I Laid on the Great Wall for a Long Time!

This week I got to pretend I was a Chinese warrior from the Ming Dynasty except instead of having weapons I had a sleeping bag. Here’s how the journey began:

On Saturday morning we took a three-hour bus ride northeast to Simatai, a small town where the Great Wall was very secure due to this spot being attacked many times during the Ming Dynasty. We were planning on climbing the wall to Jinshanling, which we were told was harder because we would be going up instead of down.
When we got to the parking lot we looked up and to the right and saw this very steep and jagged ridge, which made us very excited. While walking on the path to the wall we saw the longest zip line any of us had ever seen, but we couldn’t go on it since we just came from where it ends. When we finally got to the wall we found out that we weren’t going up the scary cliff to the right. Jinshanling was six miles to the left and at about 1pm we started our hike.

It’s hard to remember the order everything happened in on the wall because of how tiring it was. We spent a lot of time walking on undeveloped sections of the wall so there were tons of loose rocks and huge steps. At times we had to get completely off and walk around the wall. The wall is built on some very unforgiving terrain, so it makes you wonder why the Chinese would have even needed a wall to keep the Mongols out at these spots.

At about every tower there would be Chinese people selling water, coke, beer, postcards, calendars, and shirts. Like everywhere in China, they were also there to collect your empty water bottles. It was funny too when we would walk by them because they would read the stickers we were all wearing that said, “I only speak Chinese” in a very confused voice. One lady decided to follow my friend Nick and I for about 45 minutes. She asked us questions about ourselves, but she wasn’t trying to sell us anything. Eventually, Nick wanted a picture with her, so I took one and he gave her 20 kuai (which is a lot). She decided to give him a shirt in exchange, but then about five minutes later she surprised us when she asked him for the other 10. Nick decided to give the shirt back, but she didn’t give the 20 back. I guess she reached the spot she was trying to get to on the wall because after that exchange she stopped following us.




The second half was definitely easier than the first half and was more of a downhill hike, but it’s very hard to get your footing on the steep slopes with narrow stairs. An interesting thing I saw was a herd of goats grazing on the cliff side. Just before the end it was pretty smooth and it was fun to run down and then up the gradual slopes. I reached Jinshanling pretty early at around 4:45pm, so I had some time to rest before the entire group got back. Each group of seven had a hotel room to keep our stuff and shower in, which was nice because it was pretty hot during the day. Once everyone was back we ate dinner and had a massive bonfire for a couple hours. Then at about 9:30pm we started getting our warm clothes and sleeping bags because it was time to go find our spots on the wall.

It was really nice to see stars again after being in the terrible Beijing sky and there were lots of them. We setup our pads and sleeping bags with our groups and went to sleep at around 11pm. My sleeping bag was another example of things that I’m too big for. My legs were so tight in the bottom that I just slept in shorts and a t-shirt due to how hot I was. My arms didn’t have any room either once I got cold and zipped up the sleeping bag. I kept trying to readjust myself, so I really barely slept at all. I was awake when the huge group of professional Chinese photographers came and started pointing their lights in my face. I heard them comment on how big I was too, so I don’t think I’ll ever escape that.

Anyway, at 5:30am we woke up to go see the sunrise from the highest nearby point. It was pretty cloudy, but once the sun came out it was very cool looking. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures:












After eating breakfast, some people slept, a large number went and did yoga on the wall, but some of my friends and I played Frisbee and hacky sack for a couple of hours. A group of four little kids came and played Frisbee with us right before the buses left to head back to school, so we got a good picture with them.

Now it’s Monday and tons of people are extremely sore from the hike. I’m not really sore at all except my ankle feels like I rolled it a little. My martial arts class only had seven of the 30 people that are usually there. Anyway I hope to setup a picture site somewhere soon for all my pictures. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Talk to you later!

Rock Pillows

Well here I am again. I put up some pictures from my last post earlier today, so take a look at those if you haven’t. I still need to upload all my pictures to a different site so everyone can see the galleries, but that will have to wait until next week.

Not too much happened this week. On Tuesday there was a schedule power outage for our entire neighborhood from 8am to 5pm. I don’t know what the restaurants and shops on our block did about their frozen or refrigerated stuff. Speaking of frozen things, Chinese people are obsessed with popsicles. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people eating them or selling them. They are also a lot better than popsicles in the US. I hade a pineapple one that had pieces of pineapple in it and it only cost 12 cents.

Last night right when I was in bed about to go to sleep I had my first serious conversation in Chinese with my roommate. He was mainly the only one speaking, but I did my best to defend my position. He told me that I shouldn’t go to the gym so much because I should be going to other pretty places in Beijing. I told him that I like to do it and it makes me feel good, but he said I have a good figure and that there is no reason to. He also said that it makes you feel very tired and your muscles sore. This is somewhat true because this is the first week I started going since getting here, so I still haven’t worked my way back to my normal routine.

The big news this week is that tomorrow night we will be camping on the Great Wall after hiking on it for 5 hours. Then on Sunday we are waking up at 5:30am to see the sunrise. I’ve been to the wall before and the part we were on got pretty steep towards the end, but this time we will be going on un-restored sections, so we will have to get off the wall and walk along the hill sides. I’ll probably be taking a lot of pictures, so hopefully I can setup a gallery somewhere after we get back. Again, leave any questions if you have any about China and I can answer them in my posts. See you next week.

First two weeks and some Admin

Well just as I thought, I wasn’t able to post the other day. Our Internet on Friday was totally out again because of “unforeseen problems.” I waited until today to make another entry so I could include yesterday’s activities. I’ll try to get better at regularly updating so people know to check back more frequently.

I have some administrative things to handle first. You may have noticed that ad above this post. I found out from a friend here that I can get paid for every click and the ad isn’t very intrusive. He had his blog during the summer and this week he just got a check for over $100. Right now I have the ad up there, but it’s not linked to an account yet because I don’t know how to submit my mailing address to Google because they need the pinyin (Chinese Romanization if you weren’t aware) and Chinese characters for it. Once I get that setup I would appreciate it if anyone would click it and then close it if they want to. Next thing is that I setup an account on Webshots so I can host my pictures for anyone to see. I’m trying to use some software to upload them all at once, but I can’t seem to connect. I’ll get it setup eventually and add the link to the Links section on the right. Right now I have a link to my Threadless account. If you want to buy some really cool t-shirts you can use that and for every purchase I get $3 off the next one I buy.

OK now back to China. Every Friday everyone has a written and oral test in their respective classes. I didn’t think the last one was too bad and it sure was nice to be done with the week. Everyone is saying how this is the most work they’ve ever done in school and for the most part it is true because we have work to do everyday instead of papers/reading scattered throughout a semester. We do a lesson a day so we need to study the new words for our daily quiz. We also have a daily assignment and usually have to prepare something for the next day’s discussion class. This frequently involves asking random Chinese people questions about different topics, but since I can’t really understand their gritty Beijing accents I usually just ask the roommates. We also have an essay to write every week, which takes up a good chunk of time. I think that almost everyone here signed up knowing that it was going to be a lot of work with the language pledge and everything, so we are fighting through it. We also are all living here and know it’s frustrating when we can’t speak, so that is a big motivator to learn.

Anyway, last Friday some of my friends and I went to the Beijing Zoo and it was really wild. I had heard that the zoo was somewhat depressing because the conditions weren’t as good as US zoos, but its inadequacies are what made it fun. The first thing we did was go straight to the panda house because that’s why the zoo is there. The first two pandas were just sleeping like most bear exhibits, but the next one put on the greatest show I have ever seen at a zoo. When we walked over the panda was playing with a seesaw. He was biting it, picking it up, kicking it and would usually end up in a funny looking position. We even got a video of it which you can watch right here. It’s about 50MB so it might take a bit to load. Every couple of minutes he would get up and run over and play with something else. He stood up against a tree, he went and ripped some roots out of the ground, he tried to climb up the wall to eat some of the tourists, he climbed on top of his playground and rolled down the stairs at the end of it, but eventually he got tired so he went and sat in his pond. The way he carried himself made it look like it was a person in a bear suit.



Later we found ourselves watching the monkeys being fed and while we were there two Chinese girls came up to us and asked in English if we were Americans. After we told them we were they asked us if we wanted to be in a commercial. The friends that I was with were Ben, who is 6’3” with blonde hair and a beard, Stewart, who is pretty tall and has long dark hair, and Ken, who has big mutton chops, so I can see why. At first I was thinking yes, but then they told us that they would pay for our transportation out of Beijing. Apparently they wanted to take us on an all expenses paid tour of China and shoot commercials. Unfortunately we had to decline, but now we know that option is out there somewhere.

The next best thing we saw was the ostriches and the total lack of safety precautions. If these big angry birds wanted to peck you in the face, they very easily could. We saw one make a good attempt at a girl’s hand. There was something wrong with these birds though because most of their tail feathers were missing and many of them were broken, bleeding stumps. Another really funny thing we saw was one exhibit that contained a gigantic two-humped camel, one St. Bernard, and a blind in one eye Huskie. I think we were the only people in the world to be seeing such a sight at that moment in time.


On Saturday we had a CET group trip to the Lao She Teahouse to watch different performances such as music, comedy, magic, and kung fu. It was fun, but some of the performances were pretty average. Afterwards a group of us went along with some roommates to eat and see Tiananmen Square at night because it’s suppose to be really cool. Unfortunately, when we got there it was closed off for some reason.

During the week nothing really memorable happened, but we started our extracurricular classes. I signed up for the wushu (martial arts) class, which looks like it will be fun. We also started our 1:1 and 1:2 classes where we either meet by ourselves or with one other student and a teacher to work on pronunciation, ask questions, and practice speaking. I also finally went and found an adequate gym. It’s at the other campus that CET has a program, so at first I took a cab there and back, but I knew I had to get a bike. The gym is another example of China’s idea of “it’s good enough.” The free weights there are listed in kilograms as expected, but after doing the conversion to pounds they didn’t feel like they were suppose to. I asked one of the other CET kids that was there and he said the same thing. I think that they are somewhere in between pounds and kilograms, so I’m going to have to figure that out.

After my test on Friday I went with my neighbor, his roommate, and another student to buy bikes. Recently the government made it illegal to sell second hand bikes to try and deter theft, so now there is a secret bike black market. Some stores will be selling used bikes that are parked outside the store right next to the customers’ bikes, so they blend in. We found our first pair of used/stolen bikes by walking down the street and asking a random guy on a corner if he had any and sure enough he did. My friend and his roommate followed this guy through a couple of neighborhoods while the other student and I waited around. They ended up riding back with two bikes that they bought for 100 kuai total, which is around $12.50. We kept looking around for more used ones, but none of them really fit me or they were just really bad. Since I’m going to be here for the year and using everyday to go to the gym I decided I was willing to spend more and get a new bike. The other student bought a new bike from one store, but they were too much for me. The next store we went to had a good bike, but wouldn’t let us bargain. When we were asking for lock prices though I noticed that they didn’t have price tags, which could mean any price. One of them did though, but the employee didn’t notice so he asked his supervisor who said 120 when it actually said 80. We called them out on it and left. I ended up going by myself to Carrefour, the French version of Wal-mart and an absolute nuthouse in China, to buy a new bike for a decent price. This whole ordeal took six hours and left me dirty and tired.

On Saturday Stewart, Ben, Ken and I went to Jingshan Park and Beihai Park. We took the bus and got off at the stop right after Beihai to find a restaurant and unfortunately it was the exit of the Forbidden City, which is probably home to the most intrusive vendors in China. It took a while for us to find a restaurant, but we ended up going down a back road into a hutong (neighborhood) and found a good one. This place gave us a good story too when one table ordered a fish from the tank. The waiter went over and grabbed it, but it was fighting and splashing all over. He got it out of the tank and it flopped onto the windowsill and then onto the floor. He and another waitress got it into a plastic bag and then he proceeded to walk outside and crack the fish’s skull onto the front step of the restaurant. After the first crack it flopped onto the road, so he smacked it again.

The rest of the day we spent at the two parks taking pictures of the smog filled city in the distance. We also rented a paddleboat that was designed as a big swan. We were getting a lot of stares while we were out there and ended up getting into a little bumper boat match with two other boats that were following us around.

That about wraps it up for now. I’m going to post some pictures, but right now I have my homework to start, so check back if you read this and there weren’t any. If you want you can post specific questions in the comments of these posts if you have any. I think you can post without registering if you don’t want to and then just sign your name at the end. Talk to you later.

Very Busy

Well I was told that I should update this more, but I've been really busy lately. I was going to write my next update today, but the internet was out for the whole street that campus is on. Now I'm writing an essay for class, but just wanted to make a mini-update in case I don't get around to it tomorrow because I'll be studying for our test. I also need to figure out how to configure this more.

Bye for now.

All Moved In

Well here is my first post on this new blog in China. There have been a lot of new experiences already in this first week, so I’ll see what I can remember.

First thing is some general information about my study abroad program. I’m with the CET Beijing Language Program and we’re staying at the international student campus at the Beijing Institute of Education. There are 47 of us and most of us have a Chinese roommate that goes to a nearby school. We are all just taking Chinese language class, so our day is broken up into different hours of grammar, discussion, reading, one-on-one, etc.

After we arrived we started orientation bright and early at 8am last Thursday (That would be Wednesday night for those of you in the US. The time difference is 12 hours ahead of EST). The orientation lasted until Sunday which was nice because we all had time to get to know each other using English before our language pledge began with class on Monday.

Culture shock began to set in during the orientation with multiple occurrences. One of the first things I saw after getting off the bus from the airport was a Beijinger spit on the street, which is now one of the most common things I see and hear everyday. They spit really loud too. I’ve been in my third floor room that over looks a small street and have been able to hear it.

Another really funny and awkward moment was when the Public Security Bureau (the police) came to tell us about safety and security. When he was on the subject of pickpockets he mentioned that to exchange our money we shouldn’t get black money. He then showed us a picture of a black man sitting at a table. He said, “This is a black man… from Africa. Um... don’t trust them.” He said all of this with a big smile on his face. I think he meant to give a little more information about what this guy was selling, but it didn’t come across too well.

One of the hardest things to do is to go to the grocery store and try to buy food or other miscellaneous things. I needed shampoo, but I didn’t know how to say it and I couldn’t tell the difference between the shampoo and conditioner. I found a bottle with English on it and had to do some character matching to get what I wanted.

Another thing is interacting with Chinese people. I really do get stared at all the time, but that doesn’t really bother me at all. A couple of times an old man or someone has come up to me and drawn that invisible line from his head to my upper arm and gasp. There are different reactions when we speak Chinese to people also. If I’m just passing by and say something they are completely surprised. If I’m at a store sometimes they’ll laugh, but they’ll usually understand. What surprises me is when they speak back to me assuming that I understand everything they say.

Our dorms are pretty nice because we aren’t in Chinese dorms. We have normal US toilets instead of the squatters, but there is one for Chinese students to use. The plumbing is really bad so we can’t flush toilet paper and to reinforce how bad it is, today a sewage truck came and put a big hose in the ground to suck all our sewage out. My bed is in fact to short, so I might just have to deal with that. Our rooms are pretty clean, but the dirty Beijing air gets everything pretty dusty. My roommate is from Beijing, which is nice because he has been able to show me some restaurants. His English is pretty good and he’s usually able to tell me if I ask about how to say word. I’ve never had a roommate before so it’s something I’m not completely use to yet.

On Monday, we started class and our language pledge. There was a mistake with what books I had used in the US, so I was put into a harder class at first. I switched to the level below it on Wednesday so I have to make up the two lessons I missed, but I don’t have to take our test in class tomorrow. I do have to do it over the weekend though. Our classes go really fast and if the rest of the semester is anything like the last two days we are going to be really busy. Last night we had to do the following: study 66 new words for a quiz, a sheet of homework, and write a 400-character essay.

I’m also finding the language pledge to be quite difficult. Right now most of us can’t really carry interesting conversations. We mostly talk meaningless things (in my opinion) such as daily occurrences, schoolwork, etc. I like to talk about more interesting things and I think most people agree that we are all fairly boring right now. There are too many holes in my vocabulary to talk about things that I would normally talk about at home. I’m also friends with some of the level 100 students who have never taken Chinese before and it’s fun to teach them stuff, but it’s almost impossible to talk to them. They seem pretty frustrated at times too. Of course we’ve spoken English and from talking with the summer students the general consensus seems to be that we will speak a lot of English when we are away from campus.

Well I’m hoping to keep this updated because I think people are interested in knowing what it’s like here. Hopefully the next posts don’t take as long because this one sure did (not to mention the poor quality of the internet). For now I’m stressed, but having fun. Good luck to everyone with what they are up to.