Today began at the Temple of Heaven, which is in the same architectural vein as the Summer Palace and located across the street from the Forbidden City.  The Temple grounds have a mountain at their center where there’s a pavilion from which one can see the endless expanse of Bejing and directly into the Forbidden City.  The main structure at the site is an altar from which the Emperor would pray for the prosperity of his people and ask divine powers for help when his empire was in need.  Visitors of the modern day stand at the altar to make wishes.

The Temple of Heaven

The Forbidden City as viewed from outside the Temple of Heaven

The Temple park felt like a retirement village.  Elderly people were all over, practicing Tai Chi, playing sports, cards and dominos, singing, and dancing.  Some were playing catch with toys that were a like a combination between a hackeysack and a shuttlecock (heavier than a shuttlecock, but kicked from person to person like a hackeysack).  Their athleticism for their ages was astounding.  Others played a balancing game with ping-pong paddles and small rubber balls, smoothly passing a ball around their bodies while balancing it on the paddle.  The Temple’s trees are even older than its visitors.  Some have been documented as more than 300 years of age.

A man in the park was drawing on the ground with a large brush and a pail of water.

We asked him to attempt the PSU logo on one of our t-shirts.  He did pretty well.  

Next, we drove to the Chinese University for Mining and Technology (CUMT) where we received the warmest welcome I could have imagined.  We met in a boardroom, where the CUMT vice-president, Professor Fan, and their Director of International Programs gave brief speeches.  These were followed by remarks from our Professors, Xinli and Sven.  For the past few years, PSU and CUMT have engaged in a student exchange program.  All of the speakers shared their happiness at its continued success and aspirations to foster even more international understanding in the future.  The boardroom was also filled with CUMT students studying English and Engineering, with which we talked to learn the differences between Chinese and American university life.  These students joined our group for the entire day, showing us around one of their dining halls (which reminded me of Pollock but with Chinese food) and other campus buildings.

I spoke with a girl who is studying translation and interpretation between English and Chinese.  She had some of the best English I have heard from a Chinese native despite never having been to the United States.  She also cleared up a lot of questions I had about China and Beijing.  For instance, it’s no secret that Chinese driving is chaotic.  Duncan had explained to us that most people on the road are first generation drivers and don’t know the proper methods, so traffic signals are more like decorations than arms of the law.  However, I could not understand why, if driving is so crazy, the cars in Beijing are almost all in perfect condition.  My new friend explained that it is very embarrassing to drive a car that is dented or scratched, so people pay to have dings removed even if they are not a problem to the car’s structural integrity.  This is very different from the United States, where most people don’t care what their car looks like as long as it works.  It also explains why the cars are always spotless despite the facts that there is plenty of dust in the air and it rarely rains–they get washed all the time.  I have a theory that the Chinese are aware that there are many more radical drivers on the road and maintain a higher level of alertness behind the wheel.  For all the crazy stunts we have seen people pull here we have yet to see one result in an accident, although we have driven past the aftermath of a few. 

After our tour of campus we split into two groups and received presentations from professors about their research.  My group’s was about research into rock burst (what happens when rocks explosively crack under the high pressures of underground mining) and landslides caused by tectonic activity.  In both cases, the professor demonstrated how sensors could be used to monitor high-risk sites and predict disasters as much as a month beforehand–enough time to prevent loss of life.  He had miniaturized models hooked up to these sensors, and displayed graphs of the collected data on a computer screen in real time as the models simulated geologic events.  For the landslides, the professor brought us into a space that looked like a small version of one of NASA’s control rooms, complete with a row of consoles and large displays on the walls.  From this room, he could monitor sites in which the sensors had been installed.  His interface had each location tagged with a service like Google Earth, using green, yellow, and red tags to represent the danger level there.

Getting back on the bus and saying goodbye to our CUMT friends after such a great day wasn’t easy.  The time we spent with the Chinese students was the perfect way to end our stay in Beijing, and with our parting words we all made sure to encourage them to come to Penn State if ever they get the opportunity. 

After dinner we drove to the bus depot to board our 12-hour overnight train to Dalian.  The depot itself was hectic, but things settled down after we boarded.  Our group filled the entire first car, so we didn’t have to worry about other passengers at all.  In addition to bathrooms, the car had about 15 rooms, each with two bunk beds and a foldout table.  Every hour or so, a woman would roll a food and drink cart down the aisle.  Xinli treat us to some beers as we sat around in groups and talked before heading to bed.

Location: Beijing, China

Today we visited the Imperial Summer Palace–the seasonal home of the Emperor and parts of his court.  Much of the architecture was reminiscent of that of the Forbidden City, but with the addition of a giant man-made lake on which we enjoyed a ferry ride.  A long covered walk lines the lake for hundreds of meters.  Along the walk are thousands of paintings, which have to be redone every several years.  Art students in Chinese universities do the bulk of this work, with help from their professors on the larger pieces.

The Summer Palace

The Marble Boat, one of the Summer Palace’s main attractions (it doesn’t actually float).  Only the base is marble, while the top is wood.  

A collection of girls asked for a photo with one of our taller Penn Staters

Next, we walked the campus of a Chinese university, of which there are about 20 in Beijing.  The campus did not have as refined an aesthetic as Penn State, but did have some beautiful angles.  Along the way, we stopped and took a picture with a tour of Chinese teenagers, who we think were on their equivalent of a college visit.  Competition for colleges is even fiercer here than it is in the United States, and admittance becomes a focal point of pride for an entire family. 

At this point in the day, we happened to be running ahead of schedule, so we stopped by another market, similar to the Silk Market, to try our hand at bartering once more.  With the knowledge from the day before we did much better, and found some nice items at a fraction of the price that would have been taken in the United States.

In the market, we met another bunch of Americans who turned out to be in Beijing with a group from the Woodward skateboarding company.  On the way out of the market, their bus was right next to ours, and none other than Ryan Sheckler and Tony Hawk happened to be getting off.  We put the bus ride on hold for a few minutes for some photos (I didn’t take any, sorry), and spent most of lunch guessing at the odds of running into the world’s most famous skateboarder in China. 

Our last destination was an exotic foods market, which had everything from sugarcoated fruit and fried ice cream to sheep gonads and scorpion.  Some of our more adventurous eaters tried their hand at the latter delicacies, and everyone found something to try (even if it was only ice cream). 

Dinner continued the trend of lazy susans, but in addition included a dumpling bar with six or seven varieties from which to sample.  At the entrance to the restaurant, a wall of glass allowed visitors to see into the room where the dumplings were made and watch the process first-hand.  It takes three people to make them–one to roll out the thin, circular pieces of bread, one to gather the correct fillings from trays of vegetables and meats spread out on a table, and one to pinch the bread around the filling.

Tomorrow we will visit the Temple of Heaven and spend some time with administrators, faculty, and students of the Chinese School of Mining and Technology.  In the evening, we’re boarding an overnight train for Dalian.  I’m running a couple of days behind on my blogging, but should be able to catch up during the ride.  

P.S. Have you figured out the title yet?

Location: Beijing, China

Breakfast at the hotel consisted of a hot rice soup that tasted a lot like oatmeal, warm milk, balls of baked bread dough, some kind of fried chicken dish, and delicious orange cakes of about an inch in diameter that I think were mostly sweet potato.  We started our day at Tiananmen Square with the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, the Chinese political hero and founder of the People’s Republic.  In the Mausoleum, lines of spectators filtered through two chambers.  The first held a life-size statue of Mao sitting cross-legged, in front of which was a large basin.  Some of the visitors had purchased individually wrapped white flowers, which they would place in the basin after approaching the statue and performing a rigid bow. 

The second chamber contained Mao himself, preserved there since his death in 1976.  According to our tour guide (hereafter referred to as Duncan), Mao’s will called for him to be cremated, but his associates decided to preserve his body, following the examples of the Soviet Union for Lenin and Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh.  The body was encased in a pyramidal crystal case, and Mao’s face looked more like wax under the yellowed tint of artificial lighting.  As you might expect, there were no cameras or water bottles allowed inside the Mausoleum.  All conversations ceased once we entered the first chamber, rendering the building silent save for the shuffling of footsteps. 

         Next, our group walked across the length of Tiananmen Square, which turned out to be much more expansive than I had anticipated.  Various government buildings, monuments, museums, etc. surround the area, the most recognizable of which features a portrait of Mao and has a terrace that is often used for public appearances by government figureheads.  There are flowerbeds throughout the area, however they are not planted in the same soil.  Each flower is in its own pot, all of which are pushed so closely together that they appear to be in-ground.

         Most of the people on the Square were tourists, but very few were American or European.  Rather, most were rural Chinese, making a rare visit to the city.  Each group (usually 20-30 people) was distinguished from the others by its own brightly colored baseball caps, which I believe had the peoples’ hometown printed across the front.  Duncan had warned us that the rural Chinese rarely encountered foreigners and were likely to react noticeably to our presence, but I don’t think any of us were prepared to be stared at by several thousand people.  In line for the Mausoleum, where the rows snaked back and forth as far as the eye could see and were about five people deep, it was an odd feeling to have every head within 50 feet turned unabashedly towards us.  Most of the time people here observe each other with a vacant stare.  Eye contact is reserved for those who are close friends. 

Through most of the line, a party of older folks was directly behind us.  They seemed less concerned with our foreignness and more interested in ensuring that we kept pace with those ahead.  Anyone at the back of our group who paused for more than a second was likely to get his or her heels stepped on or back run into by an elderly woman.  Personal space in general seems to be much more constricted than I’m used to.  I suppose this is logical, as the population density in Beijing is far greater than in State College.

Tiananmen Square

Our next stop was the National Center for the Performing Arts, a gigantic egg-shaped structure that has four or five halls inside for various occasions (opera, philharmonic orchestra, small group, etc.).  A wide, but shallow, man-made lake surrounds the building.  The main entrance is underground, so the entryway’s glass roof actually forms the bottom of the lake.  Looking up, you can see ripples on the thin layer of water between the glass and the sky, the latter of which is unfortunately always an overcast gray color due to air pollution.  Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful sight, and the structure is one in which the Chinese rightfully take a great deal of pride.  Duncan told us that every musician in China dreams of someday playing at the Center for Performing Arts.  Despite being only three years old, it seems to have garnered much the same stigma as New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

The National Center for the Performing Arts

The National Center for the Performing Arts as viewed from its underground entrance

Lunch, and dinner later on, were very different from yesterday’s hotpot.  A lazy susan encompassed the inner are of each circular table of about ten place settings.  This surface was filled with eight or nine dishes, including rice, a salad or two, cooked zucchini, fried fish, peanut chicken, lemon chicken, beef, a soup, and tea.  There was usually enough on each dish for everyone to have at least a taste.  Dessert was cherry tomatoes and small slices of watermelon.  We could choose between soda, water, or beer to drink, but there were no free refills on any of the options.  All of the food was amazing, especially the lemon chicken. 

I’m starting to wish that I had invested more time in learning how to use chopsticks before the trip.  The restaurants we used today seemed to cater to tourists and provided forks, but the hotpot did not, and I have a feeling that most venues won’t.

In the afternoon we visited the Forbidden City, a huge area boasting of dozens of buildings (with 9,000 rooms in sum) and surrounded by a defensive moat.  The City was the residence of the Emperor and Empress, the royal advisors, and several thousand concubines and eunuchs through the end of the Chinese dynasties in the early 1900s.  It is now a museum of artifacts, structures, and gardens, all of which date back hundreds of years.  The architecture is overflowing with symbology.  Many of the decorative elements are found in patterns of nine (a special number to the Chinese), or at least occur in odd numbers.  Cranes, lions and lionesses, bats, and dragons are all featured in sculpture, painting, or tile.  A set of four pavilions each represent one of the seasons.  One structure is famously known as the place from which one of the most powerful Empresses gave birth to the sons who would become Emperors only as fa�ades to her oversight.  Artifacts illustrate the last emperor’s adaptation of Western styles under the influences of a European tutor and the coup that ended the chain of dynasties. 

Outside the Emperor’s Throne in the Forbidden City

The ceiling of the Pavilion of Spring

Our last stop of the day was an acrobatics show, complete with laser, smoke, and light effects.  All of the acts were amazing, and reminiscent of similar performances I’ve seen in State College by troupes on tour. 

One of the acts at the acrobatics show (I snuck a photo with the flash off).  

Tomorrow we visit the Great Wall and the Olympic Garden.  More on that to come…

P.S. I’m still having trouble getting Facebook to work despite experiments with VPN.  I am able to email and IM, and should be plugged in for at least an hour sometime between 9 AM and 3 PM EST most days.  

Location: Beijing, China

The flight in went well.  I watched a few movies and burned through the first half of a Robert Heinlen book.  Attempts at naps were largely unsuccessful.  The meals were probably our last taste of Americanized Chinese cuisine for a long while.  I have yet to encounter a fortune cookie since exiting the aircraft.  

Our bus, which just barely fits everyone and our luggage.  

My first observations mostly concern the distribution of automobile manufacturers.  Taxis are almost entirely Volkswagons, and so are a lot of private rides.  Audis seem to be preferred at the higher end.  I’ve been told that Buick ranks above Mercedes here, but haven’t seen one yet.  Jeeps and Chevys are rare, and in general much smaller than they are in the States, but not unseen.  I even saw a baby Ford roll by on the way to our first hotel.  Our travel guide explained that, in China, perceptions of old and new vary greatly from those in the United States.  After about two years, a car is old (and often traded in for a new model).  After a decade, even a hi-tech high rise building is old.  And yet, a 100 year-old tree is still a youngster.

The hotel has an odd blend of old and new as well.  The electronics only function if the key card that opens the door is inserted into a computerized reader in the wall, yet a console that looks like a 1920’s radio serves as a bedside table and a control for the lights and appliances.  The shower is impressively large, but the beds are impressively hard. 

Today we learned the difference between Beijing and Peking.  According to our guide, Beijing means “northern capital” in Chinese, while Peking has no meaning, and is in fact a title assigned by European (French, I think) colonists.  The term “Beijinger” refers to the inhabitants of the city, which takes about as long to drive across as it does to drive to the Pennsylvania state lines if you leave from State College.  Beijinger is not to be confused with Beijingese, the latter supposedly defining a breed of dog.  

The most interesting part of the day was dinner, which we took at an all-you-can-eat “hotpot.”  Picture a large cafeteria, with tables of eight (speaking of picture, there should be one of the hotpot below).  Each table has a stovetop upon which sits a large pan, partitioned into two halves.  Each half contains boiling water and some spices, with one side on the hot side of spicy and the other more of a mild.  Surrounding the perimeter of the cafeteria is the buffet, which contains drinks (open bar), vegetables, fruits, meats, and desserts.  The meats form the focal part of the meal, and are just about all raw.  Guests fill a plate with whatever they desire and drop it into one side of the boiling pan.  A few minutes later, they grab a ladle and fish out what’s left of what they put in, cooked and ready to be eaten.  The variety of meats was astounding, and maybe a little frightening.  Beef and fish were the staples, but squid, octopus, pig brains, and coagulated gelatinous duck blood filled out the supply.  Most of the guests drank a light beer (there’s no drinking age in China!), soda or fruit juice, with an occasional sampling of wine, scotch, or rice vodka, of which there seemed to be infinite varieties available.  We sampled just about all of them, in moderate amounts.   A lot of the food and drink was completely unidentifiable to American eyes (there were no labels, Chinese or other).  One of the Chinese students in the program sat at our table and offered some help (mostly reading the labels on the vodka bottles brought back from the bar), but even she couldn’t identify all the items that were poured into the pan, and later transferred into hungry mouths. 

The wreckage of our table after the meal.

I don’t think anyone stayed awake for more than five minutes during the hour and a half ride to the hotel from dinner.  Most of us are still rather jet-lagged, and full stomachs didn’t help.  

Wake up call is in about four hours, and then its breakfast, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and more!

Location: Beijing, China

Hello all!

Location: East Irvin Ave., State College, PA