感冒了，食堂

Unfortunately, colds of varying degrees are rampantly spreading
through PiB right now and I've contracted one. This is my excuse for
not writing a lot tonight, but I will post some pictures and write a
little even though I really just want to sleep for a year or two.

First picture: 日常生活 - 学生食堂 (Daily life, the student cafeteria)
Although eating at restaurants is generally very cheap after the
conversion to American dollars (primarily because there are no such
things as restaurant taxes, service is cheap and there's no need to
tip) the campus cafeterias are even cheaper. They've got plenty of
downsides as well - primarily that if you don't show up within an hour
of when they open for that particular meal, your options of remaining
food are severely limited. Also, I'm not sure how I managed to take a
picture of a dining hall with so few people in it; often going to the
shitang is a good way to remind oneself that yes, there are a lot of
people in China. It's often pretty difficult to find a seat.

At first the system was slightly daunting, because it doesn't seem
like it's limited to students. I it is more of a college community
dining hall - anyone who has a campus card can put money on it and eat
at the cafeteria. I often see little kids - I'm assuming that they
must be professors' or grad students'. There are also a lot of elderly
people of ambiguous association. I have the same confusion towards a
large portion of the campus apartment-type housing. There are many
buildings that clearly aren't student dorms, but it seems like there
are too many to be limited to professors and faculty only.

Anyway, most importantly: how is the dining hall food? A teacher was
asking me, "Now what does American versions of Chinese food actually
taste like?" It tastes kind of like the worst tasting Chinese food of
China - which is to say student cafeteria food. So, from my viewpoint,
受得了 - or I can bear it. It's really not bad.

Second picture: 故宫 The Forbidden City
I'm not going to write a lot. I just think this is kind of a pretty
picture that I took at the back of the Forbidden City. It's good
fengshui to have a large rock behind you, apparently. So this picture
includes part of the emperors' large rock.

Alright, I'm off to study and then to bed.

回来了！

Oh no! I excused myself from writing once or twice and suddenly it's
been a very long time since I've written anything...

Anyway, I'm back, and I promise that I won't disappear again for my
duration in China. Considering that I only have a few weeks left, that
hopefully shouldn't be too hard.

This is a picture from 潘家园, Pan Jiayuan, one of the classic Bejing,
China markets. A lot of people sell all kinds of trinkets that they
claim are artifacts. As long as you don't value them as artifacts and
are willing to barter over 5 yuan then you can count yourself a true
Chinese person. I bought some books and some communist posters that
may or may not actually be from the 1970's. Even if they weren't
printed in the 70's, they were certainly designed a while ago and I
still find them interesting, about the five American dollars-worth of
interesting that I payed for them. Although I though the fake antiques
are of interest, it was kind of hot and I didn't feel that
enthusiastic about digging through them.

Considering that I hope to be updating regularly from now on, I hope
that I'll be able to tell some better stories and things, but I need
to write my weekly essay now.

Long weekend over, back to the studying grind.

My long weekend has flown by and I am now realizing how much homework I have.
I am going to work on homework first, then hopefully write some things
here if I have time before I get to bed. This afternoon I spent
finishing the letters that I need to write, so I might not have time
to write here tonight, but I will definitely do so tomorrow.

For now, my second favorite sign so far.

努力学习

Midterm (actually a final) tomorrow.

Just studying right now, but hopefully some interesting things will
start happening tomorrow as soon as the test is over. Long weekend -
yay!

picture: Another taken from a bus window.

老婆，宝贝

picture: Some old ladies and a baby taken during our trip to the
countryside on Saturday. I apologize for the edge of the window in the
left hand side of the frame - my skill at taking pictures out of a bus
window is still not superb.

A few notes of mild interest to write tonight:
- finally set up a VPN client to get around The Great Firewall. (It's
not only so I can check Facebook and watch Youtube, really...)
- Thursday is the "semester" final - so much studying that I could do for this
- the last post two posts are out of order; thankfully due to my VPN
client I noticed that blogger simply didn't post the longer post so I
resent it
- I've started going for a jog every morning. We have class starting
at 7:30 sharp, but so far kicking my butt and doing physical activity
before hand - though it certainly seems more grueling, is paying off
in my ability to stay awake and be present in class.
- Today, the essay that I handed it received the comment "非常不错!"
(fei1chang2bu2cuo4) which is a good comment and made me happy.
However, it also made me laugh because the wording is particularly
Chinese. Literally, the translation is "out of norm not wrong" or a
step further into making sense in English "exceptionally not bad".
- I need to buy some clothes
- Wow, that last point really wasn't interesting
- Which is probably a good indicator that it's about time that I stop
writing and get to bed!

Longer post, finally!

It's been a while since I've written anything worthwhile. I'm sorry
about that. Let me tell you some stories of my adventures. Given the
epic amount of studying that one can* do at PiB, free time is a valued
commodity, but I am going to spend my Sunday night writing.

pictures:
天安门Tianan'men square.
Although there really actually isn't much to do here aside from look
at the big open space, the giant picture of Mao, etc, I really enjoyed
going. Truth be told, I think I was filled with more awe and feelings
of significance while walking around Tianan'men than while walking
around in Washington DC. I'm not sure what that means, but as we
slowly approached the great painting of Mao, I felt a swelling of
great significance. Perhaps the United States needs to reconsider it's
decorating scheme: use the White House as a big canvas for giant
paintings of our greatest - Michael Jackson and all.

农村，爬山 Countryside, Mountain climbing
This Saturday we took a trip typical of modern China city dwellers, in
Beijing as well as other large cities. The teacher that I asked said
that she thought this kind of excursion became popular about 5-6 years
ago. We went to the country side near Beijing and ate a 农家 (nong2jia1
- farmer home) style meal and then we climbed a mountain. City
residents like to do this when they have the opportunity because they
believe that life in the city all of the time, eating city food and
using the city food, air, etc. is unhealthy. I've been feeling that
myself recently: Friday night I was just thinking to myself - I want
air! I want real, clean air! Of course, it is not as though the
effects of the pollution and air quality are so intense that it's
consciously noticeable.

My father had basically described this activity to me once, including
the fact that there are actually steps in the mountain all the way to
the top. I had erroneously assumed that he must have just been
climbing a really often frequented mountain or tourist site. However,
I'm starting to think that, because there are so many people to come
to the mountain and because labor is so cheap, that this "pathway to
the top of the mountain" may be more the norm than the exception. It's
certainly not a common occurrence on mountains in the United States.

Despite the incredible humidity that made it feel (and look) like we'd
been swimming by the time we reached the top, it was pretty
incredible. I was vaguely under the impressions that Chinese landscape
paintings were from somebody's imagination, but there I was, looking
at those mountains and that fog. Also, there were some Buddhist monks
enshrined at the base of the mountain.

两种菜单
A quickie story: on Friday we went to Tianan'men square and the nearby
area Qianmen - an area with a lot of shops and restaurants, which are
obviously often frequented by tourists. The restaurant that we stopped
for dinner seemed to be at about our perfect level - a meat-containing
main dish around 20-30 yuan, vegetable dishes between 10-20 yuan. We
were surprised when we looked at the menu to see that the prices were
unexpectedly high, given the general atmosphere and situation of the
restaurant; also it seemed as though they didn't have a great
selection. There was a general mutter of "看起来有点儿贵啊... (oh, it looks
surprisingly expensive)" which the waiter overheard. After a little
bit she asked, "你们会看中文吗? (you can read Chinese?)" and then switched
our menus - which was when I finally noticed as she was taking away
the first menu that it only had English. On the second menu, there was
no English, but a price drop of 10 yuan for the couple dessert dishes
that I remembered the price for - I don't even know the differences in
the prices for the main dishes...

Other notes:
Next weekend is our long weekend. Even though I had originally thought
that I'd want to get out of Beijing, considering that there is still
so much that I haven't seen here, I've decided to stay in the big city
for the weekend. I'm pretty excited. Also, I apologize for awkward
formatting and typos in this blog - I email in my updates. Although I
can use some VPN clients to get around the Great Firewall, I'm really
too busy (and lazy) right now.

* Truthfully, this is a personal decision. There are some students
here who don't appear to value studying as the most important aspect
of their time in Beijing. I find this pretty surprising, considering
that PiB appears to be generally considered the most intense and most
demanding of summer study programs in China. With the amount of work
one could be doing, I guess I can see how some students appear to be
burned out and not studying (my roommate for example, seems to have
spent a greater part of today watching American TV on her computer) if
there isn't a great personal interest and drive in learning Chinese.
As a non-Princeton student, my grades will actually only show up on my
school transcript as pass or fail, so the fact that I study so much is
pretty unrelated to my grades.

Stories to look forward to (that I mean to write about when I get a chance):
没有菜单
街景
健康，老人，playgrounds
樱桃
交通
太平饺子馆儿服务员

I recieve mail from across the world!

It's very exciting! If you've written me a letter, I promise to write
you back as soon as I can!

Also, in case you felt differently, this sign is informing you that on
the top of the mountain during thunderstorms, cell phone use is indeed
prohibited. Also, maybe you don't want to jump off the mountain.

Just a picture

Too much work to write much - really just a picture today.

This is a small food stand, although I still don't completely
understand the Chinese food classifications, I'm pretty sure this
counts as 小吃 xiao3chi1, literally "little eats". Anyway, it's very
close to where PiB students live and everybody loves it. It may or may
not give you diarrhea, but it's damn convenient, so I think most
people's philosophy is that it's worth the convenience.

Only in China would somebody stop in the middle of making a
pancake-type-thing to check their text messages. Afterwards, he seemed
very happy, maybe some good news?

中国政府，包子铺

Perhaps I'm under the weather - it's been rainy the last few days in
Beijing and I have been especially tired and my stomach hasn't been
particularly settled. Therefore, I have very little of interest to
report from my daily experiences. However, I am going to point out the
news of the riots in China (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8139587.stm). The word is that the government has blocked Facebook
and Twitter to prevent people from knowing about this but they haven't
blocked BBC? Mildly perplexing.

Pictures: the nearest Baozi Pu, a restaurant that specializes in
baozi. I think it's actually part of a chain, but chain fastfood
restaurants in China make food that is fabulously tasty and not fake
the way fastfood is in America. Probably because all of those baozi
(steamed bread dumplings with varying kinds of stuffing) are made
right there by a little baozi-making army, minutes before you eat
them. 6 baozi is about 6 kuai; approximately 1 US dollar. Therefore,
with less than 2 dollars I can be very happy and full. [If you're not
jealous, you should be.]

Also, the street leading in from the nearest entrance/exit to my
university campus to my dorm. It's often very pretty - big trees.

If I weren't so tired I would write more, but there is a lot, a lot of
studying that I should do by 7:30 am tomorrow.

太累了，生词太多了！

So sorry I haven't written anything in a while.

The weekend was rather busy as usual and the last couple days have
also been very tiring. I have some 70 some vocab words to learn in an
hour and I just want to go back to sleep.

农业 Agriculture?

pictures: Taken on the way to and from the section of the Great Wall
that we went to on Saturday. From what I can tell, the land around
Beijing is cultivated for miles and miles on end. There areas that are
untouched are practically non-existent. Along the highway often an
attempt to hide the overwhelming presence of agriculture and humanity
by replanting from a few feet of trees up to probably 100 feet of
trees next to the road. It's a good idea, but it turns out to be even
more unsettling (to me at least) to then see miles and miles of
straight lines of trees. Looking forward or backward, nothing abnormal
is noticeable, but the echelons, rows and columns are perfect if you
look at areas closer to you. I think other people were wondering why I
was so interested in watching out the window instead of sleeping.

The topics of my one-on-one session today were all over the place. It
was humbling and frustrating. By the time we got onto the subject of
农业 (nong2ye4: agriculture) and the differences between China and the
United States, I was incredibly frustrated. Although I certainly have
enough Chinese to order food in a restaurant or haggle over prices, I
most definitely don't have the vocabulary to discuss fertilizer,
farming machines, government subsidies, pollution, genetic
engineering…

Of course, the truth is that there is still much more that I need to
learn about such things in English, so I guess I shouldn't get too
upset about it.

After watching City of Life and Death so far has been the closest that
I've gotten completely giving up the language pledge and speaking in
English. I was with my friend who's in the fifth year and there was
just so much that we couldn't communicate yet wanted to.

那怎么办？当然多学习吧！
(Then what to do? Of course study more!)

I'm looking up and practicing extra vocab words so next time I can ask
what my teachers think about pollution, the increasing demands of the
city dwelling lifestyles on the surround environment and other such
things. (Although, today we also touched upon the topic of gender
inequality and I'm also pretty interested to hear what a pretty young
Chinese lady has to say about that…)

Test tomorrow. Afterwards, hopefully some interesting things,
therefore hopefully I will have more interesting things to say.