so much for free Internet ...

I previously thought that I'd found a solution to my internet woes by using yale vpn. unfortunately, today my computer refuses to connect, which means that I'm back on the wrong side of the great firewall anew. This sort of mimics my situation for the last few days - I put together a very long to-do list (an uncharacteristic move on my part, but I was abusing my newfound computer privileges), and while I've gotten through some of them I keep adding new bullet points one after another.

Actually, forgive me if this is indicative of particular laziness on my part, but I'm going to post the list because I think it gives a good summary of my life in slightly non-traditional form. unclear points will be explained.

to do

1. mail gifts to mom

3. email HBA teachers (as in, tell them I'm alive and would love to take them out to a meal because god knows they've earned it)

4. post blog update(s)

5. launder (not money...)

9. GRAD SCHOOL recommendations (you need three of them??)

10. SIGN UP FOR THE GRE IN THE NEXT WEEK OR SO! (URGENT!)

11. explore the neighborhood more12. chinese review

13. buy an alarm clock

14. use acne medication (hah, that's an embarassing one)

16. sign up for bally's

18. buy a microphone (computers always find new ways to make my life more complicated)

21. buy fruit

22. download music illegally (uh...legally would be fine too)

23. GET GRAD SCHOOL RECOMMENDATIONS - THREE! OF THEM (I suppose this is on my mind at the moment)

24. heal knee by not being stupid

25. new visa

completed

2. HAVE TAPE (my desk is now decorated)

6. TALKED TO ALL PARENTALS

7. VPN SOLVED (hah)

8. 2:30, dinner at 6:30 (I'll explan this)

15. the bathroom smells bad and you're just going to have to deal with it

17. FOUND CCB (my bank)

19. grad school deadlines are all well off in the future

20. BOUGHT PHONE MINUTES (about time)

I suppose that's not a hugely informative list. but it's a summary of what's going through my head at the moment. I think I'll punch in two more paragraphs right now and hopefully add more at some point in the near future. Although judging from my track record, if you read this blog you must have come to the conclusion that I'm a pathological liar.

I will start with today. Started out verrrry slow, although I did some actual useful web-surfing amidst my procrastinatory behavior. however, from about 2:15 onwards to 5:30, I had the chance to hang out with 李汀羽 (li tingyu)， one of the few chinese friends I have in town. I wish I could start explaining effectively how amazingly cool she is - she's a french major (which means we have three languages to overlap, which actually came in handy once or twice). She just about went with us to sichuan on remarkably short notice. I'm still sad that that fell through. Her knowledge of western culture in general is realllly impressive, too - she talked to me today about how her favorite actor was al pacino, then told me her theory about devil's advocate, its connection to paradise lost, and what she thought of milton's motives in his portrayal of Satan. I'm embarassed by my own lack of knowledge of Chinese literature and culture by comparison - I mean, what do you learn in the states about anyone besides your western canon? and who actually reads paradise lost, anyway??

realllllly quick aside...I remember reading confucius, lao tzu and chuang tzu (孔子，老子 and 庄子） in high school and being somewhat underwhelmed in some respects. but if I had just started to realize the impossibility of translating terms with their proper context, I'd like to think I would've not been as obnoxious about them as I most likely was. I can't read classical Chinese to save my life, but just looking at a little book of confucian dicta that my lovely language tutor gave me makes me realize how little I knew.

There is one point on which 汀羽 really amazes me: That she's willing at all to spend time with me one-on-one. Here's what I mean: I had a great conversation with my new friend Toni here at ACC about how stereotyping works not only against foreigners but anyone who associates with them, too. To my discredit, I'd never really noticed as much as I should have. But Toni, who is an Asian girl, explained to me that anyone who saw us hanging out together would naturally assume that she was, effectively, a prostitute or a call-girl, and even as we were walking the street together she would notice the occasional ill-meaning glance or look of judgment from other Chinese people we walked past. And today, walking around with 汀羽, I noticed for the first time how many people would look at her judgingly as she walked past, sometimes directly, other times turning their heads once she had passed. I found it so hard not to be furious at times at the injustice imposed on 汀羽 by a generation of my own western kindred who create the stereotypes that exist by their willingness to exploit China for all its worth, and now the prejudice against any chinese girl who interacts with a western guy. it's also why I get angry at my classmates, but mostly at myself, for sometimes buying into a system that allows us to get whatever we want for cheap (though obviously above indigenous prices) and creating our own, unreal expatriate pocket. But that's also too naive of a way of looking at things as well - is that not what the chinese middle class is angling for, and what the upper class already has? and is my odd puritanical streak not hypocritical in and of itself, an act of self-denial?

In any case, 汀羽 amazes me, because I've never seen her notice the attention around her once. if she does, she's never let it show. I respect her equanimity in a situation that would incite my anger.

Ironically (in light of the long rant above about expat life not being "real" somehow) I ended up going to pizza hut with kevin, a classmate of mine from yale who happens to speak great chinese as well as being an extremely nice guy. we started at the same time, but I think he's definitely a step or two ahead of me. It was an encouraging evening on the whole on several fronts. I ended up going back to wudaokou, my old neighborhood, satisfying in itself because I really like the place and also because it makes me feel like this semester could in some way be a continuation rather than starting over. kevin's going to be around for a year, along with kevin olusola, which is also hugely encouraging - they're great folks. for all that I miss the great friends I developed over the summer, I'm starting to convince myself successfully that life goes on. I'm planning on sending my teachers a mass email telling them that I'm around and that I'll treat them to dinner any time - the least I could do given that they're all amazing, worked harder than any of the students all summer, not to mention each and everyone one of them is a good-hearted, nice, fun person. I seriously hope that they'll get back to me. but at the very least I've got some links here already.

I was going to take one last paragraph to talk about my overall circumstances. however, I have a recently purchased dvd of slumdog millionaire currently loading, not to mention seasons 1-4 of meteor garden, which I'm hoping will carry on the tradition of using bad chinese sitcoms to improve my skills. but I suppose I'll mention a thing or two about my circumstances. my roommate got here today, and he seems like a great guy, although he goes to bed early, which means I may have to preemptively start scouting out nearby late night hideouts. I'll certainly miss my habits from the summer, which would including taking 2 am study breaks to watch german soccer games broadcast in chinese, or listening to V (think mtv, only more chinese music and maybe not quite as slick) at all hours of day and night. I'm sure I'll find a way to bring the insanity to my life no matter what though.

So far all of the ACC folks I've met have been fantastic. Just about everyone here has spent a lot of time in China, more than I have in most cases, although my roommate is a fun exception (he's never left the states before, which means I get to play cicerone). still not sure if my chinese will place me into third or fourth year, or whatever the equivalent is, as well as whether I should worry one way or the other. Gu laoshi, head of HBA and former head of ACC, suggested that the 5th year program here is not as good as 3rd and 4th and that I　should try to request a place in intermediate because I'd still be able to learn a lot. I may just leave it up to them to decide. whatever happens, my chinese abilities are in for a wild ride...

Mildly triumphant return

Three nights ago at dinner, at one of the hotel's restaurants because dad and I were too tired to go anywhere else after our great wall adventure, a first ensued. We struck up conversation with one of the waitresses, who was either teasing me or delusional, because she asked “你不是明星呢？” (aren't you a celebrity?) I tried my best to convince her that I was a penniless college student, but she wouldn't buy it, insisting that I sign my name for her. I obliged, throwing in my Chinese name for the sake of it. Dad signed his name too as well. She then scampered off, excitedly showing the rest of the waiters and waitresses her newly acquired possession. Now I almost want to go and become famous now just to vindicate her.

I only bring up the anecdote for two reasons: Firstly, because I thought it was hilarious, and second, to show that even though I've been here for three months, the surprises keep on coming, one after another.

It's going on a month since my last post here. My apologies to my four (!) followers and the Light Fellowship committee. I spent a week of that in Sichuan legitimately without any internet access, and then the last week here in Beijing with my dad, running around the city and taking advantage of the opportunity to eat a nice meal or two. A whole bunch of things have materialized in the last month - I now have a working computer which I have just enabled to circumvent certain obstacles, meaning I can now post whenever I want! Now I have no excuse whatsoever for not updating my blog, which means that I advise you to heckle me if I fail to regularly update.

I'm actually hoping that the computer will enhance my chinese skills by allowing me much easier access to MDBG and such tools, and maybe even finding a good flashcard program of some sort. Mom keeps inferring that not having a computer was probably good for my productivity. She's most likely right, but I hope that over the year I'll still find the time to watch a few tacky sitcoms on chinese tv to keep working on my 听力/listening skills.

I now have about two weeks until my first class actually starts. Other students will start to get here sometime in the next few days, probably about 3 or 4 days from now. I'm going to be moving over to CUEB pretty much as soon as I figure writing this post, which means that I'll have a good long time to settle down, and probably nothing better to do than to fill in the details of the last three weeks.

Actually, one last note - not to be blatant, but what do you guys recommend as the best way to avoid the great firewall? Right now, I'm relying on the yale proxy server, which I unexpectedly still have access to (possibly mistakenly so...don't tell anyone, ok?). I also have Gladder installed, but that's not actually proving all that useful. It appears I can also find other proxy servers online, but some of them appear to cost money. So - what do y'all suggest? Apologies if this is too blunt of a request, but I spent an entire summer using my mom as my blog's courier, and doing it myself will allow me to start posting pictures, including some stunning images from beautiful jiuzhaigou national park.

Over the next few days, expect to see a recap of sichuan, probably something about my time with dad here in beijing, and then maybe more of a "life in china" update. Although I think I might be surprisingly busy over the next few days...shopping, getting situated, and, hopefully, buying a 友友球/空竹/chinese yoyo...I'm actually not really sure how to refer to it, or where to find one, but it'll be a fun hunt.

Hi Blog

It's pretty hard to make myself update the blog at the moment. For whatever reason, I feel pretty exhausted (most likely because I haven't been sleeping enough, surprisingly). To compound that, I hurt my knee playing ultimate yesterday. No problem for about the first five minutes, then a bunch of swelling, lack of flexibility and pain. Lots of pain, more than I've ever felt out of my knees before. At times it hurt enough that walking was painful. I played some more in the second half, during which we blew an 11-8 lead to lose 13-12. as you can imagine, I wasn't all that happy, and then to compound matters the pain came back in full force. I found some ice in the evening (not an easy task here in china) and also elevated the knee for a long time, but it's still pretty tender, and I've been trying not to walk around too much if I can avoid it (one might argue that this is a good excuse for being lazy). this weekend other than that was highly enjoyable, other than my newly bought "kaiweiyi" (cute, a loanword from japanese, as learned in class today...not sure what the characters are) water cube mug, complete with jingjing the panda hua/mascot thing on the side...adorable, really...except that the first time I put in boiling water the mug immediately cracked, spilling boiling water on my hands, my desk, my textbook and most of my papers. Beyond that rightly justified outburst of profanity, the weekend was very much smooth sailing, beyond not getting enough sleep.

On Friday night I went on a shopping spree, if you can call spending ten dollars a "spree". But a friend of mine and I together spent about three hours wandering around the little roadside goodsellers finding trinkets. I have an increasingly long shopping list, and it remains quite protracted, but I managed to acquire a belt (unfortunately too long...I was so worried about it being too short that I had them give me the longest one they could find), a rubik's cube which I plan to learn how to solve in the near future if my computer will ever fix itself, new headphones, a murakami book and...twilight. I have no idea why I felt the urge to buy it, other than my ever-present desire to gain favor with the ladies. But so far I've already knocked out about 200 pages. It's pretty swift reading. I feel that the longer I read the weaker the writing gets, and there are also all of two, rather wooden characters in the entire book, as far as I can tell. But it's not meant to be fine art, and it did cost maybe a buck and a half US. It's worth mentioning that none of the things I bought could possibly be real...how can headphones cost 10 kuai (haggled to a buck US)? But they sounded decent, and if they break next week I guess I'll just go back again.

wow, I can tell I'm tired by my overuse of clauses. sorry about that.

My principal leisure activity the last couple of days has been checking in on the outcome of the National Scrabble Championships, being held as we speak in Dayton, ohio. It's the first time I haven't been to nationals since I started seriously playing. That's not all that significant to me, but I really do miss playing. I played my first game in two months today after finding a way to surpass the great firewall of china and download quackle, the best computer-playing program out there. The tiredness means that my brain is having trouble refinding its scrabble brainways, and it's sort of frustrating that I can't play whenever I want. Even more frustrating is that I can visualize myself being there right now, and the thought kills me. I could be competitive with the folks who are there; a lot of my friends are doing pretty well for themselves. Maybe it's more the camaraderie that I miss - for all the great people I've met here, I definitely miss my scrabble buddies. I already missed a wedding this summer - and sure, that's not a reason not to go to china, but sometimes I feel as if I'm asleep, in a protracted dream, and when I go back everybody will have changed and be older and moved on with their lives in directions perpendicular to my own.

The blog topics I have written in my journal are starting to feel out of date. They've been on my mind for a month, two months, and maybe I've processed them and come to my own conclusions about them. That being said, I think I'm going to try to pick my favorite one and write about it. I'll get through the backlog some day. if my computer problems are ever fixed. grr.

These are all fairly good topics, but I think maybe what I'll talk about right now is how I feel about my peers. And while I assume that pretty much no one else reads this journal except for my two followers (mom and dad...thanks, guys) I think I'll apologize in advance if anyone's hurt by what I said. anyway. the composition of the different courses is interesting. second year is mostly freshmen, with the occasional old person like myself. third year seems to have a lot of heritage speakers, fifth year is mostly grad students. fourth year consists of a big majority of preppies, your good old-fashioned sort, the kind yale doesn't actually seem to have that much of (maybe I hang out in the wrong crowds). I was pretty curious about why that should be, until I had an epiphany: If you've made it to your fourth year of chinese, you're probably in one of two situations: you either grew up speaking chinese at least part of the time, OR you started in high school. what kind of high school has a chinese program? probably an elite private school. my high school classmate here, lanben, started in high school. It only placed him into second year. but other fourth years went to places such as eton, andover, the usual bunch. leading to the curious demographic trend in question. Although maybe there are other explanations.

on a whole other note, something that I talk about every so often is about the nature of the community here. Because after all, everyone here, just about, is from harvard or yale, which tends to imply that they have secretly already done ridiculous things with their lives, even if they're only freshmen. But I went through a period when I felt let down by the student community here. A lot of them work extremely hard, and it's hard not be impressed with their skills. but some of them I feel are here for the ride. A lot of folks speak english in private, fourth year students especially, for whatever reason. one fourth year buddy of mine had a great observation: not all of the people here necessarily like china that much. Maybe some people are here for resume boosting purposes, which hadn't occurred to me until someone else pointed out. More troubling to me, though, is what I feel is a sort of disrespect for local culture. Sometimes it's in small ways, sometimes big ones, but I often feel that people are here to take advantage of the country rather than understand it. I wish I had better examples. But I feel that there's a pervasive mindset, even amongst people who have been here for a while, of using the countries developing status as a boon. Whether it's getting a business started in china's booming economy, or plundering the local grocery store of their 2.5 kuai bottles of beer, a lot of people are here to make a profit, whether in small ways or with future intentions of working on a large scale. And I suppose I don't know why I'm here, or why it makes for a better worldview than anybody elses. But it's sort of a reality I'm learning to accept. Being at HBA is much like yale, or high school, or life anywhere else. A lot of people aren't in it for the purest of motives. But I've found a few people I seriously respect and will miss very, very much. So take this paragraph less as a plaint, and more as a retrospective on my early experience here in 中国。

My last little paragraph is about a chance encounter, this weekend, playing ultimate. Rumors abound in the beijing ultimate community about this guy named gareth, one of the best players in china, dating a beijing player. Well, I ran into him this weekend, and he's none other than a high school schoolmate of mine. I knew he was getting really good at ultimate but it somehow never occurred to me that it was the same guy, even though gareths are few and far between. but he's currently in chengdu, just started the first pickup group there, and writes for an english journal. Sometimes the best thing is running into people you haven't seen for a long time and finding out that they've done some extremely cool things with themselves. He's also moving to beijing, which will probably improve the local squad a great deal. I'm looking forward to having him around.

where have I been?

Ack. I was doing a reasonable job of updating the blog until the last couple of weeks. I have a pretty good excuse for week 1 - I spent it in Inner Mongolia doing our social study report, as per HBA mandate (I feel like the longer I'm here, the clunkier my prose becomes...apologies). Without much advanced knowledge of any sort, I decided to do my report on Mongolian (the language, that is) because it's the sort of topic I've always been interested in, and I thought that my background knowledge on language preservation was enough that I might be able to produce something whose importance extended beyond exceeding the word length.

But really, for all the talk about producing the report, that's not what the week was about. Writing 1200 characters isn't really going to be that much of a challenge - I think a lot of people took two or three hours. I had to handwrite mine (remind me to explain sometime while my computer is still broken) and then type it up, but that probably took...6 hours total? Beyond that it was just an unbelievably fortunate week where I had the chance to explore somewhere beyond the boundaries of what I had ever encountered before. And it's not that Inner Mongolia should be exaggerated as some distant ultima thule (see nabokov) because it's really very much like the rest of China in lots of respects, which is a lesson in itself. But I also saw the most remote terrain I've ever seen in my life, inhabited only by shepherds and goatherds. I have the pictures if I ever find a way to put them on the internet - but maybe a better description is that I'm pretty sure I could pick most directions and then walk for a hundred miles without encountering another human being, except maybe for a flock of sheep or two. overlying the rapidly desertifying grasslands you can see distant, jagged red-purple mountains, which we crossed once on a somewhat terrifying return trip to the citified part of inner mongolia.

The experience deserves to be better described, and I hope that it will be in more detail at some point, but it stacks up with any of the most fortunate experiences of my increasingly inexplicably fortunate life. I'll go as far as saying that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I was lucky enough to stumble open. I hope I get to go back some day.

Currently going through somewhat of a Chinese music binge, again tricky given that I don't have a computer. Ends up leading to a lot of frustration most of the time as I turn on V, china's answer to MTV, and hope that they'll play a decent song or two. For now, check out here for what's currently on my mind. Actually, I normally don't have youtube at my internet cafe, so I'll take the opportunity to link up to this as well (watch the whole thing...although I promise the lyrics are very moving as well if you don't speak any chinese)

I seriously have at least 8 topics for blog posts in one of my coursebooks right now, but just no time to write them down at all. Shawn (a.k.a. 少华） is consistently unbelievably friendly in letting me barge into his room and monopolize his computer for long stretches of time, but even so I barely have time to keep up with whatever happenings are in the outside world. the blog is high on my priorities list, but so are the other things I don't have time to do. As of right now I'm already neglecting a particularly challenging new lesson. Probably another hour and a half tonight to memorize, and then wake up tomorrow to review/复习...so, that's it for now. Pictures could be coming if I ever get around to taking up weimin on his offer of loaning his computer so I can start uploading.

post of the time period

It's sort of hard to figure out exactly what to write when everytime I want to post I'm put on the spot with about twenty minutes to write down the things I've been stewing over for the last few days. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with our blogging prompts. what are you going to do.

 

The biggest thing on my mind is that, on and off, I'm starting to feel like I have some idea of what Iw ant to do with myself. Truth be told, if you'd asked me why I was here, the simplest answer would just be that I really like learning Chinese. But the more I'm around here, the more the puzzle pieces begin to interlock. Of course, it's often just a passing revelation and the next day I have no idea what I was thinking. But lately, I've been thinking that the best way to combine my interests might be to go to geophysics grad school, get involved in climate issues of some sort, and then try to get involved in a job in China with some sort of environmental capacity. The longer I'm here the more I am, first and foremost, blown away by how quickly life moves around here and how fast things are changing, and as a result just how much damage china's environment is taking. One of my teachers mentioned that when she was a kid, the city centers were all cooler than they are now because widespread use of air conditioners has raised the ambient temperature. We're talking about a country that is developing rampantly, and will continue to do so even as shanghai and beijing settle down, thanks to the "Develop the west" campaign. If there is a battle against global warming to be won, it will be here in China. So why not try to get involved?

 

Beyond that, I've mostly been musing about the places I want to go. Last night, I didn't sleep too much because I postponed studying for my test, instead reading my china lonely planet, courtesy of the kind folks at light. For any of you who have ever read my travel blogs in the past (maybe two of you, but then again there are about five people reading this, so there) I actually dislike using guides to navigate once I get somewhere. But this one's a little different, because its pages contain hundreds of cities I had never even heard of, but now get to contemplate visiting, a distant fantasy in case the fellowship money lasts. Did you know there's an actual town called Shangri-la in China? Some enterprising local politicians in Yunnan renamed their city in a bid to draw more tourists.

 

Trips that I've contemplated: trying to go to korea by boat to meet up with jason kb, going to qufu, confucius's home (this one I expect to happen), getting to india by going through tibet and nepal, traveling to western sichuan, going to inner mongolia...except that the last one is really going to happen!

 

About ten minutes worth of ramblings

There are times when this city can be frustrating. First of all, the scale of the place makes getting anywhere a matter of concerted effort. This isn't like Boston, where a good half hour will get you to Southie, or New Haven when about half an hour of biking can get you clear across town. Though the subway system is far-flung and fairly quick, Beijing is quite simply huge. In the States, the only city I can think of that comes close is New York City - a much better analog than LA, where people drive everywhere, because really Beijing is just a series of neighborhoods, one after another, turning toward the fringes into farm towns, all growing the same crops. My botanical knowledge is sorely lacking, but rather than the rice paddies of Vietnam, which are essentially my only good comparison, these are rows after rows of what look like cornstalks, with the occasional root vegetable or orchard of peaches all growing in paper bags (pollution induced, perhaps?). I'm not tired of the food at this point, but it's becoming a possibility whereas before I wouldn't have worried about it.

The weather as legitimately beautiful yesterday. Blue sky, interspersed with clouds. Warm but not drenched-in-sweat-inducingly so. The rumor has it that August will see the haze return in style, but for now, I can't complain.

Planned to write more, no time as usual. Now if dell would just get their act together...

Food and language

Those are the two big subjects that I feel I have yet to address since I started writing in my blog. I have no way to get pictures from my camera yet, so I'm not going to let you share my experience of scaling a segment of the great wall, which incidentally was awesome in the old sense of the word.

The single best thing I have tasted here is...nan. What? Seriously? That's not even Chinese! Well, I'm not going to let you in on the details until my computer gets fixed (which could potentially be as soon as the next couple of days, although don't count on it). But the single tastiest item, definitely reflective of my personal food tastes, might be a loaf of nan from the on-campus Muslim restaurant. You'll enjoy the details when I post them.

Using various averages from mathematics, I'll tell you that the mean of my meal prices is probably around 15, the median is probably around 10 or so and the mode is definitely 7 or 8. Kuai, that is. It might be a little confusing why I call them kuai when the official currency of China is the renminbi - you need to understand a little bit about the Chinese language first, but yeah, they're the same thing. Anyway, the exchange rate is about 7 to 1, which should tell you about everything you need to know. The food in this neighborhood is truly dirt cheap, and it's hardly anomalous - I'm sure that there are neighborhoods in beijing where you could eat expensive food, but I suspect that compared to, say, a town outside of beijing, I'm paying what would be considered a premium. Snack food is everywhere for cheap. An ice cream bar costs about 2 or 3 kuai, leading to a serious ice cream habit on my end (I try not to eat one every day). From there on there are baozi, jianbing, jiaozi, kababs, pretty much anything you can imagine. There are tons of street-side stands - I was worried that it wouldn't be the case, that beijing would be a little too xiandai (modernized) but for all that the new buildings are going up in droves, at least in this part of town folks are always out on the streets, hawking books, shady looking meat, rubik's cubes, clothing...at night the salesfolk swarm in and the sidewalk is swathed in towels loaded with junky merchandise, dresses, purses, boxers, shenme de (etc.).

In any case. I promised to talk about food, so back to the subject. There's a bunch of different restaurants on campus - it's much less of a, for want of a better term, potemkin campus like yale is. the word has significant negative connotations, so I'll clarify by saying that yale owns almost every building within a close distance of campus and leases them based on its needs and desires, trying to create a cohesive image. I've never been 100% comfortable about that being the case. Anyway, the tradeoff is beiyu's (BLCU's) campus, where a significant amount of buildings appear to be owned by other folks, and it's not clear if leasing goes on or not. There's at least one KTV (karaoke) place on campus, a few different restaurants, including the aforementioned muslim one, and so on. However, there is also at least one dirt cheap student cafeteria where I eat almost every day. A trek to the second floor reveals a bunch of tiny little places that are essentially fast food - go up to the window, order, two minutes later get your food and sit down at one of the 8-person tables with your cohort. Except that all the dishes are actually jiachang-style - family kitchen, your chinese golden oldies of sorts. you can get a mapodoufu, gongbaojiding, or just plain old noodles, throwing in a rice or a hard-boiled egg for one kuai each. And really, though the food is laden in grease, it is quite good, a lot better than other greasy cafeteria fare I've had in my life.

When going further afield, well, to be honest, I have yet to do so that much. But there's a lot to be had. You can go to further hole-in-the-wall type joints, as I did today, where a meal is unlikely to be much more than 15 kuai for a serious amount of food. Even these places are an upgrade over the cafeteria, though, because it's here that you start to be able to enjoy chinese food the way it's supposed to be - in a group, ordering a ton of dishes and splitting them all at once. I'm almost positive I like Asian-style eating better than the American equivalent. Rather than getting two or three courses, as well as the odd bite of a friend's food if they're feeling generous, if you go with like seven or eight people, you get to eat five or six different dishes, each with their own particular flavor! you can order things that complement each other, a soup, fish, one "ma" dish...

Right, I think I need to talk about ma. So, have you ever heard about Sichuanese food being particularly spicy? The trick is, yes, it absolutely is, but they also have a certain flavor completely missing from the west: ma. It is not an excess of spiciness, but rather a certain pepper that induces numbness in the tongue as you eat it - supposedly what fugu does, except that while you have to go to the most expensive place in new york city to try it in the states, every single self-respecting place in china has at least a mapodoufu - tofu drenched in spice and ma-inducing peppers, which sort of look like miniature twin cherries. It's essentially the craziest revelation ever to find out that there's a whole different world of flavor that you have never tried in the states that is, if not a staple of chinese food, then widely available.

So, beyond the world of mere chinese food, there are a lot of korean places around, as well as a fair number of muslim, japanese and american fast food places. KFC, mcdonalds and pizza hut are everywhere, though each actually has its own chinese name (kendeji, maidanglao and bishengke respectively...thank you, chinese class!) I had maybe the best expensive meal yet last night, at a korean place where we were served raw meat, which we put in a tilted metal slab so that the juices could drain off. the flavors were pretty astonishingly good, though at 35 kuai (5 bucks) it was one of the more expensive meals I've eaten here, maybe the most expensive.

I promise to start taking pictures of special meals once my laptop gets working.

Shoot, I don't have time to talk about the language. I am such a bad blogger. I'll get around to it, I promise. It will even be fun. But for now, the major update is that I'm pretty sure I'm going to be going to the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, distinct from the actual country. We have a social study project to complete halfway through the program, and that's one of the locations available.There are also chances to go to a chinese village, shanghai, qingdao, chinese schools, a shaolin temple and a couple of others. Any of them would be amazing, and I'm tempted to check out the village, but I suspect that going to inner mongolia will be the most irreplaceable of the bunch.As well as making for some pretty crazy pictures, I hope.

In the very distant future, plans are starting to form in my mind for great adventures...so I ask a question that I expect no answer to: what's the best way to get from china to india? bear in mind that, as I just found out, the border is closed...