Luoyang (洛阳) in the Spring

April 2, 2011 - Somewhere in the air between Zhengzhou, Henan, China and Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Our train ride up to Luoyang wasn't nearly as exciting as the one to Kaifeng unfortunately - nor were the seats as comfortable (same kind of train, but the seats were harder for some odd reason). That was ok though considering the train to Luoyang only took about 2-3 hours (I forget exactly how long). When we arrived, we were slightly disappointed by the city itself. Or at least I was. Kaifeng had been kind of charming as a city - Luoyang was bigger, more industrialized, dirtier and more polluted.
After dropping our bags off at the Cygnus International Hotel (not nearly as nice as the New Century Kaifeng - admittedly, the Kaifeng hotel had spoiled us a bit...haha) we went off in search of food with the intention of going to see the peonies after we ate.
You see, on the train, we'd been informed that we had decided to come to Luoyang at an optimal time - the Peony Festival, which is apparently one of the things Luoyang is known for, had started a few days ago. We were told we should go to one of the public parks and see them in full bloom. That we wouldn't regret it!
So, food...we walked around for a bit looking for a restaurant. But we didn't find one until we had walked all the way to the public park. It was a pretty nice restaurant, decently priced and with a good amount of people in it. We ordered a few plates of vegetables and a dish of noodles with some peanut thing in it - one of Luoyang's specialties. Food was good in general, bathroom was clean (cleanest one we'd seen in a while outside of the hotels), and the day was nice.
We wandered over to the public park where we joined a really long line of people thinking that we might have to get a ticket to go into the park or the festival or something. We'd been standing in line for about 20 minutes complaining about how it seemed stupid that we should pay for a ticket for a public park when a lady pointed out that the line was for tickets for a completely different thing.
Boy did WE feel dumb.
We laughed it off as we exited the line and went into the park. The peonies were beautiful. Not quite in full bloom yet (still being protected by big plastic tents over the flowerbeds) but we were still able to see enough to keep us satisfied. We took a few pictures of the flowers, of the lovely Qing-style ting near the flowerbeds, and then sat down and watched all the Chinese parents walking about with their toddlers showing them the flowerbeds or just strolling through the park. Some of them were placing the toddlers in the middle of the flowerbeds to take pictures of their little treasures with the peonies. Although an admittedly cute idea, NW and I commiserated about how that was going to ruin the flower beds and was in direct violation of the very clear, big signs posted next to every bed that screamed "DO NOT GO INTO THE FLOWERBEDS" to the observing passerby.








The parents though, seemed to be enjoying the day out with their one child. The one child policy...NW and I discussed it for a bit there. She pointed out that here, in China, Children seem to be extremely precious - they are everywhere of course, but in China there is a certain - I don't know how to really say this - different protectiveness, different attention to their one child. It is the one chance they get - their one treasure. There is a certain sadness that overwhelmed me when I heard that. Imagine growing up with no brothers and sisters because the government said you can't...I mean, I can see why the One Child Policy is necessary and how it has worked. But this is an outsider's perspective - someone who will probably never have to adhere to the One Child Policy or something similar. I can, if I want to, have twenty children (not that I would - that just seems socially irresponsible) or none at all. But if I could only have one child, I think that they would be my whole world too...
This is why I find China so interesting - so full of nuanced complexities that reveal themselves as you pull back the layers. It is not this one monolithic culture - as their image to the world would have us believe - but a living, thriving, dynamic, evolving country that sees the world in ways that are so radically different but just as efficient as our own. I am always surprised when I learn more about it because it keeps unveiling different faces of itself and keeps me intrigued. The only other thing that does that for me is film....funny how things have a way of working out...I never really considered studying Chinese Language and culture until I just took Elementary Chinese on little more than a whim my first year at Vassar. Haha. More things to validate my Vassar experience as phenomenally unique, eye-opening, and world-changing.
Anyways...
After getting our fill of peonies and babies (God our hormones got the best of us that day, didn't they???) we decided that the caffeine levels in our bloodstream were running dangerously low and that we should go find a cup of coffee for some down time. We had seen a Dio Coffee somewhere as we were walking towards the park so we resolved to go back and find it.
About an hour and a half later, it was 6:30 and we still had not hit it...and NW's museum contact called, offering to take us to dinner. We accepted and got on a cab to go to the hotel to be picked up. Much to our dismay, the coffee place had been a block away from where we had gotten the cab and watched the place roll by as we drove past it.
Ah...I should explain this first! One of the many reasons NW made for such a good trip buddy is that we are both Coffee Junkies. WE NEED OUR COFFEE IN THE MORNING. There aren't that many people out there who would really understand the fact that I need a cup of joe in the morning to function properly. Luckly, NW is the same way, so coffee-searching was usually our first activity in the morning. And sometimes in the afternoon...haha.
So we went to dinner with NW's museum contact at a really fancy place near the Luoyang Museum (which was opening the next day...an event we had both cordially been invited to). Our host ordered a bunch of lovely dishes. I think they were mostly Guangdong (Cantonese) cuisine, but a lot of it was very very good. We ate our fill, got to know the guy, and then went back to the hotel where we promptly fell asleep as soon as our heads touched the pillows.
The next day were up bright and early. We decided to just go over to the McDonald's in the mall across the street from the hotel and get a cup of crappy coffee...we weren't completely convinced that we would find a suitable alternative. First though, we ducked into the Carrefour to pick up some food for breakfast and water bottles to take to the Longmen Grottoes in the afternoon. After emerging from the supermarket with a sad-looking piece of date cake and a yogurt, we spotted a small coffeeplace named Pappa Roti's (we suspect it was a misspelling of Pavarotti). We decided to take a chance and have our coffee there. It could not be worse than McDonald's coffee. Much to our great delight, the coffee was pretty awesome and was Illy and made from an expresso machine!!! We bought a couple of buns that they had there too...those were awesome as well. We ate our breakfast sitting near a decorative fountain in the mall.
After that we ran back to the hotel as NW's contact picked us up to take us to the Luoyang Museum.
The museum itself was impressive. The building was interesting - an inverted pyramid-like structure and spacious and well-lit. The collection was super super impressive (took lots of pics of all the dings and Han mirrors) and they had a lovely calligraphy wing that they were still in the process of setting up. They also had a few pieces borrowed from the Palace Museum in Beijing for their Qing dynasty art wing. As NW noted, it was unusual and impressive that the Palace Museum had loaned a city museum like Luoyang some of their stuff. NW got interviewed on local TV at some point as I exchanged a few businesscards with the TV crew. Hehe. After the tour, NW's contact treated us to a simple (but delicious) lunch at the Museum staff cafeteria and then offered to drive us to the Longmen Grottoes. After a few protests about not wanting to inconvenience them and reassurances that we were not on their part, we accepted.
As we were driving to the caves, we drove past a beautiful Tang-dynasty gate. The museum guy told us it was one of the old city gates from imperial times. He then did a U-turn and went into the complex where the gate was.
Turns out the gate was a museum.
A museum they opened exclusively for us that day.
Wow.
I must say it is one of the more interesting museums I've been to. The Tang fascade we saw from the outside is actually a modern partial reconstruction and it houses the ruins of the old Song dynasty gate!!! We also got to see this pretty neat model of Luoyang back in the day when it was an imperial capital. I also learned that Wu Zitian (the only female empress in all of Chinese history and one of the most badass figures in history in general) ruled from Luoyang. Yay! History!




After the gate museum, NW's museum contact drove us to the Longmen Grottoes (龙门石窟 - lóngmén shíkū). I think NW's account of what happened during that visit is a pretty good one and can be checked out here. All I can say about that is that the Longmen Grottoes are just..something else. NW put it in a particularly good way when we saw the huge 5-story Buddhas in one of the many many caves: "The feeling I get here is the same I get whenever I walk into a Jewish Synagogue, a Caltholic Church, an Islamic Mosque, or a Buddhist temple - that these people, the ones who made this, saw God and chose to manifest it this way". Quite an ethereal experience.
I think what she meant is, that it is hard to not look at these incredible works of art and not see God, not see the Ethereal, that force that is greater than all of us - not see that interconnectedness. It is just simply, breathtaking...awesome, in the purest sense of the word...The power of faith really is incredible...
Here are some pictures. But again, as NW aptly put it when going over some of our pix afterwards, although impressive to see through pictures, the pictures will never and can never really do justice to the feeling and the magnitude of actually being in the presence of these grottoes.










My suggestion to all of you is: if you ever make it to China, make the Longmen Grottoes one of the places to go see. It is well worth it...it is definitely one of the most impressing and amazing things I've seen in my entire life. And I am so so glad NW suggested I go with her to Henan to see them!
After hiking around the grottoes feeling amazed, we headed back to the hotel. NW's museum contact took us to dinner. He took us to the old part of Luoyang into this place that was just enough of a dive to be authentic, but not divey enough to be sketchy. We had the traditional Luoyang water banquet (basically a bunch of soups). The soups were really good but they also ordered Century Egg, which I tried, because you know, you should try everything at least once before deciding whether you like it or not.
Yeah.
I didn't like century egg. Texture is weird, flavor is weird...and it took 5 minutes to actually be able to pick it up with my chopsticks.
But I did like the cow's stomach soup! It was really delicious. I know that sounds weird...
After dinner, we said one last goodbye to our very very nice and gracious friend and went back to the hotel for some sleep.
This morning, we woke up, got coffee and buns at Pappa Roti's and jumped on the train to Zhengzhou where NW and I parted ways. NW was staying in Zhengzhou to visit the Henan Provincial museum there and I went to the airport to catch a plane to Hangzhou - my last stop in China before leaving for New York. So that's where I am now. On a plane. Again. The Indian man sitting next to me seems intrigued by what I'm writing. And food service is here.
Gotta go!

Categories: China, Chinese, chinese food, Coffee, ethereal, Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, museum, NW

Kaifeng (开封): Where one of my not-really-serious back-up plans is born

March 31, 2011 - On the Way to Luoyang, China

I'm a little sad to be leaving Kaifeng behind. We had a really lovely time in the city being the only Western-looking foreigners walking around. It really started with the adventure of actually taking the train from Xi'An to Kaifeng. While I was at the Warriors on the 28th, NW had called me up to inform me that all of the 40 RMB train tickets to Kaifeng had been sold out and that all that were left were the 70 RMB ones which she had bought. I guess we sort of assumed that with the price jump we might have gotten a nicer train.

Ah. Right. Let me explain that first I guess. In China, there are different classes of trains and different classes within the different trains. The nicest ones are the Z or G trains (G stands for Gaotie) and are usually the bullet trains that will go at around 300-400 km/hr. Because Z or G or C trains usually shorten distances and run shorter distances anyways, they don't usually have sleeper cabins but instead just have first and second class. As a point of reference, second class on a G train is probably nicer than economy class on most commercial airplanes. The next best train is the D trains. They're usually super nice but run longer distances and are somewhat slower than the bullet trains. You'll usually see them doing the Xi'An-Beijing, Beijing-Xi'An, Beijing-Shanghai, or Shanghai-Beijing routes. I think there's also a D train that does Beijing-Hong Kong but I might be wrong. Anyways, D trains will have sleeper berths as well as seating. Some D trains have 3 classes of sleeper cabins (2-berth cabin soft sleeper, 4-berth cabin soft sleeper, and then the 6-berth hard-sleeper). Then there's the T trains that also run from Xi'An-Beijing and they'll only have two kinds of sleepers (soft sleeper and hard sleeper) and unlettered trains.

So back to the story....

So we both sort of figured that since we paid more for the tickets we might get a nicer train, but our tickets were marked just with a number for the train. We still kind of hoped it would be okay. We had heard from NW's friend Alina that there was a new Gaotie (bullet train) running from Xi'An to Luoyang and we were hoping that maybe, maybe, we'd bought those tickets.
No such luck.
We boarded the modest-looking train only to be met by about 100 Chinese people staring at us as we dragged our super-heavy luggage through the 2nd-class compartment. Some guys were nice enough to help us get it up on the rack. We sat down in our modest seating and tried to ignore all the stares. About an hour into the ride, we began to chat with the people sitting across from us and the guy sitting next to us. They were really surprised that we could speak Chinese. They were really impressed with NW in particular because of her fluency (by that point, I could understand 95% of a conversation but couldn't really answer back). It turns out that one of the guys across from us was going as far as Zhengzhou (the capital of Henan Province) and the other 3 people were all going all the way down to Hangzhou! Pretty ballsy....in a way. Haha. They proudly informed us that the Xi'An-Hangzhou route was 24 hours long. NW and are were impressed by the fact that they planned to stick it out entirely on the hard seats (2nd class seating). We talked about a ton of other stuff too, mostly Chinese History and comparing China with America (they tried to bait us into taking a side while NW and I diplomatically insisted that both countries have their good things and their bad things). At some point, NW got asked how old she was. Just to clarify, in China, this conversation usually goes this way:

Chinese Person: So how old are you?
Foreign Woman: 22.
Chinese Person: Ah! Very good! So do you have a boyfriend?
Foreign Woman: Yes.
Chinese Person: Ah! Very good! Western or Chinese?
Foreign Woman: Western.
Chinese Person: Oh, you don't like Chinese men?
Foreign Woman: No. No. It isn't that. I just met him back home.
Chinese Person: Would you ever consider marrying a Chinese man?
Foreign Woman: I mean, I have nothing against it -
Chinese Person: Ah! Perfect! You should come over for dinner at my house sometime! My son/nephew/cousin/whatever is 23 and very good-looking. You two would be a good match!

*facepalm*

NW, being used to it, laughed it off. Said she had a lovely boyfriend back home that was Asian if that was any comfort to them. The rest of the group laughed it off too.
As we approached Kaifeng, we befriended a girl sitting nearby. She and her friend insisted on giving us a ride to our hotel once we arrived. They said they didn't want us to get ripped-off. We decided to trust them. They did, in fact, drop us off at the door of our hotel which when we arrived felt immense remorse for because the hotel was clearly a very very very nice 5-star luxury hotel (we'd lucked out on Expedia on a great deal) and we felt a bit like ridiculous foreigners. We kept apologizing for the hotel, insisting that we didn't know it would be this nice. They were nice and gracious about it though. They gave us their cell numbers and insisted that we call them up if we got lost or needed guides for the city. We waived them off and then checked in to the hotel.
Can I gush for a bit about how nice of a hotel it was? Because it was ridiculously nice.
The room was probably as big as the average American kitchen and living room put together and we had bathroom with separate rooms for the shower and a tub. Our view was spectacular too! We had a view of a man-made lake and a bunch of Tings. We fell asleep on the very comfy beds almost immediately. Here's our view:




The next day we woke up bright and early, marched ourselves down to the dining hall for a very good breakfast buffet and headed out. NW went to visit the Kaifeng City Museum as I decided to spend my morning visiting a Daoist temple and the nearby Buddhist temple. The Daoist Temple refused me entrance so I just decided to go to up to the Buddhist temple and spend the morning there.
Best. Decision. Ever.
I basically just spent the morning admiring their temples and pagodas and sitting around the Pool of Infinite Freedom just meditating. It was just such a peaceful place...the wind blew through the carved bamboo behind me as the goldfish swam around the pool in front. The city, the stress of daily life seemed far away. Despite being in the middle of a bustling city, the temple was peacefully quiet. I bought a prayer ribbon for myself and tied it on to one of the railings near the pool.
I recited a quiet prayer for Japan - for the wellbeing of all of its people and for the protection of my new friends there.








I sat near the pool for a long time - probably about an hour or so - before deciding that I should walk around some more. Some of the Buddhist monks had been already alerted to my presence. I'd smiled and bowed slightly in respect as they passed me by meditating by the pool. I didn't speak to any of them until right before I entered the room where they kept their Buddha of a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes (which is quite spectacular in its own right) where I ran into a pair of younger monks who were intrigued by my presence. They asked me where I was from, how old I was, and if I was alone. Actually, they asked me if I was Xinjiang (people from the westmost part of China which most Chinese people are not that fond of - and interestingly enough, they'll probably ask you if you're Xinjiang if you're a foreigner and can speak Chinese because all a lot of the Chinese population knows about Xinjiang people is that they're not supposed to look quite like most ethnically Han Chinese and are supposed to be able to speak Mandarin) and I corrected them by saying I was a westerner from the USA and South America. They were really intrigued about what I was doing at a Buddhist temple so far inland on my own and how I had learned such great Chinese. I told them that I had a great admiration and respect for Buddhism and Buddhist traditions and had heard that their temple was especially beautiful. I said I had learned Chinese at Qingdao University. They seemed very pleased with this answer and allowed me to pass. By the time I'd reached the gift shop after looking at all the pavillions in the temple, Buddhist Monks were approaching me everywhere I went. Word had spread quite fast that there was a nice foreigner roaming the grounds and they all wanted to talk to me. This is how my back-up plan was born and how one of the more interesting interactions of my life came to be.
Basically what happened was I got the "how old are you?" conversation from a couple of monks. But instead of it being their son/nephew/whatever they offered to set me up with a very nice young, 23-year-old Buddhist man.
I laughed at that. I told them that even though I appreciated the offer, I was only passing through China and would be going back to America within a week's time.
Their answer to that?
"Oh that's not a problem! Just take him with you!"
Which caused all of us to burst out laughing at the prospect of it. I joked about stuffing him into my luggage and how proud my parents would be of me bringing home a nice Buddhist husband. Haha.
They said that they were joking of course, but still said "Well, if you ever want a Chinese boyfriend, you should come back and we'll be happy to arrange it!"
I said that I would keep that offer in mind for the future as I exited the store, resolving to get some more meditation time near the Pool of Infinite Freedom.
And so now I figure, if all else fails...there's always the possibility of finding a nice Buddhist husband in Kaifeng. Hahaha.
As I was on my second round of meditation by the pool, NW called me up and told me she had left the museum and that we should go find some lunch somewhere. I said goodbye to a monk hanging around the pool and then left the complex.
I met NW outside of the temple and we ducked into a restaurant some 20 minutes afterwards. After a pleasant lunch, we continued on to Longqing Park which is essentially the old Imperial Palace in Kaifeng. It is really really pretty, but less than spectacular when compared to the Forbidden City in Beijing.
This is also where NW had her embarrassing moment with a deaf girl which you can read about here. We didn't do much except walk about for a bit and enjoy the scenery.
Here are a few pix of Longqing Park:







After the park, we went to see the famous Iron Pagoda (鐵塔 - Tiětǎ) at Youguo Temple (a different Buddhist temple than the one I went to). I must say, that was pretty spectacular. The pagoda itself isn't made of iron but bricks that have been painted with a special glaze that makes it look like iron. The incredible thing about this pagoda (besides it being very very beautiful and very very cool) is that it has been around for almost 1000 years and has survived 38 earthquakes, 6 floods, and a quite a fair share of wars and invasions. Pretty neat, huh?





NW decided that she was going to climb up through the insides. I decided against it mostly because my ankle hated me by this point in the day and wouldn't take kindly to me making it climb the pagoda. I hung out around the gardens until she came down to inform me there wasn't much at the top besides a small Buddha and some candles anyways.
We left Longqing Park on the plan of looking for dinner. We decided that we would have dinner by just picking up random stuff off vendor carts at the night market but would precede this outing by ducking into the nearest Halal place and splitting a portion of Xiaolongbao (the soupy dumplings) since it wasn't quite night yet.
After an hour of eating soupy dumplings and a side of beer/tea we ventured out to the night market. THE FOOD WAS SO GOOD. OMG.
We ate some crepe-like thing that I forget what it was called, and NW also ate a bing (flatbread) with pork in it. It looked really good....we also bought some Huasheng bing (peanut cakes) that are a specialty in Kaifeng. We also got so see how they were made. Which basically consisted of two very strong Chinese guys pounding on this hot mixture of peanuts and sugar until it became sort of a phyllo-dough type thing.
SO GOOD.
After we had eaten our fill of night market snacks, we hailed a cab back to the hotel where NW promptly proceeded to go soak in the tub while I sent out emails on my computer. The day was finished off by watching Revolutionary Road on HBO and then passing out for the night. :D

Categories: Buddhism, China, Chinese, chinese food, Kaifeng, NW

Xi'An (西安): A Chinese Paradise for Non-Pork Eaters (and history buffs too!)

March 28, 2011 - Xi'An, Shaanxi Provice, China

I got into Xi'An as the sun was setting - it looked quite pretty from the plane, as I mentioned in my earlier post. As I walked towards security, I realized that I had to re-fill a Chinese entry card because being in Hong Kong technically counted as exiting China and thus going to Xi'An constituted re-entry. Thank God I got a 2-time visa when I applied for it. But because I took some time to find a card and fill it out, the Chinese security kind of came over and hovered over my shoulder. The officer was nice, and was impressed that I wrote very clear characters but still sent me to the "special" line. I was like...uuuuuuuuuuh....did I do something wrong? Luckily, that turned out to be just the line that was free and not the Chinese government tagging me or something....I hope.
Anyways, I got on the bus to the Bell Tower and then met Wei Ningqi (or NW, as I've referred to her before on this blog). It was so nice to see her again after 8 months! We went to her apartment and cooked up some veggies and chicken and rice for dinner and just talked. It was a lovely relaxing evening.
The next day we woke up early and went to the Antiques Market in Xi'An with one of NW's friends from Shaanxi University. He's an archaeologist and he's pretty cool. We just went to look about for a bit and see what was available. To be honest, we were pretty sure that a lot of the stuff at the market were fakes (of varying degrees) but we still found some very pretty things. I personally really liked the aged wooden doors and lanterns we found in the ground floor as well as some old republican-era round glasses and the Han dynasty mirrors. I didn't get anything though I did take a lot of pictures as inspiration for a story I'm developing at the moment.







After the market, NW and I headed up to the Muslim Quarter. We walked around for a bit before deciding that we were hungry and we should eat something. We ducked into a pretty big and pretty famous restaurant that I forget the name of and ordered some xiaolongbao (小笼包) which are a kind of soupy dumplings and some of Xi'An's famous Yangrou Paomo (羊肉泡馍) which is is mutton meat soup with pieces of nan bread in it. Both dishes were absolutely delicious! I actually want to learn how to make yangrou paomo because it was so so good.



After eating, we set about to walk through a bit more of the muslim quarter. There were a bunch of really interesting things for sale. I bought some of the dried Kiwi that were intriguing me and some Chinese Shadowpuppets for my family (they were very very pretty). We also ate some really delicious persimmon cakes. SO GOOD. Probably not very good for one's health, but whatever...I'm on vacation! Here are some pictures of some of the stuff we saw:





After that, we headed over to the Shaanxi History Museum where NW works at. A bunch of other Fulbrighters were in town (did I mention NW has a Fulbright Scholarship to study provincial museums in Shaanxi, Henan, and Zhejiang provinces in China? Did I also mention she is kind of badass because of this?) so NW gave all of them and me a tour of the museum. I must say, they have a pretty amazing collection! I especially like the Chinese bronze "ding" - it is absolutely mind-blowing to me the amount of detail and craftmanship that goes into one of these. They're pretty amazing. We also got to see some real Han dynasty mirrors which I also really liked. I also discovered that I agree with NW in saying that I really don't like Qing dynasty porcelain. It is so overworked and too covered in detail! Anyways, after the tour, NW and I met up with NW's friend Cathy (who also works at the museum) and went for a walk around the vicinity of the museum. Cathy was super sweet! She helped us practice our Chinese and was very very patient with me, which helped me a lot and helped me get over the sort of speaking block I had kind of been going through up until that point. We decided to go for dinner and ended up eating noodles somewhere in Xi'An. They were, of course, fantastic. We attracted some attention from the other patrons in the establishment on the account of being foreign and being able to speak somewhat fluent Chinese. I think a lot of them were perplexed by it - especially when NW was talking. Her Chinese is really really good and she speaks it almost as fast as a local would so it often garners a lot of very confused stares by Chinese people. Which is good, in that it means her language skills are pretty awesome! After that we said good-bye to Cathy, headed back to the apartment for a bit and then went out for a drink at the Belgian Bar in the South Gate district. We met up with the other Fulbrighters that I had done the museum tour with. They're all pretty incredible and interesting people!
Also, funny thing happened. In a group of 5 Americans, 3 of us ended up being from Kansas. Just weird little incident - who would've thought that 3 Kansas folk would meet up and be the majority in a group in Xi'An, China???? Haha. We did a few toasts to Kansas and Kansas pride and whatnot. They updated me a bit on what's happened to my hometown of Wichita (apparently it has developed a Hood???? wtf?) and we laughed at stuff for a bit. Yay Kansas! :D
The next day, the beer we drank made sure we slept in unfortunately. So all we really did is fret over my new business card design and then head out for a dumpling banquet dinner at Dafacheng Dumpling Restaurant near the Drum Tower.
Oh. My. God.
Dumpling banquet!
How do I describe the deliciousness and amazingness of dumpling banquet????
Well, here are some pictures just to get a sense of what I was eating:








NW and I each got the cheapest banquet (for 130 RMB) and ate our fill of deliciousness. We then went out and walked around for a bit and snapped some pretty cool pictures of the Drum tower and Bell tower during the night:





My last day in Xi'An, I went and walked around the Xi'An city walls and then went to Calligraphy Street and bought a bunch of Calligraphy supplies (I like Chinese calligraphy a lot). Later I ventured out to the terracotta warriors site with another Fulbrighter friend of NW's. It basically took all day. They were pretty awesome, but I think that NW was right in saying that they're worth going to see, but once you've seen them once, you're set. I mean, the site isn't that spectacular. What really gets to you is the sheer enormity of it. Pit One is the best of the three pits. It really puts into perspective the scope of Qin Shihuangdi's tomb and terracotta army. Mostly because it is an airplane-hangar covering only one of pits of thousands of terracotta soldiers. Apparently, they've only dug up about 6000 but estimate that there could be up to 60,000 of these things total, most of which are still untouched underground. Isn't that nuts?!








Tomorrow I'm off to Kaifeng (another of the ancient Chinese capitals) by train. NW has bought us train tickets while I was out looking at terracotta warriors. I'm excited! Although, I will definitely miss Xi'An, I look forward to the next adventure!

Categories: chinese food, foodie, history, museum, NW, Xi'An

如果是七点种以前，我的脑子就运不作 (if it is before 7 am, my brain won't work)

The title pretty much sums it up. I had to get up at some ungodly hour this morning (6:15 am) after going to bed at 3 am (without finishing my screenplay) to go to the first Chinese class I've attended since I tearfully (and I do mean tearfully, the damn exam reduced me to tears of desperation) handed in my final exam for Advanced Readings in Chinese and gleefully completed my Chinese major. I got up today in hopes of maybe refreshing my language skills to be able to successfully conduct business in Mandarin Chinese when I go to Hong Kong in March if need be.
Much to my dismay (and my non-working brain's) I was met with the equivalent of the material I looked at back in the third week my freshman year. Really? 图书馆 (Library) is an Intermediate-level Chinese vocabulary word? And the grammar structure Verb + 到/ Verb +不到 is really an Intermediate-level Chinese grammar structure? REALLY? Maybe I got a little more annoyed at the class I'd arranged to take than I meant to - I think it just has to do with having to wake up too early and not having 喝了一杯咖啡 ("drank a cup of coffee". NW will understand this. She understands the importance of 汉语课以前，我们需要喝着一杯咖啡).
Damn. My 脑子(brain) really doesn't work right now. I think I'm going to go sit down with a cup of 绿茶 (Green Tea) in hopes of rebooting it sometime soon.
Until then, 再见！

Categories: China, Chinese, Hong Kong, NW

Serious Work (Sort of)

So I decided that I really need to make something of myself so I'm strapping myself down and making myself finish writing my screenplay by Dec. 1. You see, there's a grant I want to apply to. It is a pretty sweet grant so I really can't miss the opportunity. My own deadline is Dec. 1 so that my editor (N from Everything Will Be Okay) can go through it, butcher it, and return it to me in time to make adjustments and send it off. Today, I've written 10 pages so far but I still need to write another 30 at least I think. It kind of feels like forcing myself to sit down and write my Chinese thesis back around this time last year. Minus the company of N and M. However, in the spirit of honoring SoCo 7 study session tradition, I've prepared myself a pot of Chai tea that is currently sitting next to Darth Vader (my laptop. Just for future reference: My laptop is called Darth Vader, my ipod is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and my iphone is R2D2...guess who is a fan of Star Wars?) and I think that later on during the night, I'll pour myself a glass of red wine to let those creative juices flow. The tea and wine studying technique was developed by my dear friends N and J back in junior year and was used to great success by every inhabitant in SoCo 7. Of course, M added the Margaret Cho YouTube study break. Which is also essential. In that spirit, I have also pulled up a few Margaret Cho videos for when I need to distract myself for a bit.
But besides all the work I need to do in the next few days, I've had a pretty good week business-wise. I got an awesome gig that has me going to Hong Kong (香港) on business in March. I'm also trying to figure out a way to buy a ticket up to Xi'An（西安）to visit NW (Wei Ningqi Does China), but I don't know if I will be able to or not yet. I'm hoping it will work out.
Also, I've been learning how to properly dance the Charleston on my own. It gave me quite a workout today! Planning to keep at it until I have mad Charleston dancing skills! :D
Anyhoo, I should probably stop procrastinating and go to work! Have a great week!

Categories: China, D, Hong Kong, J, M, N, NW, S, Script, SoCo 7, Xi'An