“wonderland” in beijing.
beijing’s abandoned disney world (aka wonderland) is eerie and reflects some of china’s problems.
originally this park was going to be the biggest and best of amusement parks in china, but after the start of construction in 2008 and disagreements about property rights and construction, it has just become shapes in the midst of farmers growing crops there.
well as for myself, i was intrigued about this mysterious place on the outskirts of beijing. we transferred 3 times and then took a 30 minute bus there.. approx 2ish hours of transportation and then we arrived. as usual i was sleeping on the bus =P when i woke up and saw a huge outline of a castle rushing by me. it really is a sight that makes you pay attention..
as i was riding the subway to the outskirts of beijing, you could really see the rise of the ‘dark windows’. or property that has been built but isn’t inhabited yet. an interesting thing about beijing is that while most cities build UP, beijing just builds out. so you just get farther and farther from the center.
so while we were at ‘wonderland’ we wanted to explore more but inside one of the buildings, out came a lady who seemed to live there. well binh asked her , ‘你住在这儿？ and she said yes.. so.. that was an interesting interaction..
in my chinese modern economy class, we talk a lot about how construction projects in china can sometimes go unfinished because of the local corruption that takes place. for example, because the local government receives loans and makes deals with construction projects, the money can run out and since they are on a soft budget constraint, the government will bail them out (at least that’s what is hoped for). but if they aren’t bailed out the project go unfinished with no money until a couple of years later they receive money to finish it.
corruption in china is a very interesting topic because of how widespread and accepted it is. even when going in for a job interview, if you are one of the 3 finalists, you are supposed to give a ‘gift’ of money and depending on that the decision can be made. i think because it is so prevalent on so many different levels, it really changes the dynamic in china… i’m hoping that for my final econ project i can research more about corruption in china (or at least what americans consider corruption).
without further ado, pictures!
okay well we took more pictures than this but 我没有时间所以你可以找到我的照片在我的facebook.
而且，在北京我只有一个月。。怎么拉。。
does it say something about me if i work harder and have more work and sleep less in china than when i am at carnegie mellon?
my third night pulling an all nighter… but at least the movie premiere is tomorrow! :) IES has rented out a movie theater in wudaokou for the premiere of our movies.. three weeks of hard work.. it’s going to pay off. i’ll put it up on youku later!
sorry i haven’t updated on my trip to luoyang and other 事情‘s.. will do asap
This weekend is my overnight to the great wall which is too exciting.
Then the next weekend is freaking WANG LEE HOM CONCERT AT THE BIRD’S NEST!
How do I only have less than a month left in Beijing? I don’t want to leave.. I’m not ready… =(
i’m in a ‘china funk’ mood today… in other words.. i just want to chill out, watch some chinese movies on youku with english subtitles… and not have to study for my tingxie or really do anything that requires my brain. my body just has no jingli right now
the story of how I almost gave up on Chinese
I started learning Chinese in my freshman year of college on pure whim. Honestly, I don’t even know how I even decided to take that first class amongst all my science classes (I was pre-med at that time). I didn’t really think about how much of a commitment learning Chinese takes or even those dream-crushing theories that float around about how after your adolescent years, learning a new language will never be too rewarding since the ‘language learning part’ of your brain has closed somewhat. (which btw is NOT TRUE. Learn a language WHENEVER you WANT. you get what you put into it)
My freshman year of learning Chinese was purely for entertainment and some laughs. The classes were pretty easy and fun and didn’t require too much of my time. I then decided to go to Shanghai for the summer after my freshman year on the pretense of learning Chinese but really because I was tired of staying in America and just wanted to travel. I can’t say I learned too much because I wasn’t really forced to. Overall it was just a fun time traveling with friends.
Sophomore year of college was when I started taking advanced chinese classes and I had absolutely zero confidence in my chinese. It was a combination of being surrounded by a lot of pretty proficient Chinese speakers (most of who were Chinese and/or had Chinese background) and not having a good foundation. Overall, I hated practicing speaking in class because I sounded so dumb next to everyone else who seemed to just be breezing on by. After a year of that (with a lot of help from my best friends-Steph and Jinseop and on occasion Jackson), my confidence was shot. I disliked learning Chinese and really, was ready to give up learning the language.
Junior year came around and I went to D.C to study so I didn’t study Chinese my fall semester. I couldn’t even decide where to go for my study abroad in the spring because I thought I was tired of Chinese, tired of learning Chinese, tired of China. I wanted to shed it all and just start anew. While contemplating where to go (mainly South Africa), my mom advocated pretty fiercely for studying in Beijing since I had already learned it for two years. I was reluctant but finally decided to just go for it. I had no expectations of the IES program thinking that it would be a likely repeat of my summer abroad in Shanghai. Boy oh boy was I pushed off my ass and into the wonderful and mysterious and unique and amazing experience of breathing, living, practicing chinese..
Today marks the halfway point aka I took my midterm exam! During the oral part of the exam, after I finished describing the cartoon and what I thought the artist was trying to portray as well as my ideal boyfriend (which was somewhat awkward trying to explain to my chinese teacher) and what I would do if my parents were against me marrying my boyfriend…. my teacher tells me how much my chinese has improved and that I am one of the top students in the class. That really meant so much to me.
I guess today I kind of looked back on my Chinese learning and how far I have come. I stil have much to go (for which I am excited about) but taking pride in how much I have improved is important too.
That is why sometimes I think a lot of life is based on whim. I could’ve stopped my Chinese studies but through my mom I didn’t. And I don’t know thankful I am that I have continued. To communicate in Chinese, to speak another language, to be able to understand conversation, to converse with people and bond with people I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise… well.. how lucky am I?
And that is my story of how I almost gave up on Chinese.. but am so glad I didn’t.
P.S I really want to stay in Beijing for the summer to continue the IES program.. but it mainly depends on whether or not I get accepted for the internships I have already applied for. Sigh.. dilemmas.. so in love but I suppose what will happen will happen and I just gotta flow with it.
such a bad situation.. drank two cups of coffee.. midterm tomorrow aka in a 5 hours actually and i cannot for the life of me fall asleep..
things that remind me of america.
it’s approaching that halfway point (i know.. i can’t believe it either) and things here are as busy and crazy as ever.
I’ll start off with some routine news that i’m sure you guys want to hear.. well.. I dyed my hair! I think the concept of getting highlights is not as prevalent because I haven’t seen any salons with signs for them.. but anyway.. i dyed my entire hair and it is fabulous! i love it.
In Beijing most of the hair dressers are guys— super CUTE guys with awesome hair and ney-yo fedora hats.. lol. i think America should take up this model.
lan & i with our new hair!
other news: went to a nursing home in beijing yesterday for my chinese class (all the 3rd years went) and had a surprisingly great time. I talked to two chinese grandma’s about their experiences at the nursing home and their life in general. Nursing homes are a relatively new concept in China because children are expected to take care of their parents and it is seen as shameful to put your parents in a nursing home. However, this nursing home was super super nice.. it had an indoor garden with a pond for goodness sake.
Other than that, went on a trip to Renmin University last night to the UChicago China Center to listen to an econ lecture on how local government debt is affecting the Chinese economy. A lot of what was said was talked about in my econ class so that was pretty interesting. One of the lecturers emphasized how he thought it was super important for china to shift entirely to a democracy for its economy to get better and I thought that was a bit simplified.. (although he did skip half his powerpoint slides because we had no time and his english wasn’t as fluent so I might’ve missed some points?). All this talk about China and its economy losing momentum and perhaps having serious problems in the future are all still speculation. China’s economy is still going on strong and China’s government is making strides on trying to change China’s economy into a more consumption based one.. so while China’s economy has some problems I wouldn’t go as far to say that democracy is necessarily the way for them.
But more so than the lecture, the reception was just super A. Super Awesome and super AMERICAN. You have no idea how much I loved Uchicago last night.. waffle fries? tuna sandwiches? chocolate mousse cake? cheesecake? with a mixture of Chinese dessert (aka fruit) my favorite dragon fruit and mango and strawberries.. haha well I was just swooning over the reception last night. Uchicago’s china center took me back to America… the facility was modern and clean and just new and well.. it just reminded me of the gates center at CMU. I’m not used to super nice facilities anymore that I used to take for granted when I was at CMU. If there’s anything superior in America it is the care and beauty of college campuses.. there is no landscaping here in China.
Anyway I talked to the CI econ professor at the lecture last night and apparently she was blacklisted from China a couple years back for writing a book on XinJiang. Crazy huh.. I just love how everyone has their very own interesting life story to tell as long as you just strike up a conversation.. whether it is at the nursing home or uchicago’s china center. keep talking everyone!
P.S on a side note.. CMU needs a china center… you don’t know how jealous I was of Uchicago last night..
P.P.S I went to a movie theater the other day to watch 战马, an english movie (war horse).. not a big fan.. but the popcorn was yum. haha and with my bei wai student card it was only 35yuan! compared to 70 for everyone else.
the West is GREAT!
In China, there is no doubt that the ‘WEST IS GREAT’ sentiment is still active and alive here. From culture to even interactions with foreigners (who are white), it is very obvious that Chinese people seem to be in awe of westerners. From TV ads to tv shows to anything you can advertise, you can see how having a westerner in the picture makes it that much more attractive. It is an interesting concept, this WEST IS GREAT, ‘white skin is better than any other’ sentiment, the whole superiority of the west complex… how is it still so alive and thriving? If you think about it, if an Asian person visited the States or any other place, other people do not regard Asians in that same light. If anything, Asians are prone to discrimination in the States. So it was just an interesting viewpoint.
I won’t go into the whole historical reason that exists— I just wanted to acknowledge this fact..
I suppose that the bubble that has been surrounding me has burst yesterday. I went to interview Kirsten’s family for an economic profile assignment and learned some interesting viewpoints. Her host family is a pretty well off Chinese family, living comfortably and have enough money to send their daughter to a university in America. I talked to the host dad who told me that a lot of Chinese do not like Koreans. I don’t know if this is actually an overall feeling in China.. he might just have been portraying his own viewpoint but I’m not actually sure. Anyway, further on he went on to tell me that he had visited North Korea and when I asked him if he wanted to visit South Korea he adamantly told me no. Furthermore he told me that in the future as the Chinese economy gets better, Korea’s won’t really matter as much. When I tried to bring up the fact that Korea’s brands are much more famous and widely used than China’s, he didn’t seem to acknowledge it..
Well granted, later on he went on to say that Shanghai people are bad.. so I don’t really know.
Sometimes it amazes me how Asians can be so prone to disliking people of their own heritage like how there is still conflict between the Chinese/Korean and Japan or even between their own ethnicity …
Blah gotta go study for my tingxie now.. 明天是星期五！ 加油加油！
opportunities are everywhere. don’t be down over a lost opportunity- look for the others around you.
getting lost in xi’an (literally)
xi’an is considered a 2nd tier city compared to beijing/shanghai which is considered 1st tier.
I took a 14hour overnight train there which was basically a party with fang bian mian (instant noodles), card games, and meeting a new friend! i had an hour long conversation with my new friend xiao lei entirely in mandarin— we talked about the gao kao, her hometown, visiting beijing, and other random things. she was a total sweetheart.
when we finally landed in xi’an we stayed at the shuyuan international hostel which turned out to be really nice. we paid 35kuai to share an 8 bed suite style room which was perfect because there was 7 of us. so right after we arrived we went on to inside the city walls to visit the bell tower and drum tower.
(this was a confusing stoplight..)
the Muslim district was pretty cool too. Xi’an has the very first mosque built in china and has a pretty large Muslim population. this is an interesting contrast from beijing/shanghai where i don’t really see much religion. it was here that we ate beef noodle with bread crumbs or 羊肉泡馍. well the famous one is lamb but i don’t really like the taste of lamb.. but anyway.. it was super yum. the other famous dish is bian bian mian (the bian has 57 strokes.. and i can’t find it on my comp.. isn’t that cool?) which we ate after the terracotta army! yum yum seriously.. i don’t think any other country can compete with china for food. there is just so much variety and tastes.
(paomian!)
Xi’an used to be China’s capital with the start of the zhou dynasty and it is so culturally rich. my favorite part of xi’an was riding bikes around the city wall. The city wall is 13km long and surrounds the old part of xi’an. the best part was being able to see all parts of the city and the differences are so stark. the south wall was full of commercialized （商业化）buildings and modern stores while the others showed the parts that were still developing or undeveloped. well all was well until we realized we couldn’t go past one of the walls because there was construction and so we had the “great” idea of bringing our bikes into the streets and trying to climb up the wall later… basically i got separated from the rest of the group and was lost for a good while. tried to communicate with the bike rental people and well… didn’t really go too well. haha but eventually we all met up after some serious worrying to finish our night off at the big goose pagoda.
the water show at the big goose pagoda was really beautiful. i’ve seen quite a lot of watershows in various places like in barcelona and the states but i think xi’an’s water show is the only one where we are allowed to actually stand within the water show…
the next day we went to the terra cotta warriors!! it really is something that makes you just ponder about history and how fantastic it is. to be standing at the place where an entire army of stone warriors were buried and now excavated.. it is an eerie and awe inspiring feeling.
（cartoon version of the bingmayong)
eating bian bian mian (kinda) haha
overall xi’an was a really awesome city i just wish i had more than a weekend to explore it. i like visiting touristy places but what i really love is just spending my time chilling and relaxing in the city like a 当地人.
