The Jade Monkey in Beijing

It is Saturday, 7/10 at 9:45 a.m. That means it's around 9:45 p.m. on Friday, EST. At the moment I'm in our staff room at the hotel, which includes desks and computers for our group's use. Very convenient, and free, too!

Okay, so you wanna know about Bejing? After many hours on various airplanes, we (the teachers in this program numbering 20, plus our fearless leader Minru Li) arrived in Beijing. We were greated by a tourbus and tourguide, Duan. Duan was our guide for the entire stay in Beijing, and he was absolutely wonderful. His English was perfect and he had a great sense of humor. So on Wednesday night, when we arrived, we went to dinner and then to our hotel. The dinner was typical northern Chinese cuisine - kinda greasy but with many dishes sort of familiar from our Chinese restaurants back home. Dinners are served around a large round table with a huge lazy susan thingie for all the food. Only one glass of beverage is served with the meal, after that you have to pay extra. And the glasses are quite small, same as they are in Korea.

I'll take a moment here to say that I can't help comparing things with Korea, at least for the first few days. I've found many similarities but also some differences. More on that later...

AFter dinner we went to our hotel - a very traditional Chinese home of a noble family that was renovated and turned into a hotel. Absolutely incredible! I wish I had a digital camera so I could load pictures here, but you guys will just have to wait for the pictures when I get home! We shared our rooms, 2 up, and my roomie was Bethany, a very cute young woman (the youngest in our group at 22 years old) who goes to Minnesota State. Our room was small but very quaint. Meals were served in a dining area which was attached to a lovely courtyard with tables set up. The mornings were cool and clear in Beijing, though the sun was extremely hot in the afternoons.

Our first full day in China, we went to the Great Wall. On the way we stopped at a jade factory and learned all about how to tell good jade from less quality jade, and real from fake. I decided to treat myself to one large purchase - I bought a beautiful jade pendant of my Chinese zodiac animal. Can you guess? Yes, the monkey!

After the jade factory, we continued into the mountains of Inner Mongolia to see the Great Wall. Words cannot express... it was incredible (that's a word I'll be using a lot, I predict! I better find some synonyms!). It's not just "going" to the Great Wall. You have to CLIMB the Wall because it's full of steps and inclines/declines. The stones are all very worn, as you might imagine. The view is breathtaking - it was obvious that we were at a higher altitude, climbing up the wall! I wondered how soldiers of ancient times managed to move up and down that thing with armor on and shoes that didn't have treads (especially in the rain).

It was very crowded (but that goes without saying - this is China, after all!). Lots of tourists there, of course, and around the bottom of where you climb up to the Wall there were tons of merchants hocking their wares...

Y'know that stereotype of Chinese peddlers coming up to you and waving postcards/trinkets/books and shouting "$2 dollar!" Well, it's true. It's impossible to go to any touristy area without getting accosted by these people. I learned a very important phrase very fast: "Bu yao!" No thanks!!

I had my first (and hopefully last) experience getting ripped off by one of the stands selling postcards and other tourist junk. I did barter with the woman, but I realized later that I was bartering in the wrong price range! Thankfully I was only cheated out of 2 bucks, and I learned my lesson well. Better to get cheated and learn with post cards than with something expensive!! I figured, well it's part of the experience. Have to get cheated once or it's not a real trip to China! :D

I'm trying to get a handle on the money here. The Chinese monetary unit is the Yuan, and roughly 8 Yuan equal 1 US$. So everytime I try to price something I have to divide by 8 to get a sense of how much I'm actually spending. I paid a little over $5 for 20 postcards!!

The key to success here is keeping a positive attitude. I have to say that even with 20 people, we are an amazingly optimistic group, and everyone looks out for everyone else. Surprisingly, no cliques have formed. It's wonderful to have such a family-like group to be with!

AFter the Great Wall we had lunch (same type of food as night before) and then in the afternoon we went to the Ming tombs. That was sort of anticlimactic, because it poured while we were walking through the grounds to the actual tombs, and by the time we actually went down (and down and down) the stairs to the underground tombs, there wasn't much to see considering how long it had taken us to get down there (and the effort, as well). Anyway, there were a couple Ming vases (I have a picture of me standing in front of one - the caption will be "This is me NOT breaking the Ming vase." and the thrones of the Emperor and his Empress, and the other Empress who was the mother of the next Emperor (a concubine who gave birth to the lucky son). THere were reproductions of the big red coffins, totally plain and without any ornamentation. And that was it!

From there we drove to dinner (Sechuan food, just a little different from what we'd already eaten), and then to the hotel. AFter a shower a little rest, a few of us went out to "Beer street" in Beijing, which consists of beer cafes with outdoor tables. Walking down the street all of the serving guys tried to get us to sit at their place. We had a couple beers at two different places and then headed home around midnight.

Yesterday started early again with a wake up call at 6:30. So far the time change hasn't been difficult for me, as I expected based on my time in Korea. I do expect to have a harder time coming home, as before. Anyway, after breakfast (and coffee!!) we were on our tour bus at 8:20 and Duan brought us to Tienanman Square (sorry for the spelling, I don't have any reference at hand) and the FOrbidden City. One word to use here - huge. The Square is enormous, surrounded by the Parliament building, Mao's mauseleum, and a museum of ancient and modern history. Naturally everyone got their picture taken standing in front of Mao's portrait that hangs over the gate to the Forbidden City. That was incredible - the feeling of walking under his portrait to enter teh City gates. Duan told us that Mao actually never entered the Forbidden City because he thought it would be bad luck - in keeping with the tradition of Dynasties that always lived in different areas of the City than Emperors before them, to avoid bad luck. He may have been an atheist, but he was still Chinese, with Chinese superstition!

The Forbidden City is unbelievabley huge - SO much walking. There are over 9000 buildings in the City, only a few are open to the public, and we only saw maybe 5 or 6 places within the City walls, including the bedroom residence of the last Emperor and the gardens. According to our guide, the move "The Last Emperor," which was shot in the Forbidden City, was the last production allowed inside, due to the fact that they destroyed a lot of stuff inside. He also said there were some things in that movie that weren't accurate - such as the fact that Pu Yi was not around during the Cultural Revolution. He died before all that happened, actually.

One of the buildings we did visit was the Emperor's throne room. The actual throne is a reproduction, but that didn't stop a throng of people from trying to get a glimpse and take pictures. Honestly, it was like a mosh pit at a concert. I kept wondering to myself, "These people are Communists, why do they care so much about a reproduction of the Emperor's throne?"

After a hot day of walking in the Forbidden City, we had lunch at a wonderful buffet that actually had salad, much to the delight of us all. Next to the lunch place was a pearl factory. Here we learned about how pearls are made, and how to tell the quality of pearls, and real from fake (Yes, you do rub them on your teeth! Smooth means fake, rough means real). Then of course they tried to sell us lots of jewelry, and many of us bought earings, rings, necklaces, etc. I may have possibly bought a lil' somethin' somethin' to wear on my wedding day. :) The prices were extremely low and I was able to barter quite well for what I got (I spent around US$19). That made up for the postcard debacle, and I felt vindicated!

The pearl and lunch place was quite near the Summer Palace, our next stop. Everyone agreed this was our favorite place, by far! The Summer Palace was originally the palace for the emperors before they decided to build the Forbidden City, and then it became the summer residence of the royal family. I'll take a moment here to explain some history. "Beijing" means northern capital, and "Nanjing" means southern capital. When China was first united under one Emperor the capital was at Nanjing, but after there were continuing wars with the Mongolians, they moved the capital to Beijing as a military center. Unfortunately, we won't be going to Nanjing on this trip. Maybe next time!

Back to the Summer Palace - the most exquisite thing is the giant human-made lake that is the center of the Palace grounds. Buildings all around the lake are connected by beautifully decorated open corridors, and bridges. We walked through some of the buildings, through one of the corridors, saw the famous marble boat, and took a ferry ride across the lake. It was breezy and beautiful after a hot day in the sun. We had one bad incident - one of our group somehow got separated and lost. Eventually Duan found her, a few hours later, at the police station nearby (I think - I haven't totally got that whole story yet). All's well that ends well, and by 8:00 we were all at the train station ready to catch our first class sleeper train to Wuhan.

The train ride was very cool - I'd never ridden on a train that wasn't city transportation. The births were 4-up and I had a top bunk. It was pleasant but cramped. We arrived in Wuhan at 7 a.m. and went right to the campus. Our hotel is on campus and is extremely well appointed. They are really treating us like gold, I must say! Later today they'll take us shopping (we have fridges in our rooms, as well as hot pots for boiling water, and thermoses). We have a formal dinner with the University President tongiht, and tomorrow we'll have a tour of campus and get to see our classrooms. Monday we have an orientation (though no one knows what exactly that means!) and classes begin on Tuesday.

I am tired but feeling well at this point. I've been here in this room about an hour, so it's time to get a shower and take a nap before going shopping.

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers and kind emails to welcome me to China! I'll try to update this blog daily, or at least every other day, but in case I don't it's just cause I'm overwhelmed!!

Until next time,

JM (Jade Monkey)