as long as I can make it

I've been planning to update the blog for a long, long while, but each time something more important comes up, usually my academic well-being, that prevents me from doing so. I talked to mom for longer than I expected to and I don't really have much more time tonight to update, so I'm going to limit myself to the 20-some minutes that I have left at my usual, lovable internet bar, eternally replete with videogame addicts, cigarette smoke, and the oddly out of place pool tables at the back of the room. This place is massive - there might literally be three hundred computers, from the look of it.

 

Anyway. No time to be too methodical. I'll just say whatever comes to mind, working chronologically backwards.

 

Today was the first day of ultimate. It felt great to get out there and play again, and I definitely feel like I'm good enough to make a difference in the local scene - unfortunately, the place is extremely far away from the campus. I don't know if you have any idea how big beijing is, but one of my friends found a good measure today - your good-sized american city has a ring road, right? boston, DC, richmond...well, beijing has five ring roads. No joke. All concentric, just about evenly spaced, but it's deceptive how much distance there is between them, because you can look at a map and fathom it without realizing that they're a good 15 minutes apart from each other. And this is hardly china's biggest city - there are city with tens of millions of people you have never heard of. Can you find shenzhen on a map? how about chongqing? zhenyang? I have absolutely no idea where the last one is, but it evidently has ten million people living in it. you see my point.

 

Yesterday was pretty fantastic. During the day time, I happened to run into a whole bunch of people who were headed to tiananmen square (the word pengqiao in chinese is a lot more elegant, I think). So with them I went, and I saw for the first time mao's giant portrait and the sprawling expanse of tiananmen, along with the state flag, surprisingly not as big as you might expect. Unfortunately, we didn't really have time to go to the forbidden palace (gugong in chinese) but that'll clearly happen at some point, and it just costs 50 kuai. not too bad. so a few of us instead went to the beijing equivalent of times square, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten and do not have the time to look up. Anyway - the reason we didn't have time to go to gugong is...we went to see the beijing opera, or jingju! so, as with a lot of english terms for things chinese (for instance, dragon - the chinese one is actually fairly different from the european one) opera is a misnomer. because while there was a performance, and some singing, it was dominated by a much different aura. While there, we were all seated at tables, being served tea and small trinkets! There's definitely a light-hearted element - a tea server came around with a comically long-funneled pot, doing acrobatic stunts leading to us refilling our teacup. there ended up being two operas - one was a comic one featuring an old bargeman and a young damsel in distress - actually, a nun, which I found sort of interesting. I thought it was fascinating, though it's hard to imagine how much of the context I was missing. It's said that the opera is often incomprehensible even to chinese speakers, and after going I can see why! It was very stylized, but much more like a theatrical production than opera - a lot of their dialog was in plain speech, and the singing parts often involved movement. Anyway, no more time - the second was unbelievable. It was an opera about buddha and his eighteen henchmen attempting to quench a revolt by the "monkey king" - essentially, sort of a trickster figure a la loki in viking mythology, except that this guy was made up to look like, well, a monkey, and his mannerisms were all cleverly simian. So, there wasn't much talking in this one - really, it was the monkey god doing an unbelievable series of tricks - he had a staff, and the stuff he was doing with it was unheard of. There cannot be that many more skilled performers of his craft in the entire world. He basically confronted a series of buddha's henchmen all defined by specific, often ridiculous characteristcs - long arms, drunken one, the tiger, along with some extremely acrobatic swordsman. It was jaw-dropping, and it's the sort of cultural feature that I don't really have an american match for - what are you going to compare it to, cirque du soleil? also, can you imagine using jesus in a play in the states?!

 

I'm sort of crazy about this place. I don't know if you can tell from the description. According to our pre-orientation meeting for the light fellowship, my feelings about china are supposed to follow those of your traditional shakespearean comedy - start out being excited, start to miss the way things are back home, and then end up being really excited. I wish I could start to talk about it, but essentially - I don't know if I've ever been somewhere that reminds me so much of the states. oh, but it's completely different in so many details, sure - I don't know. have you ever been somewhere with a 3000 year history where life changes overnight?

 

scrabble - no time! but life is good. if time develops I'll use it, but right now things are good. I'm happy with the way I'm spending my time.

 

class. oh, class. It probably needs to be talked about, since I was goign to talk about that on wednesday and still haven't gotten around to it. aia. no time. but I will say. the teachers are unbelievable. The best I've ever had for a consistent stretch of time. anywhere. I can't get over how amazing every single one of them is. unfailingly enthusiastic when they really have to work just as hard as we do, maybe harder. while being grad students at the same time. after each class I try to decide which teacher is best, and I usually decide on that day's teacher before changing my mind the next day. my chinese has improved so dramatically that it's ridiculous.

 

mingtian jian! (don't get your hopes up) if I remember/have time I'll talk about the club I went to as well as some useful phrases.