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.