Between 1368 and 1912...

I received word today that I have money waiting for me at one of the banks, but by the time I got out of class the English speaking banks were closed.

Speaking of class, today we learned the words for "mother" "father" "older brother" and "younger brother," among an array of adverbs, adjectives, and verbs. Sorry Rachel, but I can't reference you in Chinese yet.

I had my first "Business Strategies" class today, which utilizes the little-known Chinese text "The 36 Stratagems," which was written by an anonymous author sometime in either the Ming or Qing dynasty. As our teacher informed us later, the Ming and Qing dynasties cover a period of time from 1368 to 1912. So... that's helpful.

It contains 36 mantras that aid in any given situation, whether you are in an advantageous position (loot the house while it is on fire) or a disadvantageous position (beat the grass to startle the snake) or a confusing position (shut the door to catch the thief) or whatever other position you can imagine (borrow the knife to kill your enemy).

Today we discussed "create something out of nothing," in a business and historical context. It originated when a Chinese ruler tried to trick a subordinate into certain death by telling him to make 100,000 arrows in ten days, or else. The subordinate, obviously unable to make 100,000 arrows so quickly, instead borrowed 30 boats from his friend. He then hired 30 soldiers to man the boats, and stayed up for seven days and nights creating straw men to place in the boats along with the soldiers. On the eighth day, the "fleet" appeared out of nowhere outside of an enemy army settlement, and arrows from 20,000 archers rained down on the boats. When they returned to their homeland, there were 100,000 arrows attached that were removed and presented to the ruler, who was suitably impressed and did not have the subordinate killed.

My group decided that the best application of this story in modern business was Apple computers. Though "Snakes on a Plane" was a close second.

THIS

... is CNN?

No, not the whole building. Just an apartment on the 16th floor. There are about eight people in small cubicles in the main room, and Mr. Florcruz (the bureau chief) has a side apartment thing. The only reason they are cramped is because the other apartment that they own is getting painted, or something like that.

Anyway, my taxi pulled into this gated complex and then dropped me off. CNN, as I could see in my intern packet, was in building 12. However, the buildings in the complex ranged in number from one to ten. Obviously, this was a problem. I spotted an African woman coming towards me and, reasonably sure that she was not a native Chinese speaker either, I asked if she spoke English. "No," she said, but she did speak

FRENCH!

I've never felt so fluent in French in my LIFE. I'm certain that there were a lot of things that I was trying to say that didn't really come across as making sense, but I had such a feeling of real conversation and understanding. A stark contrast to my daily struggle to order rice in any given cafeteria here.

She helped me find the correct building, and I went up to the sixteenth floor and spent about five minutes talking to Mr. Florcruz before leaving the building, because all he wanted was a resume. He said he'd send it out and hopefully find something for me to do. It was fun getting the taxi there and back, though.

Instead of doing homework, my new friend Alice came over and we decided to tour the campus. I'd have pictures, but my battery died. I'll try to describe them in fewer than a thousand words:

(Insert picture of stereotypical Chinese tower here)

(Insert picture of frozen lake with ice-skaters here)

etc. etc...

After seeing what campus had to offer, we decided to go off the beaten path and leave campus. We walked around the edge of the wall and then across the street. There was a gate that led to a dirt road, so we went down that. Eventually we arrived at a dirt road that resembled a post-apocalyptic zombie-movie setting. Rubble lined the roads. Still, we journied on. Journied should be a word.

Eventually we came a frozen pond, an empty fountain with a stone fish in the center, and strange porcelain tiling under the dirt on the road. I have no idea what the deal with that was. Anyway, across the frozen pond was a very long, single story building, which seemed to be alone in the otherwise desolate landscape. There was a light on, and a few men were walking in, and a few were walking about. Behind us, two men walking the opposite direction on the path started yelling something at us and pointing at the house. They kept walking. I asked Alice what they were saying.

She said that, as they pointed at the building, they simply yelled "good fun."

I'm going to wonder for a long time what that meant.

Tiny Shrimp

01/13/08

Yesterday Will and I decided to rearrange our room so as to counterbalance the hotel-roominess of it all. We plundered Junta's room, which we referred to as his "single room penalty" and created a large open space in ours, where we were able to place a coffee table surrounded by eight or so chairs, a tea table, and a mini-fridge. After dinner, we had a tea-party. This was a great idea, except that all we had were loose, dry tea-pellet-things and no strainer. We thought of purchasing some stockings, but then decided that might be weird for two guys to do at 9PM.

For dinner we went back to the dumpling place because they were serving soup, and our friend Tram said she knew how to order so we wouldn't have to. That was all we needed to hear.

At first glance, the soup consisted of wontons and greens- like spinach- with tiny little spices and things floating around. I would have gone on happily believing this until someone said "this is good seaweed" and I thought "well... OK" and then someone else said "no, it's moss" and I thought "fine..." and then someone ELSE said "and aren't these tiny shrimp and crab cute?" and I thought "...." Then I looked down and saw that, indeed, there were itty bitty shrimp and crabs floating in the soup. I picked up a shrimp and looked it in its tiny little beady eyes. I'm sure it would have been happy to know that it was delicious, if a little salty. Next to me, Will found a baby squid.

01/14/08

This morning was our first day of classes. I'm in a small class of seven with a younger instructor, Li Laoshi (Laoshi isn't a name, but the word for teacher. At least something like that. I haven't done my homework yet). She is very nice and patient, and gives lots of positive feedback when we get things right. Today we learned "hello," "goodbye," "sorry," "how are you?" "I'm doing well," "cool," and "I don't speak Chinese." We were also introduced to 12 of the 38 Chinese "finals," which are better known as "weird noises that we as Americans have never had to make before," and the four tones that can be used on any syllable. We spent a good hour on the difference between one that goes up, and one that goes down a little and then up, but lower. I think the guy from "Jaws" said it best: "we're gonna need a bigger boat."

I have my first day of internship at CNN tomorrow. I have to make my way across half the city and find a random building I've never seen before. I'm placing my hopes and dreams on the assumption that there will be a large "CNN" in neon lights over the front.

Noodles!

01/12/08

Noodle House- Revisited

I woke up this morning at 7, because I went to bed at 9. As you can tell, I was a Friday night party animal. Will was asleep, but Junta was up and we had a lovely cup of tea together (because they bring us hot water and tea every morning outside our door) and then tried to go to the bank to exchange his traveler’s checks and my hundred bucks.

The first bank that we hit was the Agricultural Bank of China, and they didn’t exchange money and referred us to the Bank of China, which was just off campus and just a hop across the sign-ignoring highway of death and despair™. Once we got there, though, we were told that the Bank of China only exchanged money Monday through Friday.

A quick side note- next to the Bank of China was a two-story KFC Select. This is the third KFC that I’ve seen since I arrived in Beijing. I have yet to see a single McDonalds, but the lines at every single KFC were of Disney-worldly proportions. I don’t get it.

For lunch we went back to the Noodle-house, where Junta helped me order spicy noodles (do-dao-mein, or something like that). It was considerably easier than the previous Noodle-house experience, except for the whole chop-stick-to-eat-soupy-noodles thing. There’s a guy in our group named Steve, and he can’t use chop-sticks at all. I tried to teach him. He’s probably going to starve.

After lunch, the entire group took a trip to the Forbidden City, right in the middle of Beijing. It took about an hour to get there by bus- and we aren’t even at the edge of the city. The palace complex was impressive, with every gate holding behind it another, larger courtyard with another, larger temple-pagoda-house-thing. Here’s a picture of what I mean. I’m standing at the gate of a very similar building to what is behind me.

See?

There were some neat places, though, like extensive rock gardens. In one place we found an elevated stone table with stone seats. We figured it was for tea or paper rock scissors. That was supposed to be amusing because we’re playing paper rock scissors, but you can’t really tell in this picture. Oh well.

(From left to right- Me, Jennifer, and Will)

I really appreciated the English subtitles that they had on every gate- “Gate of Tranquility,” “Gate of Respectable Thoughts,” “Gate of Martial Valor,” etc… but my favorite sign was this one:

(The more you care for the palace,

the more the palace shows its splendour.)

I appreciate the sentiment.

After walking through the Forbidden City (which was a long, long walk) we arrived at Tiananmen Square (“where nothing bad has ever happened™”). It was a very, very large square… there’s not really much more I can say, aesthetically, about a giant slab of concrete. It was worth seeing, though.

This evening I’m going out with Jordan and Glen, who live across the hall and are very good at Chinese, to get some hamburgers. At first I felt bad because I was abandoning the local food so quickly, but honestly, I think hamburgers might be healthier than all the delicious grease I’ve been putting in my system.

Finally, as promised, here are some pictures of “Hotel California”

Building 5, sweet Building 5.

My bed is on the left. See? It’s a hotel. Except without anywhere to put your clothes. Mine currently live in the TV cabinet.

Pictures Coming Soon-ish!

01/11/08- Evening

Of Yolk Cake and Dumplings

In the afternoon we went to find food. We needed first, though, to get a fan ka (meal card) so that we could join the ranks of supreme efficiency. A student here at Beida who spoke a little English helped us out, which is good because, when they give you your meal card, they also give you a numerical password to the meal card. But only in Chinese. I would be very hungry tonight if not for that kind translator.

We first tried to go to “noodle house” for lunch. We walked through the doors, which, like most doors at Beida, are large, heavy-ish clear flaps that hang down from the door frame, giving one the impression of walking through a car wash. We stood in the long line (as one student informed us, there are always long queues) and when we got up to the front, we realized that no one in our group, not even the guys who had taken three and four semesters of Chinese, could even order the simplest of noodly dishes. Not wanting to hold up the line any longer than we did, we beat a retreat to “dumpling house,” where I fully utilized my skill of pointing at large vats of dumplings to indicate which ones I wanted. Now, I didn’t know which dumplings were in which vat, but I didn’t really care. The woman helping me then said something in Chinese, and, taking an educated guess, I put my hands into a medium sized plate. My friend Will, who speaks Chinese, ended up with a giant serving platter full of at least a hundred dumplings- so I think I got lucky.

I noticed at this time that no one in the entire restaurant had anything to drink with his or her meal. No one. If you are aware of my love of drinking copious amounts of water/sweet tea/whatever at the table, you may have some idea as to the extent of my thirsty sorrow.

(update- I found out later that, after you point at a type of dumpling, the lady asked “how many?” and in the case of dumplings, “one” equals six. So Will ordered 10 dumplings and ended up with 60)

Earlier in the day (I just remembered what I did before lunch!), after the language test had so completely disheartened me, I found the one other person in my group who also had no knowledge whatsoever of Chinese. Her name is Anna, and she is of Russian descent but lives in Denver and goes to a college there, and apparently she hadn’t eaten since the plane ride the day before. I felt superior, having been to the mini-mart already, and so I took her there. While looking around, I came across a couple of items that I wanted to share-

• Wrigley’s Coffee Flavored Gum (do we have this in the US?)
• Steak Flavored Cheetos (I am assuming it is steak flavored because the other package had a picture of cheese on it and this one had a picture of a t-bone)
• Chocolate Chip and Red Bean Cookies… (I have no idea what the “red beans” actually are. I might find out by semester’s end) and, my personal favorite…
• Egg-Yolk Filled Mini-Cakes. Right next to the chocolate-filled cakes in your friendly pastry isle.

An update on the ATM situation- APPARENTLY I was supposed to tell my bank that I was going to China. I didn’t think I had to because it had always worked in Europe without prior notification. Anyway, my impression is that they canceled my card, so I have to get a new one sent to me. In the meantime I’ll skip on over to the bank of China and just hand them all the American money that I brought.

Obviously, I finally found the internet and I am allowed to post. An interesting side note, however, is that though I can post to my blog, I can not view it myself. Yay!

28 Hours Without Sleep Later

Today's a double-issue since I didn't have internet access yesterday to post anything.

01-10-08

I don’t have internet right now to post this, but trust me that I’m writing this the evening that I arrived in China. I met a good number of my group at Newark, including Will, my roommate who’s also from William and Mary, and Chris, my new friend from American University with whom I had fun and exciting adventures.

• The North Pole is beautiful right as you cross the boundary where night stretches on for months at a time. It’s also a frighteningly vast amount of ice.
• Thirteen hours on a plane isn’t so bad when you have movies starring The Rock on constant replay.
• Arriving in Beijing was odd, in that it seemed exactly like the place we took off- New Jersey
• My bank refused to give me Chinese money through the ATM. This was a slight source of frustration.
• After being picked up by our group in the airport, we were told to go down the escalator. As Chris and I faithfully did just this, apparently our group leader said “oh wait, no, upstairs” and marched everyone off. Chris and I waited at the bottom of the escalator for a few minutes, wondering what was taking everyone so long, and finally we set out looking for them. As it turns out, they were looking for us too, but we never did manage to find each other. We just wandered around the airport for about half an hour. Luckily, Chris had some money and I had the address of Peking University written in Chinese characters. With this power between us, we hailed a black-market taxi and proceeded on the most terrifying cab ride ever. What was perhaps most terrifying was that the city never seemed to end, the sky never seemed to yield its smoggy grey coat, and Batman never materialized in this Gotham/Sin City cross-breed. In Beijing the traffic seems to have taken all the best from Italy, New York, and driving behind a tractor trailer. When the driver dropped us off, we weren’t REALLY sure that we were at the university. We were just happy to get out.
• We found a very nice student who spoke just enough English to understand that we wanted her to read the Chinese directions to the place for foreign students and tell us where that was. She didn’t know, but she entertained us by accosting every other person on the pathway and getting them to tell her where it was so that she could lead us there. I asked her if she was on her way to meet friends, because I didn’t want to inconvenience her. I think she misunderstood me, because her reply was “I have a boyfriend.”
• Dr. Sun enjoyed our tale of abandonment.
• After hauling our enormous suitcases up the five flights of stairs to our rooms, we realized that we were in a hotel. I’ll put up pictures, because I don’t think I can really explain it properly. We’ve dubbed our hall “Hotel California.”
• Two of the students who were here last semester, Matt and Jessie, took us out to a mini-market and then to dinner. I bought a bottle of water for the equivalent of 40 cents. Then we bought dinner for four for an equivalent of one dollar. Pork and vegetable dumplings. Yum.

01/11/08

It’s Five o Clock Somewhere

Woke up this morning at 6AM Beijing time, which is 5PM EST. The goal of the morning is to find a phone to call home and inform those at home to call the bank so that I can retrieve money. Right now I’m borrowing 250 Kuai from Chris, and I’m sure that his goodwill, though bountiful, will eventually run out.

Upon waking up I went to our roommate Junta’s room (he has a single, Will and I are sharing a double for now) and took a crash course in the various pronunciations of a few words in Chinese. I am now 100% confident that I will call someone’s mother a horse before I leave.

Today we take our language placement tests. I wonder if I should just hand them a blank sheet of paper or sit down, spend some time looking at it in a display of effort and concentration, and then hand in a blank sheet of paper.

(update) I insisted I knew no Chinese whatsoever, and they made me write my name down at the top. The guy then took it, looked at it, and wrote a big zero on it. Which made me feel good.

Tomorrow- look for the tale of the noodle house!

Phrases learned-
"Thank You"

28 Hours Later

I promise I didn't stay up until 3AM just to retain title continuity. But it is true that in 24 hours I will be... at least in an airport. Which, with airport security as it is, is basically detached from American soil anyway.

My next post will be from China. Slight difficulty- I've been reading around about various national Chinese firewalls that block all sorts of websites, including certain google sites, of which this blog is one. I guess building one insurmountable wall wasn't enough.

Anyway, I don't think that will stop this blog, but if it does... whoops? Until then, however, a quick survey of where I stand right now.

Bags Packed- 0

Books Purchased- 0

Phrases Learned- 1 ... still....

Facts About China That Don't Come From the Disney Movie "Mulan"- 0


I prefer surprises. I keep telling myself that.