The Great Wall, Hutong, and Acrobats

July 6, 2013

Geeps!  It’s been tough getting time to chronicle my trip.  We are very busy from morning until late in the evening.  That’s a good thing.  Who wants to travel halfway around the world to spend all her time in the hotel room? 

Our Fulbright delegation is attending a variety of topically focused presentations and universities and middle/high schools that I will describe in future posts.  Intermittently, though, we are touring historic sites and cultural events.  On Saturday the 6^th, we spent the morning exploring the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu.  The enemy watch towers are closely spaced here.  While there were plenty of other tourists, it is a spot that fewer tourists visit, so access to photo vistas was pretty good.  We took a cable car to our launching point, and then spent a couple of hours hiking around.  The experience was one that didn’t seem real.  Standing on the Great Wall and looking around at the surrounding jagged-peaked mountains, I tried to imagine the Mongols making their way across them to attack.  Hiking the challenging elevation changes helped me understand what a monumental physical feat the invasions would have been.  Never mind the "simple" construction of the wall.  What we see today is mostly the Ming contribution.  Throughout many dynasties, construction and rebuilding continued.  This is why I am here.  The stories I tell in school have a deeper dimension now.  Will I be able to convey that?  On a less academic level, I want to know how that little old lady with the sodas for sale got up there.  If she walked and drug that cart, I’m completely humiliated.

The afternoon found our group in rickshaws touring a Hutong district; an example of older Beijing.  Its streets are narrow and its architecture is traditional.  While on the surface it may seem as though this is a “low rent” district.  It’s quite the opposite.  The shops and residences sit below the drum and bell towers, and the district is historic.  One square meter of most homes is worth 40,000 RMB.  That’s about 6,667 U.S. dollars. 

Mr. Wang Jian Ping and his wife, Cai Gengxin, served all seventeen of us dinner in their home.  They were gracious hosts.  Mr. Wang (The family name comes first in China.) cooked an excellent meal and afterwards, came in to share some stories.  His family has a long tradition of cooking the finest food.  In fact, he tells about his grandfather who was one of thirty-six cooks for the last dynastic emperor.  The emperor’s cooks specialize in one dish only.  Mr. Wang’s grandfather made meatballs.

Sweaty, stinky, and tired, we topped off the evening by attending a performance of incredible Chinese acrobats. 

The Noodle Dancer

Western-style food is available here of course, and since it’s fun to see familiar restaurants with a Chinese twist, I’ve taken the obligatory photos for posterity.  I came to experience as many aspects of Chinese culture as possible, though, so am trying most things at our group dinners.  In four evenings so far, we have dined at some very interesting restaurants.  My plan is to try a very small portion of many things.  The trouble is that a little of each thing can add up to a huge amount of food with the multiple dishes served at each restaurant meal.  I regularly count around ten different dishes that turn up on the table over the course of the dinner. 

Thankfully, our directors and hosts have been working with us to be sure we use appropriate dining etiquette.  All meals are served “family style.”  Everyone chooses what she wants from the dishes on the Lazy Susan the middle of the table.  The Lazy Susan is a grand idea.  Not new, but very useful.  Dishes are set on the revolving platform in the middle of the table, and diners choose what they want from them.  Chopsticks should never be set on the table itself, and when the watermelon is served, the meal is over.  Westerners who dine out tend to like to linger over conversation and coffee after dinner.  In China, you should just leave.  Enjoy a few photos of the food and ambiance in the restaurants we’ve been to thus far.

Last night’s dinner was particularly entertaining.  Hai Di Lao Hot Pot is expanding to the U.S.  I understand you can find it in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Diners sit at a table with a cooking pot in the middle.  While we waited, free manicures were offered.  They didn’t have to ask me twice.  After appetizers such as boiled peanuts and mushrooms with seaweed, get to go to the spice bar to concoct 

your own sauce for dipping.  The soup is then started in the middle of your table and a variety of ingredients appear at intervals to be added.  The broth takes on the flavor of each ingredient and becomes very different from beginning to end.  Each time a new food is added to the broth, we let it cook and then took a share.  Chopstick challenged, I had a particular challenge finding and securing things such as mushrooms and noodles.  Speaking of noodles, I thought you’d like to see how they were made and added to our soup.  Do not miss this performance.  J

From Peking University to Middle School

The Fourth of July came and went without a whole lot of fanfare.  Within and among our group, “Happy Fourth” greetings were exchanged intermittently, but mostly we just thought of our family and friends at home and hoped that they were enjoying the uniquely American holiday.

Peking University was established in 1898 and was the only university that endured the revolutionary periods changing the lives of many during the early 1900s.  A campus tour and a lecture on Chinese education and vocational schools was a pleasant way to spend the morning.  Besides the fact that the campus itself is beautiful with its gardens and water features, it has an interesting history.  There are a variety of structures and monuments honoring some of the people who promoted education and demonstrated a desire to improve Chinese relations with other countries.  The Henry Lewis pavilion and the burial site of Edgar Snow who authored of Red Star Over China, are among them.

Dr. Yang Po described the educational system including China’s vocational schools in a lecture in the Henry Lewis pavilion.  Some interesting highlights:

Education is a whole family business.   Besides the great expenses, because of regional differences in the quality of schools, families often either move to larger cities while their children attend school there.  Sometimes the student lives with a grandparent or attends a boarding school in order to get the education deemed better.  There is a huge difference in education in rural and urban areas.  Funding is determined by the central government as it is currently working to rebalance the quality of education in all of China.

The afternoon was reserved for a visit to the Dandelion school; a middle school for migrant families’ children.  Its students live on campus and attend class and study for many hours a day.  One student described the school day as from 8:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.  Keep in mind, though, that we observed some “study” of math taking place at a ping-pong table.  The school is full of evidence of creative, project-based and student-centered activities.

We learned 30 seconds before entering the class
to visit, that we would be teaching.  This is my group.

A wonderful, full-course meal followed.  More about that later.

Touchdown in Beijing

My guess is that you’ve had to pull an all-nighter to work or study at some point in your life.  Remember how you felt that next day?  That’s what I’m feeling now.  In order to adjust to the time change, our group is staying up additional hours.  I didn’t sleep on the plane, so I’ve probably been awake for close to 30 hours now.  The drive to the hotel was a good chance for city sight seeing.  After a quick rest and then turn-around at the hotel we went to dinner.  Here’s a little of what we saw today.

Beijing between the airport and hotel

Want to race?

There are lots of mopeds, bicycles, and motorized carts alongside the cars and busses. 

My first REAL Chinese food dinner was at this restaurant. 

It's All Good

With day two of orientation sessions in the history books, and a fabulous dinner out at a Chinese Restaurant, I’ve snapped, clipped, zipped, and rolled the accouterments of my life for the next month or so out the door and off the runway.  Arlis has left the continent!  I’m a planner, so my strategy for enduring this twelve and a half hour flight was in place; iPod loaded, computer charged, and snacks packed.  A movie or two would break the monotony and sleep, if possible, would come intermittently.

Our flight path was "Somewhere over the North Pole."

This is it.  The North Pole peeking through the clouds.

 Not happening.  I’ve been on board this plane for seven hours so far, and have discovered that my iPod isn’t in my backpack, my snacks are missing, and I can’t sleep.  Watching a movie is doable but there is no sound.  With another five to six hours to go, Necessity has been my mother.  Here are my tips for flying when Plan A is out the door:

1.  Take three deep breaths and chant softly, “It’s all good.”  This may be a California “thang”, but don’t knock it until you try it.

2.  Take inventory using positive talk.  Chanting and positive self-talk should probably be done softly or in your head.  People on airplanes are very sensitive to “unique” manifestations while in flight.  Positive talk sounds like this, “Arlis, you’ve got your laptop, and it’s all charged up.  You have Chapstick, your passport, and a couple of Tootsie Rolls.  There’s a T.V. screen in front of you.  You have an isle seat, and there’s an empty seat between you and “Mary at the Window.”

3.  Formulate Plan B.  Mine went like this:  “No iPod?  Okay, then.  The plane has headsets, and I have my computer.  My computer has my iTunes downloads, so I CAN listen to my audiobooks.   Two Tootsie Rolls are plenty with the meal and snack service.  I WON’T GO HUNGRY.  SLEEP IS OVERRATED.  If I’d been asleep, I’d have missed hanging out at the back of the plane looking out the window as we passed over the true North Pole.”  Yep.  6:12 a.m. Beijing time.  I saw the North Pole.  Through the clouds I could see the ice with fissures where the Arctic Ocean peeks through.  Positive self-talk continues.  “No sound on the movie screen is tricky, though.  Hmm.  Ah, I can start a movie on my screen, and the screen for the middle seat, sync them and watch the 25J screen with 25K sound.”  Am patting myself on the back (in my head) now.  I’ve already watched AND heard the movie, “The Hobbit” and may buckle down to watch another sometime in the next five or six hours. 

4.  Move around.  Getting up, stretching, walking, and standing around is not only good for you physically, it gives you a chance to people watch.

My first glimpse of China

 As I write this I see that our plane is beginning to track over the Russia.  I’m happy and excited, but also the slightest bit nervous and am already missing my family.  Thankfully, my family is cheering me on and supportive of my travel-to-learn passion, so it's all good.

We made it.  We're spending this first week in Beijing.