Mystery Beijing

"Mystery Beijing" -- This was listed as the major activity on our orientation sheet for today. Prior to that, we had a few sessions on diversity (actually pretty interesting discussions) and met briefly with our Chinese teachers to go over expectations. Apparently, teachers in China don't understand the concept of "easing into things", as they assigned us a bunch of homework and informed us we have a quiz bright and early tomorrow. I guess I've been a little preoccupied with my new surroundings and sort of forgot to mentally prepare myself for an intensive language course. At Pomona, I always thought that Chinese classes tended to drag on, and those were at most 75 minutes. Here in Beijing, I have 4 hours daily of Chinese class. On the bright side, at least when I take another Chinese class at Pomona it will seem unusually short.

After that meeting we had lunch on our own, so I went with a few other students to a little restaurant about 15 minutes walking distance away from Bei Wai. I didn't really know what expect, since this was my first real eating experience outside the guidance of the IES staff. We had a few returning students (students who are continuing in the program from the previous semester) lead us, and they suggested we all try what they called a "donkey burger". It pretty much is what it sounds like, except it was more like a donkey sandwich. While I was a little skeptical at first, I was guaranteed that this was "the best piece of ass in Beijing" (hahaha..). We sat down and ordered, and I looked around to see if they had anything to drink to go with my lunch. I didn't see anything, but I assumed (yeah, still making assumptions) that they must have water, so I asked for it. It turns out they didn't have anything to drink, but instead the "fu wu yuan" (basically a waitress) without hesitation walked outside and went down the street. About a minute later, she returned with an ice cold bottled water, fresh from the store down the street. Now that's something you won't see in the USA. I was impressed. Anyways, back to the donkey burgers. I expected that they would be good, but they certainly exceeded my (and just about everyone else's) expectations. Probably the most delicious sandwich I can remember eating. Essentially, it was seasoned donkey meat inside a toasty piece of flat bread. Simple, but incredible. Best part of all, each one cost only 4 yuan, which translates to about 70 cents. That's the great thing about Beijing (and I'm sure most of China). While processed and packaged goods are cheaper than the USA, the real bargains are the local foods. No matter what type of food you want, you can eat well for dirt cheap.

Now it was time for "Mystery Beijing" which we found out was basically a huge scavenger hunt in the Haidian district of Beijing. The purpose was to explore our new "neighborhood", and also to get a feel for using local transportation. I hesitate to use the word neighborhood, because although Haidian is only one district of Beijing, if it were itself a city in the United States, it would rank as 4th largest in terms of population. With well over 2 million residents, it is quite a large neighborhood. So we ventured out in hopes of completing certain tasks, which mostly required a photo of your group at a particular place. However, some were a bit more difficult. For instance, we had to go a particular park (the name eludes me) and attempt to participate in one of the activities that was happening. When we entered the park, we immediately saw a group of men practicing Tai Ji Quan (kind of like shadow boxing and kung fu mixed together). So, as was required, we went to the back of the group and started imitating them. I personally was hesitant because I had been socially trained to think that this type of behavior was pretty rude (I wasn't the only one), but we were assured that it was acceptable. Things were going ok, though I'm sure we looked like fools, which was confirmed by the locals' laughter. Then, all of a sudden, the group did sort of a 180, and not wanting to mess things up, we turned as well. This posed quite a problem, since prior to then we had been watching and trying to imitate. Now, we were the front of the group and couldn't really see what was going on. That was a little embarrassing. But one of the things you learn is that part of the cultural experience is people laughing at you, and you just have to learn to laugh with them. Especially in a place like China, where "lao wai" (colloquial word for foreigners) are almost immediately recognizable, you have to learn not to take yourself too seriously.

The rest of the day we hiked around a little more, which entailed riding some buses and taking the subway. None of it was too exciting, though we did get to see some pandas, which was pretty cool. There were a couple things worth mentioning, though. Firstly, the Beijing subway was incredibly clean and high-tech in comparison to subways I have been on and heard about in America (or at least the line we were on; I've heard some of the more downtown lines are not as nice). Juxtaposing this with some of streets and alleys of the neighborhoods above, it was quite a shocking difference. Secondly, I was taken aback at how quickly China can turn from seeming completely foreign, such as in the neighborhood where I ate lunch, to completely Westernized. This was no more evident than when we entered one of the gazillion malls in Haidian. Unlike the other establishments in the city, all of the stores in the mall had English names (though a few were European). None used Chinese characters in their titles. I found this quite odd. I know that Westernization is rampant in the major cities of China, but for some reason I still don't really understand why every store lacked a title that was written in Chinese. Just another one of the signs that I have a long way to go in truly understand the culture here. Nevertheless, each day I learn more, and little by little things start to become illuminated.