Little Trouble in Big China

China- the Revenge

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:41:00 +0000

After about a year and a half, I'm back in China. Because of my lack of final exams this term, I'm spending about 3 weeks here. I wasn't planning on blogging, but after the overly eventful past 48 hours since stepping off the plane, I feel obligated to as least keep some sort of documentation.

This will be a miniature version of summer 2007. Instead of 3 months, I have 3 weeks. Thus, everything is condensed. I started in Shanghai like before. Tomorrow, I leave for a two week history tour of China- Luyang, Xi'an, Pinyao, and Beijing. Xi'an and Beijing I went to last time. The others are smaller cities with ancient carved caves and cobblestone streets frozen in time (or so says Lonely Planet).

After coming back on the 30th, I'll probably take a short trip to Nanjing for the sake of nostalgia.

I think I will travel lighter this time around, so I will not bring my laptop. Thus, many of the entries will be posted after my journey ends. I will, however, keep documentation on paper, and of course take many pictures. I might even scan pages from my Moleskine if they are interesting enough.

Stay tuned.

Reflections of Beijing

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:36:00 +0000

*I started this entry almost a year ago while sulking in the courtyard of Far East Youth Hostel after a traumatizing trip to the train station to buy tickets. It started off as a rant against Beijing but turned into something else. I finally started penning it last October and just got around to finishing it this morning

---

Whenever people ask me where I am from in China, the first thing I tell them is Beijing. Never mind that I only resided there for ~1.5 years of my existence, none of which is still intact in my memory. Never mind that I had actually lived in the southern capital of China when I was there. Never mind that I have really spent the majority of my life in America, and never mind that it is Shanghai, not Beijing that I go to when i return. I was born in Beijing, and I saw myself as Beijingren.

So what was it about Beijing that made me so proud to be from there? It could be that Beijing is the capital of China, automatically setting it apart from the hundreds of impersonal, interchangeable industrial wastelands of China. It could be the vast and glorious history of China preserved in structures as magnificent as the Great Wall or the Forbidden City, frozen in time. It could be that my father, whom I deeply respect and greatly admire, hails from Beijing and loves the city as much as I respect and admire him. Or it could be that the Beijing accent, with its rounded, rolling edges, is much more pleasant than the accent or dialect of any other region. no matter, I was proud of being from Beijing and feared greatly that I would hate the city, coming back after almost 20 years.

Yet half a week into my stay, I did hate the city. On Tuesday morning, I woke up with a monstrous throatful of phlegm as a result of the thickest pollution cloud over any city in the world. By Wednesday afternoon, my cell phone had gotten pulled right from my purse at the Pearl Market by an anonymous pickpocket. On Thursday, I got shoved around by vulgar men who refused to wait in line to by train tickets at the train station. In exchange for a swift, unsolicited kick in the back as I left, I learned the Chinese words for "fuck", "bitch", and "cunt" from these mean, midget men in their volleys of catapulted insults.

Perhaps it was not all the fault of Beijing. My throat was more likely a result of a cold, itself a result of travel fatigue, which was finally starting to catch up with me. My cell phone could have gotten stolen anywhere (its precursor was held for ransom in a taxi cab from Dalian). Even the train station fiasco was probably not particular to Beijing. It was the first time that I had actually gone to a train station as opposed to a smaller vendor for tickets, and a "varied" crowd at a train station was somewhat to be expected. Besides, judging from their accents, those mean, midget men were probably workers from elsewhere.

But the damage was done. The string of unfortunate events was enough to completely disillusion me about Beijing. Thursday afternoon, I returned to my hostel almost in tears, clutching my hard-bought way out on Saturday night.

As I sat in the courtyard sulking at my disappointing half-week in Beijing, my luck began to turn. First, I met Henry, a South African English guy with whom I spent the afternoon at the Temple of Heaven. Later, I met Chris, an American studying Kung Fu in Beijing, with whom I strolled around Beihai Garden. I met Micha, a dutch DJ who starred as a security guard in a Chinese sit-com. And I met Olivier, a half French half English boy who played the piano beautifully (Salut Olivier. Franchement, tu me manques terriblement. Envoye-moi un email et dis-moi comment tu vas).

On Friday night, a bunch of us decided to go clubbing together at a joint in the Korean district called Propaganda. Afterwards, I went to back to Houhai with one of my new friends, and we sat by the lake conversing in 3 languages until morning, while the weeping willows stirred small ripples in the neon patterned reflections in the lake.

That night, while dancing feverishly amid the flashing lights and crimson-tinted revolutionary murals, while watching the the sun slowly seep into day behind the pollution clouds, I finally saw something in Beijing. Despite the pollution, despite the rude people, despite my string of bad luck, I found a sort of rare beauty in Beijing that I found nowhere else in China. Perhaps the contrast between the grungy industrial wasteland and my brief moments made them more vivid, but I like to think that in Beijing I felt at home.

Beijing II: Forbidden City

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 17:57:00 +0000

For starters, I realize that this post is about 4 months late. Apologies. Second, the order of this and the Beijing I post should probably have been switched since I went to the Forbidden City first.

That said, let's rewind to
August 12th, 2007
I had arrived in Beijing that morning after a 10 hour train ride during which my new friend Charles from France kindly gave me his seat, comme Commie Comrade Leifeng. I think I spent the rest of the day vegetating in my room to escape from the scorching heat outside. That night, after dinner at a cheap noodle joint in the houtong where my hostel was, I decided to take a stroll to Tiananmen Square.

My hostel (Far East Youth Hostel. Not nice people. More on that later) advertised that it's the closest abode within walking distance to the Forbidden City, so I proceeded on foot. I suppose that technically, they were correct, but it was quite a hike. Tiananmen square was breathtaking at night. All the buildings, both ancient and modern were illuminated with strings of lights. In characteristic Chinese fashion, the square was full of people of all ages taking their evening stroll. Small children and their parents flew metallic kites that caught specks of the ambiance around. Unfortunately, I could not catch good pictures of it on camera, but here is a the best picture of Tiananmen that I got. Took me several tries with my crappy camera to get it not to be blurry.

Later that night, I met up with Phil (whom I had met in Dalian), and we wandered around Houhai. Phil, a far superior nighttime photographer than I, took some pictures of me around the lake. I love wandering around China in pretty dresses, especially when they catch the colors of reflected lights in lakes.

August 13th, 2007
Inspired to the lovely nighttime scene, I decided to explore the Forbidden City during the day. Phil had left that morning, and Charles was with his sister, so once again, I was left with no traveling buddies. Pictures as follows (mostly of small, strange things, with no pictures of me, as a result of me being alone).

Facade in the daytime. Hello Mao (which could get shortened to lomao -> lmao).

The list of languages available for the overpriced audio guide to the Forbidden City. Note lower right corner.

They had little exhibitions in various rooms of the complex. This is apparently the set of geometric models that an emperor (Qianlong, I think) used in his math lessons.

I like acroterion (acroteria plural?). They're called acroterion when they occur on the pediments of Greek temples. I'm assuming these Chinese counterparts have the same name in English.

Flower relief on a wall.

I think these are supposed to be the "lover trees". The sign talked about some legend and how they're permanently embracing each other or something. I took the picture because they made an X.

An exercise in perspective.

"Where are you from?"

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:51:00 +0000

Here's something I had written up in July when I was sans easy internet access. It's not much of an entry for something that purports to be a photoblog, but I think it sets the mood for the rest of the entries that I will (soon) post.

"Hey. What's your name?"
"Xiao Xiao. And you?"
"My name is ___. Where are you from?"

In America, my next line would usually be "New Orleans". When prodded further with "where is your family from", I would always respond "China".

In China, things are different. The concept of where a Chinese person is from is threefold. First, there's the place where a person was born. Second, there's the place where a person grew up. But most importantly, is the place where a person's ancestors were from generations and generations back.

For most people, these three locations are one and the same. For some people, two out the three may differ from the other two. For example, a person's family might have relocated to another part of the country, where that person was then born and brought up. In situations like this, that person may identify with either locations.

For me, however, all three locations are different. I was born in Beijing but spend the first year of my life in Nanjing. My ancestors were from Shandong province. That's just the simplified version.

Actually, my ancestors weren't all from Shandong. Three of my grandparents originated from Shandong, but my mother's father is from a village in Zhejiang province, close to Ningbo. Apparently, this is actually quite unusual in China. For all of China's long history, the North and the South have had massive cultural differences. People either identified themselves as from the north or from the south. Very few people are part one, part other.

Where I spend my childhood isn't so straightforward either. As everyone who reads this blog knows, I moved from China to the United States in the middle of elementary school, thus spending roughly half of my youth in China and half in America.

To add to the mix, when I go back to China these days, the city where I stay is not Beijing, not Nanjing, but Shanghai, for that's where my closest relatives in China now live. Out of all the cities in China, I probably know Shanghai the best.

When people ask me where I am from in China, I usually tell them that I was born in Beijing. Sometimes, I tell them that I grew up in Nanjing. If they seem particularly nice, I tell them the whole story, sometimes omitting the detail about America. Other times (usually at retailers where the salespeople can figure out that I am not local), I avoid the trouble and simply walk away.

The end?

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:31:00 +0000

Apologies for leaving a cliffhanger (literally... see last post). Since getting back to MIT, I've been too busy to detail the last week of my stay in China. More is coming, I promise.

Beijing I: Great Wall

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:51:00 +0000

August 12th, 2007
I entered Beijing the second time almost as ignominiously as I did the first (shrunken, swollen, and sobbing). I had only managed to obtain a hard seat for my overnight train ride when I bought my tickets, but as a result of trying to avoid the long semi-queue to get on the train, I managed to avoid my train entirely. I was able to transfer to the next train that night at no cost except my hard seat. Great. 12 hours of sleeping on the floor of the smoke-filled spit-covered space between compartments.

Fortunately, I got put on the same train as my friend Charles, whom I had met the night before in the hostel bathroom. In an act of valiance dubbed as xue Leifeng by the Chinese passengers next to us, Charles gave me his seat (Salut Charles! Si tu lis cela maintenant, merci beaucoup! Je t'embrasse!). Some time in the morning, Charles got his seat back as a result of someone else vacating theirs.

August 14th, 2007
My friends Nicolas and Pierre arrived that morning. Nico had read on his friend's blog about how the friend got to see a wild part of the Great Wall sans the commercial clatter of Badaling, Simatai, or Mutianyu over in Huairou. Problem is, his friend didn't really detail how he got there, but we decided to go to Huairou and ask around there. Being the adventurous type (Aren't we all more daring in another country?), the 4 of us hopped on a bus and hoped for the best.

The second we got off the best, we were accosted by a mob of Mandarin speaking solicitors. Interestingly enough, they followed me as opposed to the French boys, probably because they (the solicitors) spoke only Chinese. In the end, we arranged for one guy (le conard) to take us to an obscure part of the wall where there would be nobody else.

The drive took over an hour up the winding mountain path. When we got there, the guy demanded more money to wait for us to go explore and to take us back afterward. The final price was 40 yuan each, not too expensive, I suppose, considering the entry fees for the more frequented parts of the wall cost about that much.

Pictures as follows:

When we decided to go with our driver, he told us to hurry into the car because the police was coming. At the wall, I think we were guilty of trespassing.

There was a random-ass ass on the path up the mountain.

View from the sans annoying tourists in the way (!)

Some precipice. Yes, I climbed the great wall in a dress and jelly sandals.

Pierre, Nicolas, et Charles

Hi, Mom, this isn't as steep as it looks.

I think I miss you

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:37:00 +0000

Patricia: " Quelle est votre plus grande ambition dans la vie ? "
Le romancier Parvulesco: " Devenir immortel…et puis mourir. "
- A Bout De Souffle

Xi'an Part II

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:09:00 +0000

Saturday and Sunday (8/11 and 8/12. Yes, I realize all my entries are about two weeks behind and lack the flavor of the moment. Many apologies), I went out exploring with my new friends. Narration in picture captions.

First stop of Saturday: Dayanta, or Big Goose Pagoda. I don't really like the translation, for it makes the structure sound big and awkward like a goose. I think yan should actually be "swallow", a much more elegant bird.

A tree with its parasitic twin on the grounds of the pagoda. It reminds me of some artistic renditions of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

In the afternoon, we went to the Great Mosque. On the way there, we passed by this display in a shop. Note the hairdo of the mannequin.

A Buddhist temple? Nope. This is the Great Mosque- the largest mosque in China.

There were a lot of tourists there, mostly foreigners with fancy cameras rabidly taking pictures of the interesting melange of traditional Chinese and Islamic cultures. I tried not to take with them too prominent.

At night, the city walls are illuminated rather beautifully.

My Oxford friends left Saturday night right after I met another boy from Paris. On Sunday, I went exploring with the three French boys. In the morning, we went to the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. Observer the picture closely and take a wild guess which one this is.

There were a bunch of drums on display all around the drum dower with names of what appeared to be seasons inscribed on them. There was also a large drum that you can pay 30 yuan to hit.

The plaza in the center of the city had a bunch guys selling kites and loads of beggar children (not shown). Overall, it was an appealing sight.

In the afternoon, we went biking on the city walls. The ground is much, much bumpier than it looks.

fin.

Xi'an Part I

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:05:00 +0000

On the afternoon of Wednesday, August 8, I boarded a plane from Chengdu to Xi'an, a little hesitant that I did not pick the flight leaving the following evening. I had met my first batch of friends and was not yet used to the rapid succession of introductions and goodbyes of traveling alone in China.

My first two days in Xi'an were disappointing. I thought I had made a reservation at a Shuyuan hostel, a beautiful lodge in an old courtyard right next to the city walls, through my hostel in Chengdu, but it turned out that the staff failed to inform me that the hostel was full and they had stuck me in the other hostel owned by the same place, a rather shitty accommodation on the 3rd and 4th floors of some local university dorm. This place had none of the atmosphere of Shuyuan and few of the interesting internationals like the ones I met in Chengdu. Fortunately, Shuyuan had room for Thursday night, and I moved over the next day.

However, Thursday didn't fare much better for me. I had planned on biking around the city walls that morning but had to modify my plans as a result of the monstrous thunderstorm I had woken up to. I moved to Shuyuan in the morning, dragging my suitcase through the rain until I found a cab. In the afternoon, I visited the local history museum.

I suppose the museum was interesting although it had very few bilingual signs. It had artifacts dating all the way back to the bronze age. I was a bit tired and fell asleep in the lobby for about an hour. Here are some objects that I found amusing.

Tangsancai is a technique of ceramic glazing developed during the Tang dynasty involving 3 colors: ochre, green/blue, and the background beige. Here is a horse in Tansancai.

This is some sky god or another. There was a bunch of them at the museum. They're all standing on a midget, which is supposed to symbolize evil or something.

Thing with a human head in a cat-like lounging pose- downright creepy. It's also ceramic and supposed to be a (painful) pillow.

Thursday night, I hung out in the courtyard of Shuyuan being generally antisocial, observing the other travelers engaged in their small circles of conversation, too shy to join a group myself. I wasn't too happy with my situation.

Friday morning, I woke up early to go see the Terra Cotta Warriors (TCW). After a couple of hostel-organized trips in Chengdu, I had decided that I didn't like the feeling of being herded around like a tourist and opted to go myself via bus.

While waiting for the bus, I ran into four foreigners who turned out to also be going to TCW. Two of them were from Oxford University and two were from France. One of the French guys actually studied in Dalian for a year, and it turned out that we knew some people in common (like Ginger, the chic, trilingual chain-smoker girl).

Everyone knows what the TCW looks like. Here are a some pictures anyway just for kicks:

The obligatory "I was there and did not just google the images" picture. The guy is Dave, engineering student from Oxford.

Pit One (yes, it's actually called that officially) in all its glory.
The way the people are arranged is supposed to reflect the battle formation of the time. The people in the front are unarmored because they are just there are human shields for people behind them. There are also people facing the sides to prevent infiltration of the ranks.

They had Terra Cotta horses too! The original TCW were all painted lifelike colors. You can kind of see some color variation (long faded, of course) in the pieced together guys standing in the back.

There were all these places there where you can take pictures posing with or as TCW. They make you wear these foamy, terra cotta colored things. Some people (as in this picture) are actually cheesy enough to fall for these tourist traps.

And so began my real fun in Xi'an. More on that in the next entry. Meanwhile, here is a picture of my new friends walking down a picturesque street in the art district of Xi'an.

Chengdu

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:14:00 +0000

Monday, August 6th, 8 am: I had successfully arrived at my hostel in Chengdu and spontaneously decided to join a group of 5 westerners (2 English, 2 American, 1 Australian) on a day trip to Leshan, home to the world's largest Buddha. We arrived a couple hours later to a misty morning in the mountains. Due to the tiny droplets of moisture saturating the air, the surroundings had a hazy glow like in those Chinese kungfu movies where people fly through bamboo forests. Needless to say, it was absolutely breathtaking.

According to Wikipedia, construction for the Buddha was started in 731 by a monk who hoped to calm the adjacent waters with the Buddha's presence. The monk lived in a cave next to the construction site and gouged his own eyes out to show his piety. The Buddha was completed 90 years later and actually indeed made the waters safer as a result of the massive amounts rock removed from the mountains and deposited in the river. Photos as follows:

We waited almost 2 hours to get to the foot of the Buddha. The queue zigzags down the cliff next to the Buddha.

A feat of auto-photography. This took me several tries to get the angle just right.

At the foot of the Buddha. I'm not even as big as one of its toes.

The mountain and the waters next to the Buddha.

Tuesday, August 7th, 9:30 am: I arrived at the Panda Research Center after about an hour on two buses with the Australian from the day before. We decided to forgo the hostel organized tour to save money (him) and to experience the life of the common Chinese (me). We went in the morning because that is apparently the only time in the day when the pandas are awake and frolicking. We wandered around a bit, trying to squeeze ourselves between the throngs of squealing foreign tourists with their fancy cameras, and took a bunch of pictures ourselves. Here's a selection:

This is an adult panda. It was smaller than I imagined a panda should be. I got within a couple of feet of it while it was munching bamboo in its enclosure.

This is supposed to be a panda cub. A worker had put it on a horse thing. Oh look how cute!

A bunch of cubs reclining on a tree house thing. Pandas are incredibly lazy creatures, at least in captivity. All they do is eat and lie around all day. A worker coaxed one down, and it just climbed over the other ones in its way.

For 1000 yuan, you could hold a giant panda cub for photos. For 400 yuan, you could take pictures right next to a giant panda. I opted to hold a red panda (the kind nobody loves) for only 50 yuan. It was very soft and fluffy and came to nuzzle my feet before I held it.

Tuesday, August 6th, 8pm: For the sole sake of convenience, I payed 80 yuan to tag along with an organized trip to see Sichuan opera, an art famous for bombastic displays of fire breathing, acrobatics, and face-changing. The show turned out to be a watered down variety show catered mostly for foreigners, with excerpts of opera, erhu, puppets, and other pyrotechnics. All the performers were extremely talented, but the way the show was presented had a decidedly contrived feel meant to impress tourists. I suppose that this is the best way for practitioners of old Chinese arts to make money these days- to cater to rich, foreign tourists...

A scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms rendered in Sichuan opera form.

Dance of the puppets. They twirled their flowing sleeves to flowering sounding music. Very pretty. At the end of the show, the same puppets did face changing along with the actors.

Tuesday, August 6th, 10pm: I had met a couple of English boys at my hostel and decided to go out with them that night after the show to a Dave's Oasis bar. The cab driver didn't exactly know where it was, but by a stroke of luck, I ran into my new friends on the street as they were coming out from dinner. What follows is an adventure that kept us up the entire night involving a pool, cards, a cafe resembling senior house, and conversation in the garden of the hostel.

Patio of the garden, where I pulled an all-nighter with the two English boys, a Canadian, and later a couple of French.

Finally, a brief list of people I hung out with in Chengdu by country:
2 American
1 Australian
1 Canadian
4 English
2 French

30 hours

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:40:00 +0000

When planning my travels around China, I had completely underestimated the sheer size of the country. I had planned to go from city to city by train as it is cheaper than plane tickets. The first leg of my journey, from Hangzhou to Chengdu, I had expected to take no longer than a night and maybe part of a day. When I went to buy my ticket, the sales lady informed me that the trip was in fact 30 hours- two nights and an entire day on the train.

Feeling somewhat intrepid, I bought the tickets even though all my new Chinese friends all told me that I should have just flew. How bad could it be? I got the soft sleeper, the first class of trains in China, so it shouldn't be too uncomfortable. Besides, I would get to see some lovely scenery across China. Thus, armed with two books and a large supply of snacks, I headed to the train station on Saturday night.

The 30 hours actually weren't bad at all. I slept well, and time seemed to pass quickly, much more so than it does on long plane rides. I shared a cabin with a university student, a man and his son, and an old woman, none of whom seemed particularly interested in a conversation with me, so I kept to myself the entire time and read my book. My only complain about the train was the provided "entertainment". A television that incessantly broadcasted the most irritating Chinese television shows and the most insipid music videos in a volume that could not even be blocked by my noise reducing headphones. With the exception of sleep time and nap time, it was always on and could not be turned off. Terrible.

But the scenery was absolutely magnificent. Thus, I spend much of my waking, non-reading hours outside my cabin marveling the view. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered by noon on the second day that I could take non-blurry pictures even though the train was moving. A selection of my photos as follows:

A peasant village with mountains in the background.

A house from another village. If you click to enlarge it, you can see a man in the front yard and some crops lying out to dry in the sun. Also note the duilian, lines of verse on red paper traditionally pasted around doors for luck.

Because of the mountainous terrain in much of China's south, crops are planted on terraces, as shown here.

Sometimes, the train would duck into a tunnel and emerge on the other side to a valley straddling a sparkling river.

In the evening, the mountains were a perpetual, hazy arabesque on the horizon.

And in the twilight, the mountains were reduced to enormous dark shapes in the expanses.

The next morning, I woke up to an attendant checking tickets a little after 5 am. The train arrived soon after, and I stumbled my way to my hostel at 6 am with the streets dark and the sky rainy. By 7, I came down to the lobby after showering to grab a small breakfast, and by 8, I was on a van to see the largest Buddha in the world with five foreigners that I had just met. More on that soon.

ZJU

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:31:00 +0000

I spent the past three weeks teaching at Zhejiang University. It's about time that I gave an introduction of the place along with pictures.

Zhejiang University (ZJU) was originally a school that specialized in engineering. In the early 90's, it combined with several other Hangzhou universities to become the new, monolithic Zhejiang University, with some 20,000 (I think...) undergrads and several campuses. I visited three of these. Pictures as follows:

Yuquan Campus
Yuquan was the original Zhejiang university, home to all the engineering departments and a ~10:1 boy to girl ratio. This is where I lived and taught.

Mao, with his arms raised in a salute to the people. The students say that he's hailing a cab.

The founder of the campus rendered in bronze in front of the library. He doesn't looks so big until you try to stand next to him.

The main teaching/research area of Yuquan dates back from at least the first half of this century. Here is an example of the old architecture, with the elegant uptilted eaves.

The student center of Yuquan has a pond in the middle. Around this are piano practice rooms and a cafe.

The dorm where I lived.

Huajiachi Campus
Named for a pond in the middle of the campus, Huajiachi is home to the agricultural research departments of Zhejiang University. Unfortunately, this campus has been sold and will be relocated in the next couple of years.

The eponymous pond.

Guide to the campus, including such sites as "Democracy Hall", "Peace Hall", and "Institute of Nuclear".

As it is an agricultural research campus, it had a bunch of experimental fields with experimental crops. They also had experimental pigs (not shown), euphemistically dubbed "safety pigs".

A red dragonfly perched on a twig in the middle of a small pond. I thought it was rather pretty.

I was rather amazed by an entire field of these, but all the people I showed this to never seemed to get what's so great about it. Do you?

The campus hires farmers to do the planting for the students. I rather like the juxtaposition between the fields and the buildings in the background.

My friend Zhou Wei, who took me around this and Zijingang campus. She is a communications major focusing on advertisement and made the two ads behind her.

Zijingang Campus
This is the newest and most modern campus of Zhejiang University, home to all freshmen and sophomores plus some upperclassmen of several majors. In the future, all majors except those housed at Yuquan will be relocated to this campus. I visited Zijingang the morning before I left with Zhou Wei. We rode bikes around because it is so large.

Zijingang had very modern architecture.

The inside of the architecture department building. I like the spherical things hanging from the ceiling.

Some guy with more spheres. Spheres seem to be a recurring theme of the decor of this campus.

A mushroom! These innocuous looking things are all over Zijingang, apparently used as little speakers to broadcast student news (and other propaganda).

And that is all. In other news, I left ZJU a couple days ago. After spending 30 hours on the train, I arrived in Chengdu this morning and immediately went on a day trip to see the world's largest buddha. Pictures soon.

Le Tombeau de Xiao Xiao

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 04:29:00 +0000

The last time I had gone to West Lake, I was in a rather artistic phase. I would have loved to have sat down under the shade of a weeping willow and sketched for an entire afternoon. Unfortunately, I was with a group and had to keep an average speed of two footsteps per second. Beside, the day was too hot and I had not brought my sketchbook. In fact, I didn't even bring my camera.

A week later, or rather a couple of days ago, I had a free afternoon and no desire to spend it asleep in my dorm room. Deciding to brave the afternoon sun, I hopped on a taxi to the lake, armed with umbrella, camera, and sketchbook.

When I arrived at the lake, I was greeted with a mild breeze and a breath of fresh air. After a few minutes during which I traipsed around marveling at local leaves and my luck, I looked up in the sky to see angry storm clouds looming in the near future. No matter, plenty of pavilions about.

There was a floating pavilion just off the crop of this picture, which is completely unattached from land and required a large leap to get on to. It came in handy later.

Parts of the lake were completely covered with lily pads.

The flora around the lake could have kept my pencil busy for the entire afternoon. However (mostly because of the ticking forecast), I took the shortcut and photographs of foliage instead. I followed trefoiled, serrated, veined, (a)symmetrical, recursive leaves in more shades of green than I could count into the following cursive clearing:

There, a cat took one glinting glance at me and dove into the trefoiled, serrated recursion. A small French girl (in yet another shade of green) followed her babbling, bell-like voice (une belle voix) and her Chinese caretaker into the concrete clearing. I could not resist calling out "Regarde, il y a un petit chat la-bas". Although she showed no surprise in hearing French from a complete stranger, she did stop in her tracks en cherchant le petit chat stopped in its tracks beneath the foliage.

I meandered for a while longer around the lake, snapping some more shots, before deciding that it's about time I head back. Attempting to figure out my location, I looked to a guidepost.

Statues for the "wine culture" of China or something.

I liked the juxtaposition of the old world boats in the foreground and the modern high rises in the background.

Some cosplayers! The finger in the corner is from my hurry to take their picture rapidly without them noticing.

Wait a minute... What was that at the very bottom? Rain or no rain. I had to find this place. I passed a statue (with which I had to take an irreverent photo), a pavilion (named for Qiu Jin's last words. Remember her from Chinese class, Lily and Scot?), and the tomb of a man who killed a tiger with his bare hands (he did other things, but that's all I could remember from that TV show) before I saw it in the midst of a large crowd of people at the end of the long, winding path. Apparently, some middle school children had a field trip that day and had used it as a landmark for rendezvous.

Irreverent statue photo #20

Wind Rain Pavilion and wind rain in the distance.

Wusong's tomb.

Xiao Xiao's tomb is a rather popular attraction.

Self-explanatory.

Satisfied with seeing the sepulchre of my delightful, dead doppelganger, I headed back to the place I entered the park and unsuccessfully attempted to hail a taxi back before the rage d'orage. Thus, I retreated back into the park and settled in the first, floating pavilion minutes before the downpour, where I traced patterns of the elegant woodwork tracery in my sketchbook while listening to rain drop like beads into floating lily pads.

Belated Post II: Pictures I wish I had taken (Dalian)

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 01:00:00 +0000

1. Every night after 9 PM (and no before, due to some law aimed at city beautification), the streets corner right outside the west gate of DUT comes alive with a row of food stands and street vendors selling cheap goods ranging from squid on a stick to contraband DVD's. Chunks of mostly students gather around the stands waiting for their chunks of edibles to be cooked in front of them. Smoke fills the air from various barbecue stands. Occasionally, a loud pop from the popcorn/poprice guy makes everyone jump a little.

The first picture that I missed was this night scene. I've walked past it many times in 5 weeks, but I never remembered to snap a picture.

My favorite late night street snacks are sticks of not exactly sanitary, probably not healthy, but definitely delicious mutton roasted by a family of Uguyrs, who occasionally don't heed the 9 PM rule. I get a few sticks a few nights a week. One day, I walked by the stand and saw one of the Uguyrs climb to a small platform and kneel with his back to the gate and his face in the setting sun. A few hours later, I walked by the same place, and again he was in the same position, with a serene look on his face looking out where the sun had already retreated. It was then that I realized he was praying.

There was something moving about the guy's devotion. I wanted to capture it on film, but I didn't have my camera either time. Besides, I don't think I have the skill to capture sentiment on camera.

2. The boy at the 24 hour porridge shop has a rather lovely face, charming with a small sparkle of mischief and a slight shade of buhaoyisi. I had gone there every couple of days at least for lunch or dinner, and he had always been there, no matter the hour.

From his looks, he can't be more than 16, but the tiger pendant on his neck suggests that he's probably 21. I wonder what he's doing with his life, why he's working at such a place and not at the respectable university next door. I never talked to him except to order dishes or request napkins.

I don't have a crush on him. I just like his face. I wanted badly to take a picture, but it's impossible to be inconspicuous as I aim the camera.

3. Every university of reasonable quality in China has something in common- a large statue of Mao in a conspicuous square. At Fudan in Shanghai, Mao overlooks a large courtyard. At Zhejian University, Mao looks rather orange and raises his right hand in perpetual salute (or to hail a cab, as the students say). At Dalian, Mao has his hands behind his back and wears a coat that billows to usually non-existent wind.

For a few days around graduation, enormous balloons colored like beach balls bobbed around Mao's head, trailing long signs with (what I guessed to be) phrases of felicitation.It looked rather surreal, for the balloons were just the right proportion for Mao. I kept forgetting to bring my camera every time I walked by it...

At least at the time of this entry's conception. I had since remembered my camera and taken a picture. Here it is:

4. During our last weeks at Dalian, we worked mostly at night due to communication with MIT, and thus I had most of my days free. I liked to hop on a bus into town at the east gate whenever I itched for a change of environment. About a week before we left, I planned to meet Geng at Victory Square, the gigantic underground mall, for an afternoon of retail therapy. Not wanting to carry extra weight in my bag, I forwent the camera.

Unusual things seem to pop up at a much higher frequency whenever I am sans camera. On the bus, I saw a guy writing long rows of poetry with chalk. Never mind that the bus was moving when I saw him. I would have jumped out at the next stop just to get the picture.

Right next to the bus stop at Victory Square were two young boys. One was balanced upside down by his mouth on some strange, spinning contraption. The other did flips. Poor kids. I wanted a picture, but I gave them 5 yuan instead (enough to buy both of them a meal).

After shopping, Geng and I walked around the surrounding area a bit. In a crowd of street vendors, we saw a lady peddling what looked to be pirated Hollywood movies. When we walked closer to see what she had, we realized that she actually sold pornography, child pornography. Disgusted, we quickly walked away from her smiling, enthusiastic offers, in the direction of a small boy also with a pile of DVD's in front of him. Turned out the he too was selling child porn. A child selling child porn...

5. You. Yes, you. You know who you are. Actually, I do have a couple of pictures of you, but in both, half of your face (the same half, unfortunately) is obscured. If you happen to be reading this (I really don't know why you would be. I don't think I ever told you about it), do kindly email me a (flattering) photograph of yourself so that I can toss it into a shoe box, stop thinking about it, and forget you properly.

Belated Post I: Hiking

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:24:00 +0000

Located 40 minutes outside of Dalian by train, Kafaqu literally means "Development Zone" and is home to the software park (which my dad's college classmate is apparently in charge of), lots of mountains, and the meanest cab drivers I've seen so far in China. It is also the temporary home of our new friends Phil and Matt from Penn State. Couple of weeks ago, they took us hiking in the mountains. Voici les photos:

These lion posts were all along the mountain path. The ones pawing a ball are supposed to be male; the ones pawing a cub are female. I don't know what the red ribbons are for.

The Great Wall! Not really, just some barricade from I don't know when.

Xiao Xiao on crenellations admiring the view

Dragon relief on the steps up the temple (?) at the top of the mountain.

The temple had intricate patterns on the ceiling.

And demon children in bas relief around the outer walls.

We saw two more temples on our way down- one Buddhist, one Daoist- both of which had real monks around. Guess which temple this sculpture is from.

Ancient temple nestled in the greenery of the mountains currently being renovated.

unday of the same week, Phil invited us hiking again, this time to explore a Japanese bunker from World War II. Unfortunately, I had a stomach ache that morning and opted out...

Hello Hangzhou

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:44:00 +0000

Just to say that I'm still alive and have now relocated to Hangzhou for the following three weeks. Currently, there is no internet in my room, but I think I will be able to upload photos from the (sketchy) internet cafe next to campus.

That's all for now. More coming soon, hopefully.

BBQ wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 05:07:00 +0000

I encounter too many amusing episodes in China to be able to keep up with everything in this blog. Currently, I have a mental queue of 4 or 5 future entries, one of which I am waiting for photos to be sent to me. The subject of this particular entry dates back about a week.

As a result of my piano concert last Saturday, I met the webmaster of dalianxpat.com, an MIT alum who invited us to go to a gathering of foreigners in China the following morning. Thus, on Sunday, Ben and I trekked over to Starbucks (Xingbake) in Olympic Square.

The Starbucks in China have different sizes than their counterparts in America. Instead of the Tall, Grande, and Venti, Chinese Starbucks offer Short and omit Venti, which makes much more
sense to me than the American way. When I mentioned this to the barista, she informed me that the Short is there because China is not used to such large portions. However, soon China will acquire the Venti and will offer four sizes.

At the gathering, we met a variety of pretty cool people, including two college students from Penn State here for an internship. A bunch of us went out to lunch to a restaurant called Noah's Ark, where we shared pizza, and I ordered a BBQ wikipedia. WTF is a BBQ wikipedia? Pictures as follows:

On the menu in all its BBQ'd glory. If you can read Chinese, you'll know what the BBQ wikipedia actually is.

BBQ wikipedia (a.k.a BBQ squid rings) and me in my mock Asian photo pose.

My new friend Phil from Penn State and his new friend the wikipedia mustache.

After lunch, a bunch of us went to a mall, where we strolled through arcades. Our first stop was a small children's arcade. Afterwards, we went to another arcade in the same mall full of high tech simulation-based games most of which involved shooting and killing innocents.

There was a photography shop next to the arcade. One of the advertisements outside involved a small kid dressed up as a member of the red army. Apologies for the crappiness of the picture. I snuck a shot after being told no pictures allowed.

The small children's arcade had these fish tanks full of goldfish where kids can come and fish. The beginner level involved children with nets scooping the fish out.

They also had miniature pottery wheels, or rather glorified mudpits, where small children can get their hands dirty without being yelled at by parents.

A sad plight of the Chinese single child is that it suffers from a paucity of friends. Fortunately, a wide-eyed Donald Duck is always ready to play with children.

At the simulation game arcade, we had fun shooting things.

Minor Celebrity Status

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:41:00 +0000

#1 was a tall, quiet young man with glasses and somewhat greasy hair. A 4th year student of Mathematics, he will be starting his Ph.D in America next fall at NYU.

#2 was a smiling girl with glasses. A 4th year in EE, she's admittedly a bit awkward but very cute.

To be completely frank, #3 annoys me. A scrawny sophomore with a swift stride and poor posture, #3 is a math major and a suckup to #1.

#4 was me.

About two weeks ago, I met with some of the music faculty here at DUT. After hearing me give a passably good performance of Ravel's Une barque sur l'ocean (1 hour of frantic practice the night before, 1/2 hour of practice that morning), they decided to hold a concert for me, giving me exactly 10 days to prepare my repertoire of 2 Ravel + 1 Chopin, the latter of which I have not touched in 2 years. I was apparently the "star" of the show playing more pieces and longer pieces than #1, #2, and #3.

I was asked to submit a few photographs of myself for the posters. Expecting a perfunctory 8.5 x 11 sheet of monochromatic advertisement, I mindlessly sent off three former facebook profile pictures of not particularly high resolution. This is what they actually made:

It was probably 4 feet tall at least.

A closeup of a smaller version plastered around campus.

According to these posters, the concert was a joint MIT/DUT effort held in honor of the 10 year anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. Xiao Xiao, the star of the show, is a student at MIT, is female (they felt the need to specify that as a result of my highly gender-ambiguous picture), was born in Nanjing, and has studied piano for 15 years. I was actually born in Beijing and have played for 16.

A few hours before the concert, I headed over to the recital hall to try out the piano. A bunch of students were there, peeling back sticky paper to reveal the sign to be displayed on the back wall of the stage.

I helped peel for a little bit because I was not allowed to warm up until 2 hours before the concert. It was fun.

#1 opened the concert with Chopin's "Ocean" etude and the b minor Scherzo. For all the hype I've heard from #3 about him, his performance was mostly disappointing. #1 actually had some potential for musicality. I could hear semblances of subtlety it in his phrasing. Unfortunately, he did not possess the proper technique to handle the Scherzo. His "Ocean" waves rolled far too slowly with far too many flotsams of wrong notes.

Like me, #2 started the piano when she was just 4 years old. Despite having quit piano for two years, #2 still had a superb musical sense. Her first piece, a traditional Chinese composition transcribed for piano, had a lovely, light touch, perfect for the atmosphere. Her second piece, however, showed the wear of her long hiatus on her technique. A shame, really. She would have played it beautifully in her peak.

During the two hours of practice before the concert, #3 was constantly urging #1 to practice more so that he can give a magnificent opening. Whenever #1 practiced, #3 would make "helpful" commentary. #3's own playing was cheap pyrotechnics in the worst sense. His accuracy was decent, finger technique tolerable, but his musicality terrible enough to make me hate Chopin for the duration of his performance.

My own playing was mostly unsatisfactory. I can make plenty of excuses to compensate including my poorly selected dress, which limited arm movement, the strange action of the piano, the flashing lights, the distracting audience, and my lack of warmup due to #3's inability to grasp that the recital was mostly for me (not #1). Still, the audience seemed to have liked it enough (or pretended to out of politeness). Some people gave me a nice bouquet of flowers and had me take pictures with them.

During the concert. Note the perfectly peeled letters behind me.

The performers, crew, and the professor who gave introductions.

My flowers are now arranged in 4 ex-water bottles on my windowsill. I also gave some to Ben, who enjoys pretty flowers.

Finally, here are some former recordings of the pieces I played:
Scherzo No.3 by Chopin
Alborada del gracioso and
Une barque sur l'ocean by Ravel

Let's Get Some Shoes!

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:18:00 +0000

After just two daily doses of the Sartorialist, I could no longer resist my overwhelming urge to acquire more artfully arranged pieces of fabric and leather, so I hopped on a cab (likely to be older than I am) and headed for the central shopping district of the purported fashion capital of China. My mission (not only for today but for the rest of China)- the following items:

- Dark brown leather sandals with enough heel to wear with long pants and enough spark to wear with a skirt.
- Summery dresses in orange or seafoam green, both of which go surprisingly well with my skin tone, as I only recently discovered.
- Shirt-dress with fine detail in a not too bland color.
- Interesting tops. I own far too many skirts.
- Red shoes, pointy toed, moderately high hells, preferably with some interesting but !(shiny || chunky) detail.

I've never understood how clothing retailers manage to make a profit during their non-weekend, daytime hours. I see how retailers must stay open during the day, but where do they get their customers when everyone is at work? In America, there exists a sizable supply of idle housewives as potential customers. In China, where the concept of a housewife is even more foreign than the concept of a proper queue when waiting for services, who goes shopping during the day?

Tourists, perhaps? Students, when they're on vacation? It's not even summer vacation here, and there were plenty of student-looking people in the underground shopping center that I first visited. Unsatisfied with most of the offerings there, I headed off to le plus chic et le plus cher department store that I could find in the same plaza.

The place was filled with powdered, painted, and/or plastic women elevated up to 10 cm above the ground fluttering about various vendors. Every time I see a female who exceeds me vertically, I instinctively look down at her shoes and derive, more often than not, a small, smug sense of satisfaction at seeing the source of her simulated supermodel stature. After an afternoon of navigation through such crowds and far too many overzealous salespeople than I cared to count, I settled in the Starbucks of the mall to rest my feet and to jot down snippets of this entry that occurred to me throughout the day.

At Starbucks, I strategically situated myself on a comfortable sofa next to a pair of English-speakers, who seemed to be discussing software. After a few minutes, during which time I saw a familiar looking girl in a white dress and navy hat settle into a seat not too far from me, I went up to one of them and started conversation. It turned out that this duo is the father and twin of a Nigel the Canadian that I had met at English Corner (weekly event at DUT where masses gather to speak English) last Saturday. A short while later, Nigel came back with his mom, and I chatted with the twins over my red bean frappuccino about MIT, Queens College in Canada, and Berkeley.

About an hour into our conversation, I had to use the restroom. Upon getting up and turning around, I realized that the familiar looking girl in the white dress and navy hat was in fact who I thought she looked like when she arrived. I also realized that the familiar looking girl in the white dress and navy hat (Lili, I think her name is) was, in fact, on a date with my teammate Ben. Shit. Ben had mentioned something about meeting her at Starbucks. With so many Starbucks (even in China), what are the chances of us running into each other at the same one? Oops.

After returning from my excursion, I saw that Ben and his lady friend had left. Soon after, I parted ways with my new friends and returned home with my spoils for the day:

- Dark brown leather sandals with enough heel to wear with long pants and enough spark to wear with a skirt.
- Black flat sandals that happened to match my brass rat when I tried them on.
- Turquoise shirt with interesting drape and faux buttons at the front to not require a necklace.
- Navy and gray shirt with horizontal, yes, horizontal stripes.
- Gray shorts with ample pockets that matches above shirt. My first and only pair of shorts in years.

I would have posted pictures had my legs not been horribly mutilated by a gross of gross mosquito bites accumulated over nights of the past fortnight of which at least a dozen are still present and festering. Yes, I realize this is supposedly a photoblog. Go look at some past entries. I've probably bored you enough with this dose of fashion and frivolousness.

Kingdom by the Sea

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:33:00 +0000

A (Fake) Photographic* Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in the fair kingdom of Chinaland, there was a beautiful castle by the sea nestled in the side of a lovely green mountain.

(The castle is actually a seashell museum)

In the beautiful castle nestled in the side of the lovely, green mountain lived the royal family, which had three children. Michael, the oldest, is a master of the elusive art of electronics.

(kind of true... he just got his Masters in EE.
Note the bungee jumping platform in background)

Ben, the second oldest, is generally suspected by the public to be an illegitimate child of the queen as he looks nothing like the other royal children.

However, Ben seems, or perhaps pretends to be, oblivious to his physical differences and is generally a happy, untroubled guy. Because of the heavy censorship in Chinaland, any talks of this controversy in strictly forbidden and is punishable by lifelong imprisonment in the ferris wheel of death.

(actually just an innocent ferris wheel in the amusement park next to the beach)

The youngest child is Princess XX. The king and queen of Chinaland had hoped for a third boy as boys are much more valued in Chinaland than girls. Upon giving birth to a girl, the king and queen were so disgusted and disappointed that they didn't bother giving the unfortunate child a name and angrily slashed not one but two violent X's on the birth certificate form. Despite her unsatisfactory beginning, XX grew up to be reasonably well-adjusted and gets along swimmingly with her two siblings.

Michael, Ben, and XX like to frolic on the beach in their spare time. Whenever they go out, Ben is invariably surrounded by flocks of curious children, no doubt because of his curious appearance. Like in the story of the emperor's new clothes, only the children dare to approach Ben and ask him questions. Fortunately, Ben is a good sport about it.

(there's me sleeping in the background. hehe)

XX, on the other hand, often gets accosted by creepy locals whenever she steps outside. One time at a dance hall, she encountered a man who tried to bite the buttons off her shirt. Whenever she goes to the beach, she tends to attract questionable photographers who often try to hide under their umbrellas.

(Yeah, this guy actually took pictures of me. I threw a pebble at him when he was turned around, and he promptly ran away with his tail between his legs)

This is what one of those furtive photos probably looked like:

(I was reading Lolita)

While at the beach one unfortunate afternoon, they were all attacked by Vinkigs coming from the ocean in colorful boats.

(A "Vinkig" boat ride. I think they meant "Viking")

After a short and not particularly valiant fight, everyone died...

Or did they? Just when the evil Vinkigs were about to chop the heads off our darling royal children, a flying mechanism came and hoisted our heroes away from harm. Oh, the wonders of the Chinaland police. They see all and know all and was able to see that the royal children were in danger.

The flying mechanism took everyone back to the castle, where they lived happily ever after.

FIN

*All photos courtesy of Michael Yeung

Sightseeing, or Rather, Fun with Molesting Statues)

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:32:00 +0000

This past Sunday, the Yuanfeng, one of our host professors, took our team sightseeing in Dalian. They tried to show us as many places as they could. As a result, I didn't get to spend as long in some of the places as I would have liked. Some places, we just drove by with only a few words of narration from Yuanfeng. We're definitely going to go back to some of the locations and just hang out for an afternoon one of these weekends.

In any case, we took some pretty pictures. The advantage to going on outings with multiple people is that I get to be in the center of pictures, not just the corner from autopicturetaking:

Xinhai Square, apparently the largest square in all of Asia. It is much more impressive in person and actually quite picturesque. The thing in the sky is a cross between a bike and a parachute. It flies around the sky, much like ET.

A slopey thing. It's difficult to climb to the high edge because you start sliding down. I did not see any rollerbladers/skateboarders exploiting this excellent surface. Maybe it's because there's a bronze-ish thing in the center with some 1000 footprints cast in it, which serves as a nice barrier.

Xinhai Square has a beach next to it. Here are some nice people frolicking at the beach on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. The giant plastic balls are tethered to land and contain small children, who walk on water in them like some unholy amalgamation of Jesus and a hamster.

Dalian loves statues. There are random ones (lots of giraffes and octopi) everywhere. Among them, I have found my new lover, a lovely musician who is just the right height for me. I've always wanted kids with perfect pitch!

After Xinahai Square, we headed to this spot on a mountain with a couple of enormous, grotesquely stylized trees, which turned out not to be real but are actually made from wire framing and painted plaster (best guess).

We then stopped by a pebble beach, where we met a giant turtle and skipped pebbles into the incoming waves.

Due to my dress and shoes, I did not attempt to climb on its head and merely rested (precariously) on its shell.

We walked along the beach and encountered this card playing trio, I mean quartet. 9 out or 10 Chinese people cannot tell which one is the real Ben Charrow in this picture. My best guess is the blond on the left.

Further along the beach is a highly abstract depiction of waves, water droplets, and seagulls. Here's me doing the Asian tourist pose because, after all, I am Asian, and I'm pretty much a tourist.

Semi-unsuccessful attempt at being as cool as Escher.

My secret: I like little boys.

A Laundry List of Unfortunate Events

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:01:00 +0000

1. Getting hit on by sketchy bastards: This weekend, we went bar-hopping again. While Ben met some very interesting people (absurdly liberated, chain-smoking, trilingual Chinese girl and her friend who speaks English with a Chinese-French accent), I got hit on by sketchy bastards.

At JD, a dance club we went to at the end of Saturday night, a boy started dancing with me and then proceeded to try to bite the large (fake) buttons off my (fake) Chloe shirt. I instantly ran away only to be accosted by another guy, Number 11.

11 is from Tibet. I don't remember his real name, but half of his initials consisted of the letters S and L. At his high school in Tibet, all the students were referred to by their numbers because the teacher had trouble pronouncing their names. 11 seemed nice (and interesting, though only because he was Tibetan) until he asked to kiss me. When I refused, he started biting my ear, at which point I made up some lame excuse, grabbed Ben (who had, by this point, made even more interesting friends), and went home.

2. Cell phone: Determined to have a better time Saturday night, I ventured out again, this time with Ben and Michael (third team member who had just arrived). Admittedly, I did have a better time at the first bar we went to, Makewei jiuba. Ginger, the absurdly liberated, trilingual, chain-smoker whose company I very much enjoy, had brought along a couple of more of her friends, and I spoke with them for a while before our whole group headed for JD again to dance.

I didn't want to carry a purse on Saturday, and Ben offered to carry a few of my belongings, including my cell phone. When he was paying for the cab to JD, my cell phone fell out of his pocket, and he didn't realize it was gone until the cab had driven away. Ginger called my phone with hers and the cab driver not only demanded money (the one day I didn't bring enough money with me...) but also claimed that he could not bring it back until 5 am. Now, the problem is, the phone actually belong to my grandparents. I had borrowed it for the summer and need to give it back when I go back home. After calming down a bit, I decided just to buy a new phone, not wanting the asshole to profit and not wanting to wait around outside a bar until 5 am...

3. Questionable Food: Sunday morning, I woke up at 1 pm dying of hunger. Because the dining hall was closed by the time I got there, I went across the street to a small eatery where Ben and I had eaten a couple of times before. I first ordered a noodle dish that was unbearably spicy. Unable to finish it (or rather unable to even start it), I decided to order a bowl of fried rice just to get something substantial in my stomach.

My fried rice came, and I immediately found a piece of hair in it. Not wanting to be an asshole (and too hungry to care), I continued eating from the other end of the plate and found another piece of hair within seconds. I had run out of money to buy anything else, so I still kept eating, trying to pick off the rice far away from the two offending spots. After a little while, I discovered a small piece of plastic in my rice, at which point I ran way disgusted and still hungry...

4. I will not elaborate: One of the worst feelings ever is having your hopes raised up for something only to be disappointed.

5. Piano Practice: On my first day here, I figured out where the piano practice rooms were and planned to practice when I got a chance. Last night, I wasn't feeling particularly great and decided to take a walk to the practice rooms to play a bit of piano to divert myself. Too bad the practice rooms were "temporarily closed for repair" as the sign said (according to my bad Chinese reading abilities).

Finally, because no post in a picture blog is complete without a picture (better pictures next post):

Laundry. Note that I used my internet connection cord to create a makeshift clothesline. Internet still works!

ABCDE

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:28:00 +0000

A is for Apex

A couple of days ago, Ben (my teammate) and I ventured to climb the mountain next to the school. It's called Niujiao Shan (Bull's Horn Peak), and it has a path with 500 something steps leading to the top. On our way up, we encountered surprisingly old people (still able to climb mountains!) and a frighteningly large bee. All mountain pictures courtesy of Ben:

The mountain as viewed from campus. Note the little pavilion thing at the top.

Two cats that we saw on our way to the mountain.
Ben says they should be named Yin and Yang.

Me heroically climbing the mountain with my brand new knock-off
Converse All Stars that cost 30 Yuan (~5 dollars).

View from top of mountain.
This looks over at the place where we took the first mountain picture.

View from top, other side.

B is for Bar
Tuesday night, Ben and I decided to go explore the nightlife of Dalian. Following the suggestions of a guidebook and the internet, we headed to a certain Makewei jiuba, a.k.a. Dave's Bar. The bar was mostly empty and we ended up playing with the bar cat and chatting with the 19 yr old bartender, who was nice enough to offer us free sunflower seeds to munch on. She told us that the weekend is when the bar comes alive with patrons from all different countries. We're going back tomorrow night. I'm still looking for an expat...

One of the few photographs that I've taken in China that has any artistic merit. I like the contrast between the green Tsingtao beer and the bartender's red shirt. I like contrast between the white kitten and its black tail.

His name is Bush, and apparently, he drinks beer.

Anybody is allowed to write on the walls.
I'm going to bring a marker the next time I go and leave another enigmatic note.
Look, Lily, it's Russian! What does it say?

Matrioshka and foreign bills

Zhongshan Square at night is all lit up full of teenagers playing badminton and kicking feathered hacky sacks.

C is for Class

This Wednesday, Ben and I started teaching a condensed version of 6.001 to a group of about 40 students here. As you can see from the pictures, the class is extremely gender unbalanced. Out of the 40 students, less than 5 are girls. Everybody except one person in the class is a graduate student. One guy is in his late 20's. I think he has a thing for me. He just sent me an email in which he called me a "cutie". For now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute it to his not to great English abilities...

Left side of the room

Right side of the room. Red shirt guy is in both pictures.

Wednesday night, we gave a lecture on MIT culture. Before the lecture, a couple of girls came up to us and asked whether Scot Frank came with us. She was highly disappointed when we told her that he isn't here. Apparently, Scot Frank has quite a following in China. That girl (Janet) is the leader of the pack. She gets really dreamy every time anyone mentions anything about Scot.

D is for Dining
Usually, Ben and I eat at the cafeteria, where we don't have to pay anything. Unfortunately, the cafeteria's open hours are slightly phase-shifted from our normal eating hours, so sometimes, we go buy our own food across the street. Here, we can buy a bowl of noodles or a large plate of dumplings for just 5 yuan (< $1). Our hosts have also been kind enough to invite us out to eat for a few meals.

Flat shrimp. Apparently a Dalian specialty.
One of our students says he's going to invite us to eat those.

Silkworms in cocoons. They wriggle.
We didn't eat these.

They express energy in kilojoules instead of calories here.

KFC should never be repeatedly written. KFCKFCKFCKFCKFCKFCKFC...

E is for Enigma
Recall the note that I wrote at the Shanghai Museum of Art. Turns out, I got another response from it:

Hello stranger,i am shocked by your "sad melting panda",which makes me find your paper directly among the others.Strangly,it seems that i can feel something u held back behind the words on the paper. Or should i say ,i just find some part of myself on u.I don't know... ...i don't know......what u think,what i want,why i took u paper,why i write this crap to u (in my poor english)... ...May be just because u are a stranger to me,even a stranger doesnot really exist... ...may be just because i like the words-"hello stranger."the first words Natalie Portman said to Jude Law in the movie... ...

Well,please forgive my poor english.

Anyway,bless u and your family fine.

ning

Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to get anymore responses from that note as that girl took it with her. To reinforce my image as an enigmatic figure (HA!), I leave you with an unintentionally interesting picture of me taken in front of a fountain on campus.

Dalian!

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:10:00 +0000

After bidding farewell to my family in Shanghai, I hopped on a plane to Dalian, where I will spend the next month with my team as "technical ambassadors" to the Dalian University of Technology on the iLabs project. We will also be teaching a condensed version of 6.001 and 6.002 to some students here.

The plane ride was uneventful. I again missed my opportunity to snap picture of the pretty flight attendants, who wore fancy pencil skirts with stripes in several shades of fuchsia. At the end of the flight, a recorded Chinese announcer in a pleasant female voice told the passengers that China Southern Airlines wished to forever be their friend. The corresponding English announcement merely hoped that the passengers had a good flight.

After brief waiting at the airport, I met up with the DUT people, who took me to my new residence in the building for "foreign specialists". My room is nice enough considering I'm living here for free. Its size is comparable to that of a large room in EC, its cleanliness as well. I have a TV, air conditioning, and slightly unreliable internet through an ethernet cord. I also have my own bathroom with a non-squatting toilet (joy!).

Food is completely covered as well, as long as I eat from their cafeteria. The cafeteria offers a dizzying variety of dishes whose quality is only slightly worse than an average day of home cooking. So far, my meals have come out to around $1.50 each. My one complaint is the lack of napkins anywhere in the cafeteria. Sure, Chinese people eat with chopsticks and very little food gets on the hands, but sometimes, it still happens. Also, many people eat watermelon at the cafeteria. I don't know how anyone can eat slices of watermelon without getting juice on their fingertips. I pretend to myself that everyone washes their hands immediately after eating, but I'm sure that's not really the case...

This morning, I walked around the campus and the surrounding areas for a bit. In an attempt to appear more "Chinese", I had my umbrella out even though it was completely sunny outside because Chinese women always carry umbrellas to block the sun. Even so, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. Dalian is much more "Chinese" than Shanghai, or rather, DUT and its surrounding areas are much more Chinese than the commercial districts and tourist attractions of Shanghai. I don't even know how to explain it, but today more than any time in the past week, I felt the huge difference in culture and lifestyle between me and those around me. Perhaps some pictures can explain better than words.

On-campus photos (The actual campus is a lot greener than these photos suggest. I only now realized that I failed to take pictures of the pretty greenery):

A giant statue of Mao. According to the guy who picked me up and gave me a brief tour yesterday, a giant statue of Mao is an essential part of Chinese universities.

The gym (which looks like an exploded Kresge) and stadium. Over to the far right, you can see the building where I'm staying. It's small and orange.

A vegetable garden next to somebody's residence.
I have no idea why there's a vegetable garden on campus.

Some signs with anime characters. They say inspirational things in Chinese.
There are cheesy inspirational signs everywhere. Most of them are white text on red banners reminding students to fendo ("struggle") to achieve and whatnot.

The Daheilou, or "big black building". It houses their version of CSAIL and applied math. Apparently, their computational geometry group is in there.
Note the mountain in the background.

Surrounding area photos:

A street near the student dormitories. It has way far too many different barber shops for any of them to be able to make a nice profit.

A view of the road separating main campus from the student dorms taken from the pedestrian bridge. Note the mountains in the background.

A street full of fruit vendors next to the student dormitories. Apparently, cherries are in season. One of these days (when I remember not to stuff myself silly in the cafeteria), I will buy some and practice tying the stems with my tongue.

In the afternoon, I went swimming in the pool next to my residence, during which time I realized that I cannot swim more than 50 meters without a break to save my life. I flopped around in the water for a little over an hour, swimming several feet at a time. It would have been fun had the water not been so cold and had there been less people. Still, at least I got some exercise, if swimming back and forth 5 meters at a time and gasping for breath every 5 seconds counts as exercise. Speaking of exercise, the students here love exercising. Outside the stadium, there's a big red sign that translates to "10 minutes of exercise a day, 50 years of healthy living" (I might have gotten the numbers wrong. I'll check tomorrow).

The women's locker room at the pool was a lesbian's paradise (if only China had more open lesibians...). I've never seen so many naked women in my life. The locker room had a public shower. No stalls, just a partition of the room with a bunch of shower heads attached to the perimeter walls. For a nation famous for sexual prudishness, these girls were surprisingly comfortable with nudity. Nobody seemed to care at all that everyone was naked. I, on the other hand, did not feel at ease taking a group shower even though my bikini was probably the most revealing bathing suit in the entire pool (most girls wore one-piece suits with a skirt).

No, I did not take pictures of the women's locker room, but here are some miscellaneous photos that might be of interest:

Remember the mountain behind the big black building?
I attempted to climb it until I realized I was wearing plastic sandals. Here's me in the forest going up the mountain. I'm getting pretty adept at auto-photo-taking.

3 wheeled car! These are all over the streets outside of campus.

Magpies. They're called "happiness birds" in English.
Apparently, DUT is full of them.
You can't tell from this picture, but happiness birds are quite large,
bigger than pigeons but skinner.

Interesting road sign.
I almost got hit by a car trying to take this picture in the middle of the street.
No, no, get your mind out of the gutters.

Museums and Music

noreply@blogger.com (xx) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:21:00 +0000

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 10 (after all but passing out from the few sips of "Shanghai Celebration" the night before) feeling quite the culture vulture. I had had enough of the club scene, no matter how pretentious, and desperately needed a bit of high-brow eye candy. After a quick brunch, I dropped 2 yuan to hop on bus #123 headed for People's Square.

People's Square is a vast garden surrounded by several museums, kind of like the Smithsonian district in DC. The Shanghai Museum is a usual must see but as I had already been there, I skipped it this time for novel attractions.

First stop of the day was the Urban Planning Museum, which briefly made me wish I were course 4 or 11 just so that I could have better appreciated it . Pictures:

The giant, Metropolis-esque statue in the lobby

A miniature model of some buildings from old
with miniature models of people in colorful attire.
If you look closely, the people's heads are kind of too big for their bodies...

A portion of a miniature model of the entirety of Shanghai and surrounding areas, which covers almost an entire floor. I was sorely tempted to jump in and play but refrained for fear of impaling myself on the miniature Pearl of the Orient.

Lets play a game! Find the odd one out (and don't say London because it's pink)!

I had Pocky from a vending machine for a snack. Later, I got bubble tea from a snack stand. Oh my god, I'm so Asian...

Binary tiles on the floor that glowed different patterns of 0's and 1's.
My inner bit-diddler jumped with joy.

This picture would be cool if it weren't so blurry. I liked the effect of reflection and reflection within reflection. I also like my silhouette, who is much more photogenic than I.

After the Urban Planning museum, I walked over to Nanjing xi lu to visit one of the two art museums. For some reason, I completely missed the Museum of Contemporary Art and found myself in front of the Shanghai Art Museum, convenient since I couldn't decide which one I wanted to see more.

Downstairs was an exhibit of revolutionary oil paintings. It's interesting to see images of the red army and communist leaders rendered in traditional western style. The guy who did these has my last name. Maybe we're related.

Upstairs was a lovely exhibit of kitschy Chinese pop art. Some highlights:

A cage full of pillows in the shape of speech bubbles with (what I assumed to be) Chinese internet slang printed on them.

Another picture. It was fun.

Paintings of pretty boy Chinese hipsters.

A piece entitled "Sexy Letter"

The exhibit really liked pandas. Here is a small crowd of dubious-looking ones.

They had this cute exhibit room called "Re-Panda", where they had a box full of differently decorated panda parts and you got to put them together by pinning them on the walls.

F*ing amazing

There was a series of paintings of nymphets with Hello Kitties and Tare Pandas (pa pa xiong mao). It was cute until I noticed that all of them have small lacerations all over.

There was a room playing a creepy film with creepy children and creepily pretty music with paper and a pack of markers where people can draw their own pictures. I stayed there for almost an hour writing the note above. There was a couple in the room who wanted to figure out the song and watched the film at least 5 times to catch the 2 second caption at the end. The girl likes Death Note. We bonded over that.

The note, complete with a melting panda with an injured ear in a puddle of tears...

To my pleasant surprise, somebody actually responded to my note (!)
Here's the text of the email:

Hello spaceman (Please allow me to call you like that. Thats the name occured to me as the moment i read your message left in that space),

I dont know whether you can really receive this mail or i got the wrong mail address.caus i dont have much confidence in my memory. Im glad to be the one among those who have read the message you left there. When i read it, it gave me a feeling that you were really there at that moment. Maybe its funny, but i believe the cross of two different spaces. Anyway i like this test, and want you to know that this test is successful. When you receive this mail, that means that this test has influence among the visitors to some extend. Its fantastic. Thank you.

Besos

Teresa

Nice to know that I have apparently become "Spaceman", a heartthrob of emo Chinese girls. Still, I appreciate that somebody actually wrote back. If only I were and attractive boy. It would have made a lovely story.

I had planned on stopping by JZ club Wednesday evening but after checking their web site, I decided that I cannot miss the performance of JQ Whitcomb's band the following night. I had stumbled across JQ's blog on the Shanghai jazz scene while googling gigs around town and was very curious to hear him play.

After a whole day of unsuccessfully attempting to contact BB to get him to go with me, I ended up going with my aunt instead. JZ was every bit as stylish as a jazz club should be without going over the top. I felt a distinct Oriental flair reminiscent of 1930's Shanghai. The house was pretty packed and the music was brilliant. It was a shame I had to leave after only the first set because my aunt was tired. I would have liked to stay for the whole thing.

Our table with its beaded lamp (real candle inside! Not those crappy LED things!) and my White Russian. The actual atmosphere was not as red as this picture suggests.

The band (trumpet, sax, trombone, guitar, bass, drums). Apologies for the blurry picture.

With this, my Shanghai adventures draw to a close (for now, I will be back for a bit in August). In a couple of hours, I will board a plane to Dalian where I will start working for the summer. Dalian brings beaches and dog meat (local delicacy apparently). It's also the purported fashion capital of China. I'll just be glad for the end of this superparental supervision.