Day 5: Lecture 2 and Karaoke

Today, we had our second lecture, which was focused on more recent Chinese history and included all the way up until the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. The class took about 2 hours, which he took in the morning. For lunch, we went to McDonald’s. Surprisingly, the McDonald’s in China is very similar to the ones back home. I had a Big Mac, because I was still skeptical and didn’t want to press my luck with anything else on the menu. It was exactly the same as at home, but less greasy. Everything here is less greasy than back home, which allows me to not feel as sick after eating fast food. In China, McDonald’s even has a 24 hour delivery service, so you can call and place an order, having it delivered right to your door.

After that, we went to a Karaoke Bar. They are very big in China, and it was actually pretty fun. We started out with a few oldies, like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, and spent about 2 ½ hours there. The day was pretty uneventful as far as sightseeing goes, but it was a fun day nonetheless. At night, we went to Pyro Pizza, an American style bar in WuDaoKuo, which is near our hotel. On Thursdays it has “Pyro Pong” night, where we can play beer pong against other teams. However, when we got there, the list was full, and we were told that we had to be there two hours earlier to even consider getting on the table.

Day 4: Zoo and Market

Today we went to the Beijing Zoo, one of the better zoos in the world and home to some of the few remaining Panda Bears. The bears are called the “Olympic games” and the “Asian games” pandas, named such before the Olympics. They are very boring to look at because they rarely move, but when they do it is certainly a sight to see. After the Pandas, we saw the smaller Pandas, which are a reddish color and have the face of a panda. The word for Panda in Chinese literally means “bear-cat.”

I also visited the golden monkeys, and the Rhesus monkeys, which are very entertaining. In the Rhesus monkeys’ enclosure they had animals on springs, like they do in parks that kids ride on, and one of the monkeys got on it and started to rock back and forth. Next I visited the wolves, which were very interesting because of their likeness to dogs. Overall, the zoo was fun, but a lot of it was under renovations of sorts.

After the zoo, we went to an authentic Chinese market, where we were able to haggle over prices and try to bargain our way down to the price we wanted to pay. The building had eight floors and was packed from wall to wall with little shops. There was a floor for just shoes, and there you could find every style of shoe in every variation, in every color you wanted, but sometimes the sizes didn’t go up to our shoe sizes. There was also a floor for purses and women’s clothing. I didn’t spend much time on that floor.

At night, we went to a neighborhood that had a small lake and around it had bars on bars on bars. There, we went to a bar as a group and it was the first time I really fully felt like an adult. I felt like that because we were able to drink in public, and we just sat around, had a drink, and talked for a while. It was very relaxing.

Day 3: Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City

Today we visited the pride of Beijing, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It was a day full of walking, and by the end of the day my legs were pretty tired. Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City are the exact center of Beijing, lying directly on the North-South axis. We are staying in the northwest corner of the city so the drive took about an hour and a half. It didn’t help that there was a ton of traffic or that Asian drivers are so reckless.

We had to pass through security that checked our bags in order to get into the square. Once inside we had our travel guides explain to us the significance of the square and the history behind it. The first stop was the Zhangyangmen Gate, which is the largest gate in China, at the south entrance to the square. It was built during the Ming Dynasty and lies on the north-south axis like the rest of the square’s attractions. Mao Zedong’s Mausoleum and the Monument to the People’s Heroes are in the center of the square. The area is crowded with people and you have to fight off others to get a good picture.

Next we visited the Forbidden City. At the entrance to the City we were greeted by a giant picture of Mao. The Forbidden City is 961 meters long, representing the 9.6 million square kilometers that is the area of all of China. In it, we passed through the Tiananmen Gate, the Gate of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the Imperial Garden. As we walked through the city, my main thought was “wow, the city just never ends” because we would walk and walk and walk without ever coming to anything different. Overall, though, it was a great experience.

At night, we went to a bar called “La Bamba.” Our tour guide, who is still in college at Tsinghua University, took us inside to meet the bartender, who in turn gave us each (8 of us) a free shot of tequila and a ½-liter of beer. Needless to say, we went back for dinner and some drinks with the rest of our groups. They also gave us a membership card, which gives us reduced price drinks throughout the night.

Day 2: First Lecture and Tsinghua University

Our first day in China was a pretty interesting one. In the morning we had a lecture about Chinese History and Culture given to us by a grad student who studied at Cambridge. We talked about all of the dynasties throughout Chinese history and also various wars that occurred. The lecture lasted about an hour and a half and taught me a lot about Chinese history.

After the lecture we went to another unique restaurant. At this restaurant we picked a bunch of individual items, such as meats, vegetables, spices, noodles, etc. and they cooked them all together in a wok and served it to us in one big bowl.

The other planned stop on this day’s journey was to Tsinghua University, the best university in China. Tsinghua focuses on science and technology and would be similar to an MIT or Cal Tech in the U.S. Five of the nine most powerful people in China all graduated from Tsinghua, including the Prime Minister Hu Jintao and most of his cabinet members. There is a new campus and an old campus because in the mi 1900’s the university was forced to relocate. The new campus is very serene, with a huge lake system with waterfalls and a bunch of pagoda-like structures where people can study outside.

For dinner we visited the same mall that we ate lunch in, The U-Center, and went to an authentic Korean Barbecue. We struggled to order and communicate with the servers because this was our first meal without the chaperones, who all speak fluent Chinese. It was a sort of Hibachi Grill, but we cooked the meat ourselves.

Travel Day

After a long 13+ hour flight, we finally landed in Beijing. As we got off the plane, we had to travel through a temperature scanner to make sure none of us had a fever. The Chinese government installed these after the Bird Flu epidemic to try to decrease the risk of illness being brought into the country.

On the plane ride over, I had plenty of time to kill. I watched four movies: We Bought A Zoo, Good Will Hunting, Green Lantern, and J. Edgar. I also read more of Game of Thrones. The coolest part about the flight though was the route we traveled. Most people wouldn’t consider it, but the fastest way from Toronto to Beijing was over the North Pole. That is because the circumference of the earth gets smaller as you approach the North Pole from the equator.

We took the airport subway to the baggage claim area where we were greeted by our Chinese-speaking travel guides, who are students at the local University, and our other PITT chaperone, Dr. Di Gao. We took about a 30 minute bus ride to the Xijao Hotel, where we will be staying the next two weeks.

After about an hour or so getting our room keys and putting our things away, the group travelled to a restaurant for a somewhat late dinner (8 pm local time.) The way the meal was set up was a new concept for most of us. Everyone was given a small personal plate and a pair of chopsticks. In the middle of the table was a big, circular, glass plate with a bunch of dishes. When we sat down, the students travel guides explained to us how the meal works. We could take food off the main rotational plate whenever we wanted, and put it on our own plate. But, there were no serving spoons, so the question was, how do we get the food? The solution was to use our chopsticks, even after eating with them. All manners went out the window for this meal.

All in all, the travel day was exhausting. By the time dinner rolled around, most people were just ready to go to sleep. But the best way to fight off jetlag is to stay awake in the new country until a normal sleeping hour, so we toughed it out. Our total travel day was 20 hours, but because of the day change it felt like a lot more. We departed from the dorm at PITT at 7:45 am Saturday Pittsburgh time, and landed in Beijing at 6:45 am Sunday Pittsburgh time. With the time change, however, it was 6:45 pm in Beijing.

O, Canada!

Our plane landed in Toronto around 11:45 am local time (same as Pittsburgh). The plane we rode in on was a propellor plane, and the ride was a little different. The ride was rather smooth compared to my other propellor plane experiences. The only negative: the air conditioning wasn’t working. Add that to the 80 degree temperature and the small plane and you get a hot, sticky, 50 minute plane ride.

The Toronto airport is very nice, much bigger than Pittsburgh’s. We were greeted off the plane by a jersey of “The Great One,” Wayne Gretzky. Right outside our gate lies a “Bacardi RumBar,” but since I will be flying for 13 hours, I figured it would be better to not be drunk.

Pre-Deprature Individual Report

My International Experience to Date:

            My lone trip overseas was in 8^th grade. That year after graduation, my middle school, which was a Jewish Day School, took my class to Israel. We went for the two weeks after school ended and traveled all around the country tying my in-class Jewish historical education with the actual sites I spent the past nine years learning about. It was an all-around great experience.

I want to go to China because:

            For most of my life, China has just been an industrial park where the U.S. gets their toys made and a place with a lot of ancient history. Now, as I prepare to enter the working world within the next few years, I see China as a place where business and the world market is becoming more and more important.

I think the main professional work differences I will experience will be:

            I think that one of the main differences will be that the Chinese have not established a leisure mentality as many American workers have. I think this will be prevalent because of the fact that there are many more people who are willing to replace a lazy worker in China versus in America.

I think the main cultural differences I experience will be:

            One of the main cultural traditions that differ between America and China and have always differed will be the manner of dress. In America, it is acceptable for girls to wear more revealing clothes, while in China I believe that women will be dressed more modestly. Another difference will be the appearance of pop-culture items. I think that the music and movie industry will be more censored than here in America.

I think the main political differences I will experience will be:

            The main political differences I think I will experience will be the amount of censorship control the government has over the main population. In America, we have almost complete freedom over what we can say in person or on the internet and what exactly we can search and read on the on Internet. Another one of the differences will be the business restrictions that the government can place on business to keep them in check. It is vastly different than the free market we see in America.

I think the students I meet in China will be:

            The Chinese students that I will get to meet will, I think, be surprisingly similar to me and my fellow students despite the cultural and political differences our countries have. I think they will have just as much interest in us and our customs as we have in their customs.

I predict I will be surprised to find:

How can I predict something then be surprised it? Anyway, I predict I will be surprised to find how Americanized the main city of Beijing is but how rural and traditional the outskirts of the big city will be. Also, I think that I will be surprised to find that a lot more signs and things will be in English than expected.

I think the major differences in living conditions will be:

            I think that the major differences in living conditions in China will be the population density in the city. The apartment buildings will be crowded similar to the old tenements in New York City in the early 20^th century. Also, the lack of clean drinking water will play a major role in the living conditions of the residents.

Anything Else I want to say:

            All in all, I am extremely excited to be going on a trip to China. All the differences in culture will be awesome to experience firsthand instead of reading them in a textbook. Also, the historical sites we see will be amazing and I will get to learn a lot about Chinese history that I didn’t already know. 

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