Interesting Article

Found this on NY Times while procrastinating writing my paper and thought is was extremely relevant given I can barely see the buildings out my window through the smog. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/asia/29china.html?ref=global-home

T-10 Days

I am finally back on the radar! Sorry for how long its been, but nothing truly too exciting has been going down. We have reached the "study" part of study abroad. The last couple days have consisted of class then barricading myself into my dorm room to work on my independent research project (due in 8 days). Its also nice to escape the heat, its been 90 - 100 degrees here everyday and since there has been little rain the air pollution is out of control. 

Despite the weather and the work load I have managed to squeeze in a few fun activities. 

I went to the infamous Silk Market which is basically a HUGE indoor mall with stall after stall of jewelry, silk, clothes, fake watches, purses, anything you can imagine. It is completely aimed for foreigners and they are known for giving the most RIDICULOUS prices ever. I went with some friends and we had the best time bargaining with them. We had an advantage speaking Chinese and some of the sellers yelled at us for bargaining too well. It was quite the experience, though I feel bad for the clueless tourists that end up paying over 100rmb for anything. 

I got to check out Beijing's Art District on a lazy Sunday afternoon! It was really cool, all the galleries are free and open to the public and they had an interesting mix of traditional and modern art. AND best of all they had all these cafes with rooftop seating! AND they had coffee, real coffee! It was fabulous :D

Our group got to go see a Chinese Acrobat show, which was amazing of course. I feel like they don't have the same safety standards as in the States. At one point they had stacked 3 huge men on top of each other and were tossing TINY 6 year old girls at them to stack on top/catch and toss back. It was amazing what they could do but slightly terrifying. I heard the act was pretty similar to what they do in Cirque Du Soleio.

I also got to go to a hot spring outside of Beijing with some Chinese friends I met. It was basically a giant indoor water park, but without a lot of slides. They had a huge standard cold pool with swimming lanes and 3 smaller slides. Then they had the hot spring pool, which was actually really cool. They had little geysers and shower head things to spray the spring water on you. It was definitely an interesting experience. I was the only white person there beside my friend AND the best part was we had to wear swimming caps the whole time.

I checked out the Summer Palace as well, which is about 30 minutes walking from my house. It was used by the last dynasty for relaxing and such. I made the mistake of going on a Saturday and there were SO MANY PEOPLE. In fact the Chinese have a saying which describes this perfectly: 人山人海 (rénshānrénhǎi) which in literal translation means people mountain people sea. The sights were super pretty, they have a huge manmade lake which we took a boat ride across and lots of old trees. But way too many people, think the most crowded day at Colonial Williamsburg times 70.

So yeah besides those outings its been all work, speaking of which its about time for me to lock myself into the good old dorm room and work on some research paper!

Engrish Spottings

I think its time to post my top 3 favorite examples of ENGRISH! Engrish is defined as the use of 

English that is either spelled wrong or uses incorrect grammar. I am pretty sure it is the result of sticking the Chinese message into an online translator to convert it into English. Which never really works out. I have tried it the other way and those translators really need to be improved. 

NOTE: I feel that it is okay for me to poke fun at these signs because I know for a fact I have written sentences/said things that are just as ridiculous.

Example #1: In my dorm room there are instructions for what to do in case of a fire:

 "The elevator was banned to use, when the fire happens" this hint is located under the "Evacuation picture of fire fighting"

Example #2: Our building passed out a flyer to warn us that the water would be shut off one day and it reminded us to "Please make prepare and arrange for the water using time"

Example #3: In the airport bathroom in Chengdu there was a sign on the Western toilet, which is usually reserved for handicapped that read "Deformed Man End Place"

There have been many MANY more examples, but none quite as good as the above listed. Time for me to go do some homework and write some of my own Chingrish - it really doesn't sound as well the other way.

Shanghai Pictures

Picture #1 View of Shanghai at night from our river boat cruise.

Picture #2 View of Shanghai from the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center - 492 Meters in the air!!!

Picture #3 The United States pavilion at Shanghai's World Expo.

Huangshan Pictures

Pictures of our rainy adventure on Huangshan!

Study Tour Pictures

Sorry it took so long to put these up! Its been a blur trying to get back into our schedule.

Picture #1 Me feeding apples to some hungry Pandas in Chengdu.

Picture #2 Visiting an ancient village to tour their famous arches.

Picture#3 Chilling in our village, Hongcun.

Link

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/13/news/companies/Yum_Brands/index.htm?postversion=2010071411

Back in Beijing

Hey Everybody!

Returned to good old Beijing yesterday. It feels good to be back! Traveling is amazing but its nice to know I will sleep in the same bed more than two nights in a row. Unfortunately Beijing welcomed us back with some terrible smog. I guess it hasn't rained here in awhile, which means bad pollution. The average temperature while we were gone was also 40 degrees Celsius which is like 103 degrees Fahrenheit. From what I have heard from home the weather seems pretty similar.

I only have 3 and a half more weeks of class, which is exciting/terrifying. I feel like there is still so much more to see and do. 

The study tour was an amazing experience. We first went to Chengdu which is basically an up and coming city in China. It had such a different feel than Beijing, way less foreigners, much cleaner. There we  visited some museums, I got to see some ancient relics and an archaeological dig that I studied this past semester in my Art of China class I took! We visited the Chengdu Panda Research Center and got to be interns for a day! We got to clean out Panda cages, FEED the pandas and be super close to them! It was really cool, they are ridiculously lazy and cute. 

Then it was off to the country! We stayed in a small village most of the time called Huangcun. It was very quaint and a big difference from city life. We stayed in family courtyard inns and mostly just toured the local historic spots. We went for an overnight trip to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) which is one of the most BEAUTIFUL mountains in the world. Its were they filmed Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The mountains are so different from the East coast here. They are so ragged and all around you are shear cliff faces with these crazy trees popping out of the cracks. It rained pretty much the whole time, but it didn't ruin anything, we still got some great pictures. I definitely want to return there though, I think there is so much more to explore.

Then we went to Shanghai! Talk about culture shock from the country to HUGE city! Shanghai basically feels like you're in a US city, like New York. Its very westernized, its filled with mostly western stores. I had some Starbucks while I was there, first decent coffee since I got here! We visited the Shanghai World Financial Center, one of the tallest buildings in the world, which was slightly terrifying but a great view! The last day we checked out the World Expo which was really interesting but SO CROWDED. I got to see the Norway, Russia and US pavilions. Then we took a night SLEEPER train back. It was so cool, I got to sleep in a bunk bed on a train! Its the simply things that amuse me :D

Well its class time for me, but I will try to post some pictures of the tour later!

STUDY TOUR

Hello Everybody!

Currently posting from Chengdu, China! The study tour has been AMAZING so far, we have been up to a lot of really fun things. I learned how to play Mah-jong, visited a silk factory, ate lots of interesting food, and saw some ancient Chinese relics I learned about in my Art of China class this past semester! Tomorrow we are going to spend the day playing with PANDAS! I am so excited, I hear we even get to feed them!!! 

Then tomorrow night we are flying to the country side, so I might lose email contact. BUT I will update and post pictures as soon as I can.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Everything I read told me to prepare for Beijing's pollution. Every person I talked to brought it up. And yet I thought, "I have been to New York and other cities with pollution, how bad can it be?"

HA! Boy was I wrong. Everyday I gauge how bad the air is by how much of the building, which is 2 city blocks away, I can see. The first week or so it wasn't bad at all, it rained a lot. But recently its been getting worse and worse. Today I could not see any of the building 2 city blocks away. In fact I thought it was raining it was so smoggy and dense outside. (NOTE: I am on the 10th floor, so its not too unreasonable that I can see far/would think it was rain). BUT NO! It was pollution. Everyone on our trip has been developing a steady cough over the past week or so. Its really fabulous. Its probably my least favorite part of the trip/Beijing so far. But all is good, the smog usually lets up by noon and my lungs are still kicking. 

Luckily I will actually get to breath some clean air this upcoming week! We are leaving for our 12 day study tour on Saturday and coming back the next Tuesday. I am going to Chengdu to see a Panda reserve and Huangshan a famous and beautiful mountain in China and Shanghai for the World Expo! I am really looking forward to it and I think I will have internet access here and there to update everyone!