Things That Happen In China

Well as this is a new semester, and I've been in China for a good five or so months, my life is feeling more like routine and less like a new adventure, so sometimes I forget to post. But I am still having experiences, and it's been too long since I've shared them with you all, so here goes:

My research project is about tourism in hutongs, traditional alleyways in the center of Beijing. Many of these guys have been demolished for development, while others have been developed into commercial tourism streets. I think this is interesting because on the one hand, people are sad hutongs are disappearing, and on the other hand, one of the only ways to preserve them, tourism, is drastically changing them. So I spent last semester interviewing people who live in the hutongs about how they feel about this phenomenon, and this semester I am interviewing people in the tourism business about their attitudes toward it. So lately I've talked to a guy who designs nifty Beijing T-shirts, a hostel owner, and a coffeeshop owner.

Hmmmm what else--there was a huge fire in an unfinished hotel due to extreme fireworks set off by the hotel company next to the hotel. I got to watch it because it was only ten minutes from my dorm. It was really frightening to see that many flames in one place--maybe 40 stories of disaster. There were hundreds of people watching. Kind of creepy. As far as I can tell 6-7 people were hurt and maybe 1 person died.

I really have no idea how to speak English anymore.

I am taking a cooking class once a week, so when I come home I can make you all delicious Chinese delicacies.

想家

The title is, xiang jia, or homesick, approximately. I remembered this is the thing I wanted to tell you all right as I signed my name, but I cheated and decided to put it here. It is very hard to say what homesick means. It doesn't mean I want to go home, exactly. It doesn't mean I regret coming here in any way. In part it means that when I love the weather, I want to share it with people that I love. In part it means that after about two months of getting adjusted, I finally had time to realize how far away I was. I think in Pittsburgh I go to Ohio every two months or so, so maybe it has something to do with that. But what happened this week is that I started to miss everyone, and rivers, and trees, and hills, and corn, and food, and even maybe reading hard articles and writing long essays, and everything I love from home all at once. So I wanted to tell you because if you are reading this I probably thought of you. And I miss you.

the greatest power the Internet has is to reveal just how little people care about what we write

the title to this blog entry is a quote that can be found at today's article on Savage Minds, the anthropology blog which I really enjoy reading and which I will now link to on the side of this page. It comes from an interesting blog entry that talks about how even though the internet makes writing blogs and creating groups much easier, we don't have time to really get into very much of it. i think that depends on how much time we spend on facebook, but that's just me.

today I finally didn't feel completely scared in China. I went to a store that said "Donut Shop" in English and to my surprise they had delicious american-style donuts. I spent about two hours talking to the girl who worked there IN CHINESE! I used my dictionary a lot but it was really exciting. She didn't speak much English and she was really bored because not too many people go to the "Donut Shop" (Chinese don't like things that are too sweet, and it is in an awkward location for foreigners).

I was so pumped about this that I went to the Kodak store to get passport pictures and managed to order them in Chinese, and bought some office supplies in a tiny little office supplies store.

My confidence was punctured a little when I went to join the gym and I didn't understand anything the guy said. Thankfully so many ACC students go there I knew what to do, but still, it was depressing.

My roommate and I ate at Pizza Hut tonight. It was our last meal where we could talk in English so we just decided to go for the American food too. The veggie pizza had corn, pineapple, mushrooms, tomato, and green pepper and was very very good. They had a seafood pizza too with just about any animal you can eat out of a shell on it, and escargot as an appetizer. In China Pizza Hut is a fancy affair--people get all dressed up and you sit down and they treat you very well. They also have McDonalds and KFC but those are fast food like we know it.

i have more mosquito bites than i ever have had at one time in my life. tomorrow i start the language pledge. more adventures to come!