Goodbye China

I am sitting in the Singapore Airlines lounge right now, snacking on "pizza" and enjoying my last hour in China. That the Chinese interpretation of pizza is some sort of doughy bread with green peppers and artichokes baked in, has done little to take away from my extreme relaxation.

Last night Phil and I, having heroically taken on both the Fobidden City and the Temple of Heaven after having woken up at 3 pm, enjoyed a mighty feast at the Jiaotz Goan. The English Translation of this restaurant is "Dumpling Restaurant", but this doesn't seem fair. They have dumplings yes, but their menu is so much deeper than that, full of delightful dishes of chicken and beef that please even the American tongue. I would say that I go there with friends at least three times a week, and owing to said friends unhealthy obsession with sweet and sour pork, have eaten that every time.

For our final meal though, Phil and I were free from the overwhelming influence of a certain Garret Traub and John Snyder, so we were finally able to branch out. I hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, so it was with a ravenous apetite that I decided that I would settle for no less than Chicken with Hot Peppers, Potatoes with Eggplant, and 15 dumplings. There are a couple meals that I've had in my life that hold a special place in my heart, and this was one. This final Chinese dinner, the Last Supper, was an instant classic.

Today I went to Wang Fu Jing to try and find gifts for family members. Upon arriving, I made the giant mistake of wandering into Beijing's largest bookstore. I don't know if anyone else has this problem but I will wander through a bookstore for hours and hours, completely losing track not only of time, but the concept of time itself. It is fortunate then, that this bookstore was so large, and so stocked full of various tomes, that they had a massive collection of Stephen Hawking books translated into chinese (a Brief History of Time? Ah yes.), to remind me, that, with the way the universe worked, if I did not hurry I would miss my flight.

I got some good gifts for my dad and brother, but my mom said she didn't want anything, so I will hold her to it. Not that I didn't try. I looked near and far for the kind of thing that a mom who didn't enjoy cheap, awful trinkets would like. As of yet, that market in China is still relatively vacant.



Two months ago, I set foot on Chinese soil, and after the first day of class, I decided that, I probably wasn't going to make it. Relazing that, actually, going home at this point was probably not going to happen I had to come up with some sort of plan. In my suitcase I found a tin of chocolates that my dad had given me, and counted them. 38, the exact number of days of class that I would have to make it through. Every day, after class I ate one piece . As long as I was eating chocolate I wasn't giving up. How American of me.

For the first week, I would stare at the mass of chocolate still in the tin. It taunted me. How was I ever going to make it through a pound of this stuff. About half way through is when it stopped seeming so awful. After the last day of class I noticed that something strange had happened. There were two pieces of chocolate left. Looks like I had finally overcome my fears and stopped dwelling on my stupid little routine. Either that or Princeton in Beijing only had 37 days of class.

Either way, I gave my roommate the extra piece, and we ate our chocolate together.

"Wow, that's good," he said.

Chinese Tables

Princeton in Beijing is over and gone with it is my excuse to not write in the blog. The last week has brought with it great joy and great angst. Every time I do something now, I can't help but think of it as the last time I will be doing it in China. This is the last time I will buy some fruit from a Chinese guy. This is the last time I will brush my teeth with bottled water. This is the last time I will visit the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. But considering that today was also my first time visiting the Forbidden Palace and the Temple of Heaven, this particular thought didn't make me too nostalgic.

Actually a year ago, when I came here with my dad, we visited these places and enjoyed them greatly. Going back was good, though I am completely exhausted and today was Celebrate the Sun Day in China, which is celebrated by making the weather 100 degrees. Unfortunately Celebrate the Sun Day coincided, this year, with Unbearable Humidity day.

The Fobidden City/Palace Museum is where the emperors used to live. The further you walk into the palace, the holier it used to be considered to be. In the old days, there was maybe 1,000 people that were ever allowed to even go inside, which is ridiculous considering that when I visited today there at least 5,000 tourists packed in. Also, I was considering what the emperors of yore would say if they saw the status their palace was currently in. Fat Americans and sweaty Europeans shuffle around its hallowed ground. At the holiest center of the palace, where only the emperor was allowed to go, there was a trash can full of water bottles and a naked baby. If I get a time machine, I know what I'm gonna do.

The Temple of Heaven, our second destination of the day, is where the emperor's used to go to pray for good crops and even more extravagant palaces, presumably. It is a pretty cool place, the highlight being the two accoustic marvels located in the back of this massive park. The first is a "center stone". This is a stone on the roof of a building designed so that if you yell then your voice is "particularly resonant and sonorous". I don't think the Chinese people understood though. They would just stand on it, get a picture and step off. Realizing that this behavior certainly failed to honor the spirit of the ancient engineer who took the trouble to perfectly design the accoustic properties of a giant stone building, I took to the stone and shouted at the top of my lungs. This seemed to catch a couple of the Chinese people off guard. Another thing at the Temple of Heaven, which I have called possibly my favorite thing in China is the echo wall. An ancient and perfectly round structure, the echo wall gets in name, because it is a wall on a building. That it lets your voice echo around its massive diameter seems to be a mere coincidence. I stood on one side of the echo wall, and Phil stood on the other side. I shouted "wasssup".

Our taxi cab driver on the way home today was amazing...by far my favorite in China. His taxi cab was immaculate and when I told him that I'd never seen such a nice taxi in China, he looked very proud. He told me that there were a million taxi drivers in China, and he won an award that put him in the top 100. They announced his name on the radio and gave him a plaque which he showed us. It was gold and had some Chinese characters that I didn't understand. Let's just assume that it said: "Bless this Mess" and move on.

In China, there are a number of people who make their living by collecting used plastic bottles and trading them in for whatever nominal amount of money the government uses to encourage recycling. You may think that this is an unfortunate situation and I agree, but for different reasons than you might expect. You see that people have chosen this occupation will not take no for an answer when they want your bottle. More than once, including today, I've been forced to chug a liter or two of iced tea, just so they could trade in my bottle for a couple of cents.

There are also countless people whose job is to sell stuff on the streets or the sidewalks. In general these guys sell about one of four things: DVD's, Chinese trinkets, watches, or clothing. I think there just must be some central warehouse in China where poor quality rip off goods are created at an impossibly cheap cost and distributed to various salesman. Otherwise, I just can't understand what kind of distribution mechanism is allowing for the current in situation. How is a sketchy looking guy at the great wall selling the exact same poor quality rip-off Rolex, as the sketchy looking guy in Shanghai? It's almost as if these rip-off brands have become brands in themselves: they're bad indeed, but at least they're consistent.

One of the favorite places for the salesman to hang out is in bridges and underground passages. They lay out a blanket and then lay their wares out on them. Apparently this is illegal, because whenever a policeman is spotted, a lookout guy starts shouting and everyone grabs their blankets and starts to run away. This tends to cause a veritable stampede of Chinese merchants, though the method seems to work--I have yet to see one get caught. I'm still not certain why the policeman aren't able to spot the merchants from the non-merchants. An open letter to the Chinese police force:

The ones carrying massive blankets that look like their full of rip off watches and running away from you are almost certainly the ones breaking the law.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen.

We've had three Chinese tables in the last week. The first was for all of the second year students. I had been sick for the days before it, but I was able to eat some of the food they brought for us off a surprisingly well-considered fixed menu. After dinner we were supposed to practice for the upcoming talent show, at which every second year student was going to perform some Chinese songs. Though the dinner was enjoyable, two and a half hours into it, and one plus hours into practicing Chinese songs, when one of the teachers proposed to begin with the kareoke, I decided it was time to begin the walking back to my dorm.

The Talent Show suffered from the similar problem. Clocking in at nearly four hours, I think that, although the untalented student's courage was admirable, we did not need to humor every one of them with a spot on the program. Maybe if we could have put them all up there at once and just let them go for five minutes everyone would be a winner. One of the truly enjoyable skits of the night was written and performed by the teachers, and provided us an insight into their mind that no conversation could have. Basically the sketch was an impression of us students. The rage was palpable and the mockery enjoyable. I'm not too sure it was even intended to be funny, it played more like a polemic, but I laughed long and hard.

I enjoyed the second Chinese Table with a couple of teachers and students at an excellent restaurant. But when it's not a set menu, ordering food with Chinese people is always an ordeal. First of all, everyone always says one thing that they don't like, and the teachers fail to understand that just because one person doesn't like something, this doesn't mean that the rest of the table won't eat it. A typical ordering session might go something like this:

"Joe, what do you like to eat."
"Well, I like everything except for pork."
"Ok, no pork. Steve, what about you?"
"Well actually I really like pork, but I don't care for beef."
"Sorry Joe doesn't like pork, we can't order it."
"But there's 10 other people here, they all like pork. John probably wouldn't mind if we got one pork dish."
"You have offended my family's honor."

In order to not add to the confusion, I tend to keep my mouth shut during the ordering process, but once I let it slip that I don't like fish. Quickly all the teachers learned of this situation. Now every Chinese table begins with the proclamation that Tom Knight doesn't like fish. The teachers nod their head, an air of dissaproval in the air, and do their best not to order fish.

Another obstacle on the road to ever getting any food at Chinese table is what I have come to call "the spicy food problem". I am convinced that every Chinese person has had some sort of traumatic experience with spicy food in their life, because whenever you try to order anything spicy, they intervene and urge you to think carefully before you make that commitment. An attempt to order something spicy in the presence of a teacher might go something like this:

"I'll have the Kung Pao Chicken."
"Hmm. Interesting choice. That dish is awfully spicy you know."
"Yeah, I like spicy food. No problem."
"This one is actually really spicy, I think you might want to try something else."
"Ok, fine...How about this one: Mild Chicken Dish."
"Again, very spicy. Less spicy than the Kung Pao, yes, but still quite spicy."
"Well then, I'll just have a glass of water and some rice please."
"Ok, but just be careful."

We graduated from the program on Friday, and after the ceremony we had our final Chinese table. Every teacher and student from the program was there. It was truly a great time, and thanks to the massive amounts of photos taken (I contend that it was one of the most well documented in the history of mankind) I don't think anyone will be forgetting it anytime soon. Did I mention that we could speak English? Conversing with our teachers in a language that confused them as much as Chinese confused us was the ultimate revenge. I tried to explain to a teacher what this felt like, "It's like in a movie when the good guy gets his gun taken away and the bad guy is torturing him, but then the good guy somehow gets his gun back and then he looks at the bad guy, and the bad guy knows something is wrong. Then the good guy, he just flashes the bad guy a little grin for a couple seconds and then, BANG!" The teacher, fortunately, didn't understand, but the rest of my table had a good laugh.

This was one of the few Princeton in Beijing events that I wish could have lasted longer. As I left the restaurant bound for my dorm, and soon America, I mourned the end of my last Chinese table.

It's Time To Get Ill

After going 7 weeks with reasonable health, Tuesday morning hit me like a brick wall. I don't know what it was (I'll get to that in a little bit), but I felt awful. Still wanting to keep my perfect attendance I went to class and fought the hard fight. Generally, I've found it's a bad sign when people look at you and then look like their gonna cry out of fright. During break I fell asleep for 10 short minutes in the dark corner of an empty class. Not surprisingly, I skipped Chinese table that day.

Trying to determine the cause of the illness is a fruitless and futile task--practically everything I do at this point would cause illness in a normal person. I've been eating food filled with bugs. I haven't done a load of laundry in China. I sleep infrequently and then for the entire weekend. I thought I had found the cause the other day when I looked down at my Iced Tea and noticed that the expiration date was three months ago. I went up to the storekeeper and, risking the great friendship that we've developed, asked him what was the dealio? He told me that was the date the product was made, not when it expired--a likely story. Now I sip iced tea with fear, if his story his true than the dates are all necessarily in the past. If his story is but a cover for a friend who owns a warehouse of expired iced tea, than I am certainly doomed.

For all the worrying family members, 24 hours of consecutive sleep (including through Wednesday class) seems to have solved my problem. I feel great and just played two hours of basketball with Chinese people. For the record, a grabbed a monumental number of rebounds.

Oh The Places I've Been!

On a radio show I listen to, the host constantly makes a point that women have a hard time gauging any kind of distance. It was a funny point, but it didn't become real to me until, in class the other day, one of my Chinese teacher asked the hippy girl (she's been in my class the last three weeks!) how far it was from her dorm room to our classroom. Now bear in mind that our classroom isn't in the same building as our dorms. In fact, it is a good 3-5 minute walk depending on how late you are to class.

"I don't know" the girl said.
"Just guess" said the teacher.
"I have no idea. I'm not sure." said the hippy. She was beginning to look nervous.
"Just guess, go on" pleaded the teacher.
"Ummmmmmm..." the hippy girl stalled, apparently doing some sort of unholy mental math, because after about 10 seconds she seemed to have figured it out: "10 meters."

So, using the hippy girls scale, I can safely say that over the last two weeks, my travels have taken me, at most half a kilometer.



They gave us a mighty generous "midterm break" which was all of three days. Those of you that have seen my online photo albums already know the basic outline of the story. We bought train tickets to Shanghai on the overnight, apparently for Thursday--the train was scheduled to leave at 7:30. At about 5:30, John Snyder, one of the four amigos that was going, claimed "back pain" and said that if he didn't make it to a masseuse, it would be a big issue. Now, as far as I know, John has lived in America for the better part of 19 years, where masseuses (massi?) are not so readily available as in China, and he has made do. But as I soon learned, John can squeal like a stuck pig, so I wasn't going to stand in his way. In fact, to emphasize my constant hypocrisy, I decided to go with him.

At the massage parlor, with the best Chinese we could muster, we tried to get some information about how close the train station was. Now, in China, in order to become a masseuse, you have to be blind. I'm not saying that a blind person can't know their way around a massive city, but generally you probably shouldn't rely on them for detailed directions. With this in mind, we rejected their suggestion, out of hand, that we take the subway instead of the taxi in order to avoid rush hour traffic. The subway? Where were we New York? Anyways, everyone knew that traffic jams were an urban legend, and we were taking a TRAIN too. Who ever heard of a traffic jam on a train? Geeze no wonder they had to be massesuses. Nice people, but no common sense.

When we got in the taxi at 6:30 and told him that we had a train to catch at 7:30 he just started laughing. This was probably a bad sign for us. Hoping that maybe he had just heard a funny joke on the radio, or else was a mentally ill cab driver (oh please let him be a mentally ill cab driver) we asked him if we asked again if we had enough time to make it to the train station.

"Oh no," he said, "not even close. You should take the subway."

That again. Well I guess we had no choice. We had the taxi driver drop us off at the subway station which was about 10 meters away but took about 15 minutes to reach due to rush hour traffic, so this was probably a good use of our time. When we got there he gave me a look like I should tip him for all of his great advice. It would have taken to long to try to explain that I would give any money owed him, for services rendered, to the masseuse who had already suggested a similar brand of advice. So, I just said thanks and gave him exact change.

The trip from the subway to the train station is a bit of a blur, but I do know that we arrived at our platform the instant the train was supposed to leave. A big surprise was in store though, as Garret and Phil, the other two amigos, and the purchasers of the tickets, had bought seats for the wrong day! Way to go guys! We can't blame them though because the arabic number system can be hard to adjust to.

In a shockingly non-beauracratic moment, the women at the train station decided to let us board and worry about the details later. What a gal! Might I say, if she happens to be reading this: thankyou so much, your sincere generosity will never be forgotten

As soon as we got on the train we tried to work out some sort of plan to mail our tickets back to Beijing before next day's train left, so that our tickets could be resold.



The train ride was fun, reminiscent of a trip that I had taken in grade school from London to the south of France with all my British classmates. The main difference was that all the people on that train were French and all the people on this train were Chinese. The main similarity was that they both smelled terrible.

We played Chinese Chess with one some of the locals and John ordered a small plate of honeydew melon, which I knew right away was a mistake: never order exotic fruits in China! The bill came and his little fruit plate had cost a little more than his last three meals combined.

In the dining cabin, we also met a guy who was from Norway, who played some cards with us. He was a pretty fat guy, and pretty annoying.

"Did you hear," he asked, "that America is less popular in Europe than China? A communist country more popular than a deomcracy!"
"Did you know," I felt like asking, "that you are less popular in this dining car than Chumbawumba's second album?" though I fear the allusion might have been lost on him.




We were going to be staying with my dad's friend and our former China tour guide, Jeff Noles. For quite some time, my dad had been telling me about this grand architectual innovation that he had made with regards to Jeff's apartment. Upon arriving and being greeted by Jeff, I was shown to the Kip Knight Wall, which was similar to the Great Wall, except for the fact that it was not impressive.

"You see," Jeff explained, "the wall was gonna be here," he pointed to a spot on the ground. "But your dad said that it should go here," he pointed to another spot on the ground 6 inches from the original spot. I feigned surprise and delight in a picture that we then took, though who am I to judge. This single innovation might one day be seen as the turning point of modern architecture. Also, that Norwegian guy might turn out to be a world famous politician, but I'm not holding my breath.

I had expressed a desire for an "ultra-local" breakfast, but my friends, with a ravenous look in their eyes demanded American food, and Jeff obliged. We went to the Hyatt in Shanghai where a spread of croissants, sausage, bacon, omlettes, hash browns, and Frog eyeballs caused first, looks of extreme satisfaction, and then, briefly, a look of extreme confusion on my friends faces. Quickly, I imagine, they resolved to avoid the frog eyeballs, and in no time at all the sublime happiness had returned. We stuffed ourselves like never before having found in Jeff a hero, savior and role model forever more, and having found in croissants the first edible breakfast food since ariving in Beijing. You see the Chinese idea of a hearty breakfast is a delicacy known as "rice with juice", no not orange juice, though I can't be too sure about the specifics. Let's just say it involves an animal in some capacity. About an hour, and at least 4000 calories later we set out to see Shanghai.

The first day we hit a lot of the typical sites, including the Shanghai museum, the Jinmau tower (tallest hotel in the world, and featuring, at 5 dollars each, the most expensive moon pies as well). In general, we found Shanghai to be much to our liking, containing many of the modern amenities that you grow accustomed to America such as massive plasma television screens, invisible cell phones, and an ultra-powerful ray gun. They even had Starbucks, the knowledge of which caused John to return to his pre-massage state, until he was filled to the brim with overpriced coffee.

In the course of our preambulation about the city, I caught a glimpse of something that I remembered from my first visit to Shanghai. The Tourist Tunnel! My favorite part about this "ride" is that they pretty much confess to its tourist trap nature right in the title. As I said in my photo collection, I won't try to describe this thing to thoroughly, words can only detract from it's overwhelming suck. But if you are in Shanghai and feel like wasting 30 kuay on a 2 minute ride through a tunnel decorated with Christmas lights, than this is the ride for you.

The next day we went to the Yuyuan gardens and did some shopping around Beijing. In the course of all this we got into a taxi with an obviously suicidal maniac. During two of the most harrowing moments of my life we actually drove through an antique market. There was no road! In another instant we were pinned between two giant trucks and missed being squashed by about a second. John later named this ride as his favorite part of the trip.

We also went to the Bund, and a number of famous buildings and streets in Shanghai, which by this point I have forgotten the names of. Overall, the trip was a total result of a holiday. Because the trains only leave at night and arrive at the morning, it ended much as it began. Our train pulled into the station at 7:15, class started at 7:30...




Last week, the PIB coordinators organized a trip to see the Chinese acrobactic show. This spectacle is similar in many ways to the American circus, although it is so awesome that it makes Cirque de Soleil look like Cirque de So-lame! ZZZZZZZZZZZing!

Having been to one of these shows on my first trip to China, I thought I knew what to expect. Oh, I was wrong! The first couple acts were impressive visually, but overall unmemorable, a sort of Matrix Reloaded of the Chinese Acrobactic world. The first thing to really catch my eye was the group of 6 girls doing the little top thing. Don't you know what I'm talking about, you hold the two sticks and there's the string and you spin it and then toss it into the air and then catch it. These girls gave the most flawless performance I have ever seen. It was amazing and depressing at the same time. They were so good that it was kind of mysterious how they were able to have any time to do any school work when they were constantly rehearsing for this show. Also, if your gonna have a skill set, I can think of only one more useless than this. That is, of course, solving the rubik's cube.

So, I got to thinking, what would the crowd say if I was to get up on the stage and solve the rubik's cube. I guess they probably wouldn't be too impressed. I mean, the other acts generally risked peoples lives in some way, with tiny women being thrown around and gymnasts hanging from thiry foot high poles and spinning from a strand of dental floss. Maybe if I could solve the rubik's cube while reciting the names of the 50 states, I would have something going. Only time will tell.

At intermission, one of the girls from the top act came out to the audience to sell DVD's. I didn't wanna buy one, but I tried to give her a five, which caused a fair amount of confusion, and, in hindsight, was a regrettable act.

An interesting thing about the Chinese acrobactic troupe is that, for the amazing amount of skill that each of the performers has, the production values of the show are amazingly low. On multiple occasions I noticed construction paper costumes. The background music was almost certainly midi, and was blared from some of the most pitiful monitors this side of St. Margaret's "Lunch on the Lawn".

The final performance of the night featured the entire male ensemble clinging, in one way or another, to a giant pole contraption that had been set up, rather shoddily in the center of the stage. This is the dental floss thing I was talking about earlier. Maybe if they couldn't come down till I solved the cube? I'm gonna have to talk to someone about this.




The last thing I will write about for now was the Chinese zoo, which, like the acrobactic show presented some amazing things in a less than amazing setting. I went with my roommate and two friends, and the first thing we decided to see was the Giant Panda. It was an amazing, and amazingly lazy, creature but the habitat they had it in was not too impressive, poorly kept up, and littered with trash. At first I was somewhat dissapointed, but then the Panda started eating a giant stick of bamboo and all my troubles vanished.

The zoo was as large as any I've ever been too, boasting rhinos (what a godawfully ugly creature) hippos (at least 10x lazier than the panda) monkeys (one of them could dribble a basketball!) and derranged dogs. When I say derranged dogs I mean it. One of these hyena type things had apparently completely lost his mind, because, for the 10 minutes that we watched him, he walked in a perfect loop, always rolling over in the exact same spot. But this begs the question, which is worse, the dog walking in circles, or the college students watching it for 10 minutes and giggling every time he starts again?





The other day, I had dinner at a dingy, cramped Chinese restaurant. Unable to make out the smudged menu, I told the waitress I wanted a spicy Chicken dish and she brought out Chicken with hot peppers, which tasted surprisingly good. I had eaten about half of it when I noticed a medium sized bug in the midst of rice and chicken. Quietly I threw the bug on the floor, and finished my meal.