Dear All –
Today has been a little bit more of a down day for me. It’s been nice, as the cold really starts to wear on me after being in it all day. I woke up a little later than usual (but not by much), chronicled the past days’ events, and then played a little guitar. I was waiting on Cristina and Alex to move over to the dorm. We are learning a little more about our arrangements in the dorms. There aren’t any kitchen areas in the dorm, and Cristina was pretty bummed about that. We “aren’t supposed” to make food in the rooms either, but I’ll tell more about that later. They also just sent me an email saying that we had to have a 1000 Yuan security deposit (about $200). We don’t get that money back until we leave at the end of the semester. So I say to myself, what am I going to do with $200 in Chinese money on the last day? The security deposit is something omnipresent in China, and I’m glad that we don’t have it in the US.
They put Cristina in a room with another American student who was spending the winter break in China, which was a little bit awkward for us, moving her stuff. She had no idea that she was about to move in! And the people at the front desk didn’t seem to mind at all. Cultural differences… We three stumbled into the room and found Elizabeth in a supreme state of lethargy at one in the afternoon. I helped Alex get settled into my room for the day, and then we all regrouped at the front desk. We decided that we would all go visit the Summer Palace, and get a bite to eat before heading out.
While over lunch, we had the opportunity to get to know Elizabeth a little better. She is from Richmond, and direct enrolled in MinZu University. Ole Miss said that direct enrolling was nigh impossible – and so did George Washington University for my friends – but, in the words of Elizabeth” “Of course they said you couldn’t direct enroll! They want to take your money.” So true; she is paying $2,000 for the entire semester. And she gets scholarships from MinZu (don’t kill me, Ma and Da…). She spent the last semester here, and will spend the spring and part of the summer. You can tell that she’s been here for a while – haha. I know that’s how I looked/acted at the end of my summer in Qingdao, and I’ll be like her by the end of my semester here. On the whole, Elizabeth is quite comical, and takes all of the idiosyncrasies of this country in stride. She dates a member of the Beijing basketball team, and I got to learn a little about Chinese basketball today.
There are teams all over China that participate in the China Basketball Association (CBA). It seems like, as a general rule, there is only one team per province. The Beijing team is called the Beijing Ducks, and each of the teams is allowed to have three foreign imports to play on the team. Elizabeth’s boyfriend is one of these “imports,” and he is from Palestine (as she says). The CBA looks like a big attractor of old NBA players, and it appears to be a pretty lucrative business to get outsourced to play here. Some of the best players get paid $800,000 for every 2 months of play during the season, and they live in a Western-style hotel, with a translator, driver, and access to their home country’s cuisine. I say that’s not a bad arrangement.
We ate at MaLan (the Little Chinese Herb), and then caught the subway to almost the end of our subway line to get to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is a park designed for the emperor’s retreat from the heat of the city, in the summer (just pointing out). Emperors used the Summer Palace for several hundred years as a retreat, but CiXi (the “empress” of China, that ruled China from the Summer Palace, imprisoning the real emperor on the premises) used the park as the seat of the Chinese government for the last 8 years of her life. We were accosted by a “tour guide” while buying tickets, who said that the park was over 170 hectares (how big is that?!) large. The park surrounding the Summer Palace building has several temples, and a huge lake. The lake is probably close to a mile across at its widest point, and there is a series of dikes and dams connecting to several surrounding lakes, presumably to keep the main lake at a unified water level.
While visiting all of these ancient parks, I can’t help but think about what it must be like to be a Chinese person visiting these places. For thousands of years, these parks were blocked off from the average person (upon pain of death). And until the late 1900s, the park was not open for public access. There are still people alive today that can remember when the last emperor of China was thrown out of the Forbidden City in 1924. Can you imagine that?! Hundreds of years the Chinese spent wondering what was in those places, and now they can buy a membership to visit the park as many times as they please. It’s like turning the CIA headquarters into a shopping mall or something (only if the CIA was established 1,000 years ago.
The lake at the Summer Palace was entirely frozen over, and I took the opportunity to walk on the ice! First time ever! There were all kinds of people walking on the ice, skating, exercising, and one guy looked like he was fishing. We watched the sun go down over the park, and then we headed back to the university via bus. This gave me a chance to see more of the city north of the university. HaiDian, my district, is the university and business district, and there are all kinds of restaurants – Chinese and foreign – north of our university. I’ll have to check them out over the semester.
We retired to the girls’ room, drank some chamomile tea, ate some American cookies, and watched a little of the basketball game. I think that everyone fell asleep for a little while, and after a 20-minute cat nap, I went to my room and played guitar for a good while. At ten, our hunger got the best of us, and we went to eat at a restaurant called The West. It is a pizza/Italian restaurant, and it was quite the experience. The inside was made to look like the Chinese concept of an American restaurant, and we listened to American pop songs while a Michael Jackson concert video played on the TVs there. We ordered a giant pizza for about $15, which was awesome. It had black olives, anchovies, and onions on it. Dinner turned into a 2-½ hour ordeal (in Chinese style), and we got back to the dorm around 12:30.
Tomorrow, most of the students are getting here, so I’ll be sure to let you know about the new faces around tomorrow! I’ll write soon!
Love,
Jamey
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