Patience and Gratitude

I’ve managed to let myself get really far behind on my blog. 20 days isn’t an incredibly long time, but when you’re in a foreign country, there are so many things happening every day that you could be talking about.

So rather than spend this time trying to write about all of the events that have happened between my last post and now, I want to talk about what’s been on my mind lately. Every day, China teaches me that life doesn’t need to go as fast as I’ve gotten used to in the States. Things don’t need to work perfectly all the time; the world doesn’t owe me flawless conveniences. In fact, it doesn’t really owe me anything. Every bit of technology we have is a blessing, not something we’re just inherently entitled to.

-The wifi in my apartment constantly disconnects. It makes trying to have an online conversation with anyone very mafan, very inconvenient/troublesome. On top of this, we have “The Great Firewall of China”, the block on pretty much all of the sites I like to use on a daily basis. The first VPN we all discovered and used was Hotspot Shield, but in the past month it started having a lot of problems connecting, and then in the last week it just stopped connecting at all. So my friend told me about the VPN she uses called proXPN, so I was the first in the BYUI group to switch to that one. But you gotta pay it forward. So I told Josh and Abby about it, and helped Ben get set up with it. And now they’re telling everyone and it’s spreading around the group. We help each other stay on top of the firewall. I used to get incredibly frustrated whenever the internet would disconnect. But I’ve learned to just wait it out, because it always comes back on either within a few seconds or within 10 to 20 minutes. Rather than a misfortune when it does go out, it’s more of a treat when it decides to work.
-My room key stops working a lot, too. So does Abby’s. It wasn’t like that at first, but now it stops working several times a week and we have to go get a fuwuyuan, a worker, to come reset our keys and let us into the room. It was one of the biggest mafans in our daily lives. But like all of these other inconveniences have turned out to be, rather than feel like the world is being unfair to me every time it breaks, I sigh a breath of relief and gratitude every time my key does let me into my room.

-I don’t have a cell phone, and I’ve made a few good

friends here who it would be nice to be in contact with. Our class usually goes out to dinner on Fridays, and Rungui always has to call my room phone in order to tell me the time and details. He often complains about how I need to get a cell phone because I have to be in my room in order for him to contact me, and sometimes I miss it. But at least I have a room phone, which is a lot better than nothing.

-It’s getting really cold here, and our heaters don’t get turned on until January, when we’ll be gone anyway. Also, our beds only come with a single comforter (no sheet). Our window isn’t sealed properly, so even when it’s closed, the frigid air still leaks in. In other words, it’s cold. All the time. It’s just a good excuse to go buy a new coat though, or find a cute new blanket.

-Our beds are hard as rock. Or wood, I guess. They may look comfortable, but don’t fall onto it with all your weight or you might bruise something. The first few nights were pretty difficult, after growing up on soft, cushiony, form to your body American beds. But now I sleep so well, and nothing is more welcoming than being able to crawl into my hard Chinese bed after dealing with a day of inconveniences. 

-The air is so polluted. Looking out our windo

w, you can barely see the tall buildings that are just outside of our campus. The water is so polluted, we can’t drink our tap water. We’ve been warned several times to not drink from our sinks. Everyone has to buy bottled water or boil their water before they can drink it. When we brush our teeth at night, we have to have a water bottle close by. You will never walk down a street without hearing and/or seeing a Chinese person hack a loogie and spit it onto the street or sidewalk. And after being here so long, you begin to understand why. The pollution gets in you. You know you’ve been inside too long if you can blow your nose and have it be clear and not brown or black. Speaking of loogies, the streets are utterly disgusting. I only wear the shoes I like indoors. I don’t dare step outside in my favorite boots or anything new. The sidewalks are covered in dirt, trash, barf, spit, food, pretty much anything you can think of. It’s impossible to keep shoes clean. And every now and then you’ll be walking down the street and you’ll get a big whiff of rancid, rotting something. Never sure what exactly it is. Just a mixture of trash and rotting food and sewage all sent on a mission to attack your nostrils.

You have to hold your breath because otherwise you might lose your lunch and add even more to the smell. But I’ve come to recognize it as the smell of Beijing. Who knows, I may even miss it when I leave. Maybe I’ll go back to America and complain about how clean the air is and how well I can breathe, and how I can actually see the sky. Who wants that??

-There’s a very big, very noticeable language barrier. Of course, how couldn’t there be? We’re American English speakers in the capitol of China. Street vendors yell out advertisements at us in Chinese, and at first I couldn’t help but think they were yelling some profanity or something at us. But you get used to all the yelling. Everyone here just speaks several decibels higher than they do in America. With so many people around, you have to find a way to be heard somehow. Our first experience trying to buy groceries at Wumei, our local grocery store, was terrifying for me. I put my food on the checkout stand, and the cashier asked me “ni yao bu yao daizi?” I completely panicked, like I had just showed up to a test in my underwear and was being asked incredibly difficult questions to which I hadn’t the slightest idea how to answer. But in reality, all she asked was “do you need a bag?” I have since learned the survival Chinese to get me through a checkout stand, or restaurant, or market. Sometimes the best way to teach someone to swim is to throw them into the water and let them flounder around until they figure it out on their own.

-Our neighbors smoke like chimneys. All of them. We’re surrounded on all sides by Koreans who smoke like the world is ending tomorrow and they have to get through as many packs as they can before it’s taken away from them forever. The smell seeps into our room through our bathroom and through our windows. Recently, Abby taped up our vent and a few cracks in our bathroom ceiling. It helped a little. But then we discovered that the only way to keep the smoke out would be to tape up basically the entire ceiling, because nothing here is really sealed properly. I’m not too bothered by it, but it really grates on Abby. She’s gone over to their apartment several times to ask them to stop smoking in their room, but to no avail. Some things you just have to live with, I guess.

-Have issues with personal space? Not anymore you don’t. Don’t like being touched? Now you don’t mind. China cares more about being efficient than it does being comfortable. People are packed onto public transportation like a pack of sardines. During busy hours, you have to push your way through a river of people in order to shang, board, or xia, get off a ditie or gongongqiche, subway or bus. You soon learn to stop being uncomfortable with being smooshed right up flat against a number of complete strangers.

-I’m in the first relationship of my life. I finally found someone I can truly be myself around, and who likes me for who I am. I’ve never felt so strongly about someone before. But he’s in America, and so I have to settle for msn conversations and the occasional Skype chat. More than anything, I’d like to talk to him in person, to be with my best friend. This trumps all other Chinese inconveniences, and has taught me so much more about patience than all of the others combined.

But I’m in China. How many people get an opportunity like this? Not only was this trip incredibly cheap compared to other study abroad programs, but it worked out so perfectly. We’re able to attend this amazing school full of liuxuesheng, travel abroad students, from all over the world. My three best friends here are Korean, English and Portuguese. And there are so many Italians. Even in America, the melting pot of the world, you don’t get this much exposure to pure culture from all around the globe. I feel so unbelievably lucky to be here, interacting with these people, with this culture. It’s like a different world completely, and I wonder how we can go our entire lives living in one country, never experiencing what lies beyond its borders. We like to judge everything based on what we know. And if what we know is limited to one small area of the world, we judge everything so critically, and so unfairly. It’s time to stop judging and start simply living. Be grateful for the opportunities that present themselves every day. When something doesn’t work, that’s normal. When it does work, it’s a blessing to be thankful for.

Nanjing

I figure I should write about the second half of my vacation over Guoqingjie. The first half was Shanghai, and I ended that blog with us barely catching the train heading to Nanjing. This was a much shorter train than the first, only about 4 hours long, which was nothing compared to our ride to Shanghai. It went by so quickly and we were there before we knew it.

We went and found our hostel, having to ask a few people for directions and being directed in all different directions (the way of the Chinese, no one will ever admit to not knowing something, they’ll just make up an answer and act so convincingly that it’s true). We finally found it and checked into this little hole in the wall kind of place. I’m so glad I got to experience a true hostel . The boys and girls were split into two different rooms. Me, Abby and Gidianny were lucky enough to get a room to ourselves. Adam, Josh, and Brett however had to share their room with a stranger for the first night.
After we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we headed out to check out the town. We ended up at this little restaurant for dinner and struggled to read the all Chinese menu. We stumbled across a dish that was 60kuai (about $9), which is very expensive for China. So we looked at what it was, and it said 狼肉 langrou. I didn’t recognize the character, as Gidianny read it out loud, I lifted my eyebrows. Wolf meat? Really? We asked the fuwuyuan, the waiter, if it was real wolf meat. He nodded and said it was. So of course we had to get it.
As we were waiting to pay after the meal, a group of Chinese girls stopped to talk to Abby. People in Nanjing were much less familiar and much more fascinated with foreigners than the people in Beijing. So we gave them all English names, which most Chinese people are so excited to get, and exchanged phone numbers.
Later that night, we wandered into an outdoor market selling all sorts of souvenirs. Every shop sold basically the exact same thing, so if you wanted something you could wander from shop to shop in order to get the best price. The girls we had met earlier ran up to us and handed each of us a balloon. Giggling, they quickly ran off. Chinese girls are so cute, haha. At the market, so I got a prayer bead bracelet, and a few presents for my friends.

One of the other days, we went to Zhongshan Mountain, I think it was called. We did a looooottttt of walking, and ended up at this really pretty place that had a bunch of stairs and a pretty building at the very top. So of course we had to take jumping pictures .
As I mentioned earlier, the people of Nanjing were very fascinated with our foreign-ness. I thought I had gotten attacked in Shanghai with people wanting pictures, but that was nothing compared to this. So many people asked to take pictures with us, with me and my blonde hair, Abby and her friendly smile, Tina and her curly hair, and Josh and Adam with their white-man handsomeness.
Later that day, we visited a Buddhist temple. I got to drop a coin into a pond that had all these different characters at the bottom, representing different kinds of fortune. My coin landed on the character 囍xi which means double happiness and/or luck in love. That’s a nice fortune .
We then bribed a worker into letting us ring a giant bell and hit a giant drum for free because we gave them English names. Like I said, they love getting English names from real Americans. After that area, we proceeded into a room full of ancient traditional Chinese instruments. Adam and Josh asked one of the workers if they could play them, and they said no. But knowing you can bribe just about any Chinese person, they offered to pay for it. When they said no again, Josh pulled out an American $1. This caught their attention, and they accepted the fascinating American currency as payment and let Josh and Adam bang around on the instruments for a few minutes. We got video of it, but blogger barely lets me upload photos, let alone videos.

That night we went to this little restaurant place that Adam really liked, and we all got chicken sandwiches and ate them on the steps. Then we went back to the hostel and added our marks. The walls were completely covered with drawings and notes drawn by those who have stayed there in the past, so we had to add our own “I was here”.
The next day, we went to the Rape of Nanjing memorial. The Rape of Nanjing was a six week period in 1937 in which Japanese soldiers invaded the former capital city of Nanjing. An estimated 300,000 people were killed, which added up to one person dying every 12 seconds. There were a bunch of statues and photos and various other kinds of exhibits showing the brutality of what happened. It was a really eye opening experience to see something like that.

Later on, we went to the Nanjing wall. We climbed up onto the wall, and then decided to pay for a little golf cart thing to take us to the other end of the wall. Almost joking, Adam asked them if we could drive it ourselves. Not even thinking twice, they agreed, and the guy who would’ve been the driver slid into the passenger seat. So we all took turns driving a golf cart on top of the Nanjing Wall. Pretty cool, right?

After the wall it was just burning time until we had to catch our train back to Beijing. We asked the people at our hostel if there was anywhere we could go to get a cheap massage, and one of them knew just the place. She walked with us because it was really close, and set us all up with a full body massage. It was pretty glorious. Not the kind of massage you’d imagine in China, because I pictured ladies standing on top of me and walking across my back and then maybe pile driving me into the ground. But it was really laid back and relaxing, they were really gentle—too gentle even. But it was much needed after a week of stress and adventure.

Waiting for our train, we sat around in the hostel’s lounge and played pool, followed by Egyptian rat screw, chess, and card tower building. But then it was finally time to go so we went to the train station, early this time so we didn’t have to rush like before. Our train from Beijing to Shanghai had been a soft sleeper, but this one was a hard sleeper. So it was just normal seats, crunched together for efficiency rather than comfort. First the seats filled, and then the isles filled. And I’m not even kidding when I say the isles were filled. One time during the train ride, I really had to use the restroom. So I had to try my best to step over and around people. It took a lot longer than a trek to the back of a compartment should take, but every single step had to be carefully analyzed in order to avoid stepping on body parts. And then once I got to the bathroom I almost considered just holding it in for the rest of the ride. Urine everywhere. Not only all over the squatter, but all over the floors. This tiny little room covered in pee. I had to hold my breath, and then afterwards wash my hands with hand sanitizer about a hundred times. Me, Abby and Josh were in three seats next to each other, and across from us were three Chinese strangers, none of which knew each other. So we made friends with them. They were all very nice people. And once the late/early hours arrived when we were all painfully sleep deprived, the ridiculous conversations came out. Us three Americans were trying so hard to speak Chinese, and it was working, but at such an hour, you say strange things.

After an extremely long train ride with no sleep whatsoever, we finally made it to Beijing. It was a great journey full of adventures and I’m so glad I got to experience more of China!

Shanghai

So on Monday we left in the evening to go to the Beijing train station. We got on the train, and it had compartment room things for each group, with two bunk-couches. They were supposed to be like beds, but there were 6 of us for 4 beds. Adam quickly stole the first one, and Josh got the other soon after :P
So me, Abby, Brett, and Gidianny were left with the bottom two. Me and Abby curled up in awkward positions to try to both fit comfortably, and Brett and Gidianny got the other couch. Adam and Josh slept really well, and I think Gidianny did too. Abby slept a little. But me and Brett didn’t get any sleep at all. Gidianny took some pictures of us trying to sleep, haha. She didn’t get one of my most awkward positions though. They said there was one time where it looked like I was trying to dive into the couch but got stuck. Like I was laying on my stomach, with my legs up on the wall, and my arms straight out on my sides. They said it looked so incredibly uncomfortable lol. We fiiiinally got to Shanghai after about 12 hours on the train. We went straight to Emily’s family friend’s house where the girl half of our group were going to stay the nights at. We met her and her two little sons, one was 2 and one was 4, Collin and Miles. They were super cute and had so much energy. Afterwards we went to “The People’s Park” or something like that. It was a big park. It was really cool though because it was the first chance we had to really see the skyline. Shanghai is beautiful. There are so many skyscrapers and unique architecture. At the park we went to a free museum and saw Chinese antiques and stuff. It was pretty interesting. Afterwards, we came out to see this really cool fountain. It reminded me of the one at the Seattle Center. Out of the blue, Adam and Abby decided they were going to run through it. The little thrill seekers! So we all got our cameras out and ready, and there they went. Some Chinese official person blew their whistle at them, but didn’t do anything else. You could hear a big collective gasp from all the people watching, and a few claps of applause as they came out on the other side of the fountain. Us Americans sure know how to attract attention.After that, we went and saw Emily’s hotel. She had been in Shanghai for a few days because her dad was in town on business. Their room was on the 35th floor. So we got a really pretty view out the window. Then we all went to the Bund, a place where you can look across the river and see all the skyscrapers of downtown Shanghai.
It was so incredibly beautiful. The next day, Wednesday, the Turners cooked us a wonderful breakfast. It was probably the best meal I’ve had since I’ve been in China, probably just because it wasn’t Chinese.

She made us eggs with ham and then cinnamon muffins. Ohhhh man so delicious. Afterwards we went back to the Bund because we wanted to see it again during the daylight. It rivaled the nighttime beauty, if not bettered it. Does that even make sense? So now that people could see us because of the sun, they realized we were white. So we got a bunch of people asking to take pictures with us. I literally lost track of the number of pictures that were taken of me that day. One guy even came up to me and shoved his 2 year old daughter into my arms to take a picture of me with her. Oh fun times being a celebrity.

After we were done looking there, we went across the street to find a really old French hotel. We ran into some old guys who gave Abby a really pretty fan for free. Again, celebrity status! Also, all day Abby and Adam were having a contest with each other to see how many times they could say “Guoqingjie Kuaile” (Happy National Day (the Holiday we got the week off for)) it was funny to see the reactions of people when these super white foreigners spoke Chinese to them. But one of the times, Adam said it to a security guard, and he was like “Uhhh…that’s over.” Apparently it had ended the day before? But then someone else said it still had a few days left. So who knows. So we saw that really pretty hotel! It was 着不多 100 years old. It looked so French and it was beautiful. I was kind of surprised they let us in to look at it, since it was so high class and expensive looking. One of the new workers offered to give us a tour, so she lead us around and showed us all the rooms. During the tour I realized they probably only let us in because we’re foreigners and maybe looked like we had money, and maybe they thought that if we liked it enough, we would stay there. But who knows. It was pretty. 

Then we wanted to take a ferry across the river to the downtown Shanghai area. So we walked on top of the Bund place, but couldn’t find a place to buy tickets for the ferry. So we went down some stairs, and then asked a Chinese guy and he was like, walk that way for 10 minutes. So we walked that direction and then asked another person, and they pointed in a different direction and said to walk that way for 5 minutes. This continued on for I don’t know how many more people telling us completely different directions. I wonder if maybe Chinese people just don’t like to be wrong, so they make up answers if they don’t know. Who knows. After an hour or so of wandering around, we finally found the place that sold ferry tickets. 2 kuai (30cents) for a ticket across the river. I like China, it’s so pianyi, cheap. The ferry was just like any transportation device in China, crowded and filled to the brim with people.

We got to the other side and explored the area a bit. We got a few of these big baozi for 2.5kuai each, they were really yummy (I looove baozi). And then we made our way to the tallest building in China, the 3rd tallest in the world. It’s basically impossible to get long on the way there, because you just look up and see it. When we got near its base, it was amazing, I had to hurt my neck in order to look up and see the top. We didn’t go up to the top though because it was about 100kuai to go up. So we snuck over to the really tall hotel right next to it. You could pay 100kuai to ride up to the 85th floor, OR you could be sneaky like us and walk around like you owned the place, and make it up to the 83rd floor for free. So we looked out of a window from the 83rd floor and got to see a lot of the city. So pretty!

So after we were done there, we headed back to Emily’s hotel for dinner. We got to eat their continental dinner, and it was so good! We all filled our plates several times, because we don’t really get the opportunity to eat that kind of food very often. And then we moved onto dessert where we all filled our plates several times again. Best meal ever! At one point, Josh brought up a plate of desserts, but realized he forgot something, so he handed his plate to Adam and then left to go get what he forgot. So there Adam was, having been given a plate of Josh’s food. So what does he do? “Quick, everyone! Take something!” So we all picked off something from the plate. When Josh came back, he was all smiles like usual, until he saw his plate with a single piece of food on it, and his smile slowly and sadly disappeared. I instantly regretted it, but the laughs were worth it. Josh himself admitted that it was really funny.
That night we walked around the city a bit more until we came across a big group of old Chinese people dancing Chinese ballroom. So we decided to join their dance party. I was hesitant at first, because I really don’t like dancing. But I ended up doing the swing and cha-cha with Adam and some waltz with Josh. And in one of the songs, we all did the Macarena. Some of the Chinese people were really fascinated with that and tried to learn and do it with us. This one lady was really cute and giggled uncontrollably every time we got to the end where you shake your butt. It was a fun night 

The next day we went out early to a park and walked around a little bit. Then we go to a little lake and rented two little boats. We road around calmly at first, enjoying the sites. But once we had gone everywhere that we could, we decided to play a little bumper boats. At first just with each other, but then we started “accidentally” running into strangers. Most people had a good sense of humor and laughed along with us. But a few others glared so scarily, so we stayed away from them. There were a lot of families out with their little kids, so we would always wave to them when we floated by, and they’d get so excited and wave back. It was so funny, all through the week, little kids would point at us and shout “waiguoren!” (foreigner) to their parents. And their parents would nod in understanding. I was always so tempted to point back at them and shout “Zhongguoren!” (Chinese person) but never did. But I was so surprised at how many little kids called it out. We stayed at the park a little too long, and had to super rush to the train station in order to catch our train to Nanjing on time. Like, really rush. We were literally sprinting through the train station, attracting quite a bit of attention. But we made it on time 

Another Class Outing

Wow it’s been a while and a lot has happened. The Friday before I went on vacation, I went with some of my classmates to eat Italian food in Sanlitun. Inside the subway though, some of us got our tickets and went through and were waiting for the train, but some of the others were taking a really long time. So after like twenty minutes, some of them came down to tell us what was going on. Rungui’s qianbao (I can’t remember English…The pouch that holds your money…) was stolen. His money, his credit cards, everything. So after talking to security and finding that they couldn’t do anything to help, he just went back to the school. I felt so bad for him…

Also, since Rungui left, TOP was the only Korean, and he doesn’t speak English. So us Americans, English, and Italians were all speaking English to each other, but TOP couldn’t understand so he just stayed pretty silent. As much as I could, I’d try to explain what we were talking about to him in the limited amount of Chinese we knew. He didn’t really have very much fun though L. I had a lot of fun though ^^; I love the people in my class.

This is TOP. His real name is Han Kyungho and his Chinese name is Han Jinghao. But I call him TOP because I think he looks like the Korean celebrity TOP. At first everyone just thought it was funny, but now he responds to the name without a second thought, haha. I also named him Kevin because he didn't have an English na

This is Louise, she's from England. Besides Rungui, she's my best friend in the class. She's really funny and has the funniest laugh.