Last day in Xian

How the time has flown by...I'm ready to get back to Harbin and meet my new classmates and start studying again, though...which is great, since two weeks ago I was so burnt out I was ready to collapse. So this is a true sign that I've recuperated!!

These last two weeks have been a blur of new experiences-culinary, cultural, and just plain different. I've eaten things I thought weren't possible-come on, now who would think to take ground up sesame seeds, stuff them into a ball of flour-water dough, and boil them? In case you're interested, they're weird but OK at the first bite, but by the tenth ball they are so sweet and gooey that you want to puke. I've been amazed by my six year old host sister's carnivorousness-she gleefully picks the eyes and the brains out of the fried (whole) fish and consumes them, announcing that they will make her own better. I abstained from pointing out that, within the animal kingdom, fish eyes and fish brains are not really enviable...

I've also eaten way more than I can hold on more occasion than one. Apart from eating large, deliciously cooked (for the most part; I have found exceptions to the rule and can no longer unreservedly praise the results of my host mom's culinary efforts) meals, they eat fruit and stuff between meals. I feel like Mowgli in the part where the orangutan king is trying to tease the secret to Man's Red Flower out of him.

"Have a banana."

(Uh...ok)

"Have TWO bananas"

(I'm a little full)

"Have THREE bananas and a peach!! Want some walnuts?"

"Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!"

I'm learning how to make jiaozi, too. My favorite Chinese food, bar none. Delightful little purses of dough containing anything you can think to put in them, then steamed or boiled. I could eat them everyday...and now I know how to make them. I'm taking careful notes so that I can experiment successfully when I get back!

Last night we went to see the musical fountain at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. In the day, it's nothing special, but at night, the largest musical fountain in Asia turns into a dazzling extravaganza of lights, music, and dancing water. I must have looked like such a tourist, standing there with my mouth wide open. I highly recommend going, for anyone who passes through Xian. It's only about fifteen or twenty minutes long, starting at 8:30 or 9 depending on the season, but it's by far and beyond quite worth it. And surrounded by the most romantically beautiful park ever. So go, my friends, go!

I've really been enjoying the unbridled spontaneity that goes with not having a schedule. Do I want to randomly stop and have a manicure? Sure! How about that?! Walk down this street just to see what's on it, even if it's totally out of my way?! Sure! I can shop obsessively...small, easy-to-carry things of course; and I can buy interesting small things to snack on. Sometimes this gets a bit out of hand; like when I bought three pounds of dried fruit that I can't imagine how I'll eat...then today my host mom bought me three pounds of uncracked walnuts to take back to Harbin with me, and while I also now have cashews and pecans, I narrowly escaped being loaded up with apples, bananas and grapes. I saved myself by telling her how Posy, one of my classmates, had bananas in her bag and later discovered they'd exploded...all over her passport.

Until next time...which will be in Harbin...cheerio!

I almost forgot...I want to give my host dad, Clarence Guo, a shout-out here. If you go to Xian, call him at 013519197819; www.taxitour.com. He is an excellent tour guide, great English, and just a cool guy...

Chicken hell, and why I'm going to strengthen my vegetarian convictions

Today I found out where the bad chickens go. Half of me was screaming, oh, the poor chickens! and the other half was on red alert, klaxons blaring, "Bird flu! Bird flu! Bird flu!" Just another day in the market...a bored Chinese man in filthy clothes with a cigarette hanging between his lips grabbed my host mom's choice of poultry by the wings, hauled it out of a miniscule cage where it and its unhappy compadres wallowed in excrement, tossed it onto the scale, and without a single qualm slit its throat and tossed it behind a wall to flop itself to death. When the sounds of the hen's last death struggles died away, with ruthless efficiency, he and his gory partner defeathered and gutted it. I turned away for a sec to see my six year old host sister playing with equally miserable carp in the next stall, only to have my attention redirected to the chicken scene by my host mom saying, Oh look, Xiao Dan, there's still an egg inside! Sure enough, in the de-gutting process, a fresh egg had surfaced.

I also saw the cabbage seller woman wash her hands in the fish tank. Bon apetite!

On the way home I asked if she was worried about bird flu. "Oh no, in China we don't have that. Don't worry, relax. This chicken is very fresh. Last year there was bird flu, this year no problem."

I have a riddle for you. What do sketchy butchered chickens, tap water, and carrots have in common?

Yin-yang.

A proper traveller

Lately, I've been feeling more and more like a proper world traveller. You know, the kind that write blogs about the interesting people they meet and the odd things they do and the weird hotel staff they encounter. See, normally I just sigh and go, well, I'm studying, no time to be cool like that...no time to be weirded out by TB ridden taxi drivers in Kerala or chased by business-suited men in Mumbai. But since I've been solo in Xian, all this has changed...I have my own fun stories to tell! Starting with, I ate home-cooked stir fried chicken gizzard the other day...Shuang Hua makes such good food, that I feel bad turning any of it down. It wasn't bad, actually, but I could only eat a little knowing what it was and having seen firsthand the market it came from.

The other day I sojourned to Xian's city wall and discovered that you can rent a bicycle for twenty yuan, and circle the city on top of the wall. It was a bumpy, but satisfying, hour-long ride, and by far the funnest thing I've done in Xian yet. But that's not all. After that I noticed some Chinese tour guides playing Chinese chess, stopped to watch, and was invited to play. So I squatted down and was soundly beaten, but I was beaten at a two thousand plus year old game on a six hundred year plus old wall in a...very ancient city. I should note that the day before I taught this very same game to a French student I met in the drum tower. I am so cosmopolitan these days...

After my humbling chess experience, I went to check out the market along the base of the wall, and along the way I stopped to watch a calligrapher copying out a Chinese saying. It's so fascinating to watch them write; the characters just seem to flow out of the tips of their brushes. He asked me if I could give him an English rendition of the Chinese four-character proverb 心想事成-literally heart wants things come/become; so I gave him "follow your heart" after he explained at length what these four characters really mean. Hope it's right! But if not, the foreigners he'll sell copies to won't know the difference anyway. He rewarded me by teaching me how to sign my Chinese name; it looks nothing like my name, but apparently Chinese people can easily read it, according to my Chinese mom.

Today I went walking in the neighborhood of the Wild Goose Pagoda, and a charming highschool aged girl walked up to me and started talking. She wanted to practice English, but as it turned out, my Chinese was more comprehensible than her English, so we continued in Mandarin. It was kind of fun; I invited her to lunch and we compared educational experiences in highschool and college. Then she insisted on buying me fruit, I think because I invited her to lunch, but nothing I could say about how I wasn't hungry, etc, etc, could dissuade her. So now I have probably a pound and a half of Chinese dates. Good, but I'm going to have to explain now to my host mom where I got them since I promised I wouldn't buy anymore fruit in the streets without her after I apparently got heinously ripped off (well, two bucks for a pound of dried pineapple didn't sound so bad to me...a little gui, maybe, but I was too tired to quibble over a dollar one way or the other) in the Muslim quarter on Saturday.

Last night I had my first spa experience ever. After dinner, I was all set to do nothing at home until bed time, but suddenly my host mom was like, let's go to the spa! I was surprised. Who goes to the spa at 7pm? I mean, when I think spa, I think a specially planned excursion, not impulse decision. So we went to the spa. I had my face massaged and gooed over and over again, got my head rubbed and my limbs palpitated, over two hours worth of beauty treatment. For the bargain price of 30 RMB, which my mom treated me to. whoa. that's like four dollars, for anyone who doesn't know the conversion rate. it was amazing. I wonder if I can find a place like that in Harbin? I'd go every week...

I love Xian!!!

So, I'm in Xian and loving it. There's just something about this city that is so much more refreshing than other Chinese cities. It's not the weather (oppressively hot) nor the lack of pollution (yes, it exists), but rather a relatively uncrowded feeling and a sensation that this city is comfortable with itself. It should be, after three thousand years...

It's also actually a fairly small city, as cities go in this country, at 70,000 people. The city is also well planned and laid out, in a neat square within the city walls, and in "rings" (first ring road, second ring road, and so on) on the outside. Sidewalks are very, very wide, and shaded by French maples. It's easy to navigate, and nothing's so far away that it takes forever to get there. I think it's the perfect size...big enough not to get bored, small enough not to get lost. :) I'm so relaxed here, especially with my host family, that I think I'm finally going to kick the disease that laid siege to my body over a month ago.

Speaking of my host family, they are the best thing that has happened to me since I got to China. In fact, I thought of a slogan:
"Plane ticket to Xian: $220. Two weeks with the Guos: $350. Learning six-year-old Chinese: PRICELESS."
Original, don't you think?
To be honest, I really love them. Their ten year old son is a delight, and the six year old born in defiance of the one child policy, is, while incredibly spoiled, very cute. My host mom cooks really good food...such a change from Harbin student fare! I love it. everything she makes, I love. I've only had one thing here I didn't like...fish dust...yeah, that's sick...but she didn't make it, so I felt OK not eating it. I like watching her cook, too, I chat with her and she tells me how to say stuff, and which things have yin and yang. Yes, believe it or not, carrots have great yinyang. Guess what else does? no, you never will. Tap water. Yes, tap water has yinyang, as long as you boil it first. Bottled water doesn't, she prefers not to use it. I figured I'd better not say anything about ground water contamination...are trace ammounts of mercury yin, or yang? I decided not to ask.

Today I met a French guy on vacation in China, we spent the day walking around Xian's center area-saw a drum show at the drum tower, and a bell show at...yep, the bell tower!!! grin. Then we had some sort of lamb soup, and I taught him how to play Chinese chess on the set I purchased not an hour before. so cool, it's small and in an octogon shaped box, with jade pieces. I love it. I specifically looked for one small enough to take home, but special and pretty anyway. I totally found it!!! :)

Last one of summer session!

大家好!!

Today is the last day of the last week of summer session. I have one more exam (pronunciation) in two hours, but for all intents and purposes, I'm through! The countdown is almost up...two more days and I'm in Beijing, four and I'm in Xian with the host family that's going to provide my home away from home away from home until school starts again in September. It's like waiting for Christmas when you're eight....

I've had a lot of interesting experiences this summer, from Russian chocolate (it has bubbles!!!) to presenting a paper in Chinese as one of my finals. Yeah, that didn't go remarkably well, but I'm cutting myself some slack- it's rough to talk about the impact of energy security on international relations with a vocabulary only a kindergartner would envy!!!

I've also mastered crossing the street. Sounds mundane, but if I die in China, it won't be from some exotic illness or in a political demonstration-it'll be in an ordinary, everyday thouroughfare. By far the best method is to mix in with a group of Chinese people about to cross-not only do they know best when to move, cars also are more likely to swerve for five people than for one. Makes a bigger dent. But even so, sometimes the locals are braver than me, and I chicken out in the middle and get left all alone. I paid for my cowardice once by being sandwiched in between two giant city buses, with only two feet of breathing room. After that I learned to stick with the group at all costs...sometimes I feel like a lemur, but as long as we stay away from cliffs I guess we're OK!

Last weekend our study abroad program organized a night out at the city's Cultural Revolution dinner theatre. It was really an extremely fascinating opportunity to eat good food and experience the propaganda-laden music and dances from the Cultural Revolution. I can't pretend to have understood a thing, but it's pretty hard to miss the meaning when four young people dressed as Red Guards parade around the room blandishing Little Red Books and a Mao Zedong portrait. My favorite part, though, was the duo comedy act at the end. There was a man and a woman going back and forth on what seemed to be political and cultural issues-they did a great job, hit every cue just right! The grand finale was...something I never expect to witness again in this life. So this tall, bald Chinese guy with pitch black eyebrows, wearing nothing more from the waste up except a red triangular handkerchief held on with strings, starts to sing. But that's not it. His eyebrows are also doing this ridiculous dance to the techno music, and he's singing and tearing a metal bowl into pieces at the same time. I have no idea what it was about, but it had me in stitches.

It was a very unusual experience, especially after studying the Cultural Revolution in class and coming out of it with the impression that it was one of China's most traumatic experiences, and one that everyone wanted to forget. The festive atmosphere in the restaurant belied the horror of thirty years ago; everyone was singing along and clapping to the music that a lot of the restaurant-goers remembered perfectly.

I'm hoping that my program will arrange the same activity again in the fall; hopefully by then I might understand more of what's being said! It's such a relief to have all my hard exams over with; this has definitely been one of the hardest semesters to survive that I've ever experienced. I'd definitely recommend CET to anyone who's serious about learning Chinese, but be prepared to have your brain hurt for a month! I'm looking forward to fall, the challenges of just getting used to China will have already been hurdled, and (hopefully!) school will be easier because of it. I'm taking composition, modern literature, and two one on one classes-should be exciting!

With that, I think I'll go track down some breakfast and maybe study for my test...best wishes from the land of the dragon!

Tamber "箫丹"

One, Two, Three Eggplant!!

Hello again from Harbin!

It's been one month and two days now since I stepped off the plane, and I feel like I'm beginning to catch on to the flow of things here now. Harbin is really beginning to grow on me. I'm finding it's not all dirt, mud, construction and bad smells; there really are some beautiful places to go and relax! I'm addicted to a particular pedestrian-only street near the SongHuaJiang river called Zhong Yang Da Jie. It's paved with cobblestones, and lined with shops purveying everything from clothes to Chinese and Russian commodities of all sorts. Curiously enough, there's even a Wal-Mart...see now, if they couldn't stop Wal-Mart from invading this last outpost of civilization that is Harbin, how could we possibly think we could keep them out of Pullman?!

I just got back yesterday from a weekend in Changbaishan. Apparently it's one of China's ten most famous mountains (see pictures on Facebook once I get them loaded) and though it was steep as hell and at 2700 meters (yes, that's high!) it was worth it when we got to the top and saw...gasp...North Korea on the other side of the lake!!! Yes, we were no more than a mile or so from the homeland of the Dear Leader who presently has missiles pointed (if at present rather impotently) at the United States. That's probably as close as I ever get to North Korea in this life... an eery feeling. Also this weekend, I ate stir-fried tree fungus (delicious), suffered my first attack of Mao's Revenge (unfortunate; perhaps related to the tree fungus?), and purchased a zip-up top with Esprit de Carp emblazoned on the upper left hand side. 'Nuff said. ;)

Scholastically, things are progressing as normal...not a whole lot of variety there! Study Chinese, study some more Chinese, learn how to discuss the implications and obstacles of intercultural marriage (but I still can't say "purple", and it took me until this morning to learn "peanut butter"...), and make another fifty flashcards.

Some things we do in class here are really fun, though. The highlight of my week this week was a field trip to a tea house, where the fuwuyuan gave us a demonstration and explanation of the tea ceremony. After she had finished the ritual of pouring and re-pouring, she left us to sample at our leisure delicious green tea, brewed to perfection. I think if I have the chance, I might like to learn how to do that... I did purchase some Korean barley tea (da mai cha) this weekend (I wonder if Korea's diminutive despot is also fond of it? I could be drinking the the Autocrat's Choice...) which, if it's half as good as the tea we tried at one of our restaurants this weekend, will be my new beverage of choice for a long time to come...since it only came in the super-size box. ;) But for a dollar fifty, who's complaining?

This week, my one-on-one topic is Australia. My teacher told me on Thursday that most Chinese people, despite the fact that Australia is swiftly becoming a key trading partner of theirs, believe that Australia is populated by kangaroos, wombats, and large red rocks. I laughed when I heard that; they think it's a mysterious place with curious animals, and probably not a good place to go as an exchange student or anything else, because its inhabitants are undoubtedly backwards. That is what happens when you let Discovery Channel serve as your public relations representative.

Also for those of you who might be wondering, it is TRUE that if you compliment a Chinese person on something that they have, they just might give it to you. So far I have acquired a cellphone charm, a hairthing, and a pair of earrings, and I have learned to compliment my friends on things they can't give me, like clothes and hair. ;) But it is not true that it is rude to say Xie Xie (thank you) when they compliment you; I've conducted rigorous scientific research to uncover the truth (incidentally, that's how I acquired above-mentioned accessories), and the proportion of "nali's" to simple "xie xie's" has been very small. So thank away!

With that, I'm going to dive back into my bottomless ocean of Chinese homework!!!

Lots of love to all,

Tamber

Oh, two more things! I have a phone number, it is 206-734-4308. The one note I have is that China is 15 hours ahead of pacific time, so do keep that in mind! My other phone number is actually 011-86-451-8640-1199. I typed it wrong last time around... On the eggplant subject...ok, so you know how we say "Cheese!" when we take a picture? Well, the Chinese word that just so happens to sound the most like cheese is "qiezi"...or eggplant. If that doesn't make you smile for the picture, what will?!

Just arrived in Harbin!

> Hey everyone!

I finally got internet set up in my room, so I have the opportunity to write email at my leisure! I've been in China for about a week now; I got here last Wednsday (Tuesday America time) and it's been non-stop since I got here. My first couple of days were in Beijing, and though I didn't see much of it, I'm sure it'd be interesting to go back there. What they say about the pollution is true, though...in some areas, it's so thick it looks as though it might be slightly foggy. It was super hot outside, but the sky was never...actually...blue...kind of disconcerting, actually!

After we'd oriented a little bit, we took a comfy sleeper train north to Harbin, and were bussed to our new home away from home. You know, I learned in my fitness teacher training that you should always say two positives, and then a negative, so here goes: The town of Harbin is fantastic. It has these neat underground markets that go for blocks and blocks, and the downtown area seems to have pretty much everything anyone could need. I also am really thrilled about how cheap everything is here (four of us went out to eat and paid ten bucks for a ton of food). That said, the campus is the pits! lol. Summer is the construction time here, because everything freezes solid come October or so, so the entire place is torn up. The already somewhat tired buildings are now accented by gurgling streams of mud that cascade down the student thoroughfares when the Chinese rain gods get upset, so the end result is somewhat less than picturesque. Our dorm rooms are pretty OK, though, even if our bathrooms are a bit primitive, the rooms themselves are entirely satisfactory and much better than I expected.

My roommate is also great, very patient with my pidgin Chinese. She's from Harbin, and has already invited me at some point in the future to go visit her family, which should be a blast! I think we'll get along fine.

My classes are another story; it's quite rough to be thrust into an all-Chinese academic setting. I have no idea how the grades work, but I sure hope it's on a curve, cuz half of what goes on is over my head. I'm very excited about my one-on-one class though, I was given the chance to choose a topic interesting to me (Chinese foreign relations, in my case) and CET found me a professor here at Harbin Institute of Technology to teach me the subject. He's very nice; also pretty patient as I look up easy words like "reason" and "change" along with harder ones like "nuclear technology" (which, in case anyone wants to know, is he2 ji4 shu4, and the numbers are the tones). I'm really excited about it; today we planned our syllabus and are going to talk about North Korea, Australia, and South America, all as they relate to Chinese and American relations.

I have some serious studying to do, but I'll leave you with a sample of my favorite part of China: its English skills. My new hobby is perusing the English translations of the Chinese labels, and the best so far is a brand of men's underwear called The Foreskin Saga. (no joke!!!) First runner up goes to the coconut flavored Wheat Embryo Biscuits I purchased two days ago.

Thanks for tuning in, more next time!