Orienting to the Orient

大家好! I made it safely to China! And boy, has this past week been interesting. The flight actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The 13 hours totally flew by! When we got drinks, I asked for a coke and got this:

The ingredients on my German coke can.

On a flight from Chicago to China, and I got a German coke? Whatever, it was delicious.

Sunrise over Greenland

We arrived in China at about 3:30 Monday afternoon. We went straight to the dorms to get settled in. A couple of the girls from my program and I went out to get dinner. After trying hard to order, I decided that the language barrier is more of a brick wall. Because I couldn’t read anything on the menu, I just pointed to what I wanted and ended up with this.

It was SO GOOD but also really spicy, so I could only eat about 4 bites of it or so. The next day was Tuesday and we met as a group in the dorm at 6:45am, which sounded really early at the time, but I had no problem waking up thanks to that accursed jet lag. First thing we did was get our PKU student ID's and then we split off into groups and followed one of the tutors to a place where we can get breakfast by booping our ID card. Once we got there, we went up to the window and they had a couple of options we could have. I got some corn porridge and a baozi, or large dumpling. The porridge was weird. It kind of had the consistency of mucus but was almost completely tasteless. But it was warm! Which was much appreciated on a freezing cold day like Tuesday was. Oh yeah, no spoons, we had to sip it straight from the bowl.

The baozi was decent; it had some green leafy vegetable thing on the inside. After breakfast we went to a conference room where we had a short orientation, then hopped on a bus and headed off to Tiananmen Square! For those of you who don’t know, Beijing is set up like a dart board with what’s called “ring roads” that circles the city. Anyway, Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City are right in the center of that dartboard. Tiananmen square is designated by the government as the central place for political announcements/rallies/whatnot. But that also means it is also the central place for political protest. On our way into the square, we had to have our bags scanned. They were checking for fuel to make sure we weren’t self-immolators that were there to protest. There where also fire hydrants set up all around the square to stop people who try to self-immolate.

Heading towards Tiananmen Square

 Part of the Forbidden City

When we were in the square I got asked by two photographers to take pictures with random people, which I then would have had to buy, so I told them no. But it was weird because nobody else was asked for pictures. I think it is because I’m a white girl, but I also tower over everybody else, including all the girls in our group. It’s always amusing whenever we gather together as a group to listen to one of our teachers talk, because the Chinese people gather around us just staring and sometimes taking pictures.

 Right next to Tiananmen Square is Mao’s Mausoleum, which we got to go into. We couldn’t take our cameras in, so I don’t have any pictures, but in the interior room of the mausoleum was Mao’s body in a crystal casket with the communist flag pulled up like a blanket over his chest and two guards standing watch. As we passed through, I noticed some Chinese citizens bowing to him.

The outside of Chairman Mao's Mausoleum

After Tiananmen Square and the Mausoleum, we went to this awesome little restaurant called "Old Beijing Folk Delicious Food". There we got the iconic Peking Duck (delicious), some beef (also good), shredded pork (yum) and some other tasty stuff. LOTS OF FOOD.

And we got to gaze upon this lovely painting while we ate:

Cute.

A quick side note here: for those of you who don't know, eating sit-down meals in China is completely different than back in the States. In general, we all sit around a circular table that has a lazy susan in the middle and individual place settings and we all order a dish. The waiters bring out the dishes and sets them on the lazy susan and then we each eat off of each other's food. Okay, end of side note. After lunch we took the bus back to PKU and went on a campus tour. Our group stuck together after the tour and went to a supermarket called Wumei to pick up some supplies. Wumei is kind of like Wal-Mart, but it's under the ground, literally. Then we went to buy phones which was kind of an ordeal because we couldn't communicate very well but we all ended up with super simple and pretty cheap phones that only 349 kuai (about 59 dollars), including the plan.

On Wednesday we woke up early again and had some more orientation stuff and then went to lunch with some of the teachers. At the place we went for lunch, somebody ordered a fish soup. A couple minutes later, the fuwuyuan (waitress) came in with a live fish flopping around in a net asking if that one was okay. We said it was and about 10 minutes later, here comes a fish soup with the entire fish hacked up and cooked floating around in some broth. I tried a little bit of it, but when I pulled out part of the spinal column, I couldn't eat it anymore. After lunch we went to the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace is the place where the Emperor would go during the summer because it wasn’t so hot as in the Forbidden City (which is where the emperor lived otherwise). It was really pretty, but I think we’re going to try to go back in the spring when everything is green again.

Thursday has been the most interesting day so far. First, we were waiting in the lobby of the dorm so we could walk to campus together and we ended up meeting 2 people from New Zealand! They had sweet accents. I told the New Zealand guy that I was from Illinois and he goes “Ah yes, the birthplace of Lincoln. You guys should really get rid of your penny.” Hahah umm, okay. It was really cool getting to meet other foreigners. We also took our placement test on Thursday. It was a brutal, soul crushing test that totally sucked, but actually placed me really well into the right classes. I’m one of just a couple students in the lower classes, but I’ve also had less Chinese than them because they’re all mostly juniors. It's also really interesting talking to other people on the program and finding out how they learn Chinese at their school compared to at U of I. Following the placement test, a couple guys wanted to buy some cellphones, so I went with them to help. I ended up ordering the phones for them, in Chinese! And then we went to a supermarket called Carrefour and I talked to an employee there about a mattress pad! I was so proud of myself for actually being able communicate with people.

Friday and Saturday were pretty uneventful besides that fact that we went out to some bars. They reminded me a lot of bars in the States and were even playing the same kind of music. 

This past week I was also quickly introduced to the hygiene or lack thereof here in China. The first thing is what we have come to fondly refer to as squatty potties. They're pretty much refined holes in the ground that you have to squat over to use. We've been lucky though because all of the ones we've been to have had toilet paper. Another hygiene aspect is the Chinese hock and spit loogies all over the place. My gag reflex has kind of gotten used to hearing the sound so much.

As for the smog, it really hasn't been bad most days. I think it was Thursday that the Air Quality Index got over 200 and I wore a mask for the first time. Saturday night it was over 400 so we took a cab home. As I'm writing this right now, the AQI is at 387 and I can't see very far out of my window due to the gray haze.

One of my favorite things I didn't expect from China is the continuation of fireworks after the new year. Not a day has gone by when I haven't seen some fireworks exploding in the sky, day or night. And no, the irony with the smog is not lost on me.

Sorry for the long post, but there was a lot to tell about in this first week. I'll try to post once a week, but the internet here is really bad and my blog site is super temperamental, so please bear with me! Lots of love being sent from China!