Mmm... chocolate fish!

This is a picture of a favourite snack around campus: chocolate fish! There is a tiny stall near the West Gate of BLCU which sells "fish" - batter poured into fish-shaped molds with yummy filling in the center. As the name implies, the chocolate fish has a gooey warm chocolate filling which tastes very much like Nutella. There are also apple fish but chocolate is the only one I’ve tried so far.

The best part is the price: 1 kuai or 12 US cents! There’s not much you can get in the US for 12 cents but you can get quite a few things in Beijing. I started thinking about other things you can purchase for 1 kuai, and about overall differences between here and North America. So I’ve started three lists. I’ll add to these over the year so I will perma-link to this entry in the sidebar under Archives for easy future reference.

Things you can purchase with 1 RMB (approx USD 0.12) or less
chocolate fish
bottle of water (depends on the 小卖部 xiaomaibu you buy it from)
a 烧饼 shaobing from 第一食堂 Dining Hall Number 1
bus ticket
newspaper (China Daily)
2 包子baozi for breakfast
bike parking

Things I love about China
everything on the 1 RMB or less list
Beijing parks (颐和园，北海公园)
bicycles
markets (潘家园 Panjiayuan, 秀水市场 Xiushuishichang etc.)
the ability to bargain for prices
Muslim flatbread
kebabs (肉串 rou chuanr)
hiking the Great Wall
DVDs for approx. 1 USD
dining hall 服务员 yelling "担担面好了!"
Paul's Diner
toffee ice cream
Friendship Stores
no sales tax
no need to tip
pay-as-you-go cell phones and the ability to text in Chinese
Coca-Cola (the one marketed here is less sweet)

Things I never realized I should be grateful for until I came to China
opening a packet of biscuits without a single one being crushed.
blue skies, fresh air (these are sorely lacking in Beijing)
people actually lining up
driving regulations and road safety
western sanitation (non-squat toilets, toilet paper in the stalls etc)
bagels. cream cheese.
chocolate pudding
donuts
set prices ie. the ability to buy something without haggling over the price or worrying about being cheated.
sufficiently air-conditioned subways
that english is based on an alphabet
whole grain bread

Chris and Craig waiting for the bus from BLCU to Zhongguancun

"it's culture shock: their culture is foreign to me and it's shocking"
– Craig

"this is the first place in Beijing I've seen where people line up"
"yeah, that’s because this is a line of foreigners"
- Craig and me waiting for a residence permit at the Immigration Office

"my mom asked if I visited Chinatown"
- Chris

"want to buy dvdscdsvcds?" – hawkers everywhere

And Chinglish at it's finest, spoken by everyone:
* I have to 复习 fuxi (review/ study) this afternoon
* We have a 考试 kaoshi (test) on Friday
* Do you want 一瓶水 yi ping shui (a bottle of water)?
* I want 担担面 dan dan mian (spicy noodles)

Mao propaganda posters for sale at Panjiayuan

Sunday morning and early afternoon at Panjiayuan 潘家园 (aka the “Dirt Market”). A grimy 1.5 hour subway and bus ride away from Wudaokou to the largest flea market I’ve ever seen which, according to the Lonely Planet, sells “everything from calligraphy, Cultural Revolution memorabilia and cigarette ad posters to Buddha heads, ceramics, and Tibetan carpets.” There was a lot of looking but not much buying this time, except for Chris who bought a chop carved with his chinese name, 秦克里 (Qin Ke Li). My Panjiayuan Flickr set gives a tiny little taste of what this place is like but you really have to see it to believe it.

Then we took a total financial about-face for dinner: we took Craig to the best burgers in town at, believe it or not, the Grand Hyatt on Wangfujing Street. They are a ridiculous price at 100 RMB a pop (that’s 22 担担面 dan dan noodles at 4 RMB each. Or 66 bottles of water at 1.5 RMB each. And I bought my bike for 90 RMB!) Then you convert the price to USD and realize it only amounts to $12 which seems entirely reasonable for a birthday dinner. Plus the burgers were pretty sensational, actually better than anything I’ve had back home.

Also we finally taste-tested 噢利噢s and 黑白黑s tonight. The verdict: go with the real deal – the 黑白黑s are too soft in texture and leave a weird aftertaste in mouth.

Barely visible on the left is one of two huge electronics shopping centers

Zhongguancun 中关村 is known as Beijing’s Silicon Valley because of the number of technology and computer companies located in the area. It is also the place to go to purchase personal electronics thanks to two giant buildings filled with stalls selling cameras, mp3 players, memory sticks, webcams - pretty much every electronic device you can imagine – and the ability to bargain the prices. It’s a quick bus ride away from BLCU which is an adventure in itself being a crowded, bumpy, slightly smelly journey which only costs 1 RMB or 12 cents US.

A group of us went to buy tablet/ PDA-style chinese-english electronic dictionaries with the hopes of saving the time and grief it takes to look up characters by rifling through a paper dictionary. After walking around, trying different models, and dodging overly aggressive salespeople, we settled on tiny Meijin 366s. I was the lucky one stuck with bargaining since Craig and Frederick are both beginners (they like to say they are at “zero level”) and Chris claims my listening/ speaking is better than his, which I am skeptical of since he is in a higher level than me at BLCU. With the benefit of a bulk purchase (we were buying 4 at a time) and some wheedling (“we are all language students! If you give us a good deal, we will tell our friends to buy from you!), the price went from the asking price of 600 RMB to 450 RMB or 54 USD.

We were pretty happy with our purchase but later we noticed that our dictionary was also sold in the campus store. The price of our specific model wasn’t indicated in the display but since prices of other dictionaries are very reasonable, we are afraid to ask how much our dictionary costs in the campus store and risk discovering that we overpaid. After all, ignorance is bliss – right?

Confucius overseeing the basketball courts

Ugh. I tried to drop my elective on character radicals and development this morning only to be informed that I have missed the add/ drop deadline last week - two weeks after the start of classes. I had misunderstood the deadline to mean two weeks after the student adds the course, which would be this week since I didn't add the elective until the second week of classes.

Problem is the teaching pace is far too slow. My listening skills are apparently better than other students at my level so I easily follow the teacher while other students look confused in class. This means that the teacher has to sl-ow down, simplify, and repeatrepeatrepeat her speech in order for everyone to understand. So as interesting as the material may be, enduring the two hour class makes me want to poke my eyes out. And the course is entirely lecture-based.

As no amount of explaining or pleading can get me out of the class I was told my options are 1) don’t attend or take the final exam and accept that I will fail the course, or 2) attend classes every now and then and take the final exam for the sake of passing. Haven’t decided what to do yet; option one is tempting but involves overcoming my inner academic overachiever. But really, my BLCU grades don’t count towards anything in the grander scheme of Life so why not?

Another bother: each dorm room only has one set of keys. Even if two people live in the room. The idea is that the last person to leave the room drops off the keys at the front desk and whoever returns first can pick up the keys there. This system falls apart when a person already in the room locks the other one out and falls asleep – which is what my roommate tends to do. She also sleeps all the time (it is 3:00pm and she is still asleep. This is typical behavior. I don’t understand how she remains fast asleep as she neither stays up late nor goes out at night). My insistent knocking usually wakes her up long enough to stumble to the door to let me in, much like someone responding to a pet dog scratching at the door. However, this morning she was sleeping so soundly that I had to find a custodian to let me into the room. I want to steal the key to make my own copy but I can’t even find where in the room my roommate has put the key right now. Sad!

2008 Beijing Olympic countdown in Tiananmen Square

My voice has remerged again and the sore throat has disappeared. It was funny talking in whispers for 2 days - it felt like I was sharing secrets with everyone. Class was funny yesterday when our new listening teacher asked us the class to introduce ourselves and I could only loudly whisper 我叫马淑恒。我现在病所以不能说话 "my name is Ma Shuheng and I can't talk because I"m sick." Second unfortunate moment was when my language partner phoned to set up a conversation time only to hear my apologetic mandarin rasp asking her to call again in a few days. Good thing I didn't completely lose my voice. I'd be completely screwed if that were the case since my chinese characters aren't good enough to communicate through writing.

I may have regained by voice but unfortunately I still have the most annoying, uncontrollable cough. The cliche is that everyone gets sick after arriving in Beijing because of the pollution; I thought I was in the clear as I entered my third week here, which is of course, the perfect opportunity to fall ill. There's a permanent tickle in my throat that triggers a bad hack every now and then. Coughing is really exhausting! It's bad enough that I woke myself up during a coughing fit last night. My roommate must hate me after last night.

Cough aside, I feel perfectly fine and not sick enough to see a doctor. It would just be nice to find something to suppress the damn hacking, at least when I am sleeping but I haven't been able to find cough syrup or medicine anywhere. Not even in the local Watsons where the only thing remotely medicinal are vitamins and weight-loss pills. I was counting on Watsons too since it's a Hong Kong drug store chain. Maybe the concept of a drug store actually selling over-the-counter drugs is too novel a concept in Beijing.

There's a traditional chinese medicine hospital near Wudaokou but I'm not ready to resort drinking 苦茶 "bitter tea" just yet.

Puja and Martin test one of many outdoor fitness stations found around Beijing. This one at Tsinghua even has weights!

Apologies for the backlog of posts; classes are in full swing and I've been too busy to work on this blog. However, I have little homework this weekend since my teacher was reassigned to teach a different class. For reasons also unknown to her, the head office told her on Friday morning that she is to teach a different class starting Monday, meaning that our class will be getting a new teacher. Highly upsetting news because 杨老师 Teacher Yang has a really good teaching style and everyone had settled into how she runs her class.

Incidentally, I have also lost my voice (and don't know where to find it) so I am spending this Sunday afternoon updating my blog with a mug of hot tea in an amazing little coffee shop called Sculpting in Time. I'm backdating my entries so new ones for this past week will appear underneath this, the most current, entry.

At Propaganda with Magnus and Craig

To reward ourselves after a long week of classes and studying, we decided to spend Friday afternoon walking around 天安门广场 Tiananmen Square – the largest city square in the world. Standing in the huge space, I couldn’t help but think what it must have been like when it was full of protesters during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre packed. Security in the square is very high now with cameras and guards everywhere. You can even spot sharpshooters on the roof of the Great Hall of the Peoples next to Tiananmen Square. We watched workers building a stage in the center of the square for National Day festivities which occur in 2 weeks. There was also a float emblazoned with the Beijing Olympic motto 同一个世界, 同一个梦想 “One World, One Dream” and a display with an electronic countdown noting the number of days until the start of the Olympics in 2008. Craig had fun dodging Beijing arts students; the touts in Tiananmen tend to claim to students who sell postcards in order to afford a trip to learn art and painting in Europe. I’ve discovered that a huge advantage of appearing in Chinese in Beijing is that I’m often spared the efforts of touts trying to sell souvenirs, tours, and other “great deals” to me.

We also walked around 王府井大街 Wangfujing Street and stopped by the Foreign Languages Bookstore to pick up some English reading material (I finally bought Le Petit Prince). A small side street called 王府井小吃街 Wangfujing Snack Street has vendors selling all kinds of snacks ranging from candied apples, meat kebabs, 臭豆腐 “stinky” tofu, and, get this, seahorses and scorpions on a stick. The scorpions were still moving on the skewer! Neither Craig nor I had the stomach to find out if one actually eats the scorpions alive so dinner was at a nice safe Japanese noodle shop instead.

Back in Wudaokou, we met up with Magnus and Chris to head to Lush, a small bar with a reputation for good drinks (you can order absinthe and Red Bull!) and for being owned and frequented by foreigners. Walking into Lush is an instant trip back to North America. It’s a black box space with couches and tables complete with the requisite arty, guitar-strumming singer performing on a tiny stage in the front. With curtains blocking the view of Wudaokou, the space looks exactly like a pub or lounge back home. Except music tonight was lousy with the main act being two white guys playing bad bluegrass music. So after a few drinks, we left Lush for Propaganda – a genius name for a club in communist China. If fire codes exist in Beijing, Propaganda must have broken any number of them since the place was packed tight with masses of people. It was pretty bizarre being in a club full of people drinking and dancing to American and European music and realizing that this is taking place in communist China. The party was still going strong when we finally left at 2:15am which was late for me, but nothing compared to party animal Puja who, between dancing up a storm and chatting up girls, didn’t leave until 4:15am.

This is a picture of Terence and me from my trip to Hong Kong last Christmas when we met up for the first time after 8 years of sporadic contact through emails and IMs. I knew Terence when I was in first grade in Beacon Hill School. He changed schools in second grade but our paths crossed again in grade 7 when he took the same bus as me to school. My earliest memory of Terence is from when we were five years old; I was talking to him in the school playground while he ate something disgusting and ketchup-covered. Can you find us here? I am in the back row, third from the left. Terence is in the second from the top row, third from the left.

Anyway, it was a huge surprise to discover that he is working in Beijing this year. Terence emailed me when he heard I was going to be in Beijing. He is starting a business – a social network like Friendster, or Facebook but with a specific emphasis on language exchange and learning. He is working here with another blast from my past: Guy my classmate in secondary school who I haven’t seen or talked to at all in the nine years since I left Hong Kong. I finally met up with these guys tonight when Terence asked if I was interested in dinner and a trip to Ikea since they needed to get things for their new apartment.

They work in a building next to the Wal-Mart on Zhi Chun Lu so we met there, stopped by their office, and hailed a couple of cabs to Ikea – discovering in the process that Beijing taxis only take a maximum of three passengers. We had dinner in the Ikea restaurant and yes we had Swedish meatballs. It was fun catching up on old times, learning about their fledgling business, and hearing about Guy’s mandarin learning experience in Shanghai. Guy took off after dinner to return to the office leaving Terence to wander around the store. Beijing Ikea looks identical to other Ikeas I’ve visited (Toronto, Hong Kong, Virginia, and even one actually in Sweden) and the furniture still has funny Swedish names. Magnus and a contingent of Swedish students at BLCU actually have plans to spend Christmas day in Ikea in homage to their motherland.

A very tall Martin next to a very small motorcycle

I've come to the conclusion that biking in Beijing is like playing chicken. Puja nearly got caught between a minivan and a taxi and I was nearly in the way of a bus pulling out from the bike lane into the road. This adventure took place when we took Craig back to the bicycle street so he could buy a bicycle too and were heading back to the university along Xue Yuan Road and Cheng Fu Road.

Other things that have been happening:

- Eating at Subway. There is a 塞百味 in Wudoukou and Craig, Chris (2 Americans), and I went there for dinner the other night to see whether it tastes similar to Subway back home. Verdict: it's not quite the same. the bread is softer and the guys say the meat is spicier. Scarily, the smell in the place remains the same as back in North America. Chris also brought along his Japanese roommate and we ended up sitting in Subway for 2 hours talking and translating between mandarin (for the roommate's benefit) and English (for Craig's benefit) about everything from earthquakes, palindromes, a floating renminbi, and Peace Corp. Yes, it was interesting trying to translate conversation about Peace Corp and palindromes into mandarin. The electronic dictionaries were used several times.

- Visiting Beijing University campus. Sitting and talking by a lake in one of the campus gardens for several hours.

- Beginning a South-Park-a-thon, starting from Season 1, Episode 1. Craig bought an entire 5 season DVD set for 200 kuai or about 24 USD. I don't remember there were this many dirty jokes or double-ententres! Or maybe it's because I was 15 years old when I started watching South Park so everything flew right over my head. Incidentally, the title is literally translated as 南方公园.

- Lunch with Beijing Uncle Liu and my real 舅父 uncle who's visiting from Hong Kong. He's in town on a business trip (he's a big cheese for the Hong Kong Fire Department) so several of his HKFD colleagues and someone from the Beijing Fire Department were (unexpectedly) also there. So lunch was more formal, fancy, and took much more time than expected - 4 hours with many courses and 白酒 baijiu. It was fun but I was out of my social depth, especially since conversation was mostly in mandarin. At least I managed to follow most of the conversation and avoided making a fool of myself when addressed to in mandarin.

Click on the picture and read the text. I love this - it's printed on the cover of Magnus' notepad, bought in China of course. I keep visualizing a tiny man sprinting his little heart out, straight into the notebook.

The new class level is a good fit and the material is just hard enough that I'm motivated to prepare and study. I have 4 classes: upper-Elementary level chinese, a listening class, a reading class, and an optional elective on the origin and evolution of chinese characters.

There are about 18 people in my class from Japan, Korea, Australia, Russia, Sweden, Indonesia... and North Korea! There are 4 North Koreans in my class and you can easily tell them apart from other BLCU students because they are all thin, tanned, men in their 30s, with the same haircut, and wear the same clothes, complete with a tiny little red pin of Kim Jong Il. 张美婵 Zhang1 Mei3 Chan2, the Indonesian girl who sits next to me, pointed at the pin and asked one of the students "他是谁？" ("who's that?") in total innocence - she really didn't know of Kim Jong Il. To which student replied in a stunned, how-can-you-NOT-know tone: "是我们的领导!" ("It's our leader!").

I met a very nice Korean girl named 尹翡翠 Yin3 Fei2 Cui4 who is also in my class. She's from just south of Seoul and majored in Chinese and German(!) in her university in Korea. We usually eat lunch together after class in Dining Hall Number 1 (building names here are utilitarian: I live in Dormitory Number 4 and attend classes in Teaching Building Number 1) which sells great, cheap food. The noodles and fried rice are really good. Big portions for pennies, literally at 4 RMB = 0.48 USD. But in order to eat said food, one must first navigate very large, in physical size and variety of items, menus pinned up on the wall and written entirely in Chinese. 翡翠 and I also speak completely in mandarin since it's the only language we both understand which makes our conversations simultaneously fun, challenging, and incredibly frustrating. So every lunch is mini-language-adventure.

On the American front, please send much love and luck to my good friend Erich. This great guy is in the US Coast Guard and I just found out that he is heading South to assist with hurricane response, doing law enforcement and body recovery.

Wudaokou by night. This neighbourhood is a 15 min walk away from campus.

Class today was easy. Okay, I wanted to poke my eyes out with sticks it was so slow and unchallenging. So when the first break arrived after one hour, I told my teacher that this class was too easy and asked if I could transfer to a harder class. She told me, a Korean guy, and a Japanese girl with the same problem, to head upstairs and speak to 李老师 Teacher Lee.

We thought this would involve a simple little conversation with Teacher Lee but instead, she will pull out your original placement test results and give you a real grilling asking why you want to change class. The Korean guy found this out the hard way; the Japanese girl and I heard Teacher Lee give him a really hard time when he asked to change to a harder course. He tried, in an obviously frustrated manner, to explain that he graduated from his Korean university with a major in Chinese and studied at 北大 Bei Da - Beijing University for 2 months but she kept asking why his reading and writing test results were so low if he studied for so long. After 10 minutes of going back and forth on this issue, she finally granted his request to move up to the next level.

I didn't have such difficulty, probably because I very politely explained to Teacher Lee that I've learned this material before but am merely out of practice reading and writing for two years and am willing to study hard to stay on top of class material. When in Rome... and in China you cannot expect the degree of equity that exists in a North American student-teacher relationship. Confucian values still prevail which means that as a young student, I should to behave towards my older and 'wiser' teacher with respectful deference, ie. do not follow the example of the Korean who visibly and loudly expressed his frustration with the situtation. In short, be just shy of kissing ass. So with a warning that I will not be allowed to switch back down a level if I find the new class to hard, I was placed in upper-Elementary level.

However, classes are full and I won't know if there is space in an upper-Elementary class until the morning. I need to show up at the Teacher Lee's office at 8:15am to find out if there is a free spot. With some luck, I begin tomorrow morning.

汉字 flash cards from one year of Cornell mandarin

The answer to yesterday's mystery about class is yes we had class but it wasn't a full class. We were only there for one hour where we received schedules, 3 textbooks, a mini-assessment test, and the instruction to learn the new characters for the lesson tomorrow because we will have a 听写 listening/ writing test.

I'm currently in the lower-Elementary class because I didn't do well on the placement test. The teacher told me I'm between levels: my speaking and listening is at a higher level than my reading and writing. Basically, my 汉字 characters are all over the place because it's been 2 years since my last mandarin class, meaning that I literally forgot how to read and write. Also I'm trying to transition from traditional characters (used in Hong Kong and what I used at Cornell) to simplified characters (what's used here in China). I looked through the textbook tonight discovered I've learned most of the grammar and characters so maybe I can to transfer to upper-Elementary tomorrow. Magnus is in a similar situation - he's studied Chinese in Sweden for several years but didn't test well on reading and writing either.

Magnus: "I ask the guy next to me in class how long he's studied chinese and he says two months. I've been studying for 2 years! Granted he's Korean but it's still a bit embarassing to be in this level."
Me: "At least you're Swedish. I'm actually Chinese and still in this level."

(An aside: poor Magnus keeps being mistaken for a girl in China because he has long hair - a swimming pool lifeguard shouted at him today when he entered the male changing room. And people keep asking if he plays guitar because he looks like a blond Axl Rose.)

The highlight of the day was the 4 o'clock orientation meeting for new foreign students. The head of the foreign students admissions office conducted the session but unfortunately her English was, how you say... awkward. Now BLCU not only teaches mandarin to foreigners but also teaches English to chinese students. So one presumes there are teachers who speak very good English on campus. But because this is China where 地位 status is important, the head of admissions spoke to us instead. I admit it takes balls to speak about rules and regulations in front of a couple hundred people in a foreign language so we tried very hard to overlook her many slips of tongue. A policeman was also there to speak on chinese law as it applies foreign students. His English was better but he still had memorable lines such as:

"If you lose your wallet, you should go back to where you lost it"

and

"if you overstay your visa in China, you will be penalized and executed." We think (hope) by executed he meant excluded. And by excluded, we think he means deported.

The policeman also prefaced everything he said with "I think" which gave the unfortunate impression that he was not sure what he was talking about, such as "I think if you overstay your visa, you will be executed".

Also, interesting laws about Beijing:

1) Foreigners cannot ride motorcycles - that is, no foreigner has ever been issued a motorcycle license. Mopeds, scooters, and electric bicycles however, are allowed.

2) A permit is needed to own a pet dog. Other animals are exempt from this requirement.

3) Don't openly practice religion.

4) Students from different countries are not allowed to organize in groups. Students from the same country are. This basically means we can have a Canadian Club but not a chess club. Unless it's a chess club for Canadians. Craig: "I think this law is meant to prevent us from forming the Democracy Club."

Lastly, don't even think about losing your passport. Because if you do, you have to inform and file paperwork with several police agencies and school offices before even getting in touch with your embassy. RED tape sure has meaning in communist China.

taking a break in a Tsinghua University garden

After running all over the place for a week, I had a very relaxing and utterly uneventful weekend, just hanging out in my room or on campus, reading, listening to music, organizing my budget (it's a huge pain to decipher Chinese receipts), returning emails, catching up with friends and family on IM and the phone, and running errands like grocery shopping.

Classes do eventually begin but it's a testament to the mess of university administration that no one knows the date this actually occurs. Chinese placement tests were last week (they were effing hard by the way, but at least you can't exactly fail a placement test). Results were given over the weekend, and we are told we will be assigned classes tomorrow morning at 8:30.

The mystery, however, is whether these assigned classes also start tomorrow. I guess I will find out in a few hours!

------------------------------

Relating to parts of this conversation about taxi drivers learning English, is this article. Given how Beijing taxis generally operate, I'll be stunned if I ever hear a driver actually say "we are turning left, so please fasten your seat belt" in English or Chinese.

campus bulletin boards illuminated at night

Smog and haze are the norm for Beijing in the summer so it's a real treat to see clear blue skies with white wisps of cloud. Unbelievably, today was the second beautiful day in a row. And what better way to spend a sunny day than riding a bicycle?

Up until today, I've relied on my poor two feet to cover all this distance in Beijing. Crazy pedestrian and vehicle traffic aside (which is a big aside), Beijing is a great city for biking. It's flat as a chessboard, with bike lanes most of the time, and so I took up Mat's kind offer to take us some bike shops in the neighbourhood. He is from Sweden and knows Beijing well as he going into the 3rd year of the 4-year undergraduate chinese language program. Puja and Martin (also Swedish and in need of a bike) came along too and in about 2 hours, Martin and I both had bike locks and bicycles to use them with. I bought a used bike for 90 RMB or a financially crippling 10.80 USD. It's a bit old and tends a bit to the left but it's not a bad ride. It's actually a bad idea to get a shiny new bike for general use in Beijing because bicycle theft is so rampant. Anti-theft strategies here consist of:

1) buy a crap bike
2) lock said bike
3) park said bike next to one that looks nicer than yours and/or less secure than yours

People also lock their bikes differently than in the US. There isn't necessarily enough places to lock your bike to because of the sheer number of bikes in Beijing. If people can't secure the bike to another object, they just thread the bike lock around the wheel and the frame, preventing the wheel from rotating if someone tried to ride it. Helmets also aren't used; I'm not sure you can even buy one if you wanted one. Another Beijing bicycling quirk is a cyclist travelling with a passenger perched behind sitting sideways on the luggage rack - a graceful balancing act that Craig and I are going to attempt once he gets a bike.

After returning to the school pick up Puja's and Mat's bikes, we went for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Tsinghua University. Puja and I walked around Tsinghua two days ago but because the Tsinghua campus is very very large, being on a bicycle makes a huge difference. Getting there was twice as fast and we saw more of the campus without becoming as exhausted as last time. One of my favourite things about the University - and Beijing as a whole - are the many parks dotted here and there. Tsinghua has several beautiful parks on campus, with flowers, trees, winding walkways, and even ponds, which are great for aimless wandering and a super way to escape the city hustle and bustle.

Leaving Tsinghua and going back to campus was the scary part. The roads to Tsinghua from the restuarant where we ate lunch weren't bad, but from Tsinghua to BLCU, we have to travel along a very busy road, 成府路 Cheng Fu Lu. There's a bike lane but cars frequently cut into it, buses enter the lane at bus stops, and taxis pull in and out to pickup and dropoff passengers. Crossing a road is even more chaotic since cars can turn against a red light so one frequently has to manoever around cars, other bikes, and pedestrians, often crossing the boundary between the bike lane and road in the process.

About a block away from BLCU, I came up behind a parked taxi in the bike lane. As I was half-way through passing the taxi, the driver either didn't check his mirrors or his blind spot because he suddenly began pulling out into traffic. At the same time, a bus started blaring it's horn (which in Beijing means "I'm coming up behind you and I'm not slowing down so get the hell out of my way") but because the taxi was in my way, I couldn't veer away from traffic back into the lane. Long story short, I was about to get sandwiched between a taxi on my right and bus on my left and would have been sideswiped by one or the other if the cabbie didn't suddenly realize I was there and braked hard, leaving barely enough room in front of his car for me to pass through back into the bike lane just as the bus sped by my left. It was very frightening and I'm just glad I didn't panic and tumble off my bike at the time.