Happy Holidays!

Well maybe not for those of you not in China, but this last week is a big holiday here. I can’t really remember if I did anything notable the week after getting back from the Great Wall. What I do remember is that throughout the week only six of the twelve people in my class managed to make it to every class. Two of our teachers were on the Wall also so they were really sore. On Wednesday, we also had a cool language practicum where our class went and interviewed American diplomats in China. These diplomats were also CET students that would take class in the afternoons at another school in Beijing. It was interesting to hear their viewpoints on politics and the Chinese economy.

Last Saturday, we had a group trip to Beijing’s art district. I don’t normally like art galleries, but I’m here and heard there were lots of different types of art. A lot of the art was political and some of it I was surprised to see at all because of censorship laws. One gallery consisted almost entirely of big photos of a woman standing in front of Mao’s picture in Tiananmen Square holding a pistol to her head. While there I got exhausted all of a sudden, so I went back with some other people instead of going to Tiananmen Square.

Sunday was October 1st, which is the Chinese National Holiday. This was the day in 1949 when Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China. Millions of people flock to Beijing because it’s a week long vacation from work. The traffic has been terrible all week and I guess every hotel is booked up. Stewart, Ben, Ken, and I decided to go to Stewart’s roommate, Wang Zhan’s, school. We got to see his high-rise dorm, which made me appreciate every place I have ever lived. I’ve seen high-rise dorms before. Penn has three dorms with around 25 floors each (I think) and they each have around 800 people living in them. Wang Zhan’s dorm was 14 floors and had FIVE THOUSAND… GUYS living in it. Each room has six people living in it with a bunk bed above every desk. I’m very glad we are in the international student dorms.

Anyway, the reason we went to his school in the first place was because he said his friends were having a party and wanted us to come. He said the party would have tea, coffee, and cookies. Well first he took us to a building next to his campus that looked like a hotel (and may have been), but I only saw listings for companies and restaurants. When we got to the “party room” there was a circle of about 16 Chinese people with five chairs waiting for us. They started asking questions in English and we responded with Chinese. Then the student in charge came over and said we had 10 minutes before the activities started. A few minutes later, about 25 more Chinese students came. It turned out that this was no party. This was their weekly, maybe daily, meeting where they all practice English. We broke up into groups so they could practice with us. One guy in my group spoke pretty well and said his roommate who was there wanted a language partner so he asked me. Another girl also asked if the four of us could come to their meetings every Sunday. We were essentially Wang Zhan’s show-and-tell. We played some games where we had to describe people in the room and tell stories to see if people could guess whether they were true or not. Stewart guessed my story was true, when it was false so he got punished. His punishment was to stand in front of everyone and act out a scene from the Lion King while the leader recited the lines. It was a very weird experience, but similar to many of the others we’ve had.
Well tonight is the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Cake Festival. Tonight everyone will go look at the moon and eat moon cakes, which I can’t really describe to you. All I know is that all the supermarkets have thousands of them so the thousands of people in the store at the time can buy them. The whole week is really about buying lots of crap at discount prices, while blocking all forms of transportation.

I’m still insanely busy, but hopefully I’ll find a place to put all my pictures online. So again Happy Holidays! Post questions if you have them, bye bye.