The last full day

June 13th, 2007

Today was quite the experience. We began the day with another amazing breakfast at the Jade Palace Hotel, which to everyone’s delight had lots of fruit, cereal, and bread. After a delicious meal, we were whisked onto our bus to yet another Jade Factory, although this one was much bigger than the last one, and the salesmen weren’t nearly as obnoxious. Despite the larger selection, no one bought anything, and we hopped back onto the bus and headed on to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was huge, and filled with tons of interesting sites. I think we ignored most of the more interesting sites and instead spent our time looking at rocks with holes in them, buying ice cream, listening to Cherry talking about the “Dragon Lady” and being harassed by/ harassing the people selling stuff. I think everyone now has some form of a fake Rolex or Gucci watch. Lesson number 1: Salespeople who are selling fake watches and purses are probably going to be giving out fake money as well. Too bad for Colin and Ben, who got owned by the salespeople and their counterfeit money. The counterfeit money was printed on like regular printer paper, and had a huge bold line going through the side of it. The rest of the day Ben and Colin talked about how much they wanted to pay one of the salespeople with the fake money… we’ll hear if Ben succeeds when he posts from his NCR internship. It was a long morning, and we were all happy about lunch… especially Li Laoshi, because we went to a strictly vegetarian restaurant. For our “last lunch” we ate several interesting things, like water lily seeds, white fungus, various types of mushrooms, “vegetarian” fish, and some other type of “vegetarian” meat. All of the food was really really spicy, so by the end of the meal, my face had turned a little bit red. As John said, we Irish don’t do spicy very well.
The next stop of the day was the Llama Temple. The Xiao Lin Temple was by far the coolest temple we’ve been to, but that was because of the ridiculous gongfu masters. The Llama Temple was better in a more spiritual way. We got to see the monks at their evening chanting, which was a little bit eerie and a little bit awing. We also saw this really intricate painting, which turned out to be a sand painting. The monks design this kind of artwork a few drops of sand at a time, using nothing but patience and skill. As Li Laoshi explained to us, this kind of artwork represents life; the second that you put all of that time and energy into the sand painting, life takes it away. Normally the monks destroy these as soon as they finish them, just to prove this point. Lesson number 2: Two thongs don’t make a right. Self explanatory.
Our final stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. The entrance to the Temple of Heaven was like a Chinese Game yard. People were playing Chinese hackey-sack, Mah-Jong, cards, singing, dancing, doing some kind of aerobics with fans, throwing balls, playing Chinese badminton, and just generally lounging around. It was really cool to see some traditional Chinese games and hear all of the laughter in this park that led to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven itself stood on top of a platform that was very windy. Because today was a cloudy day, there wasn’t very much light, so it was difficult to see inside it. Instead of spending much time looking at the Temple of Heaven, we instead looked at the stairs and decided to take pictures of ourselves jumping off of them… and filming a mock Rocky video, thanks to Colin and Mark. With the excitement that was the Temple of Heaven coming to a close, we journeyed on to our final destination as a complete group of seven. It was finally time for the Hong Qiao Market. Yay!
The Hong Qiao market was a fresh dose of Chinese salespeople. These people had every type of fake purse, watch, jewelry…if you wanted it, it was there. It was hilarious to see all of the foreigners who couldn’t speak Chinese try to bargain. They were like us at the very first Jade Factory we went to. “OMG, only 100 yuan!! That’s such a deal!” I moved on and watched as Kim and Julie got some great prices... for about 1/6 of the original price. Our bargaining skills have been fully honed. Our visit to the Hong Qiao Market was brief, but tomorrow the final four (Kim, Colin, Mr. Killmer and I) plan on returning to make more shopping ventures.
Our “Last Supper” was one of our best meals yet. Although slightly sad that we would soon be separating, we still had a little bit of time to savor the delicious sweet and sour fish, crunchy egg rolls, turkey in pineapple sauce, and, our all time favorite, white rice. This restaurant was so nice, they even gave us cold water!
Moving on, maybe *cough cough* you *cough cough cough* would like *cough* to *cough cough* know what a pi shu is. A pi shu is the son of a dragon. One of the nine sons of a dragon, to be exact. The pi shu is the brother of the bi xie, which, maybe you would like to know, is another very interesting creature. Lesson number 3: Smoking is a very unattractive habit that may inhibit your ability to speak smoothly.
But, really, the night ended on a sad note, with everyone saying goodbye to Julie and Ben as the left with their host families for the next two weeks. Lesson number 4: You can tell how good of a time you had if you’re sad when things come to an end. Lesson number 5: You can tell you won’t miss someone when you ignore their goodbye being announced over the microphone. Since I know the interns will be keeping this blog up to date: Good Luck you two, and be sure to facebook me and tell me how it’s going. Because the Final Four will still be asleep when John, Mark and Li Laoshi leave in the morning, we also gave them our final hugs goodbye. Lesson number 6: Coffee = Ka Fei, Cream= Niu Nai, Sugar = Tian. See you tomorrow!

Back in Beijing

So its 10:05 pm here as I begin to summarize what has been an action packed, adventure filled day in Beijing. We were all a little nervous (ed. we = Julie and I) to go to NCR today, where some of us would get to spend an additional two and a half weeks working. The cocoa – puffs for breakfast helped calm my nerves at least. You don’t appreciate how good cereal is until you’ve had to eat vegetables and pork like every morning. Anyhow our first site for the day was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square, the biggest square in the world at 880 meters per side, is filled with Soviet style monuments to the proletariat and vendors selling Mao memorabilia. A couple of us bought some overpriced Mao watches, pretty sweet. We were a little pressed for time, and so soon it was time to go into the Forbidden City. Jam-packed with foreigners, it was difficult to imagine that this was once a city banned to everyone but a select Chinese. Now there’s a Starbucks located inside an 800 year old building – and yes, we all bought some expensive coffee. After the Forbidden City it was lunch time, where we got to eat Peking duck: delicious. Now running a little late we went to NCR. Upon arrival we were given an incredibly informative presentation by a man named Michael Low. Originally from Singapore, Mr. Low described in depth the business model for NCR and its operations in Beijing. He also noted that the goal for our stay would be to learn the product from start to finish. After the lecture we got a tour of the factory floor, which encompassed a huge operation to assemble the machines. Cool stuff. I am pretty excited about this, from all we’ve heard it will be a great experience. Now after NCR we got to go to both the silk factory and the pearl factory. In the former we learned how to tell the difference between real and fake silk (they burn differently) and how silk is created. Apparently a lot of silkworms had to die to make the bedspreads. In any event after they hooked us with the information they pointed us to the warehouse. There were some awesome silk clothes, if over priced. In the pearl factory they also showed us how to tell the difference between real and fake pearls (they rub differently) and also the difference between freshwater and saltwater oysters. Again there were beautiful pieces, and again rather expensive. On the bright side after the purchase we got free candy. Totally worth it. Finally we went to dinner and the teahouse. The teahouse, besides having a lot of tea, put on a variety show-esque presentation, encompassing Shaolin monks, sound effect comedians, Szechuan Opera performers, and more. After that we came back to the hotel, and I began to blog. This will be our final night all together, as Kim, Cameron, Colin, and Mr. Killmer get ready to go back to the states, Mark and John prepare to go to Shanghai, Li Laoshi travels to Taiwan, and me and Julie go to our host families. So yah, its been good, and I think I will go to bed. –Ben Goldhaber

The Great Wall

So today was the pinnacle of the China trip. We climbed the Great Wall. After an early rise and breakfast, we piled on the bus for the two hour ride to glory. …yeah. After we got there we dodged the waiting vendors near our bus and fended them off with promises of our return. With charger horse and blog camera in hand I began my ascent up the mountain along with the rest of the group…

So first we took a cable car up the mountain. A long cable car. Like seriously, it had to be half an hour getting up. Ben had wanted to walk up the mountain himself to get to the wall, but I think after our cable car ride he might have changed his mind… (it would have taken four hours for him to get up there walking, says Li Laoshi. Keep in mind we had two hours at the wall itself…) We managed to keep busy doing cable car Chinese fire drills and singing such classics as the Superman theme song, Kung Fu Fighting, Indiana Jones, and… I don’t even remember… As Mark might say: it’s whatever. So after the cable car we had to climb a lot of stairs. Going up isn’t fun, at least a nice Chinese lady fanned Julie and I as we went up (turns out she just wanted to sell us souvenirs for 100 RMB. Who saw that coming? Anybody?) So at the top… it’s… pretty great. It’s, y’know. A wall. A pretty great wall. It’s got a spiffy view, and there’s a nice hike to have up there. Also you can actually see the carvings on some of the bricks from the workers. I went the wrong direction when I got to the top, so I kinda wasn’t with the rest of the group for the most part, but it’s basically the same thing either way. I caught up with them and we chilled out in the shade of the guard towers. At the high end of the wall, one of us (me) got a really great idea (it was really stupid, but pretty sweet) to sprint as fast as possible down the entirety of this length of the wall (almost barreled into an old woman, nearly throwing her to a violent end at the bottom of the wall. Either that or she’d be stuck on the Mongolia side and half to walk around the whole blasted thing to get back. We ((runners)) discussed this in detail while waiting at the bottom end of the wall for the rest of the group ((walkers)). ) The rest is in the pictures. After the return trip to the bottom of the wall, we loaded up on chips ahoy and headed back to Beijing. After a rest, we headed back out for dinner…

In essence though, to sum up our afternoon attempt to go to the shopping mall and get food, I can use this one particular quote: “Guuuuys. This frickin’ sucksss…!” Also we came to realize that a haze similar to the Fog of Progress (y’know. The haze.) exists in most Chinese restaurants not in hotels or other similar establishments during Chinese meal hours. Seriously, my contacts shriveled up in my eyes from that level of cigarette smoke. “Bu yao, xie xie.” After great failure we gave up and went back to the hotel. A Samuel L Jackson movie was on HBO though, so at least it wasn’t total failure. Great Wall. Not so Great Evening. Semi Great Success for today.

~Colin

More Chengde

Today we continued our exploration of Chengde’s renowned summer palace. After a quick Chinese buffet breakfast at the hotel, we took a ten minute drive to reach the massive complex. Our first stop was the Puning temple, or, “Big Buddha Temple.” The temple contains the world’s largest wooden Buddha. The temple was built in 1755, and covers almost 3,000 km. The temple is significant for several reasons. It not only joins Han Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, but also hosts a plethora of religious ceremonies involving both lamas and monks. All of the roofs of the buildings are yellow; our tour guide explained that yellow was (and still is) considered a royal color that was only worn by emperors. The highlight of the trip was viewing the giant Buddha. The statue was an amazing sight, boasting 42 arms and 25 eyes. Each of the eyes represents a different Buddhist practice. It is referred to as the “1,000 arms and 1,000 legs Buddha.” After learning some basic facts about the life of Buddha, and observing a group of monks performing a religious ceremony in one of the temple’s many wings, we departed. Our next stop was a traditional paper cutting gallery. We were introduced to Shi Junfeng, a renowned paper-cutting artist in China. She demonstrated the technique of paper cutting by creating three intricate paper butterflies in only five minutes! After this brief but impressive introduction, we browsed her gallery, which contained various pieces of artwork depicting nature as well as traditional Chinese architecture and ways of life. Almost all of us purchased some of her works, which were remarkably well priced. Of course Li Laoshi helped us bargain a little… After our shopping spree, we departed for lunch. We ate at the same restaurant where we had lunch the previous day, but thankfully they didn’t load our table with 16 dishes again! Once we had consumed our manageable (and good!) lunch, we headed for the Lesser Potala Palace- another part of the summer palace complex. We climbed a little more than several staircases to reach the top of the temple. The view was definitely worth it, though. The temple is very significant, as the Dali Lama used to live there. The windows, called “blind windows,” are completely covered; this is because monks did not want be distracted by the outside world. After trekking back down to the parking lot, we drove to a mall to do some shopping. Unfortunately, the mall didn’t have the cheap DVDs that many of us have been searching for, so we made our way back to the hotel. We drove the bus to dinner, where we had an interesting debate concerning whether or not drivers in China were really good or really bad. I still maintain that they are crazy, as I have been in a taxi on more than one occasion where the driver played chicken with bikers, vehicles, and pedestrians! We ultimately agreed that the situation on the roads was “organized chaos.” After dinner, we enjoyed some free time back at the hotel. Tomorrow we scale the great wall!
-Julie

Chengde

The first half of today was a bus ride to Cheng De. We passed part of the Great Wall on the way there when we stopped at a convenience store to pick up some Chinese snacks. We got there for the most interesting lunch we’ve had yet. It included deer, an aardvark-like Chinese animal and fourteen other dishes. This northern area is apparently known for its unique game.
We went to see the Emperor’s Summer Resort after checking in. At two times the size of the Summer Palace in Beijing and eight times the size of Bei Hai Park, it makes the city seem small. We passed through the Li Zheng (beautiful and straight) gate, as only the emperor would have done in ancient times. After touching every part of the lions that guarded the entrance (everything is lucky in China, and everything is lucky in different ways so you’ve got to get it all).
The first building we entered has a large sign with the building’s name as written by the emperor on it: with three horizontal strokes instead of the two the character normally has because the emperor found it more visually pleasing. Hundreds of year old trees filled the space between buildings where the emperor did his various activities. One highlighted room was the bedroom, which contains the “Humiliation Desk,” where the emperor signed the treaty with England that gave up Honk Kong and other training rights. There was also the study, where the four ideas of softness, hardness, sublimity, and obviousness.
We ventured throughout the resort for a few hours and saw some unexpected animals like a few deer, a vulture, peacocks, and more, and larger, ants that I’ve ever seen in one place. It was hard to believe that we had traveled farther north, because it was unbelievably hot. I don’t know how the opera performers remained standing in their heavy costumes.
We ended the day with another memorable meal – one with French Fries eaten with chopsticks, orange chicken and friend chicken nuggets. We were actually able to enjoy some free time after that, which was amazing!