Mega-post part II: Tourism and the Olympics

Contents of this post: visitors, touristy things and my ever-escalating dislike of the Olympics.

Friends!

So my friend Gang, who's interning with at the American Consulate in Shanghai, came to visit. During that weekend (when I was supposed to be writing my social study report) we went around Beijing to try to see some of the Olympic stadiums and things. Conclusion: it's really hard. All of the stadiums are now fenced off and there isn't any public access. Clearly this is for security reasons, but at the same time, it's a little disappointing. More on the Olympics later. (I was also going to mention something about entering BLCU but I'll wait until my Olympic rant.)

The Olympic stadiums are mostly covered by these fences.

The tickets for diving events at this arena sold out within a couple of hours last Friday, I think.

We had to climb over a fence that send, Don't Climb, to get here.

...the Olympic Village. Kind of sterile, if you ask me.

At a Yale BBQ in Sanlitun.

Touristy things

These are all kind of the same after a while, so I'll run through them briefly here.

Yuanmingyuan 圆明园

This is the Old Summer Palace which was destroyed by the allied British-French forces in 1860. Until it was destroyed it was used by the imperial family. It's a symbol of national humiliation because it was burned down in retaliation for Chinese execution of British diplomats. It's a great park, but after seeing a scale model of what it looked like in its heyday, it must've been gorgeous, and it does make you think about what it must've looked like at the time.

This is an educated guess on what it must have looked like before 1860, based on old paintings and diagrams.

This is part of the most famous ruins at Yuanmingyuan. They're artfully maintained remnants of the European-style palaces that comprised a small part of the palace.

More ruins.

There was some sort of lotus exhibition going on when we visited, so there were a TON of lotuses all around the park.

My language partner.

I don't know. What do you think?

Summer Palace 颐和园

This was built by Empress Cixi 慈禧太后 as sort of a playground, and I think of all the palace-like things that I have visited in China, this is probably my favorite, as it combines water (growing up close to the ocean instills a lifelong love of water, I think) and beautiful architecture. It's also famous for Cixi's infamous stone boat, for which she diverted funds originally for China's navy.

One of the bridges that the Summer Palace is famous for. Also, note the terrible pollution.

Cixi's stone boat!

台灣同學 in the Long Corridor!

Back: the Temple of Longevity. Front: yet another popsicle 冰棍儿.

Beihai Park 北海公园

One of Beijing's many "海" "seas" (the other ones are 前、后、中 and 南, "front," "back," "central" and "south," respectively), Beihai Park, which does indeed have a large lake in the middle, is famous for its white pagoda, as well as for containing one of the few remnants of the Yuan Dynasty-era palace.

China's new National Theater, which I saw on the bus from Tian'anmen Xi to Beihai.

It's beautiful.

The White Dagoba 白塔 up close.

Pollution sucks.

Olympic madness

I don't even know where to get started with this. I'm trying to look at the silver lining of this and say that if I hadn't come to Beijing this year I wouldn't know about the craziness that surrounds an Olympic city, but I'll just draw a couple of examples.

- At the BLCU gate, they check student IDs (which, unlike in America, isn't a card but is rather this little booklet that I only manage to squeeze into my wallet), which proved really annoying when Gang came to visit and stayed over because I had to go through some logical/linguistic trickery in order to get him past the guards.
- ALL the various little 摊子 and 小卖部, basically the streetside stalls, have been swept away because the government is apparently worried that (a) foreigners will get diarrhea, dysentery and god knows other digestive ailments from eating here and (b) I suspect that they think these booths are an eyesore. While I don't mean to belittle digestive problems (trust me), I think this is a little overkill. It's also sad because this is much of what makes China China (at least from a food perspective.)
- A ton of bars and clubs are closed, and while I am not the biggest party animal, by far, I don't really see the link between the closing of bars and the Olympics.
- The annual speech contest for all the Chinese summer programs has been canceled, because we aren't permitted to have a gathering with that many foreigners in one place.
- Random little things that don't seem to have any particular connection with the Olympics. Example: there is a building between the Conference Center and our classroom building that used to be a convenient shortcut, but now one of the doors (it's open on two sides) has been closed.
- I don't think you can walk in this city without seeing some sort of Beijing 2008 view in eyesight. Even on the subway (which is absurdly crowded nowadays) as I stand, there are flashing Olympic ads that you can see in the tunnel. Wangfujing 王府井 is absolutely FILLED with Olympic ads. Okay, perhaps this is a little unfair, since the flagship souvenir shop of the Olympics is located in Wangfujing, but in the most random places there is SO much propaganda, errr, publicity, I mean. Of course in Chinese both are translated by 宣传, which I find to be an apt commentary on this situation.
- Not to mention that I don't even have it that bad, since my friend My Khanh at PiB who is living on a campus (Beijing Normal University 北师大) which is apparently going to host some events/home to American athletes or something has a ton more random restrictions, including the closure of bus stops right outside her gate and stuff.

Clearly, this is my soapbox, and I understand that the Olympics are a great opportunity for this city and for China as a whole. But I'd be willing to bet that in other Olympic cities the government doesn't show this sense of paranoia. Yes, security is something to be concerned about, particularly in China. But turning the festive atmosphere that normally precedes the Games into an atmosphere that reeks of paranoia and suspicion doesn't bode well for the Games. I'm actually particularly glad that I've been reading the New York Times, even though it's not especially good for improving my Chinese, because you need a break from the relentlessly upbeat coverage of the Olympics within China.

(Also, I just remembered -- don't even get me started on the Fuwa 福娃, which I'm convinced were conceived in order to sell five times the normal amount of products that a tourist would normally buy.)

It's commonly expressed that the Olympics are a "coming out party" for Beijing. It's easy to take this as empty rhetoric, as a marketing slogan, but it isn't until you actually come to Beijing and see for yourself that you realize how true this is. China really does see this as an opportunity to put its best foot forward, show the world that it can host as splendid and enjoyable an Olympics as any. Except at the same time it's using its other foot to kick away much that it views as undesirable, much of which I'd argue is what makes Beijing Beijing and China China (of course, I don't really know, considering that ever since I've been in Beijing Olympics fever has only ratcheted up, and it'll be at fever pitch by the 8th.) It's really a shame.

Dragonfruit

To end on a lighter note, I've started buying fruit such as dragonfruit 火龙果 from the market, even though it's absurdly expensive, because even though I have a really high tolerance for fried/oily/unhealthy food, at some point even I can't take it anymore. I love fruit.

Yay!

总而言之

So this has, again, been another rather negative post. I probably sound like a broken record when I claim that really my life is not all that bad, but I really felt the need to counteract the neverending Olympics propaganda here. Besides, while I never really blog about what I'm learning at HBA, this only means that I've settled into a routine, know how it goes, and there isn't much to write about there.

To conclude, I've got two and a half weeks left in Beijing, a week and a half in Taiwan (I'm SO excited), a couple of days in LA and then Yale, which I will be in exactly one month -- my flight to New York lands on the morning of the 30th. It'll be an exciting month.

Mega-post part I: Inner Mongolia

So I feel like this is a good introduction to this post, as it sums up nicely much of my experience in Inner Mongolia: lamb, lamb and more lamb and lots of time sitting on that bus.

After thinking about what I wanted to write about for this post, I came to the conclusion that it would be one really, really long post, and also that because of my procrastinating habits it would be hard to find time to write it, and I wanted to write about these things before they got hopelessly out-of-date. So I've decided to split it into Inner Mongolia (and week 4) and everything after.

Week four wrap-up

The Saturday before leaving for Inner Mongolia I went with my friend My Khanh from Princeton in Beijing to Houhai 后海 to have dinner, and then the next Sunday I went to the Forbidden City 故宫.

There isn't really much to say about Houhai, but in a good way, as in I like it a lot. It's this area that centers around several lakes, fittingly called Houhai and Qianhai 前海. The architecture is deliberately reminiscent, and while I'm usually not the biggest fan of this -- think Xintiandi in Shanghai -- I think in this case it's tastefully done. Also Houhai is mostly bars and restaurants and not a ton of super-loud clubs, so I found that the atmosphere was conducive to conversation.

Stylized scenery. It kind of reminds you of Shanghai (I remember reading somewhere that this was intentional.)

Sunday was a gorgeous blue day like the ones at home -- I've yet to see another one as nice in Beijing.

The Forbidden City is huge, but the buildings are amazingly preserved. There really isn't much to say that you can't get from reading the Wikipedia article on it. The only thing that I can think is that we should be thankful that it survived the Cultural Revolution (more about this later when I get to the last couple of days in Inner Mongolia.) Oh, and now incidentally I have been to both "Palace Museums" 故宫博物院, in Taipei and in Beijing. (The one in Beijing is, of course, the Forbidden City; the National Palace Museum 郭禮故宮博物院 in Taipei is actually a museum that consists mostly of the art taken to Taiwan in 1949.)

Now for pictures:

THE flag. This is the one that hordes of Chinese tourists see being lowered in the late afternoon.

Some hall. After a while, they all start kind of looking the same to you.

For those of who you took Spence: this is where Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后 ruled from "behind the curtain," or something like that, in the late Qing dynasty.

I'm particularly proud of this picture. It's the northeast corner of the Forbidden City.

Inner Mongolia!

So I chose Inner Mongolia for my social study 社会调查 for a couple of reasons: firstly, I didn't want to stay in Beijing. As much as I felt, and still feel, like I didn't have a really good idea of what the city is actually like, I couldn't envision myself staying in Beijing nonstop for nine weeks. I can't still figure out why it is, but after a week in Shanghai and four in Beijing I still can't say that I really like the capital more than Shanghai. Secondly, I wanted to see Inner Mongolia, because I felt that after having seen Shanghai, unquestionably the most modern Chinese city aside from Hong Kong, and Beijing (which is pretty far behind Shanghai in some places), I wanted to see something really different and more genuinely "Chinese," although on second thought perhaps Inner Mongolia is not the best place to see these sorts of things.

Anyway, now for the detailed day-by-day, since I know you all are dying to hear this:

Day 0: Trains and real conversations

Why a day 0? Because I figure a day spent mostly in Beijing and on the train doesn't really count as the first day of the trip, and, more importantly, this is the way I've numbered my photos on my computer. So.

After surviving the midterm (let's not get started on this) and Chinese table 中文桌子 at the Muslim Restaurant at BLCU, I went to run a ton of errands and then we convened to leave for the Beijing train station. Perhaps representing China very well, the train station was packed to the gills with people and was hot and muggy and 闷. Our train was going from Beijing to Baotou 包头, a city in Inner Mongolia that I actually haven't been to yet.

After figuring out how to get onto the top bunk (I forgot to take a picture of this, but envision three bunks on top of each other, with the top bunk only taking up about 20 percent of the available space and the other ones taking up 40 percent each), I settled in for our 11-hour ride to Hohhot. The thing that was most rewarding about the train ride was conversing with real Chinese passengers. Somehow I got into a conversation with a trader from Sichuan 四川 and we talked about the American perception of China, what China is like, the rich-poor gap, etc. It was really rewarding to have a conversation with someone who was authentically "Chinese," i.e. not a teacher who is going to correct your every mistake and speak exaggeratedly standard 标准. I wish I'd written down what we talked about because now after a week of whirlwind days I can't really remember what we talked about except that we mostly discussed Sino-American relations. It was also really interesting to get a glimpse into hard-bunk on Chinese trains and what it's like. Everyone's really chatty and feels free to offer their opinion about things ranging from Inner Mongolia's grasslands to the American south. You also have to do this weird ticket-exchanging thing where the attendants take your paper ticket and give you a plastic card at the beginning of the train ride, and when you get close to your destination you give them back the plastic card and get your paper ticket back, which to me seems like an entirely unnecessary process, akin to how I have to get a receipt for stationery products at Chaoshifa 超市发 market before I can actually buy them. Whatever. It's China.

Day 1: Grassland adventures

Early morning in Hohhot.

After arriving in Hohhot bright and early (and I mean early, like 5:30 am or so), we hopped onto a bus for the grasslands. The first thing that struck me about Hohhot and Inner Mongolia was the beautiful weather -- as I've already mentioned numerous times, the weather in Beijing tends to be really muggy and the sky an unappetizing gray, but the first day in Inner Mongolia the sky was a brilliant blue and the air crisp but not cold, like it is on mornings in late spring.

Breakfast place. Can you say globalization?

The rest of the day was spent interviewing herders 牧民, who live around the area. It was actually really kind of difficult for me to understand what a lot of them were saying. Listening comprehension 听力 has never really been my strength anyway, and when coupled with an accent that I couldn't entirely understand (seeing as how my southern Chinese 南方 accent, is apparently one of the most difficult things in the world to understand, as I learned later in Hohhot and will discuss later), it was really a sobering experience and made me think about how much more there is to Chinese than I thought.

Lunch: it's all lamb or lamb-milk (is that even what it's called?) based products.

Finally, I have never before in my life seen such empty grasslands. Particularly since I come from sprawling Californian suburbia and go to school in the East Coast, which seems to just be an endless megalopolis, it was amazingly beautiful.

The picture doesn't really adequately represent how empty and wide-spreading the grasslands are in reality, but it gives you an idea.

On top of some hill.

Warning: the next paragraph is a little gruesome.

Then at night we saw a lamb being slaughtered. The way they use to kill the lamb involves pulling out the heart while the lamb is still alive, fol. Yes, you read that right, all while the lamb is still conscious. Apparently this way the meat tastes fresher or there's less blood or something. Of course at the time I was a little reluctant to watch the whole thing, but later one had no problem eating the lamb.

Don't worry, this is AFTER the lamb's heart was pulled out.

I forgot to mention, before we ate there was a performance of Mongolian wrestling, which is apparently one of the three traditions (the other two being horse racing and archery) that is very important in Mongolian culture, followed by students participating.

Day 2: Stylized Mongolia

On Sunday, we headed off to a more touristy camp of Mongolian yurts and rode horses for a good part of the afternoon, from which I learned that riding trotting horses is actually kind of difficult -- you keep bouncing up and down on the seat; what you're supposed to do is stand up on the horse, but the problem is that after three hours of riding horses, my un-fit self is tired like none other, particularly my legs.

This is when the horse was, thankfully, walking.

This yurt camp was more stylized (I don't have any pictures on me at the moment, which seems like a gross oversight in retrospect) and it got me to thinking about the differences between historical Inner Mongolia and what it's really like today. Traditional yurts were made of cloth, I think, definitely not concrete. It really made me think about how the preservation of traditional culture, and how easy it is to say that through economic development we're preserving it but in reality only preserving a stylized version, custom-designed for tourists, with all the negative aspects taken out of it. Inner Mongolia has undergone some serious Sinification (Han-ficiation?) 汉化 over the last 60 years, and the diminishing of traditional Mongolian culture is a part of this. But more on this later.

(You can't tell, but when I was typing that sentence, there were so many points when I wanted to write Chinese, with the effect of something like: Chuantong menggubao were made of cloth...how easy it is to say that tongguo economic development...with all the biduan taken out of it. Sigh.)

Day 3: More interviewing

The third day of our trip was more interviewing of mumin 牧民, and then followed by an agonizingly long ride to Erdos 鄂尔多斯, not a particularly interesting city.

Although we did find time to take a jumping picture.

Day 4: Propaganda and publicity

After getting to Erdos, we got up early in the morning to take a tour of a cashmere factory in Erdos and interview some workers there. To tell the truth, the cashmere factory wasn't the most particularly interesting part of the trip ever, but I did take some awesome pictures of the propaganda--I mean, worker motivation signs. The funniest ones are those in which the English doesn't really match the Chinese, in that the Chinese is a lot harsher-sounding than the English. The impression I got from the cashmere factory is that there is a lot of Han influence in Inner Mongolia and that this cashmere brand is apparently really famous, but I still don't know that much about it. Also, it was one of those rather soulless corporate tours, which didn't make it very interesting.

Also, there was this series of really interesting signs:

Meaning something like: "One percent of my mistakes equal 100 percent of loss for the business." Ouch. Talk about pressure.

Yeah, there's an English translation, but it doesn't really equal the Chinese, which is something more along the lines of: "If you pass nervous days in the factory, then you'll pass rich days at home."

Later that day we went to Genghis Khan's Mausoleum 成吉思汗陵墓. Apparently, although the current whereabouts of Genghis Khan's body are unknown because he was buried with little fanfare and his grave is not marked, this mausoleum is still home to a lot of his possessions. What I found the most interesting, though, was not really the mausoleum itself but what it represented about Inner Mongolia. First off, I found it to have this vaguely fake aura, since all of it had been spruced up several years before, and the huge building housing a lot of the remains and things actually replaced a collection of yurts that had previously been there. Second, the concept of building a mausoleum when you don't have the body is a little strange, to say the least. Third, there's extensive Sinification 汉化 here -- all the guards and tour guides speak Chinese, and there's incense to burn in front of some of the possessions; although I don't know much about Mongolian culture, that strikes me as somewhat culturally inaccurate.


The same day, we went to interview this family, called 达尔扈特人, Da'erhute, I don't know how to say this in English）who have apparently guarded the mausoleum for generations upon end since Genghis Khan's death in the 1100s. We were supposed to interview three families, but we were only able to interview one, the reason being since these 达尔扈特人 have not been traditionally very Sinified AND because apparently there was some trouble with the Olympic torch as it went through Inner Mongolia (I haven't even gotten started on how irritated I am at the Olympics. This can be exhibit 1), we were restricted, all 20 of us, to only interviewing one family. Apparently there are a lot of restrictions on them by the Inner Mongolian government, I think, and they're not supposed to leave the province. The man we interviewed also said that since these people have been guarding the mausoleum for so long, they'd like to let the world know about this contribution, but again because of some cultural issues it isn't really going to happen, which gets you to thinking about Sinification of these regions and how political cultural issues can often get.

Finally, on something of a random note, the front gate at the mausoleum reminded me of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall 中正紀念堂 in Taipei. To a certain point all Chinese architecture kind of looks the same to me.

Taipei, anyone?

Day 5: The desert!

This was one of the best days of the trip for me. We went to Xiangshawan 向沙湾, which is so named because apparently when you slide down the sand it is supposed to make this crackling sound. Not true -- I slid down (a la skiing) the sand and only discovered that the sand is really, really hot. Duh. I'll let the pictures/captions speak for themselves, since I think that that's the best way to describe it.

On the cable car across to Xiangshawan.

Amazingly, more comfortable than horses.

My camel!

So many camels!

Desert yay!

I spotted this toilet on camel-back, and wondered who was going to use it.

Archery.

More archery.

Too cool for school. Haha.

About to get into this ball-thing, which then rolled down this chute thing. It was really fun.

Then at night we went back to Hohhot, which I don't really have much to say about except that it looks like any other large Chinese city, with the exception of Mongolian words throughout. I did, however, go with a classmate of mine and Timo (the HBA secretary) to have hot pot in individual hot pots, which Ｉ now find to be one of the more convenient arrangements that I have seen.

Day 6: Hohhot happenings

On the second-to-last day in Inner Mongolia, we went to Mengniu 蒙牛, which is a factory that makes a ton of products, most famously popsicles 冰棍儿, at least among the fifth-year students. The tour was your run-of-the-mill standard factory/corporate tour, with the only oddity being that we had to wear these shoe coverings (what's with the shoe coverings in Inner Mongolia?) in order that the factory floor didn't get wet. It was admittedly pretty interesting to see the processing of all those dairy products, however.

...

It's really cool, actually -- if you look at the back of the picture, apparently the cows walk into this revolving thing by themselves, get milked as it turns, and then walk off.

Yeah, so we get bored during the tour.

Later that afternoon, we went to the Dazhao Lamasery 大昭庙, which was built in 1579. However, like so many other things in China, much of it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt later, and the only reason that the most famous hall (which also includes some really cool dragon sculptures and the requisite Buddhas) survived the 60s and 70s in China was because it was used as an arms storehouse. It's one thing to read about these things in history books, but another to come face to face with all this architecture and realize that the Cultural Revolution's impact on Chinese history was really profound.

A Tibetan prayer-wheel at the lamasery.

There's a matching one with 寿 on it as well.
Ouch.

Finally, that evening we went to watch this musical performance thing at Ruyi Square -- basically, it's a huge backdrop of water fountains with music ranging from contemporary Mandopop to Communist-sounding songs.

I don't know why, but this picture reminds me of Christmas.

Apparently this happens every night (I'm guessing it doesn't happen during the winter though?)

Fifth-years!

Day 7: The end

I'm running out of energy at this point to describe the rest of the trip, so this day is going to be somewhat shorter in description (and hence the non-clever description of this day). We went to Inner Mongolia University 内蒙古大学 and Inner Mongolia Normal University 内蒙古师范大学 to interview students. I actually found this to be the most valuable interviewing experience, not so much because it contributed much to my social study report (which by this point was pretty well-defined in my mind) but because we were able to talk one-on-one for an extended period of time. It was particularly interesting discussing the Olympics, because from this I was able to see how important the Olympics really are to so many Chinese people. Perhaps it's only Beijing that's organizing them, but there are so many Chinese people, including these university students, who really felt as if it was something that entire China should be proud of. I also discussed Sino-American relations, gaokao 高考, Taiwan (of course) and general economic change in general.

There was a ping-pong contest going on at Inner Mongolia Normal University, an annual one that goes to a different place every year and this year happens to be in Inner Mongolia. No wonder Chinese people love ping-pong so much.

Finally, later that day we headed off to the provincial museum of Inner Mongolia, which was basically your standard museum, with exhibits on minority nationalities added.

Charles and I.

I couldn't resist taking this picture.

So, Inner Mongolia...

All in all, I had a really good time in Inner Mongolia. I can't even begin to describe what a relief it was to escape the haze, pollution, smog and general crowded-ness of Beijing and see the huge grasslands, blue skies, white clouds and generally gorgeous landscapes of Inner Mongolia. The cities, Erdos and Hohhot, weren't so impressive, but then again they were your standard run-of-the-mill Chinese city. At the same time, I had a vaguely uneasy -- that's not really the right word, but I'm not really sure what would be -- feeling about the whole commercialization of traditional Mongolian culture. Yeah, we stayed in yurts and rode horses on the grasslands, but I'm pretty sure traditional Mongolian yurts weren't made out of cement and the horses didn't trot around on a predefined path. Of course tourists can never fully experience an authentic cultural experience, but there's something about how unabashed the commercialization of traditional Mongolian culture is in Inner Mongolia that bothers me. This is clearly also not limited to just Inner Mongolia/China, but going to Inner Mongolia made this thought stick out rather prominently in my mind.

In part II (hopefully to come in the next few days, which means that I will finally be caught up on blogging): Gang's visit, my ambivalent thoughts about Beijing and the Olympics, the Summer Palace, Old Summer Palace, Beihai Park and my thoughts on HBA and life in general. Stay tuned.