Beijing Fall ’08 FSP

Web Journal

INTRO: Hi everyone! This is the official web blog/web journal site for the Dartmouth Fall Beijing FSP. Check out the blog to see what we are up to, and check out the Pictures page to see the accompanying photos!

Sept. 5-6^th: All the students are arriving, in some cases after 24+ hour plane trips, in others after a trip of only three hours. Everyone loves the dormitories at Xinsong Gongyu, where we are staying. The accommodations are beautiful, and, as many students remarked, it looks like a hotel. On Saturday, we take everyone to eat at a dumpling place, Taiping Jiaozi Dian, where we order all of the dumplings on the menu, and have our first exciting adventure with chopsticks, soy sauce, and communal dishes.

Sept. 7^th: Today, we have our first floor meeting, where we find out everyone’s most exciting scar stories (some of the highlights include “friendly knife fights” and diamond-shaped knee scars) and have a mini-orientation to FSP life. Afterwards, we have dinner with our FSP director, Mao Laoshi (Prof. Mowry), at a beautiful Beijing restaurant called Yumadun. Mao Laoshi explains to us what we will be doing in the following weeks, and then everyone settles down to a pre-classes welcome feast. After dinner, we hold a surprise birthday party for Peter and Denise, who were both born on September the 5^th of the exact same year. Their cake took forty minutes to make, with flowers on top for Denise and a heart on top for Peter, and was accompanied by quite a street audience from outside the window of the bakery. The party was a success, despite the fact that we almost forgot to get plates J

Sept. 8^th: Today we went on a campus tour. Fall is the best time to be in Beijing, because it’s buleng bure (not hot and not cold). The campus is absolutely beautiful in the early fall weather, with high-rising buildings built in modern Chinese-style architecture and lots of trees. We meet all of our teachers, who seem as excited to meet us as we are to meet them, and all of the students introduce themselves. Afterwards, we rush over to the Exchange Students’ Office to take our ID pictures, and then we spend an afternoon engaged with grocery shopping and exploring. Some students go to the Silk Market, while others merely wander the streets of Beijing and enjoy the shops and the friendly passers-by.

Sept. 9^th: Today is the first day of classes, and most of the students are favorably impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of the BNU teachers. We also get a lot of work though, so everyone settles for a term of intensive Chinese learning. Besides being the first day of class, today is Samir’s birthday! Amidst a general feeling that the “cake thing” has already been done, we get delicious mooncakes, and celebrate the third birthday of the first week. It seems like everyone’s birthday has conspired to fall during our first week in Beijing so that we can have an excuse to celebrate our beginning-of-term euphoria.

Sept. 10^th: Everyone is starting to settle into the routine of classes, and as we have no class on Wednesday afternoons, most people decide to get out into the city to explore. Some of us went to the Silk Market, which is indoor, air conditioned and fantastic. For those who don’t know, the Silk Market is a building full of stalls where people sell all kinds of clothing and accessories for cheap prices (depending on your bargaining ability). Everyone learns how to complain that they are a poor student, exclaim Tai gui le! (too expensive!), and walk away from the stalls, at which point the price usually drops about 75 percent. We get to practice a lot of Chinese with the vendors, who are very friendly, and make a lot of exciting purchases. Plus, we get to talk to Paralympians and Paralympic volunteers from all countries who have come to visit the Silk Market. Very cool.

Sept. 11^th: Today, Hamish’s brother wins a bronze medal in the Line Swimming 400-meter freestyle! Congratulations to him! Other than that, a combination of end-of-the-week lethargy and the looming first exam (Friday morning) means that most people are either sleeping or studying. However, everyone has our Friday Paralympics’ tickets to the Birds’ Nest and Water Cube to look forward to, so people are sleepily excited.

Sept. 12^th: Our first Chinese conversation table is today, which ends up being a lot of fun. The first basic principle behind conversation table is that all the students get together with their teachers for lunch on Friday and only speak in Chinese. The second basic principle is that you can’t eat anything until you can correctly identify it in Chinese, which tends to speed up the learning process for most students. The restaurant food was delicious, and Mao Laoshi says that we will be going to a different restaurant every week so that we can sample a wide variety of Chinese food. This afternoon, we also went to the Paralympics! The Managing Director of the USOC’s Paralympic teams just happens to be a Dartmouth alum, and he got everyone tickets (thank you very much, Mr. Walsh!). Some students went to the Water Cube and others went to the Bird’s Nest, but no matter where you went, it was amazing. The competitors were truly inspiring, the architecture was dazzling, and athletics are always fun to watch in the first place. Everyone agreed that this was probably going to be one of the most memorable highlights of their stay in Beijing. Afterwards, a lot of us danced in the water feature that is set up outside the Water Cube (it is basically a series of synchronized dancing sprinklers that change direction and get everyone wet). Rachael turns out to be a very good dancer, and she gathers a crowd of Chinese spectators. All in all, it was a very satisfying night.

Sept. 13^th: Our first weekend excursion starts today at 12:30pm. We go on a bus tour around the city of Beijing, while Mao Laoshi and Lű Laoshi (Prof. Lű) point out historic landmarks and interesting places to visit. We stop to take a quick look around some of the landmarks. The group now has a much better idea of what kinds of places to visit and what kinds of activities to plan. Our to-do list currently includes a trip to Ya-Show market, a visit to at least one historic men (one of the entrances in the old city walls), a visit to Yuancheng (the part of Beijing that dates back to Mongol reign), and Hongqiao (the pearl market). We are also considering visiting one of Beijing’s amusement parks, and finding a place to fly kites. After the bus tour, we got off near Tiananmen square, where we had a couple of hours to explore. At 7, we all make our way over to the Forbidden City Concert Hall, where we hear extremely talented musicians play Mid-Autumn Festival songs with traditional Chinese instruments. The music was soothing, relaxing, and also moving, and a pleasant conclusion to the day. One of the students remarked that the concert was “the best I have ever been to in my life.” At the end of the day, everyone is tired but very content.

Sept. 14^th: Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival! It is also our day off from classes and official excursions, so it is up to us to plan our own activities (and catch up on studying). The students who went to the Silk Market on Wednesday had so much fun that we decide to organize a trip for the whole group. We leave in the early afternoon and spend about five or six hours haggling and meeting the other shoppers. We get everything from skirts, belts, pants, and shirts to sneakers and cool skates that snap onto them. Afterwards, we are very pleased to discover a Baskin Robbins (yay!), and we take the subway home. The subway has been recently improved for the Beijing Olympics, and it is actually a very convenient way of getting around the city. It was a little confusing at first, but by now we are all subway pros. Once in the dorms, everyone studies late into the night to get ready for the upcoming week, but first, we celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with another round of delicious mooncakes.

Sept. 17^th: Today, every FSP student becomes the unexpected recipient of about $45 in coupons to MacDonalds, of all places. Dartmouth had four student volunteers for the Olympics and Paralympics who are returning to the US in a couple of days. They receive food coupons to eat, and apparently, had 300+ MacDonalds coupons left over. So, the coupons went to us, our fuwuyuan (the kind people who help us out and clean our rooms at the dorms), as well as our teachers and program directors. Many students in the program had sworn to only eat Chinese food in China, but now we are all regular customers at the MacDonalds, for pancakes in the morning if for nothing else. I think one student summed up the situation appropriately when he said “This is just about the funniest thing that has ever happened to me.”

Sept. 19^th: Our second conversation table is today. We all meet at a Sichuan website to eat delicious food (see the pictures page for photos). Today, the students provide the entertainment, as the second-year students have all learned to sing Wo he Ni, a Chinese song written for the Beijing Olympics. The students all have surprisingly good voices, and all of the waiters and waitresses also come over to watch their performance, which goes through several repetitions, with all of the boys swaying arm-in-arm in the back. Then, the third-year students perform some funny Chinese rap pieces that they had learned in class. When they try to speed up, it falls apart a little bit, but all of the Chinese spectators are nonetheless impressed by their performance.

Sept. 20^th: At 8AM today, we embark on our very first weekend excursion, to the Sima Tai section of China’s Great Wall. The surrounding countryside on the way there is gorgeous, although many students take the opportunity provided by the long bus ride to catch up on some sleep. When we arrive the weather is crisp but not cold – perfect weather conditions for a climb. As it turns out, the Sima Tai section of the Great Wall is the steepest and the hardest-to-climb section of the Great Wall, but also the one with the least tourists and the most beautiful view. Almost everyone makes it all the way to the top of the wall, and then most of decide to take the cable cars down to the bottom. All in all, everyone felt that seeing the Great Wall first hand and climbing up a portion of it was an important cultural experience, and everyone was very glad they went, especially as it was so beautiful.

Sept. 21^st: Today is Sunday, so most everyone does their own thing, so to speak. Some people decide merely to sleep in and catch up on some studying, while others go out to various marketplaces to guangjie (shop around). At night, we have a floor meeting that features floor-bonding in the form of lots of MacDonald’s food, one very short Mafia game, and one longer and much more intense Mafia game (wherein the townspeople defeat the Mafia in the last round).

Sept. 24^th: Today is the busiest day we have had so far. We are going away to Datong on Friday, so everything that is normally due on Friday is moved to Thursday. Thus, we have a test to study for, an essay to write, as well as a paper due for our Chinese culture class. Despite all of this intensive studying, everyone still has a good time, because tonight is the occasion of our first get-together with Chinese students. The evening (complemented, once again, by lots of MacDonald’s) is a huge success. One student said he felt like he practiced more conversational Chinese in that one evening than in several weeks of talking to people on the street, while others said that it was very interesting to be able to be able to exchange cultural perspectives. Most students made a lot of friends, and everyone exchanged contact info, so now we have outings with Chinese friends to look forward to.

Sept. 25^th: After a grueling day of tests and papers, the weekend has come one day earlier than it normally does! Tonight at around 11pm, we get on a hard sleeper train that will take us to Datong, where we will spend the first of two weekend trips (see the trips page for more information about Datong). The majority of us have never been on a sleeper train before. It turns out to be a series of open-ended compartments leading onto a corridor, that contain six bunk beds each (three on one wall and three on the other). The bottom and top bunks afford room to sit up, but the middle bunk, unfortunately, does not. This particular genre of sleeper train is called a hard sleeper because the beds are hard and covered by a thin mattress pad. They are actually not uncomfortable though, and most of us, tired out from class today, sleep well. Sleeper trains are fun!

Sept. 26^th: Our first day in Datong starts at 6 AM (too early!) when the sleeper train gets into the station. The rooms aren’t ready for us yet, so we all go down to an amazing breakfast that features everything from bacon to spring rolls. After breakfast, we wash up in two of the rooms (which turn out to have glass walls between the room and the bathroom?!) and then we start our activities for the day. First on the list are the Yungang caves, which are caves that have millennia-old Buddha statues. After lunch, we visit the Huayan Temple (which has very cool circular doorways) and the Nine Dragons’ Screen, and then we head back to the hotel. Most of us received upgrades at the hotel, so we ended up with rooms that had showers and bathtubs. We had to wait a little for our rooms, so the hotel gifted everyone with coal slabs drawn from the local mines that had been hand-etched by artisans. The gifs were a little bit heavy to take back, but nonetheless very thoughtful and unique.

Sept. 27^th: This morning, we continue our Datong trip with a visit to Hengshan Mt. (we seem to have a tradition of steep hikes on weekend excursions). We meet a Daoist priest who lives at the top of the mountain. Afterwards, we travel to the Hanging Temple, which is a temple that is literally built into the mountainside, and is supported by stilts. It is made of wood and yet has survived for more than a millennium, making it possibly the coolest thing on the trip. In the afternoon, we visit the Muta, or Wooden Pagoda, which is one of the world’s oldest wooden buildings. It is nine stories tall, and according to our tour guide, is an architectural feat similar to France’s Eiffel Tower and Italy’s Tower of Pisa. This evening, we eat huoguo (hot pot), which consists of a pot of boiling water where you cook your own food, and then a dipping sauce. It was absolutely delicious, and the guys ate plate after plate of meat, leading them to be christened lang, or wolf, by one of our teachers. After dinner, we take a sleeper train back to Beijing, and arrive in Beijing at the ungodly hour of 5 AM.

Sept. 30^th: Our McDonald’s coupons expire today! I think the general feelings about this were summed up nicely by third-year student Hamish Tildesley, who said “I am glad that the McDonald’s era is over.” Heartily agreed!

Oct. 4^th: We have no official scheduled outings this weekend, but some students make a brief outing to the Pacific Underwater World, which is the best aquarium in Beijing. The aquarium, besides having lots of cool exhibits such as the endangered Humboldt penguins, was quite a cultural experience! For instance, American aquariums do not feature real, live mermaids and scuba divers in their tanks. All in all, everyone had a great time.

Oct. 6^th: Today we made a visit to the Guojia Da Juyuan, or National Centre for the Performing Arts. We were very lucky to get tickets, as they are usually prohibitively expensive. We went to the opera house where we listened to Chinese and Korean folk songs. Not only were the voices beautiful and inspiring, the Centre itself was absolutely gorgeous. It is a large round ball, almost shaped like an egg, surrounded by flowing water. To enter, you actually walk underneath the water, which flows over glass and throws shifting reflections into the room. Inside, the Centre is made up of a series of windows, so that from the top you can look out over the surrounding area. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and afterwards people visited Tiananmen Square, the bookstore, and the nearby Xidan Marketplace.

Oct. 10^th: Today we have a very special Chinese conversation table. Instead of eating near the university campus like we usually do, we take taxis to a Japanese all-you-can-eat restaurant called Songzi. The food is amazing, with everything from sushi and sashimi to cooked crabs and eel and oysters. Everyone eats as much as they can (most people skipped breakfast in order to make room for the meal). At the end of the meal, we are visited by the owner of the restaurant, who only speaks Japanese. Luckily for us, Heita is a native Japanese speaker, and is able to thank her on all of our behalves for a wonderful meal.

Oct. 11^th: We have an outing to Xiang Shan (Fragrance Hill) today. Xiang Shan attracts a lot of Chinese tourists during the fall because it is very beautiful when its leaves change color. Therefore, we arranged to see it before the leaves change color in order to skip the crowds. Somehow, this doesn’t work and there are still massive crowds of Chinese tourists. The weather was beautiful, though, as it has been on every single outing we have gone on so far. We have a running joke now on the FSP that Mao Laoshi brings the good weather with her. Everyone has a really good time walking around the gardens and the park at the foot of the mountain, and some people climb partway up, although we didn’t have time to make it to the summit. This evening, we go to a meeting of the Dartmouth Club of China. We find out about the Club’s activities, and get to meet and talk to a diverse group of alumni. Everyone finally gets to meet Carl (an actor in China who recently hired two of our students to perform live in a concert). The evening was a success, and everyone, although exhausted from the day’s events, feels that it was worth it.

Midterm trip -Many students have elected to write their own web journals for one or more days of the trip. All student journals will appear directly under the regular summary for the day that they are written, and can be accessed by clicking on the links. Please check them out!

Oct. 14^th: Today, we took a plane to Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou (the province where we will be spending our mid-term trip). We have learned a saying about Guizhou which goes “Tian wu san ri qing, di wu san chi ping, ren wu san fen ying.” Literally translated, this means “There are no three consecutive clear days, there are no three consecutive flat feet of land, and the people do not have even three silver pennies.” Basically, it means that the province is prone to misty and overcast days and does not usually get a lot of sun (the name of the capital city, Guiyang, means “Sun is precious”). The terrain is also very mountainous, and the people very poor. Once we arrive though, everyone is impressed with the modernity of the city and with the quality of the hotel. The food is very good, and the weather is warmer than we expected.

Oct. 15^th: This is the first day of our mid-term trip! The weather, unexpectedly, is beautiful and sunny. Since we have been told that sunny days are rare in Guizhou, we all wonder again what it is about Mao Laoshi that brings good weather on all of our outings. Sometimes it will rain every day for a week, with the exception of the day that we go on an outing. In any case, we visit a middle school in the Flower Miao village, which was amazingly fun (see the Trips page for more information about the Flower Miao). The students at the school have never seen foreigners before, so they are extremely excited to meet us and talk to us. We shared our lunches with them and they shared their lunches with us, so we each got to experience some of what the other eats. We gave them gifts of office supplies, while many of them gave us gifts of drawings they had made with good wishes written on them, which were very sweet. After lunch, Peter taught “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to a packed auditorium full of kids, which was a huge success. We had a very intense basketball game with them, while those of us who don’t play basketball taught American games to the smaller children. Duck Duck Goose and Simon Says (modified to Chicken Chicken Pig and Wang Peng Says) were big hits. One bright student got the idea to get autographs from all of the foreigners, which started a huge storm of autograph-taking. Most of us gave out upwards of two hundred to three hundred autographs. All in all, we were very sad to leave, and everyone wished they could stay longer. We are all sure that this is going to turn out to be one of the highlights of the trip.

Ana's Journal

Oct. 16^th: One of the most exciting events today is the song and dance performance by the Wangba Miao, which includes extremely cute children dressed up in traditional costumes. They offer us shots of rice wine, which is most appreciated by the students. After their performance, we are invited to perform for them, at which we all stand arm-in-arm and sing the Alma Mater in chantey style. For an encore, the second-year students sing “Wo he ni”, a song written for the Beijing Olympics which they learned in class. The Miao villagers were impressed. Afterwards, we had a cutthroat round of bargaining for various Miao products. Then we have lunch, and continue on to the Flying Clouds Temple, which has a gorgeous view. In the afternoon, we arrive at the hotel, and find that some zhongguoren have moved into Heita and Samir’s room! After convincing them to leave, we go out and explore the city, where we find a group of local women dancing to music. In China, many adult women choose to do organized dancing outside a couple of times a week as a form of exercise. We all think this is really cool, so we join in and dance with them for about an hour and a half, before heading back to the hotel.

Oct. 17^th: Today, we see some Qinglong Cave Temples, which are interesting. Afterwards we see a talented performance by some Miao villagers wherein they dance, sing, and play native musical instruments. The stories that they tell through their dance is surprisingly evocative, and all of the students find themselves eagerly following the progression of the story. In the afternoon, we take a boat ride down the Wuyang River, which is calming and peaceful and has gorgeous scenery. Somehow, this is our third day of sunny weather, although supposedly Guizhou has no three consecutive sunny days. The rumors are still flying about Mao Laoshi’s magic…

Ji's Journal James's Journal

Oct. 18^th: Today is an interesting day because we visit Shidong, which is a Miao silversmith village. We visit the home of a silversmith, who explains to us the basic differences between real and fake silver and gives us a short silver-working demonstration. Afterwards, we take a look at his wares, and almost everyone buys something. Many of the girls get earrings, although rings are also a popular choice. The silver is good quality and much cheaper than in the States, and so makes for a good remembrance of the trip. There are lots of little kids in the village, who are very friendly and to whom we give lots of candy. Afterwards, we return to Guiyang to refuel and get ready for our travels in the western part of Guizhou.

Yilong’s Journal Heita’s Journal

Oct. 19^th: Today we spend a grand total of eight and a half hours on the bus!! The scenery in Guizhou is quite distinctive and very beautiful, but the roads are terrible and the bus a little cramped. Needless to say, everyone is very glad when we arrive at Zhijin Cave and learn that we have a six kilometer walk through the cave. The inside of the cave is impressively big and full of interesting stalactite and stalagmite formations. In the US, cave formations are generally likened to castles and such, but in China the formations are imagined to be a mother with a child giving her mother-in-law a back massage, or a woman with a basket climbing up a mountain. Everyone gets excited at the end when the lights are out for the last stretch and we think we are going to get to walk it in the dark, but after a short wait some tour guides come and fix the lights. Then, it is back on the bus for the ride to Anshun.

Oct. 20^th: Today we visit the Changjiao Miao. When we arrive at the village, the villagers line either side of the road and dance for us. Once we reach the village entrance, they give us shots of rice wine, which Mao Laoshi says was “stronger than she expected.” Much to the delight of the students, shots are given out again during the dance performance. This is the poorest village we have visited so far, although we did not know that would be the case beforehand. All of us bought candy in Beijing to give away to village children, because we knew that some areas would be too poor to afford treats like candy. However, we thought that the poorest village would be that adjacent to the high school that we visited, which turned out not to be that poor. All of us wish we saved more candy for the village children, and what candy we brought quickly disappears. On the bus ride back, all of us are unusually quiet and pensive.

Allison's Journal

Oct. 21^st: Today was one of the best days of the trip so far! We visit the Huangguoshu Waterfalls, which are awe-inspiring for their power and their beauty. As we walk up the path, the waterfalls grow nearer and more breath-taking, until someone says “The path goes behind the falls!” We all knew this beforehand, but it wasn’t until we saw the waterfalls that we appreciate what that really means. We walk behind the waterfall in a natural-formed cave/corridor that looks like something out of Disney world. In places, the cave wall opens up and we get a glimpse of the waterfalls right in front of us. In some spots we can even walk up almost to the curtain of water. Unbelievably cool! Afterwards we visit Tianxing Scenic area, which is beautiful and – well, scenic. We walk across the 366 stepping stones in the lake that represent the 366 days of a leap year, and we all take pictures on our birth-stone. After that, we visit a bridge with an amazing drop on either side to a low river valley, and we hang off the sides and see how long it takes for an apple pit to fall down. All in all, a very satisfying day.

Oct. 22^nd: Today we visit the Ten Thousand Peaks Forest, which really looks like a forest of peaks. Everywhere you look, the skyline is disrupted by high and low peaks of various shapes and diameters. The tour guide tells us to “use our imagination” to see what shapes the peaks took. For instance, one peak is supposed to look like Sleeping Beauty (this one was hard to find for some people), and another looks like an eagle with its wings spread. We also see a museum of Miao and other minority groups’ wedding custom. One particularly gruesome wedding custom involves the bride and groom pulling apart a live chicken on their wedding day. Afterward we are supposed to go rafting, but one of the boats has broken down so there aren’t enough boats. However, we still walk down to the rafting area and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Oct. 23^rd: The highlight of today is definitely rafting! Rafting, the high school, and the Huangguoshu Waterfalls are probably the three coolest things we have done on this trip so far. We have about six people to a boat, and our watermen take us out onto the Maling River. The front two boats instantly start racing each other, and having a war with paddles and water to try to get the other boat wet. Meanwhile, the third boat lags behind until about halfway through the ride, when they get close enough to be pelted with water by the other two boats. Many people fall into the water, are pulled in, or swim to reach other boats. Even those who haven’t actually been submerged in the water are soaked from the rapids. It was so much fun! After we get off the boats, we walk barefoot back to the bus where the laoshi’s are waiting for us with some very welcome, steaming-hot ginger tea. Before we drink the tea though, we all give the laoshi’s a nice, big hug! So, on the way back to the hotel, everyone is wet!

Kamil's Journal

Oct. 24^th: Today, unfortunately, is our last day in Guizhou, although most people are ready to go back. We visit Qingyan Ancient Town, where we try different kinds of tea and practice archery. After that, the students present a gift to the bus driver and the tour guide, who were amazing, and we say goodbye. The plane ride back is uneventful, and when we get back to the dorms, we find out that the elevator is out of commission for the next month! So, we have to carry our luggage up five flights of stairs. Oh well, we are all glad to be back!