-Tom .

2007-10-16T03:23:00.001-07:00

Written on Friday, October 12

Apologies for not updating any earlier. It had been my hope to get some pictures out with this update, but the camera seems to be having problems connecting to my laptop. I'll continue working on that.

This update's pretty much about my current class schedule. I have four hours of classes Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to noon, and all classes are in Chinese. The first two hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the last two hours on Tuesday and Thursday are the main class, General Chinese. This is the class that mainly focuses on grammar, diction and common usage. Primarily this is a lecture class, although it also has a fair amount of memorizing and reciting the lessons (a common practice in China, from elementary all the way to high school). The teacher for most of the classes is awesome - major poetry geek (like me), also greatly interested in history, especially ancient military history, which is part of what got me interested in learning Chinese initially (the books "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are a realistic fiction version of the events after the fall of the Han Dynasty in China).

Monday and Wednesday are Listening Comprehension classes. These are tough. Imagine trying to listen to a conversation through a bad speaker. Now imagine that it's the recording that the flaw and not the people speaking or the machines you're using to listen to it, and that mishearing one syllable will cause you to miss the answer. That's Listening Comprehension. Fortunately, it's not a very fast-paced class despite this.

Tuesday and Thursday are Reading Comprehension, which is tough because it's fast-paced and taught by another teacher who I'm not as good as tracking, but it is quite interesting despite that. We cover about thirty characters every day in this in addition to what's covered in our daily class, and learn the stroke order for newer characters. Sometimes discussion starts on what we've been reading about; one of the assignments this weekend is to visit the Summer Palace, which I intend to do Saturday. The teacher for this class is a bit more serious-minded, but still very cool and quite understanding.

Fridays are Speaking classes. This is mainly just adlibbing a conversation, which I can usually manage to do even if I manage to mangle sentence structure a bit - if I don't remember how to format something, I revert to a basic Chinese sentence instead of an English format, so it's usually at least comprehendable. It would be nice to have this more than once a week, but not much I can do there.

All the classes also have a lot of homework assigned, so it tends to be more like six to eight hours a day of study, which is about the same as at home. The primary difference is that there tend to be practical exams every time I leave campus.

All in all, quite fun; I'll try and get pictures of the places I've seen up by next week!

-Tom

2007-09-06T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ni hao！Finally I manage to get a post for this written; been having laptop problems, which I’ll go over in a second. However, aside from that and losing my debit card, everything has actually gone excellent!

The flight to Beijing was uneventful; I had forgotten that the entire trip over the North Pole would be during “the day”, since it’s summer there (and summer at each pole is pretty much constant sunlight；gogo tilted axis), so it was somewhat hard to sleep on the plane, despite my desire to.

The airport was quite painless to get through; two forms to give to two people, and then walking past the people offering taxi service for about 350 RMB to get one who ended up costing me 72 RMB (I think I overpaid just a bit, but that would primarily be because I failed to note how much the toll was on the way).

Of course, my pronunciation isn’t that great, Chinese or otherwise.

So it’s no real surprise that I managed to get myself delivered to Beijing Youdian Daxue instead of Beijing Yuyan Daxue (Beijing Postal Service University instead of Beijing Language University, loosely translated).

After getting that problem sorted out and getting a second taxi ride for 12 RMB across downtown to BLCU, I then managed to find my room and crash for the night.

Notable things that have happened since then:

1) Went to Tianyi Market. This is… probably best described as a huge indoor bazaar. Each of the two buildings has seven floors; each floor is dedicated to selling one or two types of things, and you can barter for anything there; no fixed prices. It’s awesome. Sadly, a bit too far away to walk to right now; tried to at one point, got lost.

2) Laptop stopped working. Fan shut down, RAM started making my computer freeze, all that. Fortunately there’s tons of internet cafes (wang ba), so it’s not too hard to get stuff done, but still…

3) Started classes. Today, in fact! They’re… boring. Then again, I asked to be placed a level below what the test recommended for me, so that I could have a listening class (as only the beginner level has one). However, if the listening class doesn’t help, I’m going to get moved up a level and get going there.

4) Visited three (4) Chinese restaurants, one (1) Japanese restaurant, one (1) French/European restaurant, and one (1) combo Korean/Japanese restaurant. Of these, my favorite was easily the French one, Tous Le Jours (…what? Cheap, excellent food). The Japanese restaurant, Isshin, and one of the Chinese restaurants, Langer Restaurant, are tied for second (both have excellent food, but they’re more expensive then Tous Le Jours).

5) Had a physical at a Chinese clinic. I can safely say that the conditions in such places are practically American (assuming you go to the right one; I’d imagine others are worse, as well). It was a perfectly fine experience, all in all. Nothing of note occurred to make it exceptionally irritating, the bus ride there aside (it takes one hour to get there by bus if you leave during a busy time on the road. Quite irritating).

There’s not much else to tell! I’ll try and keep you guys updated; stay well!

-Tom

Initial Post

2007-08-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hello there!

My name's Thomas Brown, and I'm going to be traveling to China. This blog's meant to show you some of the sights over there.

China has a population of 1.3 billion (or so), and I'll be in Beijing, the capital of China. Beijing has about fifteen million people within the area it governs, and will be hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics.

It will take me a few weeks to get pictures up, so for now, I'll teach a few words of Chinese.

Ni hao! (Pronounced knee how) Written 你好 : This is a simple way to say hello to your classmates. If you're addressing a teacher, it's more polite to say:

Nin hao! (Pronounced neen how) Written 您好 : This is the way to say hello to older people in China.

Laoshi (Pronounced laowshee) Written 老师 : This is the word for "teacher" or "elder".

Xuesheng (Pronounced h-shue shung) Written 学生 : This one's tough to say; the pronunciation's the best I can think of. This is the word for student.

Zaijain (Pronounced zai jian) Written 再见 : This is how to say goodbye! So, until next time,

再见!