07-06 | The Great Wall, Tienanmen, Beijing Opera House, and Marco Polo Bridge - Week Two In Review

Before I arrived in Beijing, I had assumed PIB was going to be devoid of any scheduled excursions or activities other than the 5 hours of class each day, but the scary warning in the PIB pamphlet (essentially, you will not have time for sightseeing) belies the multitude of things that go on here outside of the classroom (even more so if you're willing to do some planning). Apparently PIB is actually even better at HBA at scheduling speakers and things like that. These two weeks have seen 2 calligraphy lessons, an international affairs speaker, and a talk on Chinese art.

This week's Chinese table was ridiculous.
Somehow we ended up with so
much food that we couldn't fit it all on
one table, so in addition to all of
this there are two dishes
that are not pictured.

Here's that sushi restaurant I absolutely love for their
buy one get one free offer...

Our concert ticket. 

Obligatory picture with the Chairman

Some art at the Opera House

Some friends and I went to this place to bargain for
running shoes among other things. If you tell them you
come from America they'll double your prices.
If you don't look Chinese you'll probably want to ask
for a 50-60% discount to start... 

Rain.

Drinking milk tea at the Nanluoguxiang Hutong in Beijing

The Great Wall. It pretty much looks the same no matter
where you are, but since we went out into the
countryside, there were hardly any other people. 

As for excursions, we've visited the Great Wall, and today we toured a WWII museum as well as Lugouqiao (the Marco Polo Bridge). Afterward, we visited Tienanmen, took some pictures, and then watched an orchestra perform with traditional ethnic instruments at the Beijing Opera House. They played quite a few arrangements of western songs, including this one Russian piece that sounded exactly like the Tetris theme. 

Deng Laoshi (left) I cannot believe you did that :(

Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao) The lions have been
repeatedly restored over the many years the bridge
has been in existence, so they're all different.

At the Marco Polo Bridge WWII museum. Some stories
don't get told enough. 

Posing with Traditional Beijing Yogurt as well as
Zhen Laoshi

PIB Yalies. The Beijing Opera House in the background
is colloquially called the "Birds Egg" for obvious reasons.
The entrance is underground, and all that water flows over
a clear ceiling. This we found out after walking around the
entire perimeter of the damn thing. 

They were very strict about taking cameras, but not cellphones.
It was really a great performance, especially the Tetris. 

The Light fellowship sends out email blog prompts every week, and the last two have been "what are your goals" and "what kinds of cultural missteps have you made." Language-wise, my current goal is increasing my vocabulary (which is not-so-great). Surprisingly I think I've gotten that speaking thing down all right. Personal goals include seeing more of Beijing, planning a day trip somewhere, and doing more of that 交流 thing. 

As for missteps, apparently half of the teachers here thought I had a lover in China. A got a tone wrong in one of my individual discussion sections, so "why I want to study Chinese" switched from "getting to know my relatives (qin1 ren2)  in China" to "getting to know my lover (qing2 ren2) in China." No wonder all the teachers were like, "that Ed Kong he's so liberal and open." 

In other news, I walked into a Subway the other day, and some kids from a Boston College exchange program or something saw my Tshirt, and started asking me with large eyes and slow English whether I went to Yale, to which I couldn't help but break the language pledge to tell them that I live in America and that English is my native language. The sad thing is that most Chinese people on the street assume I'm local, and when I can't read bus schedules they look at me really weird. On the other hand, I get slightly-less-outrageous pricing when bargaining. 

Anyway, it's 3AM and tomorrow we're going to the 798 Art District. 

Cheers,

孔令鑫

06-08-13 | A New "A New China"

PIB sent me something else along with my invitation letter. Packaged alongside the two crucial slips of paper was a fresh copy of A New China, which is one of the books that PIB uses for its 2nd-year Chinese class. Incidentally, it's also the textbook we used in last semester's Chinese class... Here's hoping I'm not being downgraded a level because of my stupidity in getting forms sent in.

Left: Old New China. Right: New New China

I suppose this could be incentive (or subtle warning from PIB) not to fail the placement test (which occurs bright and early at 8AM the first day). If everything goes well I'll be trading up.

-ELK

06-06-13 | Climbing "the most beautiful mountain in China"* - Huangshan Trip Planning

Well, it's a few days before disembarkation, so I suppose now would be a good time to start planning. After a brief rest stop in Beijing, our first excursion will be to Huangshan (黄山) or "Yellow Mountain." Not named for the color of the mountain or the color of anything, really, but after this fellow, the Yellow Emperor or Huang Di (黄帝).

In my two weeks of sightseeing before hitting the books, pretty much my only requirement was climbing a mountain. Any mountain. I'd settle for a large hill with stairs. 

Satisfactory

Huangshan is not a large hill with steps. Rather, it's a massive mountain range with 1000 meter high peaks of badass granite, marvelous sunsets over oceans of clouds, opportunities to achieve enlightenment (see buddha's light). And stairs.  "The most beautiful mountain in China" has also inspired a fair bit of art.  

Needless to say I'm quite excited. That said, planning has been a little sad on my part. The dad has booked flights and a hotel (I think), and it's looking to be a 3 day trip. In addition to that, there's the matter of which paths to climb and which to take a lift, the famous sunrise at 4:40 - 5:10 AM, and a ton of peaks and pine trees with weird names. It'll also be freezing cold at the top, which is a problem since the other 95% of this summer is going to be sweltering.

We'll see how it goes (this summer's motto). Staring at all this booking information in Chinese is reminding me that I should review my characters (汉字) and maybe pick up some traditional Chinese literacy as well. Thankfully, there's an app for reading Chinese on your computer by MDBG which I have not used yet. Here's hoping Google Maps will be workable for Beijing, since that is seriously the only reason I don't get lost when I leave home. There's a Baidu maps as well (in the likely event Google maps is blocked in China). Chrome translates most of the all Chinese interface quite nicely. 

-E.L.K

*designation a quote from the dad

06-04-13 | Chinese Visa Application

A blog entry about applying for a visa? How bureaucratic and absurd!

That Applying for Lawful Entry Thing
The invitation letter from Beijing Normal University (BNU) finally arrived after a bunch of delays completely and totally caused by myself (the PIB staff were wonderful helping me out with this). *Folks, don't misplace important documents and remember to set up mail-forwarding after you leave campus.

Official documents in hand, I took an early train to New York to apply for my visa. Having forgotten my headphones, it was looking to be a dreary day. Looking like a sad potato in the taxi line outside Penn Station, I ran into some friends - coincidentally one of them also applying for a visa. The rays of heavenly light springing from the clouds dimmed momentarily as I found out I had forgotten to bring a passport-sized photo for my application form. Thankfully there were a few places nearby that did visa photographs for certain forgetful people...

The Chinese Consulate in New York frequently gets terrible reviews, but I didn't have much trouble. I made up my mind to apply for my visa in Chinese while waiting in line with this English-speaking (外国人) friend of mine. Who told me "It's going to be a train wreck." Well, I managed to get out a sheepish "你好" before being asked "whether I had any copies of my invitation letter and JW202 form" in Mandarin. To which I replied "sorry." I managed to get out of there in less than 30 minutes, but not before the visa agent gave me a look that said "you're an idiot" and "why are you wasting my precious, soul-wrenching-fluorescent-light-filled time with your feeble attempts at language proficiency." She was, however, exceedingly friendly and I was surprised at how easy the whole process was.

Outside the consulate, a confused guy asked me and my friend what he was supposed to do with the slip of paper they gave him. "Thats the receipt you hand in for your visa. Yeah next Wednesday. You're good. No problem," conversed my friend. Afterward, my friend, a lanky caucasian male with thick-rimmed hipster glasses, remarked: "stupid white people."

--E.L.K (令鑫)