Tai Shan and the Stairway to Heaven

This weekend, I planned a trip to Tai Shan, the holiest mountain in China. Luckily, I didn't have to go by myself - 11 people came with me. We started out on Friday with our backpacks packed and our hiking boots tied on. We headed to the train station. This time, I was lucky and got a hard sleeper just like everyone else. No "no seat" tickets for me. Enraptured with the luxury of the hard sleeper, I fell asleep almost immediately and didn't wake up until 5:20 am, when the train ticket woman banged on the three level bunk beds to let us all know we were at our stop. Apparently not everyone was as impressed with the hard sleepers as I was. Cara and I, who are seasoned train travellers by now after our trip to Qingdao, slept pretty soundly. It sounds like everyone else woke up or had a hard time sleeping.
We were in Jinan when we got off the train, and we needed to catch a bus to Tai'an, where Tai Shan is located. We all caught taxis to the long distance bus station, and then got on a bus to Tai'an. Everyone filled up on KFC and snacks from a convenience store. Jon and I had a debate on whether the chocolate muffins I was eating were really muffins or just cupcakes. I of course argued that they were nutritious muffins, and he was trying to make me believe they were cupcakes. Jon is the one fixing his hair on the bus for the picture, because he is a girl. : )

After an hour and a half, we arrived in Tai'an, and I sent everyone in taxis to Dai Miao, a huge temple at the foot of Tai Shan. Emperors as early as the Song dynasty would go to this temple to make sacrifices to the mountain god before making the pilgrimage up the mountain. The temple complex is quite similar to the Mountain Palace, which I told you about in a previous post, and the Forbidden City, which I haven't seen yet. Dai Miao (or Dai Temple in English) is famous for its ancient cypress trees, most of which are still living, and can be seen throughout the temple.
The Dai Miao also had amazing architecture and these old steles that are called Tortoise Dragon Steles. Apparently there are several different kinds of dragons in China, and one of them really looks like a turtle. I get really excited about this, because I LOVE turtles!Outside the temple, the makers of TaiShan Beer were putting on a beer festival. They had two large blowup bottles of Taishan that encouraged small children to hug them like characters at Disney World. And of course, the beer brand has little girls come out to dance and sing the glories of Taishan beer. This always fascinates me a little bit.

Tala, Ariel, and Liling had skipped Dai Miao and had already started up the mountain by the time we all left the temple and the beer festival. Cara and I weren't hungry, but we grabbed a bag of baozi (stuffed steamed buns) and left for Tai Shan while the other seven climbers went out for lunch. The mountain started at a pretty level pace, and Cara and I took our time exploring all the small sights around the bottom.
We found a huge pillar of magma that had formed thousands of years ago and mysteriously cracked and fell over. Now what is left is a wide, round and flat table coming out of the ground, and what used to be on top of it is lying on its side next to it. The Chinese apparently believed it was a sign from Tai Shan, the mountain god. Another interesting thing we saw was an old tree that one of the emperors had hid under during a thunderstorm. He was making his annual pilgrimage up the mountain, and found five old trees that apparently gave him shelter during the course of the storm. He was so thankful he promoted the trees to royal status.
Cara and I both bought red headbands that pilgrims wear when they climb the mountain. After they make it to the top of the mountain, they typically tie some money to one end of the headband and throw it into a tree to bring peace and safety to their families. I liked mine to much to throw it into a tree. Sorry Mom, Dad, and Marshall, the Chinese Mountain God does not have your back, you'll just have to watch your own.
The stairs started getting steeper, and we wanted to stop for a much needed break. Luckily for us, a woman who picks tea leaves off of the mountain sold tea for 50 cents on the side of the path. She ushered us over and poured us two big mugs of Tai Shan tea with the tea leaves still in the bottom.After about three hours of climbing and sightseeing, Cara and I made it to the mid-point of the climb. We had taken our time getting here, and two of our friends, Richie and Jay, caught up with us at the half point. The other five climbers found us there too. Richie, Jay, Me, and Cara set out ahead of the others, and we proved to be a little bit faster at climbing Tai Shan's 7000 steps than everyone else. We are also all going on spring break together to trek across the Yangzi River, so we like to joke that we had tryouts for the "Yangzi River Adventure" and we all made the team.

The last 2000 steps were very, very hard. It is almost a vertical stretch towards the top of the mountain, a literal stairway to Heaven. I had a heavy backpack on, so every step felt like I was lifting all of my weight and then some with just one leg. By the last 1000 steps, an unceasing climb towards the Gate to Heaven, everyone is hanging on to the hand rails for dear life. And by everyone, I mean us 12 American climbers and thousands of Chinese climbers - old, young, men, and women, who are all coming up to reach the top of the mountain. In fact, we got to talk with many of them. Most of the young people we saw wanted pictures with us, so we made some friends and had some creepy Chinese people try to slyly take pictures of us without our permission. Whenever I caught them I would hold up my own camera like I was going to take a picture of them too. It usually embarrassed them a bit, but I got a kick out of it!Cara and I were very inspired by an old woman in a purple coat who decided to climb the mountain all by herself, but amassed a following of younger women who tried to keep pace with her. She had a walking cane and trudged steadily up the steps, never stopping to take a breath. She yelled out encouragement to all the women climbing with her and eventually to Cara and I as we fell in step with the whole group. Richie and Jay didn't really know what to make of this group of eight women creating a support group as they climbed the final 1000 steps.
And then, finally, the last hundred steps were so painful, and I didn't want to look back because behind me there was only emptiness and a huge, vertical staircase that I could easily fall down if I made a wrong move. But Jay, Richie, Cara, and I all made it to the top and sat down to recover with some new Chinese friends.
On the top we wandered around, grabbing fried dough twists to munch on while we waited for the other eight of us to make it up the mountain. We looked for a hotel to spend the night in on the top, and all the hotels were pretty expensive, and pretty dismal. We each spent ten dollars to stay the night in a hotel which shall not be named. It was the most awful place ever. They waited until after we bought the room to tell us there was no running water because it was frozen, and the heat would not come on until 8pm. A little dejected, the Yangzi River Adventure team strode out onto the top of Tai Shan to get a glimpse at what is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It was cold, and as the sun went down and the sky started to change colors before our eyes, we explored the very edges of the peak of Tai Shan. I'd like to share with you some of the views we had, and ask your forgiveness for the hideous hat I decided to wear, that not only did not stay on my head, but also came to a point at the top and made me look like a cone head.
1. Cara and I hugging on the edge of a cliff in the Sunset
2. The Sunset over a pagoda (only in China)
3. Jay being an idiot
4. A shot over the edge of the peak at the steepest part of the staircase
5. The peak of Tai Shan, complete with a Mountain god temple and a Moon temple
However, although the mountain was breathtaking, the dinner we had was not. We ordered (so really it's our fault) some kind of weird spicy potato shreds and a tofu soup that tasted like dirty dishwater. When we got back to the room, we were all exhausted, and it was only about 6:45pm! However, the room was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Cara and I were sharing a bed, and Jay and Richie had their own beds. However, despite the fact that we were crammed together in this bed, Cara and I were both freezing. So we put on all our clothes and ran around the room, trying to get warm. Finally the Chinese woman came and turned on the heater at 8pm, and we all gave her dirty looks before we fell asleep.
The next morning we woke up at 5:10 am and prepared to hike back down the mountain. Our train out of Jinan was at 10:25 am and we needed to get down the mountain and out of Tai'an, into Jinan and finally be at the train station by 10 am. It was pitch black, and we were all a little nervous about going down the steep, almost vertical steps in the dark without a flash light. But as we passed through the Gate of Heaven and looked down, we could see lights coming up towards us. Hundreds of people were making the morning climb to the top of Tai Shan, and as we gripped the hand rails on our way down, the Chinese people kindly lit the stairs in front of us so we could see where we were going.The biggest surprise came when, about a half an hour into the walk down, a crazy old man who lives on the mountain in a cave came out and started giving us all hugs. He lives in a cave and handcrafts wood souvenirs for tourists, but he also gives free hugs for the climbers. He was a very sweet old man, and gives really good hugs to tired, sweaty people like me!
There were eight of us climbing back down the mountain that day, and after an altercation with the bus driver at the midpoint of the mountain, we finally made it down to Tai'an, where two taxi drivers were patiently waiting to drive us speedily back to Jinan. They knew we were crunched for time, so they drove their taxis through bike lanes and between cars like maniacs to get us there in time for the train. We made it in time and took our three hour fast train back to Beijing. And I finally got to take a hot shower and bath after three days of mountain trekking.

A Weekend in Beijing...Kind of

After a long and arduous week of classes, I got ready for a busy weekend. On Friday afternoon, Tala, Georgette, and I bought 1 dollar tickets to go see "Life is Beautiful" at the campus movie theater. The movie theater is actually really nice, and the movie, though dubbed in Chinese, still had Tala and Georgette in tears. I however, maintained my stoic composition.

On Saturday morning, we all got some running clothes on and prepared for the Amazing Race, Beijing University style. Our program planned a scavenger hunt around campus so we could get to know the area better. We had different tasks to complete, like eating spicy food and repeating a Chinese tongue twister, and I had to climb the rock wall, which was 60 feet high, for my team. However, my team, due to a lacking in athleticism and enthusiasm, came dead last in the race.

After about three hours of napping, I went out to dinner with my language partner, Percy. Percy is what I would call a cool dude. He is very proud of his region of China, which is in the Northeast. He introduced me to his girlfriend and another friend of his, and then we sat together for a long time trying to communicate in Chinese. Although extremely patient with me and very interested in everything I had to say, he did tell me that I open my mouth too big when I speak Chinese. I responded that maybe my mouth was just bigger than Chinese people's mouths. He said if that was the case, that all foreigner's mouths were HUGE! So apparently the trick is to speak Chinese through a very small opening in your mouth, but I haven't mastered it yet.

Then Percy and I parted ways and I headed over to Pyro's, a pizza place that the owner, Rich, has newly renovated. He threw a hawaiian party and gave everybody cheap pizza. He also gave us lots of flowers and a dj, but I went to bed early that night so I missed most of the more intoxicated festivities. I went to bed early because, at 6am, I woke up, put on my hiking boots and my one sturdy pair of jeans, strapped on my backpack, and travelled about an hour and a half by bike, subway, and taxi to the Lido Holiday Inn, where Beijing Hikers was preparing to leave for a hike through Quarrymen's Pass. I signed up for the hike a couple weeks before thinking that it would be a nice chance for me to practice my Chinese with Chinese hikers. No chance of that, as I soon realized that Chinese people do not hike, and actually don't have a good word for hiking. The closest they have is 爬山 which means mountain climbing. The people I hiked with were all European and American. I made friends with two British women and a French woman, and was amazed when, upon getting to the mountain, one French man strapped his three-year-old to his back in preparation for the hike.
We started up through the pass, and we were walking through an old village, complete with braying donkeys and smoking huts. We went further up through the mountains and after walking on a steep winding path, we came to one more house. Hayden, the guide, had even marked this house as the old woman and the old man's house, and sure enough the old woman ran out of her house to greet us as we came up to meet her. She was 83-years-old, and had all of three teeth in her mouth. The old man was sitting on his front stoop, working on a chair and giving us all a toothless smile. The old woman ushered us into her home, giving us all big hugs as we passed by her. She had laid out sunflower seeds and cherry tomatos for us in the room that serves as her kitchen and her bedroom. She had many of us sit on her bed while we ate. When she saw the three-year-old, a beautiful little girl whose mother is Chinese and father is French, the old woman got really excited. Chinese people love children, and this woman bent down and put her nose up against the little girl's nose, smiling a big smile. It took a moment for the little girl to move from stunned to terrified, but when she did everyone laughed and the old woman promptly handed her back to her mother.
In the meantime, I had finished my share of sunflower seeds and went outside of the house to explore. The place was a little like a petting zoo, with a donkey, a mangy cat, and some chickens. I made friends with the donkey and he let me pet him and take some close ups!
After that, we left the old house and really started hiking. The way up was quite steep but also very sunny. There was very little mud or snow, and the way up afforded some beautiful views of the mountains.
However, on the way down, this side of the mountain was in shadows, and it was still covered in snow. We had to slip and slide our way through brambles, low hanging branches, and worst of all, snow. It wasn't very steep, but it was slippery, and pretty challenging. We came out into the sun at the end to climb up one more time on the route, and once again we were on dry ground. This time the climb up was much steeper, and at the top we stopped and had lunch. The way down was once again icy, but it went by very quickly and finally we had finished our four hour hike. The best part was that Beijing Hikers provides all kinds of snacks and drinks at the end, which are much needed. And the house by the road that we passed on the way to the bus had, you guessed it, puppies!

Qingdao and the Train Station Catastrophe

Oh my goodness, what a weekend! A couple of friends and I decided that we wanted to go to the port city of Qingdao for the weekend. We planned to take the overnight train there on Friday night, and a fast train back Sunday afternoon. Naturally, I planned the trip (ensuring that I wouldn't pay too much money) and I set out on Friday morning in my running outfit to go get the train tickets.

I finally arrived at the train station and stood outside in the cold for 15 minutes in line for my tickets. When I got to the front of the line, I tried to order three sleepers (bunks) on the overnight train to Qingdao. The woman told me they only had two sleepers and they wouldn't sell me another ticket. I tried to argue with her, saying I didn't care what the third ticket was, I just needed three tickets to Qingdao. She sent me to another line, and I went through the whole process again. And finally, once I got through the third line, the man sold me the two sleeper tickets - the only two tickets left on the train, and a "no seat" ticket. This meant that while my friends Molly and Cara would have sleepers, I would be sitting in the mysterious "no seat" section of the train.

That night, I gave my bag to Molly and Cara to protect in car 15, where their sleeper bunks were. Molly offered to help me sneak into their car. She promised me that she "would be little spoon" and we would get to share the bunk, and no one would notice. At that point, the idea of sneaking to their car sounded pretty good to me, but when I arrived way back at Car 6, was unceremoniously shoved by the train attendant into the car, and found myself standing in the middle of 150 other Chinese passengers, I realized that sneaking all the way back up to Car 15 would not be an option.

It was hot and crowded, and standing room only. The car is actually a hard seat section, and has three seats on either side of the aisle for people who have "hard seat" tickets, but us unlucky ones who have "no seat" tickets, have to stand in the aisle and wherever we can get a space. I thought to myself that there was absolutely no way I would be able to stand for 9 hours overnight, so as the train attendants managed to weed out a lot of the people without train tickets, I sat down. I put my back up against one row of seats, and my feet under the other row across the aisle. It was cooler, and I didn't take up too much space, so people could just step over my legs if they needed to get somewhere. I sat like that for four hours, and as time went by the men stayed standing and the women found corners of seats and floor spaces to sit on. The old man sitting next to me on his sack of grain finally reached his stop and hoisted the grain over his head and got off.

An old woman sitting a few seats down from me was staring at me intently. It didn't surprise me too much because I was the only white person on the train. She had been listening to music for most of the train ride, and was singing and slapping her knee all by herself. But now she was just staring at me. She yelled out to me and asked what my stop was, which I didn't understand. The girl sitting on the edge of a seat next to me took my ticket and told the old woman I was going to Qingdao, and the woman just nodded her head and smiled at me with her mahogany colored teeth.

Then, a few minutes later, the man sitting next to the woman got up at the stop and left the train. The old woman immediately spread out over the two seats and called out to me "Come over here." Two men standing beside me hoisted me up from the train floor, and I was led by my jacket sleeve through the throngs of people to the open seat the woman had saved for me. As I sat down, baffled, she patted my back and continued listening to her music. I was amazed that everyone else on the train just let me take the seat - no one else even tried to sit down there. I guess they just didn't want to mess with that old woman. About twenty minutes later, she handed me one of the earbuds from her own ear and told me to listen to the music. I listened to weird Chinese music, that she went through and hand picked, for THREE hours. Every time I tried to return her headphones to her, she wouldn't take them, and demanded that I keep listening.

I dozed a little bit, but I didn't really sleep at all that night. There were some men who stood standing the whole nine hours. One man even fell asleep, standing, with his briefcase as his pillow. When the train finally arrived at Qingdao I was so tired that I didn't think I'd be able to fall asleep at the hostel when we got there. Molly and Cara walked over with concern and hesitation as to my potential grumpiness, but I was so happy to be there that I just smiled and gave them hugs, and of course told them about the old woman.

The man from the hostel was standing at the train station with my name on a sign, waiting to drive us up to the hostel. On the way there, we were stopped in the road by a Chinese man and Chinese woman have a huge fight about their cars in the middle of the street. Molly, Cara, and especially I were so tired that we just dumbly watched the fight continue and the yelling get louder. Finally our driver, who was just as engaged in watching the fight, honked his horn and got the two drivers out of the way.

The hostel was amazing. It was China's first modern observatory, and had been abandoned until they bought it and renovated it. The showers are modern and private, the bathrooms are western style and clean, and the beds and linens were very soft and clean. We dropped off our stuff in lockers, and went upstairs. There is a restaurant on top of the hostel, and right beside the dome of the observatory. They made us western style breakfast with fried eggs, warm toast, and sausage. It was wonderful. And the best part for me was the hot, freshly brewed coffee - it was certainly going to get me through the day.

After breakfast we headed out with a map and directions from the people at the hostel. We first walked down to the ocean. The air was warm but the wind from the ocean was really cold and very powerful. It was hard to walk out on the Zhanqiao pier toward the temple at the very end. The water was beautiful, and we could see where the boat races and sailing events from the Olympics were held. Because the tide was out, there were people hunting for oysters on the rocks by the pier.

On the way back, something totally unexpected happened. I saw a woman I recognized walking on the pier with her family. As we passed each other, we kept looking back to see if we really did recognize each other in a city of several million people. It was the crazy old lady from the train!!! I immediately ran back and told her I wanted a picture with her. Cara took a picture with my camera, and all of the woman's family members had their cameras out snapping shots of the two of us. We were hugging and smiling at each other, so amazed that we saw each other again. It was really an amazing experience.

After the pier and walking around the city, admiring the German architecture and eating lunch, we headed back to the hostel so Cara could take a shower and Molly and I could take a nap. Our next stop was the Tsingtao Beer museum and brewery. Tsingtao was founded in Qingdao in the 1900's, when the Germans took over the town as their colonial outpost in China. The history of the brewery follows the history of Qingdao quite well, as the brewery was taken over by the Japanese when they invaded in the 1930's and 1940's, and finally returned to the Chinese after the liberation movement in 1949. The museum was pretty tame, but watching and learning how beer is made is actually pretty interesting. Through the museum they gave us small glasses of raw beer (German style) which tasted pretty yeasty and...interesting. After the whole tour, we were also given freshly brewed Tsingtao beer, which was okay, and definitely part of the experience. The only thing that kind of bothered me was that a couple small children were running around the museum, and each of them got a whole glass of raw beer and a whole glass of regular Tsingtao just like their parents. Starting them young I guess.

After the Tsingtao museum we were all pretty tired, and we headed back to the hostel for dinner and bed. We ate dinner early, and the restaurant on top of the hostel made us Western style chicken and beefsteak sandwiches, which was also very refreshing. Molly couldn't get over how much she had missed mayonnaise and Cara didn't talk much while she devoured her french fries. We relaxed on the roof for a while, looking at the city, checked our email, and went to bed.

On Sunday morning we got up, got dressed, and headed out towards the Guest House. It's official name is the Yingbin hotel, and it was originally the home of the German Governor General, and Mao Zedong and Yuan Shikai have both stayed here in their time.
After the Guest House, we hiked up a hill to the lookout towers that overlook Qingdao on Signal Hill. The views were really beautiful, and the main lookout tower rotates so you can see the whole tower just by sitting in one spot.

After the last of our sightseeing we headed back to the train station and took a fast train back to Beijing. We felt kind of relaxed and rejuvenated just from being on our own, doing things at our own pace, and just enjoying the warmer weather and different scenery. It was a really great trip.

798 District

On Saturday morning, my program took us to 798 District on the east side of Beijing. The 798 Art District used to be a cluster of state-run factories that ceased production in the 1980's. The Chinese government was going to demolish all the buildings, build by German architects and of significant architectural importance, when the artistic community in Beijing asked to take it over. Now, the 798 Art District (798 is the name of the original factory) is filled with beautiful modern art galleries. The artists who run the galleries also kept a lot of the original architecture and an old train in tact and in the area. It is a really neat place, with cafes and galleries continuing on for about a square mile.

Upon getting on the bus, I was greeted by a graduate student at Beijing University named Donnie. Our professors had thought it a good idea for us to meet language partners so that we could practice our Chinese while the Beida students practiced their English. Donnie was very patient with my broken Chinese, and very excited to tell me places to visit while I'm in China. When we reached 798, our new Chinese friends followed us around the district, admiring artwork with us and telling us about the area and its history. In our group of international students, there were six of us Westerners and three Chinese students. Donnie was a molecular biology major, and I don't think he got as much out of the art exhibits as I did, but he did a good job pretending.

Out of the exhibits I saw, the ones I thought were the most interesting were the "Gods of Destruction" exhibit, the thermometer exhibit, and an exhibit where the artist made huge piles of bubbles and photographed scenes through the bubbles. The Gods of Destruction exhibit are sculptures of four Olympians from the Athens Olympics who were purportedly on steroids. They are all Americans, and they are nude, massive, and in animal form. Marion Jones looks like a bat out of hell, literally. They are in cages and shown above, as is a picture of one of the pieces from the thermometer exhibit.

And of course Saturday was, you guessed it - Valentine's Day. A depressing day for most us, but we decided that all us girls would get dressed up and go for a night on the town. We told the guys that they weren't invited, went out for dinner together, and danced the night away! The boys, it turned out, were not too upset that they weren't invited: two of them went on a date with each other, had a candlelit dinner together at a restaurant with Wifi and skyped their girlfriends while they ate. When we got home, we found red roses on each of our pillows. The boys had went out and bought us all a rose to say Happy Valentine's Day.

The Ice Cream Saga and the Silk Market

After class on Friday, Tala, Ariel, and I decided it was time for some hard core shopping. We headed out towards the metro station, but on the way, we were hit with another painful urge for ice cream. We stumbled into a standard looking westernized restaurant called Big Pizza and ordered three chocolate fudge sundaes. Now, keep in mind that sundaes in Beijing are nothing like chocolate fudge sundaes in the US, but they normally do the trick.

Well, our ice cream extravaganza was doomed. First, the vanilla ice cream was watery. Then, to my unpleasant surprise, a crunchy green leaf of spinach was burrowed somewhere in my sundae. I promptly removed it from my mouth and took a picture of it. Tala found celery in her ice cream, and Ariel was finally too frightened of finding something worse than a vegetable in her sundae that she stopped eating. As I ate my ice cream I noticed a pink tinge on my spoon. Upon further examination my sharp plastic spoon had cut my lip and I was bleeding all over myself.

With the ice cream drama over, we got on the metro and headed to the silk market. It is in a huge building with six floors, and on each floor there is something different to look at. On the first floor there are very real looking Spyder, Columbia and North Face ski jackets and snow pants, along with all the tee shirts you never wanted to buy, and some really pretty dresses and Chinese clothing.

The second floor has scarves. Everywhere. So many scarves that Rachel Welty would just be overwhelmed with opportunity. Some of them are silk, most of them are not, but all of them are cheap. I got a fake Burberry scarf, which makes me look very British, for about five dollars. On the next floor there are shoes and purses. The purses are all really nice, and fake. I bought a real leather, fake Salvatore Ferragauss purse for eight dollars. And then, from the third and fourth floors up, there is jewellery and pearls. The pearls were so beautiful and very cheap. I bought a black pearl necklace and matching earrings for 7 dollars.

In the Silk Market, which I'm sure you've gleaned has very little silk, the sellers are very aggressive. They are almost all young girls a little older than me, and they speak impeccable English. They will yell at you while you walk by their stall "Hey girl, hey sister, want to buy bags?" If you stop in they immediately ask you what you like and demand a starting price. They ask for about a hundred dollars for anything you are looking for at first and than bargain down to a price the two of you agree on. I happen to be quite frugal, and pretty determined, so the prices I got my purse, pearls, and scarf at are not the prices that most people pay. This place is like my mom's heaven.

If you go too low for them they say raise the price a little, and "come on, you're such a beautiful girl. You and I are sisters, why you try to cheat me like this?" If you try to walk away, they will block you in the store or grab your arm to keep you there. It would be scary if I wasn't at least seven inches taller than all of them. But I have to say, it is a little overwhelming to be constantly yelled at and bargained with. It's not something I could do everyday, even if I do like shopping.

Luckily, I had two really fun friends to shop with. Tala is Jordanian, and so she bargains at the markets in Jordan every day to get everything. She barely speaks any Chinese, but she would sidle up next to the stall seller and say, "of course I'm your sister, and I want those boots. Why don't you be my sister and give me a good price?" Her deals were as good as mine, and she didn't have to pretend to walk away to get them. Ariel on the other hand, is way too nice to walk away, and doesn't have Tala's bargaining skills, so she just got manhandled in every stall she went to by eager sellers.

But at the end of the day, we were very satisfied with our purchases, not so satisfied with our ice cream, and seriously thinking about going to bed early.

Though He Is Rich, I Do Not Like Him

Whew! What a week. It was my first full week of classes and I am excited about every one of them. My Chinese professor is really friendly and my professors in Sino-American Relations, History of Modern China, and Chinese Political Reforms are all very interesting people. I was worried I wouldn't be able to understand their Chinese accents but it seems I'm managing quite well.

In Chinese class I am learning important phrases like "turn left taxi driver" and "I don't want any more dumplings." The most impractical one we learned happens to be the title of this post. I finally know how to express my feelings about Hugh Heffner.

On Monday night, one of our advisors/program directors told us that there was a Lantern festival and that we should definitely make a journey into town to see it.

Never having been to a lantern festival, we imagined that there would be thousands of lanterns strung up in the trees, and festival food. We were wrong.

After an hour and a half on the metro and another hour of walking back and forth in front of Tian'anmen square looking for the "lantern" festival, we found nothing and decided to go home. Meanwhile the fireworks dangerously exploding in between houses and the subway stations and the skyscrapers turned out to be the main attraction. The Lantern Festival is just a time when people go out, walk around, and admire the fire works on the last night of New Year's celebration, even though these fireworks have been going off continually for a month now.

In Beijing, there are very few laws regarding the use of fireworks during the New Year celebration. This means that fireworks go off in the street and directly over your head. I have no idea how many people die each year from a firecracker exploding in their brain, but I'm sure there are quite a few casualties. We were lucky enough to make it home that night without singing our hair.

Tianjin

After a little bit of planning and mapping, I organized a day trip me and a few friends to Tianjin, a city an hour away from Beijing. Imagine my surprise when, on Saturday morning, 12 sleepy college students were on time at 7:30 am to travel to the city with me. We knew we were in for a lot of walking. We walked to the nearest metro station, Wudaokou, which was about a half an hour away. Then we took the metro down to the southern part of Beijing, and took a taxi from that metro stop to the Beijing South Train Station. From there we took a bullet train that reached up to 336 km/h, and reached Tianjin in about a half an hour. The city, at first sight, was missing one attribute of Beijing - air pollution.

All 13 of us started walking, and the real journey began. I played tour guide, because apparently everyone heard there was a day trip, not where, not how, not how long, and I was the only one who knew anything about Tianjin. First we walked toward the Northern part of the city, and we found Old Culture street, which is a street in Tianjin that is reconstructed as a 19th century Chinese hutong. In the little shops on either side of the street, the Chinese venders sold everything from fake Fendi bags to Chinese swords to chopsticks. There were pearl and jade shops right next to fan shops. It was a souvenir shopper's paradise. After an hour and a half of poking around the shops (the boys bought swords, and the girls bought purses), we all met up for lunch at a restaurant at the other side of the street. But we ate light, and prepared ourselves for what I promised would be a real treat.

Tianjin is famous for its fried cakes, so my trusty guide book told me, and after lunch we headed out West to find a famous shop whose name means Earhole in Chinese. When we finally found it, the smell of refried doughnuts was so intense I was drooling. The bakers take sweet bread, fill it with chocolate, cream, or some kind of fruit paste, and then fry the whole thing in sesame oil. We had to fight through the crowds of people (there are no lines in China) to get a few of the cakes for ourselves. Everyone enjoyed them, and I'm pretty sure that if I ate anymore my arteries would have clogged.

After the fried cake fiasco we continued to walk west to get to Tianjin's tiny metro. We needed to get south to walk through Tianjin's upscale shopping district. After about a 20 minute ride we arrived in what looked like New York city. There were a lot of Europeans, and the shops were all American and European clothing stores. Everything was really expensive (for me) and there were beautiful ball gowns and $100,000 cars on sale at every corner. Two real life manequins wearing wedding gowns posed for my camera. One threw up a peace sign but I didn't quite catch it soon enough. Molly, my roommate, and I saw a Haagen Daaz store and were hit with a ferocious craving for ice cream, but because we were running low on time we didn't get a chance to buy some.

All thirteen of us walked about six miles that day, took a high speed train back to Beijing, and then Molly, Tala, Ariel and I headed to the Lotus Center (Chinese Walmart) for some food and a hair straightener - none of which was for me. Molly and I secretly came to hunt for Haagen Daaz ice cream that we were still craving. It's been so hard not being able to drink milk or eat any dairy products here. I really miss cheese and, you guessed it, Ice Cream. When we were starting to think all hope was lost, we saw it. Gleaming by the cash register, by holy and fluorescent light, was a freezer that held large and small pints of Haagen Daaz ice cream!!! Molly and I made a run for it, her juggling the comforter that she randomly decided to purchase, and when we got there all our hopes were dashed. The ice cream was $6 for a one scoop container, and $13 for a half a pint. Our tiny college student wallets just couldn't handle it. We went home, tired and dejected, and vowed to find affordable, good ice cream another day