China Studies

Matt Hoover Films

2010-11-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

www.MatthewHoover.net

http://www.matthewhoover.net/Matt_Hoover_FIlms.html

INTERNSHIP PART 3: What it's like...

2009-11-25T17:09:00.001-08:00

Everyone I work with is very friendly. I feel like I have been friends with my coworkers for a year, even though I have only known them for one week. They are all young (around 22 to 25) and easy to relate to. I enjoy getting to know them and have conversations with different people each day. While working during the day I will have occasional short conversations with different people throughout the office, covering many topics from how much my Levis jeans cost in the States, to how to say different phrases in Chinese, to even talking about relationships. For lunch we (me and 10 other employees) take a ten minute walk to an apartment near the office. The company rents the apartment, where a’yi (meaning Aunt) has lunch prepared for us. Each day she cooks something different dishes for us, including shrimp, fried rice, soups, cooked vegetables, squid, more rice, beef/chicken and many other Chinese dishes. Lunch is always fun and lively as I always have a good conversation with someone on the way there and back, as well as a talkative time while we eat. After eating we go back to the office where most spend the second hour of lunch (lunch is from 12:00 to 2:00) taking a nap, but I either talk with people or catch up on non-work tasks I have.

In the morning I walk about five minutes to the west gate of campus, where I catch bus 520. Usually the bus is pretty packed, and I end up standing the whole way; since it is only a twenty minute ride, it goes by quickly (some people have one hour transits). The other day when the bus pulled up it looked very full, but when a group of 15 people rushed towards the door, I figured I would too. Once we somehow all squeezed in, I thought there was no way anyone else could fit and that the driver would simply not let anyone else on for the next few stops. To my surprise at the next stop (even though no one got off) 8 or 10 more people crammed in, some getting in the back and passing their card to the front to pay.

INTERNSHIP PART 2: What I’ve Been Doing in the Office...

2009-11-24T06:44:00.000-08:00

My position is within the foreign sales department of the company, as these are the only employees who use English for their job; the three main people I work with are Libby, Jeffery, and Lidia (their English names). There are about twenty employees in the company, all of which are Chinese (some of the other interns are working with American employers). I have my own desk in the middle of the office, as if I were an actual employee. At my desk there is a computer which I used for about the first three hours, but after not being able to do much since it was all in Chinese, I ended up plugging in my own laptop. The office itself is much nicer than I had envisioned it, with wood finish everywhere and an elegant board room. The glass door entrance from the elevator hallway is electronically locked (as with most companies in China), so when I arrive in the mornings I type in the key-code to enter.

As for the day to day environment my internship is pretty relaxed. I usually just wear a polo and don’t really check in with anyone when I arrive, but simply get started on what I was working on from the day before. I also don’t really have a main project to work on (as some of the other interns do) but simply help out with day to day things that need to be done. My co-workers (the ones that give my my tasks/assignments throughout the day) have been really helpful in teaching me different things about how the company operates; I've learned a ton of random aspects of trade concerning international business. Below are some of the things I’ve done so far:

Taking pictures of samples for to send to customers to approve of the product.

Creating customer invoices, which include the customer’s information, the product ID number, quantity, price per piece, shipping size, number of pieces in a set, total cost of order, etc. We have a basic template in Excel to plug the info into, which they typically just send the actual Excel file. But when I made the invoices I started saving them as PDFs so it will be delivered as clean document that anyone can easily open. They liked this so I asked why they did not do this themselves, for which Libby replied that they have Office 2003 which is not able to save files as PDFs. I then took it upon myself to search for an application that they could easily use to do so. After about an hour of searching the internet and testing several ones, I finally found some software that could do the job (it is actually freeware, so anyone can use it for free). I installed it and tested it on the computer at my desk, and when it worked I installed it on Libby’s and Jeffery’s computer and showed them how to use it. It actually installs itself as a virtual printer, so when you want to save something you simply go to ‘Print’ and select the ‘PDFCreator’ printer, and it lets you edit the document’s info and save it where you want.

Proofreading emails they are sending to a customer, in English of course. There have actually been a lot of times when they are trying to describe something difficult to a customer and they have me write the entire email; such as when we needed to let the customer know that “the top of the serving plate has been approved to come in contact with food, but the bottom where the stand is connected by glue has not been tested yet.” Or trying to tell a customer who wanted to be able to unpack their product quickly, that packing the product a more secure way is recommended.

Editing Xiamen Yerun’s website ‘about us’ page. There is a paragraph that described the company which was understandable but worded as if I were trying to write a paragraph in Chinese.

Filling out shipping labels, and calling Fed-Ex or DHL to schedule a pickup (the operators speak English).

I started talking to Libby about the trade shows the company attends, and asked questions about what they entail. She told me that usually they go to Germany, but the one they attended recently was here in China. I asked about the booths the use, and she said that they usually have two options: to use the standard booth provided by the show or bring their own. I also asked if they give out catalogs or ‘company info handouts’, and she mentioned that they once gave out catalogs but now just put pictures of all their products on CDs to handout, because the catalogs are heavy and expensive. I then asked if they give anything along with the CD and she said that they usually just staple a business card with it. That’s when I asked or if they would like to have a case/sleeve to put the CDs in. Libby liked the idea and went to over to George’s desk (her manager) to ask him what he thought. He also liked the idea, and even mentioned printing something on the face of the CD as well. So now I am currently designing a sleeve (a case that the CD slides into and folds open) as well as an image to print on the CD itself.

Just me sitting at the desk looking up prices for an invoice...

INTERNSHIP PART 1: About the Company

2009-11-22T05:50:00.000-08:00

* These next couple posts will be concerning my internship, so there'll be a couple more to follow soon.

As I am about to begin the second week of my internship, this weekend has given me a chance to rest and relax some. My group arrived back in Xiamen last Friday, and the next morning on Saturday I went to visit the company I would be interning at. Saturday morning I met Yili (our director’s wife, who arranges the internships) at the Nan Pu Twah gate of campus, where she told me some about the company. Up until this point I had no idea what the company’s business was or anything about it, including it’s name. At the gate we were met by two employees of the company who then took me (by city bus) to preview the office. The office is open on Saturdays but only a few employees from the foreign sales department come in (because sat morning here is Friday evening in the states, making emails and calls possible). After being shown around for a short amount of time I took the bus back by myself to campus.

The company is called Xiamen Yerun Import & Export Trading Co.. Pretty much they are an in between for factories and customers. A factory will make a product such as ceramic magnets but might now have the skills or resources to sale or market their product. And there might be a customer who really wants to buy 10,000 magnets but no way to contact the factory who makes them. This is where my company operates, by connecting the two: the customer will contact Xiamen Yerun about a certain product, for which we will contact the factory of that product and ask for some samples. The factory send us the samples, and after checking them for quality, we will ship the samples to the customer. Also, many times customers will request a specific color or design on a product, for which my company will contact the factory and ask them to make the changes. So Xiamen Yerun literally has thousands of different products ranging from ceramic magnets, to holiday decorations, to dinnerware, to clothes and garments, to luggage, to even instant coffee mixes. While these are not really our products, as far as the customers are concerned we produce and sell our own products. At first I questioned if people would actually by the products they have, but soon learned that they have hundreds of customers all around the world (this week we worked with Italy, Germany, Holland, Canada, and U.S.) and that the company has a steady flow of customers. Usually a minimum quantity to purchase a product is around 800 to 1000 pieces, so companies buy the product in bulk to sell in their country; also at times companies will buy jackets, shirts, small luggage, etc with their logo embroidered.

One set of magnets (we have hundreds of thousands of different magnets)

We just shipped 8000 of these to Holland...

One of the thousands of Christmas products....

Forbidden City

2009-11-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

*feel free to click on the pics to view them a little bigger

This morning when I looked out across Beijing from my sixth floor hotel window, I saw every rooftop coated in solid white, as well as every tree, vehicle, and sidewalk. During the night it had snowed, covering the city with a few inches of powder. I had woken up around 9:00am and started the day slowly. After eating a late breakfast I packed my suitcase and waiting until noon when our group would meet to load up on the bus. We found out our train was postponed from 8pm to 10pm, so we loaded our bags on the bus and took a hour for lunch. While loading the bags I tossed a snowball hitting one of the interns in the side of the face… she was not very happy at me but didn’t hold it against me for to long. The interns are students who were in the program in years past who help out our director. At 1:00pm we headed off to our touring site for the day: The Forbidden City.

Snow outside my hotel.

The Forbidden City is located adjacent from Tiananmen Square, so we crossed through the square and entered the City. The Forbidden City is around ten football fields long and eight wide. This tour was Larry’s history presentation, so as we walked to several major parts he covered the background and various interesting facts for us. We walked through the whole site, but only concentrated on several key buildings / areas.

Many times when Chinese go on tours they will go in a large group with a tour guide. The tour guide will hold up a colorful flag, while the members in the group will all wear matching solid-color ball caps to designate their group. In order to make sure our group was getting the full experience Larry had a couple of us the night before help him fold newspaper hats for everyone, and he made a flag out of a small branch. Even though we only wore them for a little while, it was fun to have the other tourist staring at us odd foreigners.

We took a picture next to a group of Chinese tourist, also wearing hats!

After touring the city we stopped at a popular/busy Beijing street where we took a couple hours to look around and eat dinner. The street is very wide, blocked off from traffic, and lined with higher-end stores and malls. We then made our way to the Beijing train station where we waited for an hour to board our train; when they opened the gates for us to board there was a rush of people all fighting to get through as quickly as possible. A few of us actually raced some Chinese all the way down to platform five and down to car six, even though our sleepers were reserved. For this trip I’m in a berth on the bottom bunk, which is nice because the bottom bunks have more head room allowing me to sit up. Larry is above me, in the middle bunk, but everyone else in our berth is Chinese. Across from me are very old Chinese men who I played Chinese chess against while we waited for the train to depart. Even with one of them helping me against the other, I still lost without too much trouble on the other man’s part. Tomorrow we’ll arrive in Shanghai bright and early, and hopefully I won’t be too tired.

The Great Wall, Weird Meats, and The Temple of Heaven

2009-11-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

After waiting a short while in the crowded, fairly dirty, Xi’an train station the time came for us to board. We loaded our bags into the train and arranged ourselves in our sleeper-bunks. The cars we were in had 6 cubicles with three bunks on each side of a narrow space. Around 10:00 pm the lights turned off and everyone soon fell asleep; the whole night the train bumped and swayed as we made our way across China. We arrived in Beijing the next morning around 6:00 am. We loaded into a chartered bus which took us to our hotel. Aaron and I used the hour before meeting up again to go a few blocks down the street for breakfast. We ended stop in at a small restaurant that had a women serving from soup pots. The soup we picked out ended up having something like liver, along with noodles and other things; the spicy soup, along with some delicious flat bread, made for a filling meal. Our group then met up at the hotel where we boarded our chartered bus to head off to our destination for the day: The Great Wall.

A glimpse of our train before I boarded.

The portion of the wall we went to was at a different location than the one I had been to a few years previously. There were hundreds of people covering the wall, mostly consisting of Chinese tourist. We made our way up the steep steps to different towers built into the wall. The towers had small arch entrances with small connected rooms on the inside, which one has to walk through to reach the next section of wall. The wall wound across the tops of the mountains as if someone had laid a piece of string loosely on them. The sun was out which warmed up the air, along with the energy used to hike the stone steps, had everyone taking off their coats along the way. We reached a high point which had signs point to follow some stairs down to another path at one of the towers. The tower had another section of wall that went high up to another peak, but since it was a sort of dead end they had the door to the tower blocked off with a sign acting as a make-shift barricade. Seeing how there was no one section, we decided that it would be neat to go look at. We had seen a couple of young Chinese men on the other side of the tower so we knew it was possible. I noticed an arched window in the tower, so I climbed up and slipped inside. A couple of friends in my group followed behind me. We went up to the top to look around and take a few photos. Soon many more people started making their way up the section we were on (apparently one of the men that was inside before we were moved the sign down at the tower to the side). We made our way down right as a worker was trying to usher people back to the other section. While interesting to see, my attention soon turned towards what I would get for lunch. Our group met up at the entrance to the wall, and I slept during the hour and half bus ride back to the hotel.

I just happened to look out right as someone was snapping a picture...

After a strong wind came it was all I could do to hold on...

A view from the top.

My roommates...

When we got back we were met by Denny, a guy who was in the China Studies Program a couple years before who is now working at a company here called Hope International. Larry knows him fairly well, since they’re from the same school, and so a few of us went out with him to look around Beijing. We took a couple cabs to the nearest subway station, where we took the subway to a different part of town. We arrived at a big street which was blocked off from traffic, lined with name-brand stores on either side. There were people everywhere in the area, mostly just looking around as we were. We walked a good ways down to another street which had about four blocks of food vendors; what made this strip of vendors special is that they had almost every type of meat you could imagine. While I didn’t try the seahorses (which were 50 kuai a skewer), I did try dog, cat, and scorpion. The scorpions looked like the large yellow ones from back home. They simple took a live scorpion, placed it on a skewer, and dipped in frying oil while it was still squirming around. None of them were very gross or appetizing, but made for a fun experience none the less. On our way back to the subway station we stopped at an Outback Stake-house, were we split a Bloomin’ Onion along with some brownies and ice cream. Granted this was a cheap stop for dessert but was worth the treat.

The vendors on the showcasing their foods.

mmmm...

Today our group visited the Temple of Heaven, which accompanied by the knowledge from our history class was very interesting. The site is quite large, with different sections as you walk through it; it reminded me of more of a giant park than of a traditional single temple building. Traditionally, four times a year the emperor would come the Temple to pay respects / pray to God for good harvest. There was a long and complicated process for which the emperor would progress through, including animal sacrifices and prayers. An interesting fact is that throughout the site there are gates connecting each section, with a main gate in the middle and two slightly smaller ones on each side. The middle one was reserved for Shang Di (or God), and the emperor would walk through the one on the right. The first section had was bordered by a large square wall with a circular platform in the middle. The platform had three levels, each connected by nine stairs. In the middle of the top level there is a large stone, surrounded by nine other stones. These are then surrounded by 18 stones, until you reach the ninth ring which has 81 stones. If you’re starting to see a pattern it’s because many things in the temple have meaning (a lot of times to with the number three), which could include the color of rooftops or the ridges at the bottom of gates to keep demons out (apparently demons can’t cross over a one foot partition, or take curves in a path). The next section had a circular wall around it with a temple building in the middle. The most interesting thing about this section was that if you talked right next to the wall, your voice carried all the way around the someone one the other side; even a whisper could be heard if people around were quite enough. The last section had a long and wide path up to a big area surrounded by a square wall. In the middle there was a large round temple building, also on three levels of circular platforms (a circle inside of a square also holds important meaning). Here we took lots of random photos until exiting out through a side gate. While leaving the site we passed by many people gather throughout the area; much of the outer part of the site resembles a park area, with trees and sidewalks and survivor shops. I would classify most of the people hanging out as ‘senior citizens’, who were singing, dancing, TaiChi-ing, or playing a form of hacky sack together.

Every building is very intricate.

Last test, earthquake, and on to Beijing!

2009-11-05T04:29:00.000-08:00

Today was my last day of class for this semester; I took my history final this morning, and am now left with a marketing paper and internship to complete the semester. The test wasn't extremely difficult, although I did have to think harder than on my other tests. I now have dozens of key figures and events from China's two thousand year history crammed into my head.

Yesterday we had a lecture at 2:30pm, so at 2:31 my roommates and I went running out of our room on the fourth floor to our classroom on the second floor; we had been hanging out in the room and simply lost track of time. I made it down the two flights of stairs pretty quick, and bolted out into the hallway on the second floor. As soon as my first big step hit the tile floor to make the corner, both of my feet were above my head before I knew it and I was on my back sliding down the hall a few feet. I looked behind me (from my spot on the floor) and saw the cleaning lady mopping the the floor a little ways down. As my roommates ran by me, I bounced up and slipped into the classroom, where our professor wasn't anywhere near ready to start. I've managed to not embarrass myself too much this semester, but knew it was inevitable to happen sometime.

This morning around 8:30am while we were studying some for our test there was a small earthquake. It only lasted about 20 seconds and only lightly shook my bed to where it was barely noticeable. Later we found out that it was a 4.4 and was about 25km away. I thought it was neat, but more disappointing than I would have hoped.

Tomorrow we have the entire day off before meeting to head to the train station at 4:30pm. At 6:00pm our train to Beijing will depart. It should be about a twelve hour over night trip. We'll spend four days there, and take another train down to Shanghai. This next week will be purely leisure as I will not have any classes or school work, and will only have to worry about the cold weather in Beijing.

Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses

2009-11-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

Today our group spent the day visiting the site of the Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses. The warriors were built during the Qin Dynasty (220 BC to 206 BC) by emperor Shi Huang di. The Qin dynasty was the first dynasty to really unite all of the kingdoms in China under one empire. The above emperor had the warriors and horses built to help guard his tomb in the after life; his tomb is about a third of a mile away from the actual site, and has not yet been opened. The warriors and horses have not all been excavated yet (for whatever reason they’re taking their time), being first discover in the 70s.

There are three pits containing the soldiers, each one now covered by metal structures to protect them. Each soldier is actually unique, in that they were all crafted with interchangeable parts, and have different clothing, hairstyles, and facial features. Originally they were elaborately painted, but years of being under ground has taken that away on most of them. Also, the soldiers originally wielded weapons, which were taken during a later rebellion to be used as weapons by peasants.

When first arrived we watched a short movie the history of the soldiers in a large room that had screens all the way around, with everyone standing in the middle. The movie looked as if it were made in the 70s, with video and audio that anyone with a basic digital camera could have produced better. After being enlightened by the film, we walked to the first pit of soldiers. We were able to walk around the entire outside of the pit, above the soldiers, reading informational signs posted along the way. The second and third pit were set up more like a museum, with spot lighting and exhibits showcasing different soldiers and weapons recovered and restored.

Below are various pictures from the trip, the type you’ve probably seen in encyclopedias:

Xi'an: Shopping and Fountain-Light shows!

2009-10-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

There is water dripping down my window as I sit here on my bed with the lamp dimmed, trying to recall the day. It’s midnight, and even though we are waking at eight tomorrow to go out on a class ‘field trip’, watching the lighting and listening to Norah Jones has proved very relaxing before bed. I am hopeful that the rain will wash some of the smog from the sky, as it as not rained since I’ve been here; I think tomorrow I will learn the word for rain in Chinese.

Today started off with an eight a.m. quiz over the Song dynasty, which including questions about how the Chinese decided to revitalize Confucianism in order to preserve their culture from foreign influences. After that we had a standard two hour lecture over the next dynasty, then a presentation over the Mongols by Tyler, a fellow student. We were supposed to then watch a movie concerning Chinese history (yesterday we watched Mulan and took notes on what was culturally accurate and inaccurate), but since the projecter we usually had was being used for a French conference, we had the rest of the day off. My roommates and I, along with a couple others, decided to out into town for afternoon; we met up at twelve and head out to the bus stop on a main road, a short ways from campus.

We paid our 1 yuan fee and boarded bus 603, and I rode in the top half of the double-decker for the twenty minute ride into the center of Xi’an (the part with the giant wall around it. In an early post I mentioned that the wall is really big, but since then I’ve found out that it is 19 miles long. It has huge gates on all four sides, which are almost like castles in themselves. The center part of the city has a bell tower and a drum tower, both of which are focal points for everything else; we were going to up into them but found out it cost 30 yuan to do so. Most everyone had a list of things they wanted to buy from the ‘tourist market area’, which has all kinds of stores selling random Chinese stuff. It is funny to go through the stores looking at things to buy, because many of the shops have the same items and start with extremely high prices, for which you barter them down from (if they say 400 yuan for something, you can probably get it for 60 or 80). As soon as we reach the area where all the shops are, I stepped into one and began to look at some different silk ties. After looking around for a few minutes, and not buying anything, I walked down the narrow street to catch up with the rest of my friends, who I assumed would be looking in shops further down. As I made my way around the curved part of the street, I couldn’t see them but decided to keep walking anyways. I past by a couple of young Chinese women standing in the opening of their shops’ booth who we had gotten to know (partially becoming friends with) from the bartering a few days before, and asked them if they had seen my friends pass by. They had not, so I figured they must have gone to get something to eat before embarking on the finicky task of negotiating a cheaper price on set of chopsticks (kuai zi), since we had not eaten lunch yet.

A view of the street with vendors

I decided that I would probably see them around eventually, and went strolling through the streets in the area, observing the different store owners and street vendors going about their daily routine. As I passed by different carts cooking meet and frying tortilla type bread, I tried to decide which vendor my stomach might agree with most. Using my expert skills in the Chinese language (even though most people there speak some English because of the high flow of tourist), I inquired what kinds of meat and vegetables were being fired in flat-bread. The small beef and onion sandwich turned out to be the perfect start to the series of small snacks that made up my lunch. While I was walking slowly on the sidewalk, a woman I passed by asked me (in English) if I like Chinese art, to which I replied that I thought it to be interesting. She then proceeded to tell me about a small exhibit she and her teacher had in a building a little ways down the street; after telling me more about it, she ushered me to follow her to have a look.

Seeing that I had nothing in particular to do, I went with her to a small room on the second floor of the building where many painting covered the walls. She asked me sit and rest while she showed me different paintings she had done; I took bites from another treat I had picked up, and talked to her about my study abroad program as well as things in her life. She told me how the art show was to help raise some money for students at the local Art University; she had many beautiful painting, some on silk and others on rice paper, which were very reasonably priced, but I simply did not need a painting. Some of the paintings portrayed historical people or events, which I was actually able to lightly converse about. She spoke English well, due to her New York tutor, and our conversation lasted about thirty minutes until I went back out to wander the streets.

A cart on the street selling food (of some sort)

I turned down a street busy with locals walking and shopping, and began to walk for at least ten blocks or so. The farther I went from the ‘tourist shopping area’, the more I found local shops where people would go for day to day things. Eventually I turned north up another street and headed towards one of the main roads inside the wall, stopping for a piece of cake at a bakery. Once I made it to “Big West Street” (Da Xi Jie) I proceed back towards the center of town where I first parted from my friends. Right when I walked into the shopping area I met up with them. They’re were just about done shopping (I had been gone for about an hour), so I stepped into a booth selling knock off Polos and jackets, where I bartered down to a price I figured was reasonable. I pretty much go into a bartering situation knowing that I don’t really need what I’m looking at buying, and if the price doesn’t work out it’s no loss. Sometimes I would just barter to have fun talking with the shop owners, because they do it all the time and have all kinds of techniques to try to persuade to buy their stuff, which I then attempt to turn around on them. Once you let them know that you understand how the systems works, there is a kind of a mutual understanding that allows you to joke with them and work out a reasonable deal. I ended up buying a couple of Polos, one with read stripes and one with blue (since Jacklyn has mentioned before that I should wear more colors).

I met up with the others, who were Larry, Aaron, Lucas, John, Brett, and Trinity (who came with the others but joined us). One of the girls in our group had told us that this past summer when watching the travel channel, Samantha Brown had visited a restaurant in the area on her show, so we found it and tried the famous Jiao zi (like dumplings) there. We had plans to go see a popular light show of sorts at a nearby pagoda later that evening at 7:30, so to burn the two hours until then we headed to a nearby Starbucks after the meal. Being one of the only place in China that accepts credit cards in China, we took advantage of not having to spend our ‘trip cash’. I simply got a small hot chocolate and a slice of banana break, which could not have been more appetizing, while the air outside cooled as the sun diapered. We stayed and talked on the couches there for maybe and hour, then headed out to go find the giant pagoda with the light show. Since we had no idea where to go, Aaron asked the Starbucks workers if we could have a small map of the city hanging up, and sure enough they let us take it.

Larry, Me, and Trinity outside the restaurant that was showcased on the travel channel

We walked across the city towards the south side of the wall, then exited through the large gate into the rest of the city. We somehow got separated from Brett and Lucas when they stopped to use an ATM, and since Trin left us after lunch, John, Larry, Aaron and I head off towards the pagoda, following our small tourist map. While walking we past by a long line of people out side the wall, which turned out to be hundreds of people waiting at the bus stop to catch a bus. We walked for a while, asking directions with our map from different people on the street to make sure we were going the right direction. Since we had about an hour til the light show started, we figured there was no need to take a taxi. After walking for quite a long ways we finally thought we were closing in on our destination. We stopped in at Dico’s (a Chinese knock off of KFC, which is really good) so John could use the restroom, so I picked up a chicken burger with fries and a drink. By this time the show was about twenty minutes away, so we started walking much faster to get there. Once there was only a few minutes before our deadline, we began running down the sidewalk trying to make it on time. Our main problem we soon discovered (after running for about 10 minutes) was that instead of being 4 blocks away, were actually more like 40 blocks away; the picture of the pagoda was on the edge of our map because it wasn’t actually on the map, only in direction of where the map ended. I was finally able to eat my meal I bought, which I had been running with, once we realized there was no reason to keep running.

A gate in the city wall... It's a really big wall!

We finally saw spotlights sweeping across the sky and eventually made our way (a long way at that) to the park the pagoda was in. The park was quite large and had hundreds, if not thousands of people walking around. By talking to someone we discovered that another show was to start at 8:30, so we went walking around for thirty minutes. While walking we noticed that down the middle of the park, leading to the pagoda, were large wet concrete areas with lights built into the ground, each about the size of a basketball court; it turned out that the light show was more of a water show with lights. While walking before the show time, we came across a large open area where a hundred or so Chinese women (most were older) were line dancing to music. Of course we took the opportunity to join in and take some pictures of ourselves looking like fools trying to keep up. We soon made our way back to the other side of the park where the light show was to begin. Each basketball-sized area was separated by a ten foot section of long stairs, where we made our way through the large crowd which had gathered around the perimeter, as well as on the stair sections. The show began and for about 20 minutes the fountains shot off powerful spouts of water into the air, with multiple displays of light illuminating them, all choreographed to different songs throughout playing over surrounding speakers. The show was quite impressive and lightened all of our spirits, as it was one of the most entertaining and enjoyably things we had experienced since arriving in Xi’an. Towards the end of the show the jets of water began to go higher into the air, and when combined with the wind picking up the entire crowd (exactly where we were) began to get soaked by the water blowing towards us. Hundreds of us began to quickly make our way away from the where were getting so drenched, and since one of the areas of the fountains was not on for a short part of the show, some people began to cut across it to get to a dryer location. Right as they were half way across, sure enough the jets they were standing on shot into the air, catching one man right in the chin.

The fountain/light show behind me; while it's not that impressive here, actually being there was awesome!

Once the show was over, most of the crowd (which was in most likely over a thousand) made their way toward the main road at the end of the park. At this time is also began to sprinkle, but since we were already fairly soaked we didn’t mind. The road soon turned to slight chaos as people rushed to board buses and hail taxis. We found our selves right in the middle of the struggle to find transportation back to campus. Since we didn’t know the bus systems very well, and could have easily taken a bus the wrong direction, we decide to grab a taxi. Only about one out of every 200 taxis that drove by were empty (or available to get in), so catching was turned out to be a challenge. As one taxi drove by (traffic was slow because of the horde of people crossing the street), Lucas yelled out that the man in the front seat was handing money to the driver to pay. So ran up beside the taxi to lay claim to it, racing many other Chinese men trying to do the same. I managed to attain a hold on the passenger door handle before anyone else, and jogged along side the taxi until it stopped at an appropriate spot to let it’s passenger out, all the while boxing-out anyone who might try to climb in before we could. We jump in, told the driver the name of our university, and he began taking us there. The trip wasn’t too long (only going a couple yuan over the standard starting fare), and on our way the sky began to flash with distant lighting.

I paid the driver eight yuan, and we made our way through the main gate of campus towards our dorm/hotel/where we sleep at night building. While half way across campus the sky began to rain some, eventually turning into the heavy drop now falling outside my window. Once we returned we took showers, played a couple games of Chinese chess, and examined the items others had purchased during the day, each sharing a unique story of how they either go received a great price or a not so good deal. While it ended up being a long day, in no way was it tiresome or wearisome; traveling the streets of Xi’an (the capital for many of ancient dynasties) proved enjoyable. entertaining, and enlightening. I look forward to what the rest of my time here in China holds, and what other adventures lay ahead.

A building near the park that I liked.

First few days in Xi'an

2009-10-27T07:46:00.001-07:00

Well I’ve arrived in Xi’an a couple of days ago, and have been settling in here. We’re staying in hotel type rooms at a university, and while the university is not the newest or most up kept, it has been a nice stay so far. Meals here (in the canteen) are even more inexpensive than in Xiamen. This part of the semester is our ‘history module’, which consists of two weeks of straight history. On Monday we had a quiz over sixty pages of our history text, then a two lecture from a Chinese professor (she studied in the states and speaks great English), then a thirty minute presentation from a student in our group. We’re coving Chinese history from around 1600BC to present day, which is quite a bit of events and people, but I have been surprised how interesting it all is.

Today we had another quiz along with a two lecture over the Qin and Han dynasties. We also received our grades from our first quiz, and mine was a 5.5 out of 5 (with a bonus question). Almost all of our grades are on a 5 point scale, which is then converted to a percent / letter grade. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep that up for the next few days. We then had a thirty minute break before student presentations. Today was mine and Lucas’s turn, and both of ours went well. My presentation was over The Genius of China, in which I covered the inventions that came from the Han dynasty, and showed how they have directly impacted the modern world. I covered about ten different things that originated from ancient China, including improvements in sailing, drilling for oil, the wheelbarrow, and even negative numbers. Part of our grade for presentations is a handout, for which mine was four pages with pictures of each invention.

We’re located about a twenty minute bus ride from the actual city of Xi’an which is surrounded by an extremely impressive wall. The wall looks to be at least a hundred feet high and probably forty wide. The walk would probably take two or three hours to walk around the entire way. The city inside the wall is really nice and has a lot of places to shop for stuff. It also has more upscale places, such as Starbucks, and really nice parks with fake trees and grass. We mostly spent our time looking around the Muslim quarters, which is an area of town that has a lot of vendors and street food.

Duyun and The Ranch

2009-10-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Today I awoke in my Xiada dorm at 5:00am and took a 5 min shower to wake up. Me and the roommates gathered our bags and made our way down the campus gate where our bus to the airport would meet us. Our group loaded up on the bus with our luggage underneath, and drove a short ways to pick up our director, Dr. Jay, who was waiting at a bus stop. As we drove the city was seemed near empty with no one on the streets. After driving across the Xiamen island for forty minutes we arrived at the airport where we checked our luggage in and waiting for our flight to Gui Yang, where we would meet our contact for the next few days of our trip.

This part of the semester is known as our ‘service project’. While groups in past semesters have done things such as teach English at a local Xiamen school, our director spoke with his supervisor in Washington D.C, and received permission to take our group on a trip somewhere he had never been before, stating that we ‘were a bit more adventurous then usual.’ Going into the trip we did not have exact details of what lied ahead of us, except for a for vague elements, including no electricity or running water at the rural location and that we would be building some type of road. So we boarded our plane at Xiamen airport, beginning our adventure. Since we would go straight from our service project to our history tour, we packed enough for a three and a half week trip. For domestics flights in China (at least at smaller airports) you take a bus from the terminal, and board the plane out on the tarmac by stairs. Our flight, for whatever reason, first went north to Chang Sha, which took about an hour. This was only a twenty minute stop, which was enough time to go into the airport and stretch our legs. Then we got back on for our three hour flight to Gui Yang (pronounced Gway Yawng). Once we landed, we walked down the stairs from the plane where I was met by cool, crisp, wet air, which was a sharp contrast to the warm climate of Xiamen that I’ve been in this whole semester. Where as usually going into fall weather the days would gradually get colder, here I went straight from warm weather to a feeling of late fall. Once we recoved our checked baggage we met our contact at the departure gate of the airport, a tall American man who’s name is Tim. We went out with him to a restaurant a short walk from the airport, where we ate lunch. We split up into two groups and sat around two tables; Tim was at our table which let me get to know him a little bit. He told us some of his story and what he is doing in China. He also mentioned things about how the province we were in was one of the poorest in China, as well as the city we were going to was one of the poorest in the province. We then took a two hour bus ride through rural China to a city called Duyun (doo-yun), which is where Tim and his family lived.

Tim and his wife Debbie have both been in China for twenty years (and actually have a really neat story of how they actually got married in China). They have two kids, Mark who is 14 and Rianna who is 16, both of which we got to hang out with the past few days. About fifteen years ago they moved to Duyun to teach. While it would be difficult to explain their whole story here, teachers in China can only teach for so long until they must return home for a couple years, so they ended up started a ranch for beef cattle, called the Thousand Hills Ranch. Before the ranch, while they were still teaching, they also started a program called 3E, which stands for Education and Economic support for Ethnic minorities (their website for basic info is 3edevelopment.com). We found out about the ranch and that it would be where we would be staying for the next few days. The 3E program was set up to help kids with scholarships for school (from elementary up through college). Also, at the ranch aside from raising beef cattle, they also have Christian focused camps during the summer for Chinese families, as well as foreigners (US, Australia, Europe), to come relax and have fun. One of the camps is also for high school seniors who have been receiving the scholarship, in order to prepare them for college through sessions covering time management, financial management, studying, etc. The ranch and the 3E program essentially allows them to connect with the people in the villages around the area, impacting their lives directly.

The bus ride wasn’t too bad, and even watching Con Air dubbed over in Chinese was kind of fun; we arrived in Duyun and were met by Debbie in their pickup truck, and loaded our bags in the back of the truck and took taxis to the hotel we would stay at for the night. Then went out to eat and explore on our own; the town is relatively small and was neat to walk around. There is a river going through it with several walking bridges across it. There is also a street called ‘stone street’ which is a restored version of the ancient design. The street curved down a hill and was lined with intricate deep red wooden store fronts. While walking around Aaron, Larry, and I stopped and watch some men playing Chinese chess at a table on the sidewalk. After watching for a bit they discovered we knew how to play (learning how was one of the requirements for our contemporary society class because it’s so popular). One of the men gave up his seat and ushered Aaron to sit down and play, so he began playing the Chinese man still sitting. It turns out that even though we have played each other quite a bit in the dorm room, the Chinese men are still a thousand times better at it. Later that night I played another man, and every move I would make he would in turn show me why my move wouldn’t be a good choice, and then show me a better move. He still won with no problem.

Me watching Aaron getting beat in Chinese chess... It's fun but tough!

While we were walking around we found some canvas shoes that were army-olive green with black rubber soles. We each bought a pair because for fifteen kuai, allowing me to save my tennis shoes from being ruined at the farm. We went back and met the group for dinner, where we were joined by a couple of young guys from south Carolina, who were teaching English there at the schools (Zak and Matthew). Later that night they took a few of us out walking around the town, where we sampled street foods and explored the night market.

Me walking on the stone street.

The next morning we met up downstairs of the hotel, and were met by Tim and Debbie, as well as Julian who is a New Zealand guy who has moved permanently to Duyun with his wife. The family owns a small truck and a SUV, which along with the van they rented, carried our group out to the ranch. The trip was about a hour and a half. We winded up paved roads for a about forty minutes, until we came to a village where we turned onto roads consisting of stone and mud. Since the seat in the back of the van was broken, four of the guys got out and road in the bed of the pickup since the roads are so bumpy. We left most of our luggage locked in their office in town, only bringing a backpack each. We wound up the mountain roads through three villages, until we reached the ranch at the top of the mountains. The ranch is about 1000 acres and has an interesting story of how it was acquired. They have three structures on the property, along with barns for the live stock. The main building is a house they have made with a large dinning room and kitchen and living area. The second building is where our group for the week; while the power lines to it have been down for a couple of years, the building was pretty nice. It is two stories built into the side of the mountain with two big balconies and a large living room with couches. There is a bedroom down stairs, and two up stairs, which contain a bunch of bunk beds. They have a lot of sheets and pillow cases which they keep washed so we had clean bedding for our stay. The ‘lodge’ has a concrete to collect rainwater, which provided water to flush the toilets (we had water coolers for drinking). The roof was tin, so when it rained at night you could hear every drop that fell from the sky.

The group walking the road from our lodge to the main house.

The last building is one big empty room for activities (especially on rainy days). It has a arched metal roof and was probably about 100 ft long. This is where our service project was for the week. The path from the road to the entrances of the activity building was dirt and would get quite muddy when it rained. So our job was to dig out the dirt down to the bed rock (about a foot and a half or so) so it would be a clean path. We spent three days digging out dirt and moving large rocks as well. Once we had the dirt removed, we poured concrete, with the supervision of the Chinese ‘ranch hands’, who are men from the nearby village who work on the farm. We mixed the concrete on the ground and complete two porches, and a ramp from the road to the bedrock.

We're moving rocks to make a base for the concrete ramp. We had already dug a ton of dirt away!

The terrain of the ranch, along with the overcast weather, made me feel as if I was traveling in Ireland. There was hardly a flat piece of land, as all of it was rolling hills/mountains. They had stone walls, which were built with the help of the village men, to act as fences (they also had a lot of barb wire fences up). There is a main road constructed from stone that winds up over the steep hills to the different buildings. It was about a five minute walk along this road from our lodge to the main house. Debbie cooked meals for us for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; which proved to be some of the best meals I’ve eaten in a long time. For lunch the first day we had a Chinese ‘hot pot’, then for dinner we had hamburgers with French fires. The rest of the meals went as following (this just what I had but there where more choices):

Breakfast - peanut butter sandwich or cereal or noodles, Lunch – spaghetti, Dinner – pumpkin or potato soup, Breakfast – same, Lunch – hot pot, Dinner on the last night – a combo of leftovers from the other meals, along with delicious homemade doughnuts for desert. One of my favorite treats was to make a hot cup of ‘Russian Tea’ on a cold morning or evening. The mixture consisted of half orange tang powder and Lipton instant tea, along with some cinnamon and clove spices.

Here we're playing spoon (actually 'chopsticks') after dinner one evening

The second night we were there we had a camp fire a short ways from the house. The air was cold making the warm fire really enjoyable. We sat around talking for probably two or three hours, and after a little while they brought out left over supplies for us to all make a smore each. I spent at least ten minutes roasting my mallow to perfection. Eventually the clouds began to clear and you could see every star that had been placed in the sky.

On the last day Rianna guided us on a hike out to a water fall on the property. The hike winded along trails through the mountains for about two or three miles, many times proving steep and windy. I had an image in my head of a little stream falling maybe five feet over some rocks, but when we arrived and looked over a rock ledge into the hole beneath, where a flow of water was falling at least a hundred feet. The bottom looked like an oasis from a movie with thick green grass surrounding a deep pool of clear water. We spent about an hour at the top playing in the water and taking pictures. We took a different way back through the mountains, which was slightly shorter but a challenge none the less.

The waterfall is in the background. Here it doesn't look that impressive or high, but it was!!!

I'm standing at the edge of the top of the waterfall... don't worry it was safe.

While we where there to help by clearing the road for them, Tim really stressed the importance of relaxing and refreshing our spirits. In the mornings we sang worship songs, and at different time when hanging out after meals I got to hear a lot from Tim and Debbie of some of the things they have learned along with their stories. I have hardly even explained the past few days, but know that even I typed twice as much I wouldn’t be able to convey the experience of going there. Two of the mornings when I woke up there was a solid cloud of fog surrounding everything at the ranch. Walking up the stone road, past the cows and stone walls, and up the rock path to the house was amazing. I could only see a few feet in front of me, and the air was crisp and cool. It is somewhere I could definitely return in the future, but who knows…!

Movies and Holistic Medicine

2009-10-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

Every Friday we eat lunch at the CSP office then watch a movie together on a projector. Each movie relates to intercultural communication in some way, followed by us discussing different aspects of the film. Today’s showing was Anna and the King which I enjoyed very much; it was the version with Jodie Foster, who always makes great movies. Since the entire movie is in a cross-cultural setting, it was easy to relate it to being here in China. Not to mention it is a great movie, and even though I remember seeing at some point in my life, it has a really interesting plot.

Right after the movie seven of us from the group went with the program director’s wife to a traditional Chinese medicine place to receive healing for our many ailments. From what she told us, the company is the oldest in China, founded around (a long time ago), and until the communist took over, only served the royal family. The place we went to was on the third floor but the entire building has herbs, potions, teas, and other traditional medicinal products. When we all treated in a room that held four people and just took turns as soon as someone was done. You go in an the doctor asks what your problems are, and through the director’s wife I told him that my upper back and shoulders were sore, and that I might be starting to get a cold (my nose was a little runny). Next I laid down on my back with my head facing into the room. An assistant proceed to massage and work my shoulders and neck by reaching under me. From what I could tell he wasn’t even trying to massage the muscle, but was digging in as to massage my bones! He did this for some time. He would do different things such as pressing into the back of my neck while rotating my head. After a bit, he had me flip on to my stomach where he continued to work on my shoulders, neck, and upper back. He cracked my back by doing a (not too rough) circular motion with his hands. He would also press into one side of my shoulder while twisting my arm up above me.

He then asked me to take off my shirt and lay on my stomach. He got some round glass balls, with an opening on them, that would be stuck to my back. To do this he took a big swab thing and lit it on fire and rolled it around in the glass. Then he twisted the bulb on to my skin where it suctioned like crazy. Apparently its draws out toxins that are causing pain in that area and helps the flow of Chi in your body. All I could tell was that it was sucking my entire back in the ball! It felt a little uncomfortable at first, but I simply put some chill music on my ipod (really jacklyn’s ipod) and zoned out. After a few minutes of this the doctor put in acupuncture needles. He placed one on both of my shoulders and one behind each of my knees. The ones in my shoulders I didn’t feel that much, but the ones behind my knees sent a shock down to my toes and up my back. It didn’t hurt per say, but was defiantly not too comfortable. I laid there for about ten minutes until he took the needles and bulbs off of me. I was told not to rub where the bulbs had been and also wait to take a shower until six hours later. Something about it messing up my heat balance and Chi. The bulbs left some pretty dark rings, which I guess is all the toxins it pulled to the top of my skin. For 70 kuai ($10 US) it was definitely worth the experience. I’m thinking about starting up my own holistic traditional medicinal shop back in the states now, and maybe mixing in some Miracle-Mist treatments as well.

The Ancient City of Chongwu

2009-10-25T05:27:00.000-07:00

This post is a little old but I just now finished it:

Last weekend I took a trip, along with 4 other guys in our program (Lucas, Larry, Brad, and Tyler), to a city called Chongwu. We had all been talking about taking a weekend trip somewhere, and to not have any plans for when we arrived. We asked our director where a fascinating destination for us might be, and he suggested this trip. He had not been there in several years, but did email us a basic guide as how to get there and what to expect. As we found out, this guide was more comparable to perplexing scavenger hunt instructions.

We woke up Saturday morning and packed our backpacks with a couple of things (really just a toothbrush and some extra cash) and took off. We decided that instead of navigating the bus system across Xiamen to the bus station, we would take a taxi there. With one in the front and four of us squeezed in the back, it was a nice ride there, on our way going through one of the world’s windiest and most complex tunnel systems ever. We arrived at the bus station and walked toward a building that had hundreds of people in lines coming out of the door. We randomly picked one of the 30 lines (a lot of the trip was based on random decisions) and slowly made our way to ticket window. Tyler purchased all of our tickets by showing the characters for where we wanted to go (supplied in the directors email) and we paid him back. We were lucky we decided to take the taxi there because we only had a 20 minute wait for our bus, instead of the next bus which left three hours later. We made our way through the bus terminal and boarded our bus. The bus was a large charter type bus, with almost no one else on it. For only 44 kuai ($6 US) we weaved our way across China’s country side on the three hour ride, having the entire back of the bus to ourselves. You would think that a trip like this would include mixed scenery, from woods and fields to the urban view when passing through cities, but due to the population every mile of the trip displayed some type of construction or housing or other signs of people.

When our bus finally arrived in the city, it stopped seemingly randomly in front of some stores on the side of the street (the streets are all lined with stores of some kind) and let us off. Following the guide which told us to purchase return tickets right when we got there, we found the bus station which was a tiny little store front that had a lady inside at a small desk. We bought our tickets and asked what direction was Chungwu. Since there is a large modern city here, the ancient part was further down the coast. We started walking in the direction she told us and found a harbor that had a bunch of fishing boats which looked like they were 40 years old and shouldn’t be floating (as there was also many boats which weren’t floating completely). As we were walking we came across a woman squatting on the side of the sidewalk who looked as if she was native American and was picking at some grass. The reason she seemed quite odd to us was because she was completely naked! Upon this sight we looked around to see if this was weird to anyone else, but no one appeared to notice. We decided that she probably had some sort of mental condition so no one bothered her decision to travel in public naked. We walked around the harbor and eventually came to a large gate structure, which our guide mentioned as the entrance towards the wall. We walked up where the wall was located and I was confronted with a surprise. I had in my head pictured a wall that was maybe four feet high and in crumbles, but the wall around the city looked to be thirty feet high and as solid as the day it was built.

We walked around the outside of it for a little bit until we found a small doorway sized entrance that people were using to go in and out. We went in and began walking through the houses (which were really just a pile of random little buildings thrown everywhere creating one connected maze of a structure) deeper into the city. Since there was not one path that went for more than thirty feet before changing direction, we had no idea where we were going. As we walked we would occasionally see people doing chores, or old men playing some form of dominoes, and little children playing together. We made our way through the city to the other side of the wall were we decided to climb onto it to get a view of where we were. The wall on the outside had one big straight side to it, but the inside had three levels, each about five feet wide. The levels were like giant stairs to the top, were a dirt path went along the edge of the entire wall. The top of the wall had a typical ‘castle’ construction, with big blocks sticking up every five feet. Once on the wall we could look across the city and see that the wall circled the entire way around (probably making the wall about six miles long). We walked the wall’s path up the a light house that was constructed into a corner of the wall. The wall is located a short distance from the ocean, so the view in all directions was amazing. Also, something really great that we noticed that made walking around really enjoyable (including the whole trip in general) was that the entire time we were there we did not come across any other foreigners. Unlike visiting places like the Great Wall, which are frankly tourist traps, this place had zero foreign tourist.

We continued to walk around the wall coming to a big gate structure built into the wall (it turns out there is about five of these around the wall), and tried to make our way to the beach. There were people there who stopped us and asked to see our tickets (I knew enough Chinese to understand ‘ticket’) in order for us to exit to the beach. By this point we just want to find a way out of the wall, but since they wouldn’t let us out here we made our way around to another gate that was facing more toward the inland and exited the city with no trouble. However, I was startled when a lady (for some religious reason I’m sure) threw a pack of black cats into a fire pit right when I walked past her.

Once outside we tried to walk to the beach in front of the wall, but there was a gate across the road that led to it. By asking the attendant (and using inference clues) we found out that part of the beach was actually an exhibit of hundreds of stone carvings and cost twenty kuai to enter. Instead we decided to walk along the outside of the wall in search of something to eat. None of us had eaten that day (except for some snacks on the bus) and were ready to have a meal. While we walked we also talked about where we would sleep for the night, since we had made no plans before taking the trip. Brad had read on the internet before we left that there was a beach where we could rent tents but we had no idea where. We walked for probably thirty minutes around the wall until we ended up were started. We stopped on the side of the street and asked a motorcycle taxi where we could eat (there were men driving motorcycles around everywhere, which had little taxi licenses plates on the front fender). Once we started talking to the one man, ten other taxis pulled up to where we were, pressing us to get on their motorcycle. We weren’t really planning on getting a ride, but simply wanted directions. I then just asked guy we were talking to “chi fan”, which means eat meal, and he nodded his head ‘no problem’ and motioned us to jump on. We each hopped on the back of a bike, and we zipped across the city, weaving around people and cars the whole. None of us were expecting to get to enjoy an amusement ride in this strange place, but were surprised by how fun the ride was. They dropped us off at a small restaurant which only had a few small tables inside, and after paying the each driver five kuai (which made it a pretty cheap thrill) we went into the store. We all tried to order fired rice, but after some confusion, it turns out that a this Chinese restaurant only had enough rice for two plates. Our question was What kind of Chinese restaurant runs out of rice? Instead some of us ordered fried noodles (fired noodles or rice is usually a safe bet because almost any place in china can cook it, and since everything gets so hot in the wok any germs on the veggies or meat is killed). At the end of our meal, I looked up the words “rent” and “tent” in my phrase book, and asked the people working these words. After a few minutes of caveman communication, I got my question across and they wrote down on a card some Chinese characters for me. We assumed this was the location were we could get the tents to sleep in for the night, so we went to the street and flagged down some more motorcycles.

They acted like they knew where we wanted to go so we all jumped on the back of a bike and took off. There is a giant intersection in the middle of town that has no stop lights or any order whatsoever. When pulling up to the intersection, the motorcycle I was on was cut off by a truck, which we bumped off of, turning us to drive through some fruit stands. But we caught up to the rest of the group with no problem and kept going on our way. The taxis ended up taking us to the same gate that we tried to get into earlier, but did not want to pay at the time. We asked the lady in the office window “rent tent” and she pointed into the beach area, so we figured this was the right direction. We bought our tickets and started making our way through the stone sculptures. I was actually surprised how interesting all the sculptures actually were, and we took a bunch of photos of us climbing on them. As we went I would occasionally ask someone ‘rent tent’ which allowed us to narrow down where we where supposed to be.

Finally I approached a man, and after saying ‘rent tent’, he acted like he had been waiting for me all day. He led us to his little shop where he had a bunch of three person tents stacked up. We found out the price (40 kuai each) and paid for two; he then took them out on the side walk and began setting them up for us using make-shift pvc poles. We carried them down to the sand as he guided us where to place them. We placed them about 50ft from the water, and since it was high tide, we had plenty of distance. The beach we were on curved for about 300 yards creating a small cove, with large rocks on either end. We then took off our shoes and shirts, and went down to the water. Tyler jumped in and started to swim, but before anyone else could decide to get in a policeman came and told us to get out. Since swimming wasn’t allowed, we went climbing on some rocks at the end of the beach, a short ways from our tents. It was just about sunset so we took some different pictures on the rocks.

After it got dark we went walking around the beach where we were approached by a lady selling cheap fireworks out of a basket. We decided that fireworks were a perfect way to enjoy the trip, so we bargained for a few different boxes. After lighting several small bottle rockets, and some roman candles, we lit off some mortar-shell type ones that were all connected by one fuse. We thought they would simply send sparkles up into the air, but we were surprised when they all blew off with a loud bang and whistle!

After the entertainment of the cheap explosives wore off, we decided to go to bed. After brushing our teeth with bottled water, we found comfortable spots in our tents. Larry and Brad slept in one and Tyler, Lucas, and I slept in the other. It turns out that 11:00pm to 1:00am was the exact time that people came to randomly scream into the ocean or play their trumpet on the rocks behind us, or even for the fireworks lady to light off samples in front of our tent. There weren’t a lot of Chinese visiting the beach, yet a consistent flow of people continued through the night. After finally falling asleep for what seemed like a few minutes, a man appeared outside of our tent at 6:00am to wake us up. Apparently the man that rented us the tents has somewhere to go that morning and needed to lock up his tents. Since 6:00am is not really early for Chinese, this was understandable and we were able to laugh about getting evicted so early. We had fruit for breakfast and then went climbing on the rocks again on our way back through the statue garden. We made our way through town and back to the small bus station where we successfully changed our tickets to an earlier time (from 1pm to 10am) since we had gotten up so early, and waited around in local shops until it arrived. This bus was slightly more full than our first one, but we still managed seats to ourselves in the back.

We slept most of the way back to Xiamen and simply caught a city bus from the bus station to the university (I just now typed ‘Xiada’ before changing it to ‘the university’ because that is how it’s referred to here in chinese, which is short for Xiamen Daxue or Xiamen University). So whenever I refer to the university I say “Sha! Da!”. We made it back with plenty of time to get ready for the next week, and surprisingly weren’t too tired. The trip was a great success in that none of us knew very much Chinese or even where we were going, but were able to figure everything out, and everything worked our smoothly for us. We kept telling ourselves the entire trip how surprised we were that nothing had gone wrong yet, and were just waiting for something to not go our way, but that never happened. It was a blast and definitely a great experience!

Busy Streets and Good Food

2009-09-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Food in the on campus canteen is quite good since there are individual vendors to chose from, but the restaurant Brad and I went to today was a nice change. Only about a 10 min walk from our dorms, the place we went to was down a small street not far from the west gate of campus. When you pass by a restaurant on the street, there is typically someone standing at the door patiently waiting to welcome you in, who will open the sliding door and show you in. The small restaurant was fairly full, so we were sat across from a Chinese man who was eating at a table by himself. This was interesting to me because in the states you would never be seated with random people you do not know. After we were half way through our rice and sweet-and-sour pork, the man left and a women on her son were seated across from us. The full plate meat, rice, and vegetables was only 10 kuai, which is about $1.30 US (pretty cheap to fill you up). Another thing that is different about meals in China, is that there is not too much emphasis on a drink with your meal. Usually the small bowl of soup (mostly just a broth, with maybe some chives and seaweed) serves as your drink, or sometimes a small (about the size of a shot) glass of hot water. While most places have drinks for sale, I just buy a bottled tea off the street on my way back. It is also common for Chinese to pay for their friends when they go out to eat, or at least one person pays and they will split it up later, since meals are mostly family style. So when foreigners began to split up the ticket while in the restaurant it’s not unusual for the locals to see this as weird. Below is a picture of a fish we ordered last night at dinner…

I have discovered that once here for even a short time you become quite competent at timing traffic. What I mean by this is that when crossing the street there is often no such thing as pedestrian right of way. If the car or bus is bigger than the bike, then the bike better get out of the way, and if the person is smaller the bike, they better move quickly. When crossing the four lane road outside of campus, you must look down both ways to gather a general idea of how much traffic there is at that time. Then you must look left to judge the distance of the car in the nearest lane, while also taking into account that the car in the next lane needs to be even farther back. After you find that perfect break in the traffic, you can make your way to the middle, where you have to judge if you either have a chance to go the whole way, or need to wait patiently in the middle of the street while buses zip by on either side of you. The best thing to do is cross with a small group of others who are also navigating their way across. While all of this does require you full attention to your senses and can be a complex process, it becomes relatively natural after a few times. Today while walking back I notice that I was timing the traffic both directions and calculating my chances for death, while simply having a conversation and not even realizing how innate it had become.

A small cultural incident happened to me today had nothing to do with the Chinese. A couple days ago I rode home on a bus across from another foreign student from Belgium. She talked to me about where I was from and that she does a lot of horse riding back home, and even though I try to avoid other foreigners here, it was interesting to hear about her country. The incident happened today when I was in the lobby of our classroom building reading for the next class and she came over to me to say hi. She came up to me and started to lean close to me (like for a hug) so I tried to divert by shaking her hand, but then she started as if to tell me a secret. It turns out that in Belgium it is custom to greet someone with a European ‘fake kiss’, it didn’t take me too long to figure out what was happening, but was briefly awkward to be caught off guard. I asked her about it and she told me how some places in the country do the kiss on each side or sometimes three times. Like I said, nothing to do with Chinese but I thought it was odd enough to mention.

Church and Classes (and the mosquito that just bit me)

2009-09-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm writing outside on some steps right now because this is kinda my only choice for internet this late. While it is rather cool outside tonight, I have learned that Chinese mosquitos are comparable to ones from Texas, and can leave a large whelp on one's toe!

On sunday we visited a Three Self Church on a small island a few hundred yards from Xiamen island. The island is know as Gulangyu and is a very popular sight to go see when in Xiamen. It has a maze of narrow streets that contain no organization what so ever, with many attractions such as piano and organ museums, aquariums, houses built by wealthy chinese who have moved back to China.

The church was all in chinese, but was interesting to experience none the less. With everything we hear in the US about the church here in China, I found that most if it was not true at all. While a lot of things are probably true up closer to the capitol, the church here in the south seems to be as 'free' as one in the states. There are even house churches here in Xiamen that are well known and operate without any trouble. I am by no means an expert on the subject, and have not really seen that much of the church in China, but after visiting the three-self (which often has been said to compromise the bible) the people are very faithful and genuine believers. While interesting, I decided not to stay and look around on the island too much but went and ate with a few of the others.

This week is one of our busier weeks as far as classes go. On Wednesday we are meeting our business professor across town (about a 45 min bus ride) to go tour a factory that day. He complemented our class to our director the other day, mentioning that we ask all kinds of really good questions (something chinese students don't do too much). He is an extremely interesting man who, though slightly older, has a strong vocabulary in english and knows everything there is about business in China, and the rest of the world as well. I enjoy this class a lot as we always cover interesting topics and he is such a good professor.

Also, Trinity (a girl in our group) has taught me a basic scale on the violin. She brought it so she wouldn't get rusty, so I decided I would take advantage of it and learn a new talent. As for now I'm having a lot of trouble keeping a box shape with my arm holding the bow, and continuing to move the bow when switch strings... But I am able to hear if my fingers are making the right note or not! It's sounds a lot less like a dying cat, and more like a 5 yr old playing!

And just to keep you informed on cultural lessons, if you watch the chinese they will never set their backpack on the ground or floor and usually always take their shoes off before going into their room or apartment. This is because most people here spit on the ground, so anything that touches it is possibly really gross.

~matt

Weekend with new friends

2009-09-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday and Friday night there is something called English corner, where Chinese students can go to practice English as well as a place for us foreigners to make Chinese friends. Usually there has been mostly graduate students or even graduated students who are older (most of which are fine to talk too but do not always make the greatest peers to hang out with). On Friday night I was lucky enough to begin talking with a group of younger students who were all interesting and spoke fairly great English. Because we’re not supposed to really make Chinese friends with the opposite sex for obvious reasons of issues that could arise (i.e. if I started dating a Chinese girl then dumped her she might get some guys to beat the crud out of me), I to talk mostly to guys. One guy I talked to, who’s self proclaimed English name is Gin, was really interesting so I got his phone number and asked what he was doing the next day. Usually I don’t give out my number because it’s asking to get barraged by unwanted calls and text if too many people get your number. He said he would love to meet me the next day (Saturday) to play ping pong in the gym or something.

He lives about a forty minute bus ride away from campus because he graduated last year and now has a job with China Telecom. He is 21 and still has a lot of friends on campus so he comes back quite a bit. I slept in til about 10:00am and gave him a call when I woke up. He asked if he could meet me at 1:00pm so I went and had brunch and got some reading done. I met him by the west gate and he mentioned to me that the gym building doesn’t open until 2:30, so I told him I wanted to stop by the post office, so we went to do that. On our way we saw some men on the side of the street creating animals and insects and flowers out of reeds or thin leaves. The creations were quite intricate and well made so I considered buying them. They were 10 Kuai each, but Gin talked them down to 12 Kuai for two. So I picked out a grasshopper and a flower. I thought the grasshopper looked really neat and I figured buying a flower was like getting a flower for Jacklyn (even though it’ll probably be dried dust by the time it makes it home).

Gin and I went back to campus and went decided to go hang out in my room for a little bit to cool off some. I showed him a lot of the pictures and video I have on my computer and we talked about a bunch of different things, from kinds of music to the wedding he was going to the next day (he had almost forgot until I showed him a part of a wedding video). At 2:30 we went over to the gym and got a table. Since we got there a little early there was almost no one there yet, but after a while the place was full. He had been telling the whole day that he was not too good at ping pong, but that must have been by Chinese standards because he beat me every time. We spent a lot of time just hitting the ball around, and I was able to learn how to hold the handle in Chinese way, and even how to spin the ball crazy on serves! Maybe I’ll start hustling ping pong table when I get back to the states.

Three of his friends met us while we were at the gym (one guy, two girls). After about 2 hours or so of playing we went to the bus stop outside of the west campus gate. On our way there we stopped at a store with a window on the street and got fruit smoothies. Gin paid for mine (since I was ‘his guest’ there was no way that he would let me pay), which was made from fresh mangos and bananas. We caught the bus and went around to the other campus (about a 10min ride). The university has multiple campuses, but one is connected by a tunnel through a small mountain/hill, which was just easier for us to take a bus around to. We went all talked the time on the way to the restaurant to eat dinner, with Gin translating some of the more difficult things. We went into the restaurant and walked up some tiny wooden stairs to a table on the second floor. He mentioned that this place had a really good soup, so we all got a bowl of soup, with a bowl of rice, and some dishes in the middle for all of us to eat from (including Chinese cabbage, and some meat with peppers). The soup I ordered had mushrooms and some type of meatballs.

We ordered after another one of their friends joined us, and dinner lasted for about an hour. We talked about all kinds of things, and I really enjoyed hanging out with them because they were all such good friends. They grew up near each other and were classmates in middle school (high school). After we finished eating (which Gin again paid for me) we caught a bus back towards the other campus were one of the girls had a small apartment near the university. We took a narrow stair case up four floors to the apt, which was not necessarily located in the nicest set of buildings, but what kid our age can afford something too nice? We all sat down the living room, which was about the size of a large bathroom, and talked and joked for a little bit. They asked me to show them a card game I know, so after a quick card trick, I taught them how to play what we call ‘Egyptian Ratscrew’. They all picked it up real quick and we all got into it. It’s a game where you try to win all the cards and if there is a double laid down you can slap and take the cards. For about two hours we laughed at the intense game as we all would at one point be out but eventually slap back into the game. It reminded me of playing cards with friends back home and I enjoyed it a lot. The game lasted for probably about two hours (we were using two decks) so around 9:00pm I said my goodbyes and went back to the room.

I had fun getting to know Gin and his friends as well, and will probably hang out with him sometime soon (or when I am not so swamped with homework). Sorry that I forgot to take more pictures during the day, I'll start getting some more. I hope things in the states are going good; I heard that fort-worth had a lot of rain lately? Let me know :)

~Matt

First few days in Xiamen

2009-09-16T07:47:00.001-07:00

So I’ve been in China for a few days now and it’s been great. I’ve found that simply coming in with a slight knowledge of the language has helped immensely. If anything, simply knowing the sounds of Mandarin makes speaking new words much easier, where as some of the others in our group are still having trouble pronouncing number and words like “thank you” correctly. Sometimes it makes me cringe because they use the words they know so confidently in situations, but are so far from saying them correctly.

There has been some free time but for the most part there is always something to go see or do. While there is quite a bit of reading and assignments, I don’t think the classes will be too difficult, but maybe more challenging. Much of the coursework involves discovering how the Chinese think, encouraging us to personally find out why the Chinese do certain things the way they do and what their opinions are on things. It has become profoundly evident how little I know about China.

When we first arrived our entire group was on the fourth floor in double rooms, comparable to a dorm back home. But within the first couple days we were moved to different rooms on different floors. Apparently the Overseas Education College (OEC) here on campus, which is who all the foreign students here go through, has contracts with other countries guaranteeing students single or double occupancy rooms here. So for our situation, which seemed to be stupid and annoying at first, the college was actually being nice enough to us to simply rearrange us instead of kicking us out completely. I actually like the set I am in know more than the first room. Everyone in our group is now in four occupancy rooms on different floors. When you first walk into a room there is a small hallway with a bathroom, then there are two rooms connected with a door that hold 2 people each. I enjoy the three guys I’m living with and have gotten to know them a lot already.

A couple nights ago a few of us went walking around to practice our Chinese and see things. We ended up walking around the lake in the middle of campus and came across a group of guys at the bottom of a small amphitheatre-type place by the water. They had a stereo with flashing lights going and as we got closer we realized that they were street/break dancing. We thought it was great so we sat down on the steps and watched them for a little bit. It turned out they were actually really amazing at it. After we decided that I should go down and jump in and start dancing with them. Instead I went down and asked if they could show me how to do one of the moves they had just done. After messing around for a little bit trying to do some of the things they were doing, I got my friend Lucas to go down and dance for us. One of the funniest things I have seen in a long time was Lucas doing crazy and random dance moves while we all cheered him on. He had no idea what he was doing but thought he was great at it. The Chinese guys said that he was doing a style they had never seen before, but really a style no one had seen before. After we decided that we had embarrassed Americans enough we went on our way walking around campus, with Lucas asking us the whole way if his dancing really was good.

I have found multiple Chinese dishes that are always a safe bet to be a tasty and filling meal, but have also found several that I doubt I try again very soon. There are a couple canteens (cafeterias) on campus where I usually eat. There is a particular process for getting your food though; first you have to go up to one of the vendors and see what it is you want. Since we don’t have cards to pay with, you then find out the price and go to a cash register counter across the room. You tell the lady (in Chinese) how much and which vendor, and she then prints out a receipt that you use to pay for your food. The food here is pretty cheap and also really good. A plate of fried noodles (which has small pieces of egg, meat, lettuce, peppers, and spices stir fried with noodles) is only 7 yuan (pronounce “yewh-en”), and the serving is enough for two or three people. That’s about $1 dollar for a whole meal.

Yesterday me and three other guys went running on the beach. Since the ocean is only a couple hundred feet from campus, we can see it from our sixth story room window. The beach is fairly clean, although I probably won’t go swimming in the water, and there is a new board walk along the water above the parts of the beach that is just large rocks. So half of the run was on the sand and the other half winded above the rocks with the water crashing beneath. The weather here has been fairly humid but will hopefully cool off pretty quick.

We just now had our second day of Tai Chi, which a few of us business concentration people are taking for fun. It was actually less Tai Chi and martial arts type things today. By the end of it all of our legs were shaking. The stances you make as you go through it are basically a low squat. And as you transition to different punches you are just shifting your weight on your legs but still staying very low. I don’t think I am going to beat anybody up with my impressive Kung Fu skills, but I’ll be in shape! Every now and then he pulls up front to go through one of the moves to help show the group good and bad things. He pulled me up a couple times, and even though I needed to shift my weight more on one of the stances, he said (in Chinese accent) “He have lots of spirit in his eyes, very good”. I think it’s either because I take on the face of an ancient warrior preparing for battle, or maybe because it hurts so much to stay that low.

This morning we visited the factory of a company called Meixia (May-Sha). We left this morning at 8:30 on a bus and got there around 9:00am. We went up stairs to the main office where we met the president of the company, an American man who moved here about 20 years ago. We sat around a conference table where he told us his story of how he came to China. He has a really interesting story about how he came to the point he is at now, and how living his faith and going to work has become two in the same. He gave us a tour of the entire factory, where they make some unique stain glass things, some poly-resign bushings, and some outdoor furniture made from concrete that looks like rock. There were a thousand interesting things he talked about, including particular things about how he runs his business and what he has learned over the years concerning his faith. One interesting example he talked about, which I might not be able to convey correctly to you, was the difference between a method and a goal. Like eating; is it a method or a goal. Of course it is a method, but when it becomes a goal it is gluttony. Or sleeping, it is also a method but when it becomes a goal it is not good. And then church; many times it becomes the goal, where as it should be more of a method to the kingdom. He might be also be teaching a few night lectures for us business concentration people in a couple weeks.

I feel like I’ve only mentioned a couple little instances out of a thousand from my time here so far. I haven’t taken that many pictures yet but hope to start taking more. If you have any questions let me know.