The Great Wall, a Confucius Temple and a Trip to the Theater

We finally went to the Great Wall!!!!! I had been waiting for that day for sooo long. On Friday afternoon we headed out to an ancient part of the wall that nobody else ever hikes, so we had that whole part of the wall to ourselves. Not only was the wall really cool, but the scenery was beautiful! The part of the wall we where on was high up on the mountains next to Beijing, so we had a great view of some rocky crags and a few small villages that dotted the countryside. At the same time, it begs the question, why did they build the wall across the top of the mountains in the first place? Aren't the mountains enough of a natural barrier? Oh well, maybe the Huns and Mongols where more advanced than we gave them credit for. And I think the Chinese soldier's legs where exceptionally strong, because climbing that sucker was exhausting. Anyway, the Great Wall was great! Definitely something that I would recommend everyone see if you get the chance.

First view of the wall from the bus

Yep, those are the "stairs" we climbed.

On Saturday, my philosophy class took a trip to a Confucius temple here in Beijing. It was fascinating, partly because our teacher was there to explain stuff to us, but mostly because out teacher brought along a 19 year old british student, who is part of the 79th generation descended from Confucius. Now that was awesome. He was super cool (and pretty cute) and told us lots of neat stuff about Confucius and his family. For example, the Confucian family tree is the longest family tree in history, and his grandfather was tortured during the cultural revolution for being a descendent of Confucius. All in all, it was a really cool experience enhanced by the fact that we got to learn about Confucius straight from one of his descendants.

 James, part of the 79th generation descended 

from Confucius (the person, not the dog)

For the past week or so, every Hanyu (reading and writing) class has been preparing performances for a School of Chinese as a Second Language-wide competition. Each class (by level) has to put on a skit of some sort, and then the judges (who are teachers) choose a winner. I went today (with classes 1-12). Our skit was from the book Journey to the West, which is about a Chinese Buddhist monk who is traveling from China to India accompanied by the "Monkey King" and the adventures they have along the way. Our specific story was The Monkey King Meets the White Bone Demon. Guess who I was. That's right. The White Bone Demon. Before you watch the video below, here's a summary of the story:

Tang Seng (the monk) is traveling with the monkey king and two other companions through the mountains when they decide to take a rest. Monkey King draws a protective circle on the ground and tells the 3 not to leave the circle while he goes to gather food. The white bone demon hears that Tang Seng is in the area and gets excited because if she eats his flesh, then she will live forever. So when Monkey King is gone, the white bone demon turns herself into a beautiful girl to try to lure the monk and his companions out of their circle. But the monkey king returns, sees she is not a real girl and kills her. The white bone demon then turns herself into an old lady who also tries to get her hands on Tang Seng. The monkey king kills her too. Then the demon turns herself into an old man, but the monkey king kills him too. Tang Seng at this point is to mad at the monkey king for killing seemingly innocent people, that he bans the monkey king back to his home mountain. After Monkey King leaves, White Bone Demon finally captures Tang Seng and takes him back to her home. One of Tang Seng's traveling companions runs off to find the monkey king to help save Tang Seng. On their way back, the two run into the white bone demon's mother (who is also going to eat Tang Seng) and another, lesser demon. They easily kill the two demons, and transform into them in order to fool the white bone demon. Right before Tang Seng is killed, Monkey King and the other companion turn back into themselves, fight with the demon, kill her and save Tang Seng.

Now that you know the story, here is a video of us acting out that whole thing.

Aaaaand....we got second place (out of 12)! Wooo! But seriously glad that's over. I was so nervous. That's all for now, I've gotta go to bed. Hopefully I'll have some more stuff to update you guys on soon!

Qingdao

As I mentioned in my previous post, this past weekend we had Thursday and Friday off due to 清明节 (qingmingjie) which is the Chinese equivalent of Day of the Dead. During this holiday, many families return to their home towns and sweep the graves of their ancestors (the name literally means Tomb Sweeping Holiday). But, the only thing it meant for my friends and me is that we got to go to Qingdao! Wooo!

Qingdao is an adorable little city on the coast of China, almost parallel with South Korea. During the late 1800's and early 1900's, it was seized by the Germans as retribution for the Chinese killing 2 German missionaries. Instead of being the, stiff, boring, grid of a regular Chinese city, Qingdao had a very European feel to it as we walked past lovely architecture on winding streets.

To get to Qingdao, we took the 高铁 (gaotie) or high speed train which ended up only taking about 5 hours. The inside was kind of like a plane, but with more leg room and we actually had some pretty good scenery on the way there.

Upon arrival, we hailed a taxi and headed over to our hotel. We where going to stay in a hostel, but they where all booked up by the time we got around to it.

After dropping off our stuff, we walked along the coast as we tried to find somewhere to eat dinner. Just by happenstance, we managed to stumble upon an underpass that was chock full of small vendors selling all kinds of seafood and the local brew, Tsingtao beer, readily on tap. Instead of wandering even farther, we decided to eat there. I ended up eating some sort of noodle thing that didn't fill me up at all. So I went back and got...squid. On a stick. It was SO GOOD! I also got some sort of fish jerky stuff. The guys (Eddie and John) bought a plate of crawfish that I then had to demonstrate how to eat all while thoroughly enjoying the 10 kuai pitchers of beer. After eating our fill, we moved on and wandered around the city for a bit. We ended up finding another really interesting area called 1902 street. This street was mor elike an alleyway crammed full of vender selling everything from pineapple, to raw octopus tentacles (draped over the tables) to lizard to snake. We didn't try any of it because we where still full from dinner, but it was really cool just to see.

We turned in early that night and woke up early on Friday to go to the local wine museum. Apparently Qingdao now has a flourishing wine scene, enough so that they felt obligated to build the tackiest museum ever. For real. It was really bad.

Complete with this statue of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

Honestly, I'm not sure what was worse, the museum or the crappy glass of free wine we got at the end.

It felt like daggers going down.

No worries, France, Italy, and California. China is a long way off from being a competitor in the wine arena. Thankfully, the next thing we had planned was the beer brewery. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever tried Tsingtao beer, but if you have, it was made in Qingdao. At the brewery, we got to wander around the museum and learn how the beer is made. It was actually pretty cool!

The magical floating beer tap.

Eddie and John in the "drunk room". It was only a 

slanted floor, but it certainly made one dizzy.

After the beer factory, we stopped by a cool restaurant to get lunch. At this restaurant, they had tanks of seafood where you could point and say "that one" and they'll wisk away that eel or fish or whatever you ordered and in about 10 minutes, bring it out to you, freshly cooked. The boys decided to be adventurous and order these prehistoric things.

Which turned out looking like this:

Once you got past the spines and the hard exoskeleton, the meat inside was pretty tasty, though there wasn't very much of it. Eventually we got tired of making a mess and the guys instead switched to using them as puppets.

Over the next couple of days, we explored Qingdao some more, going to places like the Granite Mansion, the aquarium, the Governor's House, Signal park (the highest point in Qingdao where you can get a 360 degree view of the whole city), the Olympic sailing center, the local Olympic torch and various beaches (though it was way too cold to go swimming).

 The Granite Mansion

 No. 2 beach

 Qingdao skyline with the Olympic rings

Olympic torch

The local Catholic church. They 

wouldn't let us inside for some reason.

View of Qingdao from Signal Park

All in all, the weekend was amazing. Qingdao is a beautiful little town that gives you the feeling of having been transported to Europe. It was a wonderful break from Beijing and a great way to spend our 清明节 weekend.

The group: John, Eddie, me, Kate and Hannah

Nanjing

Before I get started, happy Easter to all! Okay, two weekends ago, my program arranged a trip for all of us to go to Nanjing! Nanjing is about a 9 hour train ride south of Beijing. The word "nan" (南）actually means south and the word "bei" (北）means north. Just as Beijing is China's capital in nowadays, Nanjing used to be China's capital during the Ming Dynasty and, more recently, during WWII. Because of it's history, Nanjing is a very interesting city with lots of historic sites juxtaposed with modern technology.

So the trip started off with a 9 hour overnight train ride. I've always wanted to ride on an overnight train so I was super excited. But, I was expecting a Harry Potter-esque train. Definitely did not get that. On the way to Nanjing, we were in what's called a hard sleeper. Each car had 11 compartments (open to the aisle, no door) in it and each compartment had 6 beds. Your ticket told you if you where on the bottom, top or middle. I was on the bottom, thank goodness. The beds where short and hard. They provided us with a pillow and comforter, though I was pretty wary of those. The toilet was a squatty potty. Let me tell you, using a squatty potty in general is really difficult, but using one on a moving, shaking train? Next to impossible.  The lights in our car where turned off at 11pm and that was when I tried to go to sleep. Unfortunately, I did the math in my head an realized that we had 66 people in one car. For some reason that weirded me out, so I only got about 2 hours of sleep that night. And then I was awaken the next morning by people hocking loogies everywhere. Overall, the first train was not the best experience ever, but certainly one that I am glad I had.

We arrived at the train station on Saturday about an hour late, so we where rushed through breakfast and then headed out to the royal gardens that where preserved from the Ming dynasty. The gardens where incredibly beautiful and lush with great architecture and artwork. The best part: seeing grass and trees for the first time in over a month.

Left to right: my friend Hannah, Kate (roommie), yours truly

 After the gardens, we bopped over to a Confucian temple for a few minutes.

 Burnt offerings

 Confucius himself

 Inside the temple

Prayers tied to the railing in the temple.

After the Confucian temple, it was time to check into our hotel. My roommate was the same roommate that I have back in Beijing (Kate, from above). The hotel was actually really nice and the bed were....soft! So great.

 Next on the agenda was visiting the mausoleum of Sun Yat-Sen (the founder of the Republic of China)  and the first Ming emperor's tomb. These two places where huge and crowded, but worth the congestion and the walking.

Heading up the 392 steps to Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum 

View from the top 

Ming Emperor's tomb

The mausoleum and the tomb was followed by a hearty dinner and then an early bedtime.

Sunday started off with an early wake-up call and then a bus ride to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial was built to remember the lives lost in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation which occurred during WWII. According to the memorial, over 300,000 Chinese lives were lost in the brutal killings. 

 A statue outside the memorial

The memorial itself was expansive. We where given an hour to view the whole thing (it was set up like a museum with displays and info on bulletin boards), but we could have spent way more time there. It was quite the sobering place. i knew very little about the Japanese occupation before visiting. I also found the language the exhibits used very interesting. Whenever possible, they used adjectives such as "disgusting" or "abhorrent" etc. It just made me wonder how accurate all of the information was, considering it is coming from the Chinese communist party, it coincides with the victim narrative and China and Japan have such tense relations nowadays.

We lightened the mood a bit by then busing to and island located right outside of Nanjing. The island was a quaint little place with small villages and farmland dotting it's landscape. Unfortunately, China just sold that village to a company from Singapore. I didn't even know that could happen, but apparently it can. The company is now forcing the local residents to relocate so they can demolish everything and set up a high-tech industrial center on the island. Ah, progress (sarcasm).

On the very tip of the island, there was a park that we visited that looked out over the mighty Yangtze river. 

The Yangtze

Two of our teachers. I was hoping I could capture them falling in.

 They didn't.

朋友们! (Friends!)

Exhaustion set in pretty quickly, so we soon returned to the bus, went back to the hotel and checked out and then headed over to the train station for the trip home. On the overnight train home, we had soft sleepers. Despite the name, the beds where just as hard as the hard sleepers, but it was only 4 per compartment and we could close a door. There was also a western toilet (alleluia).

I slept much better on the way back than I did on the way there. We pulled into the train station at about 7am, sat in traffic for 2 hours and got back to the dorms at around 9am. I quickly unpacked, changed clothes, repacked my backpack and headed out for my 10am class. No rest for the weary! Overall, it was a very fun, and exhausting trip. I feel like I learned a lot more about Chinese history as well as getting to see another part of this huge country.

This week we have midterms. I have a midterm everyday, so I've been busy studying. Thankfully, this week we get Thursday and Friday off, thanks to 清明节,  or the tomb sweeping festival. This is a time when all Chinese people remember and celebrate their ancestors. But for me, it means a trip with 4 good friends (Hannah, Kate, Eddie and John) to a city on the coast that is also the home of China's most famous beer brewery. The city is called Qingdao and I will update you more on it when I get back!