So I heard you like puppies...

I got two ^_^ smileys on the quiz and homework we were handed back. Lukewarm grades, but not too bad. Also got some very encouraging words in somewhat broken English.



After class today we went to a tea house (茶馆). Authentic "Tea Performance" and all that. Our assistant/chaperone/TA Wang Laoshi told us a ton about real Chinese tea, where to get it, preparation, aging, (only for one kind) etc... We tried three kinds, Kungfu Tea, Green Tea, ans Jasmine Tea. The Kungfu aka Wulan tea was the best, it almost had a sort of sweet kick to it. It's also apparently the most expensive. In the picture above, the little brown cups have Wulan tea in it that you're supposed to drink in three sips, no more and no less. The tall clear glasses are for the green tea and the squat cups are for Jasmine tea. Apparently, guys are supposed to only use one hand to grip the saucer, cup, and lid all together and drink it. If you use two hands, Confucius' spirit comes down and gives you cancer and irritable bowel syndrome.

After that, we went to a dumpling place. It had the standards, with shrimp, chicken, mushrooms, all on the menu. One curious member of our party asked if they had dog. They did. So I had a couple dog (狗) dumplings, all the while thinking of Mattie. They were actually not that great. The spices in them were nice but the meat itself was nothing special at all. 不好吃



PS I hope these images are posting and formatting correctly. I can edit the blog but have no way of actually reading it since the blogger.com domain isn't banned but apparently blogspot.com is. I also can't see comments.

Christmas already?

The bell that starts passing period isn't a bell at all. It's an awful-quality recording of Silent Night, without any lyrics, and plays for a verse or so. I don't think our teachers know why it's funny.

I also went to the supermarket. Apples were 5 RMB for half a kilo, which is apparently expensive. My tutor recommended it was a lot cheaper to buy them at a market. I'm sure it is, but its also probably got E. coli smeared all over it. Local flavoring I guess. What I did discover is that every printed date is a manfactured date, not a use by date, so the milk I bought was actually bottled (or bagged, I suppose) May 18th. The price by the way, was 10.2 RMB for 12 220ml packets, which seemed cheap but the math bears out that it approaches American prices. It's almost $1.50 for 2.6 liters of milk, which is ~2/3 of a gallon. Add another 50% of the 1.50 and you've got $2.25 for a gallon of milk. Most things in China so far are several times cheaper.

Anyhow, class started yesterday and most of the patterns and some of the characters are review. Not too difficult so far, and class is only for 3.5 hours a day, 30 minutes of which is break, and it's nothing after 5-hour summer school biology from a few years ago.

I bought a pack of playing cards, and I'm not even sure what they were trying to go for here. It's not awful English, but it does leave you wondering.



PS The internet here is AWFUL. It cut out 3 times while writing this and the first time I tried to publish it.

Arrival and first day

So my flight was delayed by 4 or 5 hours. At first we sat on the tarmac while they had a hydraulics failure. Then they eventually asked everyone to get off the plane, gave us $10 meal vouchers and told us to be back in 30 minutes. An hour or so later we got into the air. I was expecting the flight to be purgatory but it actually wasn't so bad. I watched 3 and a half movies, dosed off a lot, etc...
The flight was 12 or 13 hours and we ended up going over the North Pole and Siberia. When we landed, the airport itself was incredible. First, it was just complete in March. It looks new, feels new, and is beautiful and massive. I think I read an article in the New York Times that said it had more floorspace than the Pentagon. I believe it. I met up with 3 other UW people and we got our luggage and went to the shuttlebus that took us to Tianjin.
As soon as we got outside though, the Beijing air hit us. First, everything far away was seen through a fog, just like a natural one. Second, the smell was weird. It was something like chlorine combined with slightly rotting plant matter and a tinge of sulfur. The drive to Tianjin was interesting, though I slept through lots of it. What I did see though, was that their roads were immaculate. New, perfectly shiny black asphalt and glowing paint. The sheer amount of roads and onramps and offramps and curves reminded me a little of the highways in California going from Orinda toward our dentist or Marie Calendar's near Ygnacio Valley Road. Additionally, this was our first glimpse of the 'local charm' as there were people biking right on the highway between Beijing and Tianjin.
We got to our hotel/dorm at around midnight local time (we are 13 hours ahead of Central Time during the summer) and got to sleep around 1:30 AM. I only got 5 and some hours of sleep,
I just couldn't get any more because I apparently wasn't tired.
Today, we started on a tour of Tianjin at 10 AM. We drove around on a bus and got out a bunch too. First, we went to a strip of cheap shops with tons of knock-offs like Luis Vuitton and Rolex. After that we stopped off for lunch. Ordering was most difficult. It was "Hot Pot" style so they gave us a pot of half spicy sauce and half mild, and 6 plates of what I think was beef strips that we dropped into the pot for a bit then pulled it up and ate it. It took us forever to order though since we were all so bad at Chinese, and eventually got a guy with much better Chinese to help us out. That along with a 600ml beer cost us only $6 each. After that some went to the supermarket and some went to the bank. I opted for the bank since I was unable to get any money from the campus ATMs. I got 1500 Yuan (also called kuai or Renminbi/RMB) which is a bit over $200. The current conversion rate is basically 7 kuai to 1 dollar. Even with a plummeting dollar, this country is so cheap. Also during the bus ride, I got the first taste of people pointing. Even while in the bus, Chinese outside would point at us. Finally, the highlight of the day so far would have to be when I made a one-year old kid cry. He was sitting with his mom and dad right behind us at lunch, and he kept staring at us. We smiled and said hi to him, and he seemed really amused. I eventually asked his parents if I could take a picture with him, and handed my camera off to a friend while his mom held him up. As soon as the camera came out however, he got incredibly shy and would not even show his face. His dad then took him and came and sat next to me, and sort of held him up. The poor kid was visibly shaken now. As the dad was sort of shoving the boy toward me I thought he was intending for me to take him. So I did. Oops. He had already been complaining and looking worried, but he started full-out bawling. His dad immediately took him outside and I started telling his mother how embarrassed and sorry I was. Neither of the parents seemed at all troubled and they seemed to think it was kind of cute/funny too. When the dad brought the kid back I said sorry to him, then his mom told him to say no problem but he was just embarrassed again and hid from me. Hopefully I haven't scarred him into a life of hatred for the white menace. Oh well.

...

The study abroad people said this was a good idea, and I know my parents will appreciate it.