北京这个地方... BEIJING

Two pictures of the 硬卧 "hard sleeper" we took from Shanghai to Beijing (北京) and back. The ride was about 12 hours long, departing around 8pm and arriving 9ish am. There was not even enough space to take a successful picture of the crowded environment, hah. But we had a great time in these tiny six-bed compartments--no door, no privacy, no shame. Goodluck to Mike, who will be spending three years in similar conditions on a submarine !

But yes, last Tuesday through Saturday evening my fellow students and I were in Beijing--seeing the sites with the help of a tour guide. Five days truly wasn't enough, though. And sadly several parts of the city are currently closed for renovations. I was especially disappointed that Chairman Mao's Mausoleum was closed. The story behind that building is pretty hilarious. The Chinese destroyed numerous ancient city walls to build this massive monument devoted to tourism--err, to remembering Mao and his accomplishments. He lays in a glass casket which is raised each day from the frosty depths of the preservation room. My friend saw his body in 2005 and told me that while tourists wait in the approximately one-hour long line to see the Great Helmsman, flowers (plastic) are for sale to be used as a sign of gratitude and remembrance. These flowers must be placed on a cart 30 feet from Mao's casket (the closest tourists can get). Apparently after a certain number of fake flowers have been sacrificed/handed over to that strangely fresh-looking body of Mao, Mausoleum workers will wheel the cart full of flowers back outside to the line, where eagerly waiting tourists will purchase them once again. Oh those Chinese, so practical.

But I suppose I should talk about the things I actually saw myself. Tian'anmen Square, The Forbidden City, Jingshan Park, The Summer Palace, The Ming Tombs, The Temple of Heaven, a Hutong (small alleyway with traditional style architecture of houses--courtyard, etc). And, of course, the Great Wall.

Here is a picture taken in the Forbidden City. As you can see, this building is being renovated, so instead of letting us look at those hideous scaffolds, a screen is placed in front depicting what it will look like eventually. I was actually quite surprised that many of the locations will not be renovated by next summer. [Ok for some reason this type just turned blue and underlined. I wish I knew how blogs worked. Though maybe it doesn't actually look this way for you. eh]


All of the locations were really beautiful. It's just so amazing that these monuments were built three hundred-ish years before Europeans came to America (which our tour guide reminded us of several times). The history of China is so vast and complex... although visits to touristy locations such as all of the above do not promise any sort of deeper understanding, they still are worth seeing for the seer magnitude and ingenuity of Chinese architects. Our tourguide also referred to the below temple, the Hall for the Prayer of Good Harvests, as the symbol of Beijing tourism. She really tried to get us to understand that. This monument constructed during the Ming Dynasty is probably misrepresented and very distorted from the original design, but it is still very important to the Chinese as it creates a source of income for and fascination with Chinese society.








My favorite tourist location we visited was the Great Wall (长城 : literally "long wall"). There are three sections of the Great Wall that are open to tourists in Beijing's vicinity. We all opted to go to the one farthest from the city as we were hoping to escape some of the smog and maybe, just maybe, see the blue sky. Well, we still weren't that successful but the good news was that there were very few other tourists there, so I got a lot of great pictures. Here are some of them:

look at that second picture--you might be able to make out a beach umbrella on the wall. This is where Chinese salesmen/women relentlessly shoved water, beer, postcards, and vacuum packed hot-dogs in my face.


This section was quite high, and really cut through some steep mountains. The hike up there was not easy, and the heat certainly did not help. To make it easier on tourists like me, this section offered a gondola, a chair lift (just like at a ski resort--look at the picture to the left), and even a toboggan ride down from one section. I am uncertain how I feel about these recently constructed add-ons, as they are only there to make this spectacular accomplishment of 3rd century BCE (completed in 221 BCE) more accessible for tourists who think that the other side is Mongolia (a woman asked me that...). I am not doubting that a toboggan ride in, say, California is much different than the toboggan experience in Beijing, China, but I do think it is somewhat peculiar that some historical sites only appear to capture the interest of travelers to a point--and that point is usually very familiar to the tourist.


But then I stop taking myself so seriously, and realize the most important thing is to actually see the Great Wall--by whatever means possible. It really is breathtaking, the hills, the trees, and Grand stone wall that stragely does not feel out of place.

And don't worry, Sunmi, I came back to Shanghai with a slightly heavier bag.

I'll hopefully write again soon. Our second semester (Chinese 302) began on Monday, and it is actually integrated with a different class, Chinese Society Through Film. So tomorrow we will discuss 《洗澡》 "A Bath", a movie I am about to watch in a few minutes. It's really amazing how much I have improved... just earlier I called a travel agency using all Chinese. Here's to hoping I didn't agree to something I'm not aware of...

a few 'tings (oh wait, that was Jamaica)

ah! things have been awesome here, but very busy. Napatra and I went to Suzhou this weekend, I had my final oral exam about 18 hours ago, my final written test in 5 hours, and I'm leaving for Beijing in approximately 15 hours! It's going to be rad--especially about seeing the ridiculous architecture for the Beijing Olympics and going to the Night Market to eat a Scorpion on a Stick !

I wanted to post something here that my roommate, Cuisang (PONG), wrote for our weekly newsletter last week. It describes a trip we all made two weekends ago and is really quite good--I hope you enjoy. It is pasted below with permission, and the picture shows Napatra and I (kind of dark) with the traditional architecture and river in the background:

"XiTang (西塘) is an ancient canal town in Zhejiang province replete with preserved Ming and Qing dynasty-style architecture and gardens. A two-hour bus ride from Hangzhou (杭州), it has been called the "Venice of the East," although this has been said of the other similar canal towns in China in Suzhou（苏州）and elsewhere. Bus trips to more remote ancient towns like Xitang seem to be almost completely monopolized by domestic tour companies, as the drive there is too inconvenient for most individual tourists to make alone. Large signs advertising Xitang started in Hangzhou and continued to appear along the highway to Xitang. The trip along the highway was a glimpse of modern China outside of the big city—large-scale industrial development sites were located alongside hand-tilled farmland.

"Traditional towns and neighborhoods like Xitang that are tagged by the government preservation are heavily advertised for their cultural and historical value. Tour groups come and go and eventually help finance, in the wake of camera clicking, a new lifestyle for those who live in the towns. As a result, what used to be a sleepy, poor fishing and farming town on the outskirts of a large city soon becomes a tourist trap, a place where visitors can take pictures, buy overpriced goods, complain about how touristy the place is, and learn a little about how the town used to be during ancient times. By one measure of the word, this is success—culture has been preserved, the economic well-being of the townspeople has been enriched. On the other hand, this is a big failure—nothing but the façade of buildings and a few cultural relics in display cases has been preserved. Xitang's long-standing lifestyle of poor self-sufficiency has been replaced by opportunistic and also opportunity-giving tourist-dependency. In fact, it is neither a complete success nor a complete failure; it exists as another example of old vs new, government vs people, preservation vs progress; or any other dichotomous view of China. Xitang is full of culture yet lacking in culture, a relic and a model, a success and failure, an allegory yet also reality. "

And now something to perhaps lighten the mood: translation difficulties! Cuisang and I recently came across some tasty 休闲饼干，which roughly translates as "Leisure Biscuit." But the true rough translation exposes itself on the wrapper. The one and only English sentence--that is not even accompanied by a Chinese sentence (apparently having English words is just "cool")--reads as follows:

"Increase into the real object material of original flavor, through dispensing of science, in really ideal good product that enjoy of delicacy."



Happy Father's Day!

Remnants

A massive double decker bus in the "French Concession"--the former area of Shanghai that was under control of France. It is now a major shopping center full of many expensive stores, some of which are Western companies (Caroline - they have a five-story H&M, so quit your job at Dulles and move to Shanghai to work here).

But why pay American/European prices when you can score a knock-off for ~$10 in the street shops? There is apparently a famous street in Shanghai called 七普路 / Qipu Lu (pronounced "chee-pu lu", lu means road). this is a transliteration of "Cheap" and apparently this little street is full of extremely cheap--we're talking $8.50 for Gucci-- goods. Making a stop there is definitely on the to-do list-- anyone need anything??

While I'm on the topic of shopping/shopping centers, take a look at this picture I took inside a modern Shanghai shopping mall:

Remind anyone of an American shopping mall? Very peculiar... the more I go to the wealthier, nicer parts of Shanghai, the more they look American.





Right next door to this very nice shopping center (which was pretty much empty), is the 静安寺 / Jing'an Temple. Below is a picture:







As you can see, the temple is right in the middle Shanghai and can not escape those L'Oreal Eyes. I will refrain from making comparisons with the Great Gatsby. But this temple was extremely interesting to visit because it was actually shut down during the Cultural Revolution, which took place from 1966-1978. (1978 is the year Mao died, though most of the radical culture 'smashing' occurred during the first three years, after which Mao said that the CR was going a bit too far. Nonetheless historians usually give the above date for the Cultural Revolution.)

During this time, the Jing'an Temple was converted into a plastics factory, and it still has not been fully renovated. Take a look at these pictures, one is the back of Jing'an Si, which was free for tourists like myself to walk around/look at, and the other is on the roof of the main hall, a space which can be used for outdoor services:














So as you can see, it looks just like a factory still. At the time of my visit, in the main gathering hall an hour-long chant was in process. It was really beautiful to hear, especially because the only chants I have ever heard are not melodious--this one had a repeating melody.

A second Buddhist location we visited that still holds scars of the CR is a large monastery in Hangzhou. Our class traveled to the tourist city of Hangzhou this past weekend. It was about three hours by bus, south of Shanghai. I forget the Chinese name of the mountain next to the monastery that we visited, but the story is pretty interesting. The Buddhists believe that the mountain flew from the Western Paradise and landed in its current location. Many Buddhist monks and pilgrims travel to this mountain because there are thousands of Buddhas, Arhats, Bodhisattvas, and Heavenly Kings carved into the mountain (if you are interested in the differences between those four categories, send me an email and I'll do my best to use my college education in Virginia to fill you in, hah).

During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards and other radicals came to this mountain and defaced more than half of the images:
(I decided to show you pictures of myself and my friend Napatra because I don't think I've posted any of myself or friends yet. I hope this doesn't deface the image more than the destruction of the CR, ha !)

But yes as you can see (hopefully), all of the images' faces have been smashed. it is really a pity because it was such a beautiful mountain with very detailed representations of important Buddhist deities.

I am really looking forward to conducting research on this topic in the spring. Why exactly did the Communist Party find ancient relics such as these a threat to the development of the nation? Where were practitioners displaced? And post-Cultural Revolution, how where these sites able to rebound? In the Hangzhou monastery, we viewed a ritual of blessing for a man and woman by Buddhist monks. When was this sort of thing mandated "allowed"?

Time for dinner. until next time.

Modern Chinldren

A picture of three classmates (from left: Frazer Henderson/Hanfei, Rebekah Brooks/Baijia, and Leise Hook/Lidun) and I standing in front of a massive Mao statue in the middle of our campus.

So - the Chinese government has sought out this "Super Shanghai Summer" as a threat and therefore blocked it from viewing in China. Yeah I'm being melodramatic. But for some reason all of my friends here that have a blogspot website (moosedung.blogspot.com for Frazer Henderson's if you're interested... and I forget what Napatra's link is, sry) are UNABLE to view it anymore.

Luckily for you all, though, I can still make posts that you can see in America (or wherever you may be). The blockage also continues on to the comments section. So if you really hate my blog you can totally post nasty comments and I won't know about it. Just delete them all before I return to America on the 21st. Thanks.

This also means, though, that if you want to add something to what I've written, just say hello, tell me you miss me so much, etc, then write me an email! leonelli.stephen@gmail.com. It'd be great to hear from you and I will get back to you as soon as I can!

But yeah! It has been a while because I couldn't figure out how to get this work, but I have been having an extremely interesting time here. Last Thursday we interviewed parents regarding the 高考 gaokao (similar to the America SAT except 42942050 times more intense), I visited the 上海博物馆 Shanghai Museum and 静安寺 Jing'an Temple on Friday, and we went to 杭州 Hangzhou this weekend (a smaller tourist city three-ish hours south from Shanghai).

I hope to write about all of those at some point, but right now I want to talk about something very important to China: 孩子们 Children! I started to notice a bunch of munch-kins wearing a red scarf around their neck. Below is a picture:

These poor, unsuspecting kids still don't know I took their picture. Maybe it's good my website is blocked in China.

So anyway- as you can see the young fellow on the right is not only eating a Popsicle, but also wearing a small red scarf. Eventually I just really needed to know what holiday I hadn't heard about, so I stopped a young girl and asked her in Chinese, "Why are you wearing this read piece of clothing?" She responded. I didn't understand a word she said. So I replied, "Is it a festival?" And she responded, "No it's not." And then I didn't understand another word she said.

So, I've been trying to tell myself that this little 8 year old was speaking the local Shanghainese dialect--which is completely different from the standard (meaning the sounds you hear on the television, what is spoken in Beijing (approximately), etc.) "Putonghua" we study--and that's why I didn't understand her. But I obviously couldn't be satisfied with only knowing that it wasn't a festival, so I asked one of my teachers.

the 红领巾 honglingjin, or "Young Pioneer Scarfs" are worn by children that--as far as my understanding goes from my teacher's explanation in Chinese (sadly she was speaking putonghua, and I'm still not clear on some things)--earn not only outstanding grades in school but also exemplify moral excellence. I am not sure where the standards of morality come from, but my guess is from communist tools like the Little Red Book, which glorifies communist soldier Lei Feng from the revolutionary China period (late 1940s). The schools award these scarfs to children who are "outstanding," and as you can see not everyone wears them.

This is also a tool, according to my teacher, to expose children to the "benefits" of joining the communist party. I was surprised to learn that there are actually several governmental Parties in China, though my teacher said that in reality it is always 共产党 gongchandang--the Chinese Communist Party--versus everyone else, lumped into one group. Reminds me of how our biparty system in America similarly gives nearly no chance to "third-party" groups.


Well there's much more I'd like to say but I had better go to bed. I'll leave you with a picture I took while walking around with some friends the other day. It's something that I've seen three or four times now: uniformed workers getting prepped for the day (this was around 11:30am). This group actually had a little song/chant that they all said together after the boss was done speaking. If you love Star Trek for the uniforms, come to Shanghai for a great time.

Culture!!!

This week began our extracurricular classes. The classes are meant to teach us things about Chinese culture--I signed up for Chinese Cooking, Chinese Painting, and [Chinese] Taichi. The classes are taught by either graduate students here or by locals. Our painting teacher did not speak English, so learning how to paint in complete Chinese was spectacular, let me tell you. And THIS was the product:



I also want you to know that, fortunately, the Teletubbies can be found in different shapes and sizes all over the world, even China:

This is an enormous advertisement my friends and I passed while in search of an antique store yesterday. When we reached the antique store location according to the Lonely Planet book, we found that it had been raised in place of a giant hotel. Who's communist now?



OK I will make another post soon, I have to get back to studying. oh and by the way, please feel free to visit photobucket.com to see pictures posted from the students in the program. the login ID is "UVAshanghai2007" and the password is "lianglaoshi".

晚安 / wan'an (goodnight)

blocks

Man. I'm finding life slightly more challenging here for two main reasons: I don't have a cell phone with a calculator (funny how much I miss that...), and wikipedia is not allowed. I feel less intelligent without these two handy little things, but then again, I shouldn't be calling myself intelligent if I rely on things like wikipedia.

Some other websites that are blocked: myspace (sorry, sis), the BBC news (is this the only news agency that reports news truthfully or something?), and google of course has a massive filter.

There is one aspect of daily life that is NOT as blocked as I would have thought it would be: ADVERTISING. Wow! China is SEXY! There are underwear models everywhere, scantily dressed women, and innuendo galore. Whether it be on the television or on the subway, the advertising industry is basically on the same level as, gasp, America!

It is also interesting to see how often WHITE models are used--it's quite startling to me, actually. Do we in America have many advertisements that have nonwhite models, etc? Perhaps... but it feels funny here. Especially because on the television, they have programs that teach the listener how to speak English. The last one was a post office scenario ("Repeat after me: I want to send an international letter.")


I also wanted to make a comment about the peddlers here in Shanghai. Wow- aggressive. today I went to the bank and got approached by two people outside the bank who said, "Don't go in there, I can give you money." This is in English, actually. But the most funny encounter with a salesperson was at the Bund in downtown Shanghai. This is a very famous place in Shanghai architecturally so there are lots of tourists. So, of course, lots of salespeople. And I guess the things they sell change by month, and this past Saturday they were CRAZY about getting us to buy shoe-slip-ons that had wheels. Of course I had no need for this, but one salesman grabbed my upper arm and shook it. Hard. But in a friendly way somehow. He was wailing, "先生！！” "Sir!!" It was really hilarious. Both he and I were laughing. I unfortunately still let him down and have no roller-slip on shoes to speak of.


This is a picture of me at the Bund. You can see the famous Pearl of the East TV Tower (东方明珠电视塔, Dongfang Mingzhu Dianshi Ta) in the background there. We went to the top of it to gaze over Shanghai. It was like the Washington Monument expect much, much grander.

Blog this

So, I somehow managed to escape the Chinese government and set up this blog. Actually, I don't know why Steven Pong (淬桑 / cuisang), my classmate, future travel buddy, and roommate for the summer, was unable to create one earlier--I had no problem at all. He was probably rapping in Chinese at the time which, believe me, can be quite distracting (the latest little tune was "Do you know the Muffin Man" in Chinese).

But yes! We're totally in 上海 Shanghai, at 华东师范大学 Huadong Shifan Daxue (East China Normal University). And it is great! Even if so humid all my papers are nothing but wrinkles, and we never really know when it's raining or if we just walked through a bad spot. Luckily we're staying in the Foreign Student dorm, which is more like a hotel--we even have maids come each day to make our beds--what a life. I certainly am struck by just how many jobs there are in China... so many employed, uniformed people I feel like a bit overwhelmed. At every entrance to every store, there is someone to greet you with a smile and a nihao (hello). It's wonderful really it's

We started class last week, on Monday the 28th. Shanghai is 12 hours ahead of US East Coast time. (cool difference with America: there are no time zones in China, so the entire nation runs on the same clock--makes figuring out train tickets much easier!) We have class each day from 8:00am - about 11:30am, in addition to a one-on-one session with a teacher for one hour. The teachers are all graduate students at the University, most of which are studying "Teaching Chinese to Foreigners." I am glad they are our age--it's been nice getting to know them, even if it's forced. We study one chapter of a textbook a day, so it's about 55-70 new vocab words to memorize for the daily quiz we have Monday- Thursday, accompanied by an oral exam on Thursdays and written exam on Fridays. Yeah. For eight weeks.

Anyway I hope you enjoy reading this, or any other trite thing that people write at the end of their first post to a travel blog. Write me via email: leonelli.stephen@gmail.com for the fastest response.

Have a spectac day!