6/18/2009 01:45:00 PM

May 06, 2009

Hello everyone,

Beijing is wonderful. The summer (or at least the beginning of the summer) is wonderful. The city is finally green again! There are gentle breezes in the air, and the clouds of air pollution seem to have blown away. It's the perfect time to travel China! Something I will do starting... tomorrow.

I have finished my semester at Peking University, have concluded my internship at CNN, and taken the Chinese proficiency exam, and it is now time to relax. The past semester has gone by so fast. It felt strange to have been cramming for several weeks and then have it come to a sudden stop once the exam was over.

The exam itself was a little rough, so I'm going to pray for good results within the next few weeks as they grade them, but either way, I feel much less stressed. Despite learning much at CNN, I think I can stand not transcribing news interviews for a long time. I can also stand not studying Chinese for a few weeks. Therefore, I'm going to travel and eat.

I recently got to eat at the Quan Ju De duck restaurant (again) with some friends. I say again, because I love roast duck, and try to treat myself once a month. The restaurant has more than a 100 year history, and when you go, they even give you a little number saying what number duck you ate in their whole grand scheme of duck roasting. I have a soft spot for the crispy fatty duck skin, wrapped around tender meat, glazed with plum sauce, and wrapped in rice bread.

And I will be able to eat even more as I travel to the western autonomous region of Xinjiang tomorrow. It is the home of a large Muslim minority in China, an ethnic crossroads for the East and the Middle East.

Xinjiang literally means, “the frontier,” and has been the center of Han Chinese, Middle Eastern, and European exchange for more than 1000 years. It's the last surviving city on the Ancient Silk Road in China! The culture is a pluralistic mix of Turkic peoples, Pakistani people, Kyrgyz peoples, and the blue-eyed, blonde haired Chinese descended from Romans captured by the Mongol empire.

But along with all this ethnic mixing, they have developed a delicious food history. They are known for their roasted lamb, organic desert grown fruits, and yogurt. I'm so excited! Anyway, I'll keep you all updated when I get back.

Enjoy the coming summer!

-George

6/18/2009 01:41:34 PM

April 14, 2009

Summer's Coming!

Hello everyone,

I hope the springtime is going well for you all! Beijing finally made it to about 75 degrees in the last few days, and I have enjoyed all the time outside. I'm a little sad that I didn't get the chance to go out hiking outside Beijing, but it was fun wandering around the city in the warmth.

I did get to go hiking at the Great Wall again recently. Unfortunately, it wasn't as warm, but I did get to hike along a 10-kilometer section the wall with some beautiful landscapes. It was about 3 hours outside of Beijing, and my friends and I went on a long journey via public bus and black taxi (an unregistered cab that you negotiate with to take you places) to get to it. All in all, it was a nice break from studying for this Chinese exam. Repeating Chinese characters and grammar over and over gets so boring. Though my Chinese is getting better, and two weeks from now, the exam should go well.

In the meanwhile, I study and try to find fun distractions here and there. One of the nice things about Beijing is that it has many cosmopolitan affairs at not so very cosmopolitan prices. One such event was a wine and chocolate pairing put on by an expatriate chocolate-lovers group in the city. For the equivalent of 13 dollars, I was given 5 small glasses of wine, 5 pieces of chocolate, and an hour of explanation and pairing commentary by a sommelier flown in from France. It was a nice treat especially, because the Chinese aren't really fond of sweet things, and they don't really have much in the desserts category the way Americans do.

Anyway, back to the books.

Cheers,

George

6/18/2009 01:38:51 PM

March 17, 2009

The New Year

China got really busy after winter break ended. It was a fairly abrupt change to my everyday pace of waking up at noon and wandering aimlessly my apartment until something forces me to enter the outside world. It was cold; luckily, it's warming up in China. Weather is slowly enter the 50s again, and despite northern China having the worst drought in more than 50 years and the most luxurious hotel under construction burning down two days ago, things are doing fine.

I spent most of the break either studying or lounging around, and topped it off with the celebration of the Spring Festival. This is the largest celebratory period in the Chinese calendar, and quite possibly the occasion triggering the largest period of human short term migration. Every year, millions of people return to their hometowns to celebrate the Spring Festival with their families. People go home to celebrate the “passing of the year” and engage in about 2 weeks of eating, drinking, driving away ghosts, and seeing family. I spent the eve of the spring festival with a Chinese friend of mine whose parents came to visit Beijing.

During this period of time, you're supposed to welcome the New Year by eating auspicious foods (long noodles for a long life, fish to bring financial prosperity, and well, I guess I also accidentally had my first taste of donkey, though, I'm not sure when and in what dish I had it, so I guess it wasn't as climactic a “new food” experience as I hoped it would be).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbCVnssdN9s

For the next two weeks, until the Lantern festival, every night was, in varying degrees, filled with fireworks, firecrackers, loud boom noise things that shoot up into the sky and set off car alarms for blocks, ground flowers, and roman candles. This country takes its fireworks seriously. Well, I'm not sure seriously is the right word for it, because I thought the city was going to burn down during the whole spring festival. The fireworks in the video, everything that you saw was produced by somebody who went to a fruit stand, threw down a couple hundred RMB, and then proceeded to “drive out” every ghost in China come nightfall. It was a bit terrifying sometimes to see people setting off fireworks so close to my apartment building, so close that some of them would burst right in front of my window. I got used to it after a while, and used to the barrage of firecrackers that seemed to go off everyday at sunrise.

It was fun while it lasted. Though, once the semester started, I barely had enough time to make dinner for myself. I'm currently working Monday, Wednesday, Friday, from 9:00am-6:00pm at CNN Beijing, and it's been a really amazing experience so far. This is the sort of Chinese speaking work environment experience I was hoping on having. I spent my days reading Chinese newspapers and researching through Chinese internet to find whatever the reporters are looking for. I think my favorite thing to do so far is translating/transcribing the interview tapes that they bring back into the office from Chinese into English. It has pushed my vocabulary to the limits, and has definitely given me an interesting taste of Chinese culture. At the same time, it's given me a new view of the media industry, a view which is forming and I will probably try to put it into words after I get back into the United States. But yes, China is definitely a place that is seeing growth and social innovations that surprise me as an American. For instance, people get addicted to the internet cafe's here. And I suppose I can't even call them internet cafes because the Chinese don't even call them that. They call them "internet bars," and they are these dark, badly ventilated, greasy, rooms filled with computers that people can rent for a fairly low fee. Apparently, there have been several elementary and middle school students that have been skipping school to go hang out at the internet bars, so much to the point that it's created a group of truant students who are having difficulties coping with the real world in doing things like...finding jobs.

I suppose it might be somewhat equitable to people who game too much in the US, but it's just so fascinating to think that these internet bars are creating a new group of people that actually physically know each other, as opposed to video games which can socially isolate people in the US.

Anyway, yeah, I work at CNN 3 days a week, and then Tuesday/Thursday, I have class from 9:00am-4:30pm, and Saturday I have class from 9:00am-noon. Each week is something that I really need to put my mind to, get goodnights rests for, and prepare for, lest I end up crashing. I really only need to keep up this lifestyle through April 18-19, the days in which I will submit myself to the Chinese proficiency exam. Wish me luck.

Anyway, Happy Year of the Ox!

Zaijian!

George