view of the campus just inside South Gate

Is it normal for a person to consistently sleep over 12 hours a day? Because my roomate does. She must think I don't need sleep at all because so far I'm the one who sleeps later and wakes up earlier. Anyway, I snuck out of the room today at 1pm because today is the day where new students are bussed to a health center for a full medical checkup. Foreign students are required to have a clean bill of health to attend BLCU which means bloodwork, physical exam, chest x-ray, and ECG.

I can't say this was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon (I'm not fond of needles) and I was annoyed that they did not accept the report from my Canadian doctor (I did all the tests back home before coming here). Still, a bus ride, lots of waiting, and shared pain and awkwardness makes for a pretty good environment to meet people. Today I had a taste of how international this campus truly is. Here's a breakdown of some people I met during this 3 hour experience alone:

Magnus - Sweden. Studied mandarin for 1 year in college, 2 in high school. We passed Beijing Ikea on the way to the center and he took a photo to email home.
Charlie - UK. Unlike most of us, he'll be in Beijing for 4 years, actually doing his undergrad in Chinese Language Studies at BLCU. Which means this is his freshman year.
Emma - France
Nicolas - Canada (yay! Quebec)
Dave or John, I'm not sure of the name - Puerto Rico
Tang - Thai. Learning Chinese because he wants to work in the tourist industry.
Rumi - Bulgarian

Among BLCU students, Rumi stands out because she is older - 46 years old to be exact - instead of being about 20-30. She is an amazing lady who speaks unbelievably good mandarin. She's studied chinese for 3 years already and received funding to come to Beijing to learn the language for her doctoral research comparing historic Bulgarian literature to historic Chinese literature. Her husband, whom she misses very much, is back in the states working on his second(!) doctorate, speaks five languages, and is very supportive of her being away to study in China for one year. They have no children but she showed me many pictures of her two nieces who she absolutely adores.

Back on campus, Tang and I met with Craig from Boston (complete with accent) and taking a year off from grad school at Hahvahd to study at BLCU. We were trying to find a Japanese restuarant that Puja suggested but due to my lousy sense of direction, we ended up circling around Wudaokou for 40 minutes before giving up and eating dinner on campus. We spent the rest of the night sitting outside, talking and drinking Tsingtao - apparently the unofficial beverage of the campus.

The banner reads "One World, One Dream"

Puja and I are in a nearby restuarant for lunch; it was crowded so the waitress asked if we minded sharing a table with other people. We didn't so she sat us at a table across from a man who was already seated with a big bowl of noodles. I was finishing a phone conversation in cantonese with my mom as I sat down and when I hung up, he asked: 你是香港人吗? "are you from Hong Kong?"

"Yes but I was raised in Canada" I replied, surprised. "I am from Shenzen" he said switching to cantonese "and when I heard you speak, I knew you are from Hong Kong." It turns out he's sells earphones ("the newest models" he said, pulling out samples for us to see) that are produced in Shenzen. He has an office in Chongqing and one in Beijing so he is often in town for business.

He noticed my wariness in the conversation and said 你别怕我.我不是坏人 "You don't need to worry, I am not a bad person" and told us he is a family man, with a wife and son in Chongqing. His son is 13, very smart, and starting to learn english. This gradually led into a one hour conversation over his noodles and our 饺子 jiaozi (dumplings) in mandarin, cantonese... and english when I would translate for Puja. We talked about development in Beijing, travelling in China, the advantages of knowing english and chinese, the difficulties learning either language. I asked him whether the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics has increased demand for learning english. He told us it's about the same as before but now taxi drivers really want to learn english too.

I told him Puja and I are both students at BLCU and are in Beijing to study mandarin for one year. I studied mandarin for 2 years in university but Puja is a beginner. He told us when he first came to Beijing several years ago, he could not speak mandarin - specifically 北化 beihua, Beijing mandarin - at all. Only by practicing with his Beijing friends did he pick up the language. "So you see, I know how hard it is to learn mandarin" he said with a smile. "Your mandarin is quite good, you communicate very well" he remarked "and in one year you will be very good. But do not be afraid to speak mandarin". He gave the table an emphatic thump. "Do not be afraid of Beijing people, you must practice. Only then can your mandarin improve."

He pulled out a pen and paper and announced "I am giving you a test! Can you write 汉字 hanzi (chinese characters)? What are your chinese names?" Puja and I wrote our names and slid the paper back to him. He read our names out loud (mine is 马淑恒, pronounced mah-shoo-hung) and said "好!写得很好 - Good, both of you write very well!" He passed two business cards to us.

"你是曾先生 - you are Mr. Zeng". I was reading his card aloud.

"Yes, my last name is Zeng, but you can call me 曾叔 Uncle Zeng. This is my cell phone number. You must call me if you need help in Beijing since I know this city very well. You should also come to my store to practice your mandarin! I can help because with our cantonese we can certainly communicate."

"But will you remember us if we call?"

"Yes, I will definitely remember. I'm going to call you 小河 xiaohe and 小马 xiaoma (Little He and Little Ma - He is Puja's chinese last name, Ma is mine). Just say it is 小马 when you call and I will know it is you."

He even insisted on paying for our lunch before he left!

View of the campus outside my dorm

Despite the unbelievably painful memorization-and-recall process (what wouldn't I give for a photographic memory), I actually really enjoy reading and writing chinese. Some characters I especially like and my new favourite one is this:

串

Combined with the character 肉 in front, it means kebabs (肉串, rou chuan) and it makes me happy because it looks exactly like a stick with meat on it. Actually it also looks like a stick with marshmallows on it... I wonder what's chinese for s'mores? Strictly speaking, the stand-alone character 串 really means "to string together" but I'll take whatever memory aid I can get, so stick of meat it is.

Anyway, before I discovered this extraordinary character, I spent the better part of the day moving into the dorms and going through the hellish registration process. It's like old-school Cornell course exchange before everything went online, except with longer lines, more misinformation, and more running around different buildings on campus. And everything is in Chinese. And no one realized that the chinese take a two-hour lunch break between noon and 2pm (but at least that window of time allowed me to see mom off at the airport for her flight back to Toronto). I started at 9am and it was after 4pm before tuition, insurance, and housing was finally filled out, signed, and paid for. And there's still a health examination left before we get student IDs and finally complete the registration process.

But that's for Wednesday. For the rest of the evening, I met up with Puja, an Iranian-German who I've been emailing for a few weeks since he's also in the one-year language program. We met up with several other students for dinner, which was of course, korean kebabs.

I also met my roomate tonight. She is from Korea and her chinese name is 李升娟, Li Sheng Juan. She speaks Korean and little English. Keeps kimchi in the fridge. Her mandarin is about the same as mine though so we can communicate a little bit - at least we know enough mandarin to be civil to each other. She's very quiet though so we don't talk much. I sure hope we don't have trouble living with each other. They didn't teach us anything in RA training about a situation where roomates speak different languages!

Entrance to Beijing Wal-Mart

Ah globalization. I've seen Starbucks, KFC, McDonald's, Dairy Queen, and Orange Julius in Beijing but what American presence would be complete without a Wal-Mart?

Thanks to a passing mention in an email from a friend in Beijing, we realized that we were one subway stop away from the superstore. I needed food and some things for my room and wouldn't mind the convenience of a one-stop-shop, so the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Beijing (the 46th one in China) it is.

For some reason, Wal-Mart makes me think suburban America so it's surreal to see the huge navy sign in Beijing, complete with the chinese name 沃尔玛 (pronounced woh-arr-mah). It's identical in spirit to the stores in America but there are definitely differences. For one thing, the store is built UP over 3 floors and not OUT. No sprawling parking lot either but there is a free shuttle with several routes - one which appears to go by my school.

And of course, all products are in Chinese, not English. Have you ever felt overwhelmed standing in front of a shelf trying to decide between 40 different kinds of shampoo? Imagine that feeling. Now change the packaging into a language you can't read. Yeah, exactly. After watching me stare at a shelf for 10 minutes, Mom finally took pity on me and helped translate. It's also fun seeing a familiar brand on a completely unfamiliar product, like Tide laundry detergent in bar form (like a bar of soap) for handwashing clothes, as well as how brand names translate into chinese: Oreos are 噢利噢 (pronounced ohh-lee-ohh).

Speaking of Oreos, I found the chinese knockoff of the cookie. They are called 黑白黑 (hey-buy-hey) which means Black-White-Black. Check out the packaging:


Real ones on the top. Chinese knockoffs on the bottom


Crazy eh? Only in China. I didn't buy either but I think that next time I'll get both and conduct a blind taste-test.

Other fun things one can buy in Beijing Wal-Mart are bicycles. There are the plain old bicycles and then there are these:


Electric bicycles for sale


Pedalling turns a dynamo inside the bike that charges the internal battery. When you want more speed or power, or are just plain tired, you stop pedalling and switch on the motor. I haven't seen that many in Beijing so far but there were plenty when I was in Hangzhou last Christmas. Probably because bike theft is awful in Beijing so something this shiny is asking to be stolen.

Oh and if Beijing Wal-Mart and USA Wal-Mart had a price-off, Beijing would win hands down: we left with an entire cartful of stuff and only paid 50 USD for the lot.

View of Chengfulu from Wudaokou subway station

As far as cities go, Beijing is really really big. It takes at least one hour to get from one side of the city to the other - whereas driving for one hour across (non-rush hour) Washington DC will take you well into Maryland or Virginia. It's true that visitors underestimate distances in the city, places are generally much farther than they appear on a map. Of course, my mom and I learned this the hard way when we spent today walking around the city.

We used the subway to get into the city area since the nearest station is 五道口 Wudaokou on Line 13, about 10-15 mins walk away from campus. There are currently 3 lines on the system: Lines 1, 2, and 13 (presumably lines 3-12 are planned for the future). Fare is dirt cheap at 5 RMB or 60 US cents for a transfer ticket across three lines, while single-line fare is 3 RMB or 32 cents. What can 32 cents buy in North America? Even vending machine gum costs at least 50 cents. Lines 1 and 2 are older so they still have 服务员 (staff) who take paper tickets but Line 13 is newer so there are barriers that take magentic tickets. Despite the automation, even these barriers are staffed by at least one person, perhaps make sure everyone knows how to use the machines. Stations are stuffy and it can be quite a wait between trains but the subway is still the best way to get around Beijing. And among the announcements declaring the next station and warning about closing doors is a great one that translates into "China is a country that respects its elders. Please offer your seat to those who are elderly."

Our first stop was 天安门广场 Tiananmen Square which is very large and very impressive. We wanted to go up 天安门, the iconic Gate of Heavenly Peace hung with a portrait of Mao Zedong but bags weren't allowed in the building and the line for the baggage storage area was too long. It was too hot and too crowded to linger outside for long so we left the square and headed for 王府井大街 Wangfujing Street, a busy commercial and shopping area. There are shops and department stores flanking the entire street, and a very large, very new mall that reminds me of something from Hong Kong. Wangfujing is also home to the huge and creatively named Wangfujing Bookstore which is much larger than any Barnes and Noble, Borders, or Chapters. There's a decent English section with lots of classics and Harry Potters but I was there to buy a Chinese-English/ English-Chinese dictionary and a couple of maps.

I also picked up a sim card for my mobile; did you know you pay different prices depending on your choice of phone number? Numbers with 4s are cheapest (it's considered an unlucky number because the pronounciation of 4, si4, is very close to the pronounciation of death, si3. This is not good if you have trouble with mandarin tones, especially if the number 1 is next to 4 because the pronounciation of one and four, yao1 si4, can sound awfully close to yao1 si3 which means "want to die"). So now I have a chinese number for my North American phone. It works fine, except because the phone is programmed for English, Spanish, or French but not Chinese, the phone menu for the sim card is in gobbledyguk and I keep getting mystery texts from the network that say "incompatible message format".

By this time mom was exhausted so we stopped for a coffee break (not Starbucks although there was one packed full of people) and people-watched for about 40 minutes. Recharged with caffeine, our last stop was 秀水市场, the Silk Market which sells much more than silk. Instead, the market is known for selling goods with questionable authenticity. Think a five-storey building filled with NYC Chinatown vendors but better organized and with more variety. Bargaining is expected and I heard some of the best english in Beijing so far from the stallkeepers, except it's along the lines of "I give you best price," or "20 dollars? you're killing me" On average, we managed to get down to about 1/3 of the initial asking price which meant prices of around 100 RMB (12 USD) or lower. We got some shoes, and a few USB flash drives. I also got a really fake IBM wireless travel mouse but it seems to be working so far.

It was past 8pm by the time we got back to the hotel which meant we were walking around Beijing for the better part of 11 hours! I think we will need to start taking more cabs tomorrow.

Hello I am in Beijing and not too jet-lagged thanks to these magic pills. They are unbelievable and I highly recommend them for any travel that crosses time zones. Anyway, my trip was off to an interesting start as soon as I boarded my flight to Beijing when a little boy was seated next to me and started jabbering to me in mandarin. I discovered that 赵润邦 (Zhao4 Run4 Bang1) is a 10 year-old kid from Beijing with an affinity for Batman and 北京烤鸭 (Peking Duck). He was traveling alone after spending one month at his 姑妈's (aunt, specifically father's sister) home in Toronto. His parents are both professors, and his mom knows six languages. Even though my mandarin was off (and boy is it humbling to have a 10 year-old correct your speech), we also talked about Canada’s Wonderland, haunted houses, and the relative merits of Superman vs. Batman vs. Spiderman (he likes Batman best because he is rich, dressed in black, and has lots of gadgets) over the next 13 hours. He taught me the mandarin for Winnie-the-Pooh, I explained to him the meaning of “double-double” – which he heard people ask for all the time at Tim Hortons. Actually, I really only understood half of what this kid kept going on about, which was sad because he kept telling jokes and stories but I’d lose the meaning before the punchline. He always laughed so hard and looked so pleased with himself after telling me that I didn’t have the heart to say “uh, 我不懂” – I don’t understand – so I’d just give and enthusiastic nod and big grin instead which seemed to make him happy.

More mandarin practice when I landed. My uncle had asked a friend of his in Beijing, who I call 刘叔叔 "Uncle" Liu to look out for me this year so he and his son Rick were at the airport to meet me and wait for my mom's flight to arrive (she couldn't get a seat on mine). Uncle Liu only speaks mandarin but Rick was able to help out when my mandarin became hopelessly garbled because he also speaks english, and cantoneses so we'd actually use all three languages in our conversation.

During the drive into Beijing, the first things that struck me are the heat and smog. It's muggy and humid, like a summer in Washington DC, but whereas DC is just sticky the air pollution makes everything kind of... dirty. A thick haze is everywhere and the difference between a sunny day and a cloudy day is whether the haze is yellow or grey. Even the trees along the highway into the city looked like they were covered with a layer of dust. Add in humidity and 30+ degree celcius temperatures and it doesn't take long before you start feeling pretty icky.

It took about 40 minutes to get from the airport to my school, 北京语言大学 which is is located in north-west Beijing in an area called 五道口 Wudaokou in 海定区 Haidian District. It's actually quite far from the heart of the city, about a 40-60 min subway ride away from the Forbidden City/ Tiananmen Square. It's a hectic area and, like the rest of Beijing, cars, bikes, and pedestrians compete for space on the roads; right-of-way doesn't exist here so you gotta watch out for cars and bikes unexpectedly sneaking up when you are walking around. We stopped by the school to reserve a dorm room before checking into a nearby hotel.

But more exploring tomorrow. Uncle Liu is taking my mom and me out for dinner - incidentally, for 润邦's favourite Peking Duck.