Back On the Other Side

We had our final class for Flower in the Mirror today, and to be honest, it was probably the only academic part of my study abroad program that I liked. The professor must’ve felt like a total celebrity today, because apparently individual photos with him just aren’t enough. Each time I started to leave and say my goodbyes, someone would yell, “Badminton team picture!” or “Now let’s do a group picture with the professor!” It added up to more awkwardness than I’d like to have on my social resume, but he deserved it.

I also saw a Chinese movie at the PKU theater with one of my friends who’s leaving tomorrow, because we thought it would make sense to do that instead of watching a badly dubbed version of Men in Black. It was a good plan, except I forgot that a lot of Chinese wuxia movies suck. It started out just bad, but ended up as a good experience because it eventually got so bad that it became guilty-pleasure status. The action scenes would’ve had me on the edge of my seat if it weren’t for the fact that my legs were already pressed against the seat in front of me without any room to move forward.

Finally, we had our most exciting game night so far in the program, because everybody had a chance to paint my nails. That was my dare for losing Tungst, and I guess it wasn’t that bad. Some of the girls got real creative and painted ladybugs and pandas on them. Imagine waking up to that in the morning. Might as well relocate Animal Planet to my fingers.

So I’ve finally done everything on my Beijing bucketlist today after visiting the Marco Polo Bridge and the Sino-Japanese War memorials. The Marco Polo Bridge is called Lu Gou Bridge in Chinese, but Lu Gou means nothing close to Marco Polo, so I don’t know how that guy’s name got there. It was cool though, because the bridge guarded by so many little Chinese lion statues on each side. Some of them had bells under their paws, and others had little baby lions under their paws. They always look fierce, so I had no idea if that look they gave to the baby lions is of affection or to say “I’m going to eat you.”

The Sino-Japanese War memorials were cool, too. I mimicked the statues in most of my poses, and having done it so many times, one of them is sure to look really similar to the original. I got my fingers crossed. We also got to ask one of the old ladies there to take a picture for us, but it was way too early for her to be yelling about how bad she is with cameras in a good-natured way. Admittedly, after all that shouting, her picture turned out to be better than the one I took.

It was a great morning overall, and the pictures that will grace my Facebook will definitely look really legit. So be on the lookout! 

After visiting the Summer Palace today, we’ve officially been to 5 World Heritage Sites at Beijing. It was really cool, although the temperature was definitely nowhere close to really cool. But of course, with the countless servants at their side, those ancient Chinese emperors might have been able to replicate the AC experience at the various temples, pagodas, and bridges of the Summer Palace.

We decided to rent a boat and row across most of the Summer Palace, but the only options there were 4 people boats or 6 people boats. Luckily, a mom and her daughter decided to tag along with us for the 4 people boat. We thought it was a steal until we noticed that it was a peddle boat, and that the only two people who can peddle it are the ones not wearing stilettos and older than 7. My legs burned like crazy after we got off, but my need to look great in pictures kept them steady. 

As a funny anecdote, I saw a dragonfly carrying another dragonfly while rowing the boat, and noted how nice that first dragonfly is and how well it embodies those Confucian themes we learned. Then, my friend told me they were mating. Awkward turtle.

In general, the Summer Palace was definitely better than the Old Summer Palace, and it’s good to know that China made improvements in 300 years. Keep this up, and the pollution might be gone the next time I come here, and maybe I can get a picture of a bridge AND a temple in the same picture without a haze of gray covering one of them. Because the palace really would be amazing with a better atmosphere. 

The Drum and Bell Towers were definitely two of the highlights of my trip in Beijing so far. I can’t believe it took me this long to check them out, especially since they had such an amazing view of the whole city. We saw that one temple at the highest point of the Forbidden City, the white temple at the highest point of Beihai Park, and the broadcast tower at Olympic Stadium all from the top of the Bell Tower. My theory is officially that all Chinese temples are divas.

The Drum Tower looked fancier than the Bell Tower by a long shot, but the view wasn’t as nice. However, it did come with a drum performance every hour, and that was cool. I felt like I was in one of Jackie Chan’s Chinese war movies the moment they started pounding away at that main drum. I don’t know who was more impressed with the performances, the Chinese tourists or the Western tourists. Personally, I wasn’t sure if I was more impressed with the drumming or the fact that the drumming didn’t break the drums in half. It was that epic.

We then went in pursuit of this really famous Chinese yogurt place for half an hour. It was called Wenyu Dairy Shop, and word on the street is that it sold Chinese yogurt with Chinese cheese and red beans. We had to pretty much ask a billion locals for directions to find it, and soon I was convinced our journey to the dairy shop should be made into some kind of epic movie, too. When I actually tried it though, it was like heaven. I’m pretty sure it also gave me 500 hip-local points, because every other 20-something local and they mama had a Wenyu yogurt in their hands. Okay, so that probably gave me 500 hip-local’s-mama points, too.

Finally, I got to cross “ride a rickshaw” off of my Beijing bucket list, because that’s exactly what we did to get back to the subway station. It was only a 5-10 minute walk back to the subway station, but we wanted the experience. The way that rickshaw swayed and sped convinced me I was going to meet my maker. Luckily, I managed to keep my life and only lost 10 RMB to this ride. Which is still kind of a ripoff, even if the experience made it a worthwhile ripoff.  

Today started in danger of failing when we ended up at the wrong subway stop on the wrong side of Beijing for the Botanical Gardens. Thanks, Google. No wonder China banned you. After discussing whether or not to ride a bus for an hour to see something we might be able to see back in the States, we decided to go to destination #2 instead.

That turned out to be a much smarter idea, and this time my haggling game was ON FIRE when we returned to the Silk Market. My friends said that if they spoke English, it would be much harder for me to get the price they want. I took their challenge and owned it. I heard people yell, “She’s buying a dress for her mom and she wants to only spend 40 RMB?!” and “This is the cheapest I’ll go, just give me 5 RMB more!” The more pissed off they get, you know the better your deal was.

I also decided to get my parents one last present on the way back. It was a grain of rice with both of their surnames on it placed inside a purple, leaf-shaped trinket. I thought it was epicly cute, even if I had to call my aunt to figure out how to write my mom’s last name. The vendor apparently thought it was cute. Either that, or she was smiling because I got ripped off. 

We then went to the Niujie Mosque, which was one of Beijing’s oldest and largest mosques. It had a really peaceful feel to it because there weren’t that many tourists there. Luckily, that means all of our pictures ended up looking pro because there weren’t hordes of people there to randomly photobomb every awesome scene. It was really cool to see the mix of Arabic and Chinese influences on its architecture and art, especially on the huge Chinese-styled vase with an Arabic character on it. I don’t know if I was more impressed by its fusion of cultures or the fact that it was taller than me.

Lastly, we hit up Da Shi La by Tian An Men. It was the BIGGEST shopping street ever. There were endless alleyways and the street just went on with all sorts of things. We got everything from bracelets with our names on it, to food, to souvenirs, to souvenir food. This place has owned Beijing’s shopping scene since the 1500s, and a lot of the shops had been there since the Qing Dynasty. That’s what I call swag. It felt like what Chinatown would look like if it was actually designed by Chinese people. 

So we finally got to visit the Great Wall today, and it just so happened to be the first time we encountered Beijing’s torrential rain. On the bright side, that gave me an excuse to ride those cable cars to the top and make the claim “I got to the top of the Great Wall in 2 minutes.” Beat that. The view of the area around the Great Wall was all obscured, but on the bright side, that means we get to focus more on the actual wall itself. I would’ve wanted to photoshop those trees out of the way, anyways. You get those everywhere. You don’t get the Great Wall everywhere.

While on the Great Wall, I did the smart thing and borrowed everybody else’s umbrella cuz I forgot mine. I did that for all of twenty minutes before I realized I can’t have an umbrella blocking my face from all those epic pictures I planned to take. Every time we ran into a crevice on the wall, I was reminded of how steep the mountain on which it’s built is. It’s really a wonder that people 2000 years ago built that across most of China on this kind of terrain without any machines to help them out. Maybe aliens do exist.

After we got down, I helped some of my friends bargain souvenirs down to the price they want, and grabbed dinner at a local Shanghaiese place, and it was my first time having xiao long bao during this trip. This time, the soup inside those buns did not squirt all over me, so I consider the dinner a win.

I wish I’d eaten slower though, because the rain only got more intense after we walked out. Five minutes after leaving the restaurant, every dry patch of the sidewalk was like a stepping stone in a river. By the time we made it back to the dorms, my shoes and socks felt as dry as my slippers when I step out with them from the shower. While I just rushed to get back into my room, some of my friends still persisted to get boba in the rain before heading back. Their passion for boba is definitely an inspiration.  

We finally got to take Bei Hai Park off of our bucket list today after trekking through sweaty and overcrowded subways and sweaty and overcrowded buses in the morning. I also got to take sing-“I’M-ON-A-BOAT”-like-in-that-one-annoying-song off of my bucket list when we got on a really nice and fancy boat to tour around the lake. The view looked like it would have been absolutely amazing and Facebook-worthy from every angle if it weren’t for the intensely heavy smog that made each scene look like a painting that was half-erased. First my health, and now my pictures. SMOG, what more do you want?!

After this amazing trip, I went back to my dorms and prepped for my presentation on intellectuals in China. I delivered what I wanted to deliver, but I also did that on the exam too. However, I didn’t read the directions on the latter, and what I wanted to deliver turned out to only be A- material. So who knows? Everything was going perfect today until I lost my camera at one of the two convenience stores. When I went back to both, the owners all said they never saw it. We all know one of them is really the Mafia (this is a sign that I am on Mafia withdrawals and need to play that game again).

We ended the night with our third round of KTV in Beijing, and I was challenged by one of my EAP friends on my Usher-ness when “Confessions” came on. I don’t mean to brag, but I think I not only stepped up to the plate, but also hit a home run on that challenge. Because you know, this is the “only way we know how to rock.”

Today, while some of my classmates took fieldtrips to different parts of Beijing with their classes, a friend and I took a fieldtrip across the street to the office of the people in charge of our program. We wanted to ask them to reserve a room for us on our last Friday for an official goodbye event and a slideshow. Luckily, it paid off and now we might even get free pizzas! If they change their mind, I’m still gonna push for the free pizza.

I studied for most of the day to make sure I don’t get any lower than my A- in Society and Politics, but the nerves are getting to me. After half an hour of trying to perfect my speech, more cuss words came out than content. 

After that, we grabbed some dinner at Wu Dao Kou and hit up an Italian place. Five minutes in there and I felt like I was already back in the States. It was chill, and it was only then that I realized how much I’m starting to really value each conversation with my new friends in the program, even if it’s mostly jokes and haterade. Never knew how much I wasn’t ready to leave Beijing! 

We visited the National Science and Technology Museum in the morning, and it was pretty cool. It was also littered with little kids that I had to compete with for the first-person shooter game exhibit. Once again, the air conditioning was one of the highlights of the place, but it was up against stiff competition in the Rube Goldberg exhibit, the wall that made letters and shapes, and the waterworks that squirted heart shaped sprays of water and Chinese characters. 

Having missed breakfast, I was also sorely tempted to buy one of those expensive-as-America drinks and sandwiches with like, one slice of spam in them. Thank the lucky heavens that I didn’t. After experiencing four floors of coolness that made me embarrassed each time I realized I was just as excited about something as the 6-year old next to me, we found the best sweet potatoes ever. Win. 

At night, I was supposed to go to Wang Fu Jing again with a friend to meet up with some other friends and eat desert. But then the friend I was supposed to go with bailed on me. As I was deciding whether or not to go alone, I bumped into someone else from EAP. He gave me a very serious speech about the merits of exploring things by oneself and threw in phrases like “culture shock” and “different perspective” until I was totally rolling with his vibes and decided to go. 

It was worth it. On the subway, I saw a little kid sitting in his mom’s laps playing with his cousin, who was sitting in his aunt’s laps in the seat to his mom’s left. That sentence was as complex as Inception’s dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. His uncle, who was standing up, teased him and asked “Will you miss your uncle and cousin [insert name here] when we go back to Nanjing?” And he yelled, “YES. Don’t go!…Wait, but if you go I can visit cousin [insert name here] and play with him there!” Cutest. Thing. Ever.

Wang Fu Jing itself was great, as usual. I swear I’ll go deaf if I spent more than two hours there with all the vendors yelling in my ear, though. People say I’m loud, but these people scream for a living. The red bean soup was great, and the jelly was very underwhelming. The people selling those should keep their mouths shut if a food critic ever comes their way. 

I got to visit the Silk Market, or Xiu Shui, today. That place is renowned for having the most aggressive vendors ever, and bargaining stuff down to a reasonable price is supposed to be near impossible. When I walked in, I was greeted with a flood of people from all over the world. I also heard those Chinese vendors say “COME BACK! You can make this cheaper!” in about a billion different languages. 

For the sake of saying I’ve bargained at Beijing’s Silk Market, I went and picked out an awesome T-shirt with the names of Beijing’s many landmarks on it. The starting price was 100 RMB, but I dropped it like it’s hot to 35 RMB in about 2 minutes. I was flaunting my ego around like I was that king of the world Aladdin was talking about until a friend told me I could have gotten it for 20 RMB. I didn’t believe her, but when a vendor at another room saw my shirt and asked how much I got it for, I told her 20 RMB. When she offered me another one for the same price, I knew I got played.

That was kinda sad but cool at the same time, and I decided that having the experience at all was a plus when we went to Da Dong Peking Duck Restaurant. It supposedly has the best Peking Duck in all of Beijing. For 61 RMB each, we ordered three Peking Ducks for the groups. Everybody busted out their cameras when the duck chopstick holders came out, when the chefs came out to cook it in front of us, when the ducks were placed in front of us, and basically every five minutes after that. It was amazing.

The duck itself was great, too. BUT…I’ll have to admit, the free lychee, free persimmon juice, and free duck soup that accompanied the duck were REALLY great. And probably the highlight of the whole dinner, which was an amazing way to cap off a great day.