Mid-Autumn Fesitval

Today in China, is the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is one of China's most important holidays. My apartment complex has decorated a little for it.

Here is a link if you want to read more about the holiday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

For the holiday, I get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. But I have to make those days up on Saturday and Sunday. Also, from October 1st-7th we have off for China's National Anniversary.

Last night, I went with my Chinese friends to our friends work party. We had Chinese hors d'oeuvres, tea, watched some operatic performances, and listened to Chinese Folk Music. It was really interesting to experience. I also got tour an apartment that is selling for 30 million RMB or about $4 million USD because my friend sells apartments like that to rich Chinese people.

For me though, what was really noticeable about last night was that, in this apartment complex of three buildings, there were a total of 5 lights on in the buildings. There are so many high-end buildings but few people to live in them and owners have no incentive to lower the price of apartments because in China, there is no property tax. In the US, if you can't find a tenant at the price you want, it is better to lower the cost of the apartment, so that you can at least cover the cost of the property tax. But in China that doesn't happen and since many people see buying apartments as the safest investments in China, anyone with money buys one, and will only sell it at the price they want. So property prices in Beijing have climbed 12% since last year and it is becoming hard for poorer people to even afford the worst apartments.

Today, I also had my first meeting with my tutor. She is amazing, and I learned so much from her in just one day. The plan is to meet three times a week, two hours at a time. Combining my time in the class room and with my tutor and not including my homework and other studying, I will be studying Chinese 22 hours a week! This much studying should give me conversational Chinese in just a few months and this time next year, I should be fluent!

想家 "Home Sick"

There is a poem by one of China's my famous poets, Li Bai. The poem is about being home sick, in Chinese they call it 想家 or "wanting home" and even though at this moment I am not home sick, I thought I would post the poem because the time when I home the most is usually at night. For me, this poem really captures those times.

So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.

Cultural Differences

Here is a mini-series from CCTV about the differences between Chinese and Western cultures. It is about the only thing in three weeks that I have enjoyed watching on CCTV. It is five parts.

Part 1 http://english.cntv.cn/program/crossover/20100907/100068.shtml
Part 2 http://english.cntv.cn/program/crossover/20100908/100238.shtml
Part 3 http://english.cntv.cn/program/crossover/20100909/100295.shtml
Part 4 http://english.cntv.cn/program/crossover/20100910/100159.shtml
Part 5 http://english.cntv.cn/program/crossover/20100915/100078.shtml

Snacks full of Calories

I just wanted to write a quick post about my snacking habits here in China.

In the past two plus weeks, I have spent much of my free time snacking on chips, ice cream, soda, and fried Chinese snacks. Many would think that I would be gaining so much weight, well not quite. Partially, do to some unfortunate stomach problems, I have estimated that I have lost close to 10 pounds and I think that is a conservative estimate. Even without the stomach problems, I think I would probably have lost around five pounds.

There are also a few ideas that I have come up with to write about through talking to other foreigners about their experiences, and one will include details about the food here and what my daily meals look like.

Lots of good posts coming, and more pictures of the surrounding community.

Ok, now back to my Pringles can and pineapple soy milk.

Classes

Today was my first day of classes. It was quite uneventful and included only the very basic level of Chinese. The class was three hours long with three small breaks in between. Basically, we went over numbers, greetings etc. Not to much homework either, but there is plenty of stuff to review and preview for tomorrows class.

Besides learning Chinese, the thing that I love the most about studying abroad is the different people you meet. In my class alone, there were three Kazaks, a few Russians and people from Japan, Botswana, Jamaica, Mongolia, and I think two of the girls were from some South East Asian countries.

Apparently I have a very good Chinese name, because my teacher and everyone else really seem to like. I think I mentioned this to my parents but not on here, my Chinese is 孔泽华, pronounced Kong Ze Hua. The father of the family I was staying with gave me the name, and I must say its better then my last name, which made me sound like a migrant worker. The reason for the name goes like this, Kong is the last name of Confucius in Chinese, Ze is from Mao Ze Dong and Hua is how they pronounce George Washington's last name. The reason those were picked were because, Confucius and Mao are very big in China, and I am very tall to Chinese people and since I am American they decided on the character of George Washington's name.

The other night I went to dinner with a friend in Zhongguancun, which is the Silicon Valley of China and only a short bus ride away from my apartment, we came across a Christian Church. Here is a picture of it.

Tonight was the first night that I could cook on my own, since I finally bought a hot plate. Ah, it was nice to make have pasta for dinner!


Tomorrow, I also begin my language exchange with the daughter of the family I stayed with. We are going to meet on Tuesday and Thursday, one day I help her with her English the other she helps with my Chinese. I have also been spending a lot of time with her and her friends. They are young, trendy, upper-middle class urban kids. Quite similar to who you would run across in NYC. One owns a smoothie, fruit and dessert shop (which is amazingly fresh and tasty), another sells multi-million dollar apartments. The others are all in school but appear to come from pretty well-off families. The are a ton of fun and love to have a good time and they always pay for me when we go out and I can't do anything to stop them! Its a Chinese custom to be generous to people you first meet.

Have to go finish reviewing for tomorrow and go buy some dish soap to clean my pan from cooking. Bye.

Apartment

First Day of Classes

Tomorrow is my first day of classes. My schedule looks like this, Monday through Friday 8 AM-11:30 AM, with classes in listening, speaking and reading and writing rotating throughout the week. It is essentially equivalent to a full class schedule of a US college student, and all in Chinese.

Also an update on my bathroom situation, it wasn't that I couldn't flush toilet paper but that there was a back-up in the line (not sure why they would tell me that I couldn't flush toilet paper but alas they are Chinese). Also I am not sure if this whole situation is because it is a new building and not all the kinks are worked out or what, but all is good on the flushing front!

I also bought a hot plate today, so now I can officially cook in my apartment. In case I didn't mention it before, my apartment doesn't have gas, so all cooking has to be done with an electric hot plate, and when I was signing the lease with the landlord I didn't realize I needed that, so I didn't have it put into my contract, thus I had to buy it on my own.

Have class early tomorrow, so I will put my photo account information tomorrow and everyone can get a closer look at my apartment. I will also have all the details about my first day of classes.

Chinese Way of Thinking

One of the things that continues to amaze me is that with so many space-age buildings, advanced subway systems, HUGE malls etc. etc etc. there are so many basic services that just aren't available to everyday people. 


Let me sum up the story. Since I have moved in, my toilet would get blocked from time to time no matter how little went in. Then on Sunday, "stuff" started to come out of the drain in the floor. I was told that it is because the pipes are getting backed up. That you can't put toilet paper in the toilets. This just confounds me because how in a new building can you not have 21st Century plumbing? I may need to ask a foreigner that is living in my building if they are having the same problem because it could just be what they are telling me and it may not be true.


Another example, is that you cannot drink tap water here, or in any Chinese city for that matter, perhaps maybe Hong Kongers can. You would think that of their $500 stimulus that they would have invested money into sewage and water filtration systems.


I asked a number of my Chinese friends about this, and they responded that this is how a Chinese person thinks. If your buildings, airports, train systems etc. look amazing then everything must be amazing.


Also, on a slightly different topic, I went grocery shopping today and when you go to pay you have to pay for each plastic bag you use. The cashier girl gives me 2. I have about $80 worth of grocery's! So when she starts stuffing and stuffing and stuffing all of my things (including my bread) into bags I just asked for 4 more bags. She looked at me in disbelief! Chinese people are so frugal that they will stuff everything into as little number of bags as possible even if the bags cost .1 yuan each!


I tried uploading pictures of my apartment but there are so many and it takes to much time, so I think I will open a flickr account or some other type of photo sharing account and then will share with everyone the link.

First Big Weekend

This weekend was the first weekend since I have been in Beijing that I could go out (also only my 2nd weekend) but I made it count. Friday night I went out with the daughter of the family I stayed with and met up with a bunch of her friends. It was a blast, even though she was the only one that could speak English.

We spent most of our time at a lounge/bar called Pure Girl and we played Chinese drinking games involving dice and cards. I also taught them how to play Kings, which they loved because it involved far more drinking then their games. 

An interesting thing about going out in China (maybe its done in the US but I have never done it), is that when you go with a group of people you dont buy your own drinks you buy a bottle of whichever alcohol that you like and share. And so we went through 2 bottles of Whiskey and the bartender bought us a few rounds of tequila sunrises. They also made me take a shot of absinthe because I was the guest (i think).

Later at about 2, we moved to KTV or karaoke bar and sang until 4 AM. They made me sing every Lady Gaga song there was because young Chinese people are OBSESSED with her!

I will post pictures on Monday because that is when I am getting my camera back from Mrs. Pi. She held onto it because I was having furniture delivered to my apartment and its not safe to leave valuables around. Also, the posts will be become more frequent and more than just about what I am doing but about observations etc because I will have internet in my apartment finally! Oh yeah its only $120 for a whole year! And i think its a 10 MB download!

On Monday, I pick classes and learn more about what school is going to be like so will have tons about that as well.

Stay tuned!

Sorry for all the bad grammar and spelling mistakes but I have so much to do that I dont have time to read over what I wrote.

First Update from China

Hey Everyone

Sorry it took so long for me to update my blog but, I have been both very busy and have had little internet access. I will try and sum up the past week as best I can because so much has happened. Going forward, I will provide more details and post much more frequently.

I landed in Beijing around 2 pm last Saturday and the family I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Pi were there to pick me up. They drove me to their home, which took an hour because of traffic and because they live on the other side of Beijing from where the airport is. That night we went out for dinner to with their daughter and a friend of hers. The food was excellent it the company was great! We had many beers!

My first full day in the city, included going to get my sim card for my phone and we also went to a map store to get me a map of the city. My cell phone bill will cost about 88 RMB or $11 a month. It includes 450 minutes and 150 MB of data. Text msgs are .3 RMB and each MB I go over my data plan is .24 RMB!!! Check the exchange rate to see how cheap that is!

On Monday, Mrs Pi took me to register for my school and to start looking for an apartment. The registration took about 2 hours and was typical China in that it took forever to complete when it should have been done in 15 minutes. Very frustrating.

Looking for an apartment was even worse. Mrs. Pi knew what I was looking for because her daughter translated eveything but she doesn't speak much english. So it is very hard to communicate with her. It wasn't until Tuesday that I thought of using google translator for everything. Anyway, the first day of apartment hunting was miserable and the places we looked at were awful. They were typical Chinese apartments.

The second day was much better and we found an amazing apartment! It is brand new, in a gated community of sorts. It is so new that many rooms are still be completed and the outside is still being finished. Many of the things in my apartment weren't installed yet.

On Wednesday, we went back to the apartment began to finalize payments and to oversee the installation of the air conditioner, TV and the cleaning ladies who came to clean the apartment so I could move in that night. After they had completed, Mrs. Pi took me to Wal-Mart to buy many apartment neccessites.

Yesterday, I had my physical for school. The paperwork for my physical I brought from the US wasn't sufficient because it was all photocopies!?!? So I had to get 5 tests done. Again Chinese inefficiences, caused a process that maybe would have taken in an American doctor's office an hour took close to four in the Chinese hospital! But it was great day because I met so many foreign students from all over the world. I met people from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan, UK, Belgium just to name a few. It appears that for students entering the university this year year there are only four Americans. I also got to meet up with two Chinese friends that I met at the Olympics and we went out for dinner, got milkshakes and they came over to my apartment.

My one friend Lang Cheng asked me to give him an English name. He was thinking about Nove, which I told him was kind of dumb because its not a real name. I came up with the name Miles because he reminds me of a hipster-like kid and thought he needed a cooler, less-common but still used named. He really liked it!

That is all for now I think, I have to go back to my apartment to meet Mrs Pi who is going to help me with some of the last formalities of my apartment. I will post pictures of my apartment next time I am at Starbucks, since I don't have internet at my apartment until Monday.