sunday

from mom:

Hi Meghan, We need to hear and see an update. The food pictures made me hungry for more! Pardon the pun. Mom

well, now i know where i get the horrible joke genes from. okay, so i already knew i got a good portion from dad, but now i know that i really had no genetic chance of being not punny.

sunday was an interesting day, more interesting than it will seem to you, because most of the experience can't be written about/recorded digitally. this day we went to the beijing sports university and met and then spent the day with students from there. here's a statue of mao on the campus. the campus was very pretty and very green.
we ate lunch with the students and then brought them to the summer palace. the summer palace is notorious in china as a product of imperial excess. it is associated with the empress cixi. i can't remember if she was in charge of its creation, but if she wasn't, then she expanded it at great cost. the story is that the money spent on the summer garden came from the military fund, so when japan and china fought at the turn of the century, china's navy only had one shell to fire on the japanese fleet. the summer palace is more than just one palace; it's a gigantic green space in the northwest of beijing. a large lake was dug, and the dirt from the lake was used to build a hill that overlooks the city.

here's a weird creature that you can find guarding entrances all over beijing, along with more generic lions. i haven't yet been able to figure out which animal parts mean what, but overall, the creature is used for protection. the green fabric in the background is surrounding a building at the summer palace. a lot of the tourist destinations are currently being restored so they'll be ready for the olympics next year.

this is the long walkway that winds along the shore of the lake.

this is the main tower on the hill that overlooks the city.

to get up there, you needed to climb lots of stairs.
and lots more stairs.

but the view was pretty awesome. these were some buildings just off to the east.

this is the view just to the west. that tall thing is a tibetan monk temple or something.

the view south. the entire lake and a lot more are all part of the summer palace. it's the largest imperial garden in the world.
this statue was in the tower near the top of the hill

the exterior of the tower. we could have gone higher, but we didn't.

the view south again.

here's a pic of me and my classmate kysa with the two beijing sports university students i spent the most time with. we're wearing hats we borrowed from a souvenir shop. i don't think the workers in the shop were happy that we played with their hats and then didn't buy anything.

anyway, the students both have chosen english names for themselves in their classes. the one on the left calls herself shirley, and the one on the right calls herself blue. they're both english majors. shirley plans to be an english teacher like her mom. she might also study journalism. blue wants to switch majors to economics, since she sees knowing english as more of a skill, not something to base one's career off of. they only have two weeks off this summer since they're going through training to be volunteers at the olympics. they were both so hospitable and friendly, and it was sad to say goodbye to them. if my experience with them is any indication, they'll represent beijingers as warm, friendly, and helpful hosts at the olympics.
here's another view of the lake, the mountains to the northwest, and the hill we climbed at the north.

bridge to the island in the lake

view from the island of the structure we climbed.

so yeah, sunday was really great. it was wonderful to connect and talk with the beijing university students. they told me a lot about china, and i told them about the us. we exchanged email addresses, so i can keep up with them. it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far.

btw - i made a google map of some of the places i've mentioned on this blog.

okay, day 2 - saturday

i have to get y'all caught up!

the first day, friday, was gorgeous. it was windy, which i guess kept the smoggy pollution out of the city. our prof said it was rare to see such gorgeous blue skies. saturday was pretty, too, but also hotter.

pretty much all of the dogs i've seen in china are tiny and adorable.

this day we had a lecture and then we went to the beijing development museum, which, when you think about it, is an unusual idea for a museum. it had lots of 3-d maps of beijing at various points in time. the one below was at the entrance. i think it was of beijing in the old days, but i'm not sure about that. i think the forbidden city is the little tiny, tiny square in the center - the tiniest one. you can also see the great wall snaking around the mountains around beijing.

this is a gigantic wall-mounted map of 1949 beijing. all the golden roofs are in the forbidden city. tiananmen square is just south of/below that, and you can see the hill i took pictures from on friday just above that.

then there was a gigantic map of the beijing of today, including buildings that haven't been built yet. it was HUGE. the big patch of green toward the right is the temple of heaven where the emperor used to go every year to pray for good weather, etc.

here it is from a slightly different angle and better lighting. the forbidden city again has golden roofs, and tiananmen square is just south of/below it. mao's mausoleum is the rectangle surrounded by square bushes/grass. the bubble to the left of tiananmen square is the new opera house. our hotel i believe is also in this picture. we are a couple blocks east of the forbidden city. the olympic sites are on the same north/south axis as tiananmen square/the forbidden city. they are up where the map goes into shadow. i'd have to zoom in to check, but i think the round thing just below the shadow along that axis is the "bird's nest" stadium that is the main olympic venue.

below is i think part of the financial district of the city? anyway, it's more businessy with more skyscrapers. that sweet looking one is for cctv - chinese television. i'm hoping to get to see that one before we leave. if i remember right, this is in the northeast part of the city. maybe northwest. anyway...


here are the two most striking olympic sites. the bird's nest is the stadium, and the square bubble thing next to it is the aquatics center.


after the beijing development museum, we went to a restaurant that cooked peking duck. there is construction seriously all over beijing. even on the street of our hotel. the government is making the people clean up their houses at their own expense. this was on the way to the restaurant.


at all of the restaurants we've visited so far, food is served family style. a lot of the restaurants have lazy susans on every table to make serving easier. here's our food from saturday night. i couldn't possibly begin to describe all the dishes, mostly because i don't remember exactly waht they were. but the red and white dotted one at the bottom is lotus, and the pale dish at the far right is duck liver. i didn't have the duck liver, but the lotus was good.


and the below pic shows a deboned duck f00t. yes, i ate it, and yes, it wasn't without a lot of gagging.

i think after i got home from the restaurant, i fell asleep right away. i've gotten a lot of sleep the past two nights - far more than 8 hours - because i've been really tired at 6/7 pm. i'm not letting myself fall asleep tonight - i just miss too much!

anyway, what else? um, i think i forgot to mention that at the forbidden city there were a lot of tourists, but also a lot of chinese tourists. many of them probably had never seen a white person before in person, so i got asked a couple times to pose in pictures with people. then again, it might have just been the red hair and height that fascinated people. there are also a lot of poor people who try to get you to buy stuff. europe is like that, too, but in china, you feel safer about people possibly pick-pocketing your stuff. also, as if you didn't already know, everything is dirt cheap. we were amazed that we had a huge meal of dumplings - potstickers - and it cost about 2.20 in US dollars each.

there's a lot i could talk about regarding the topic of the class - sports and globalization and the olympics in china - but that'll have to wait. also, the people in the class are awesome, as are my professors.

okay, quick new update, i guess?

okay, friday we started out by going to tienanmen square, this is the square at roughly the center of beijing, just south of the forbidden city. the square is named for tienanmen gate, the entrance to the forbidden city, which is at the north end of the square. you can see mao's picture on the gate below.


to the west of the square is the house of congress, or the equivalent. during that tienanmen square incident, (which happened sometime in the 80s, but i can't check the exact date because i think the chinese ISPs block wikipedia.com. i want to say '89? in any event, i can't get to wikipedia.com for whatever reason) three students went up the steps of the building and waited for someone from the government to come out and speak with them. no one ever did.

the pic below is of the people's memorial. behind that is mao's mausoleum. these are at the south end of the square. during the tienanmen massacre, hunger strikers convened at the people's memorial. now you can't even go up to it - it's roped off and there are guards making sure you don't slip by.

to the east of the square is another government building - can't remember which. in front of it is a countdown clock to the olympics. there are several of these all over beijing.

then we went to the forbidden city. i couldn't find any outdoor pics from within the city that do it justice. the place is just freaking huge. but what i thought was interesting is that in one part of the city is a gallery of imperial treasures, two of which are jade mountains. they were originally part of a trio, but the third was carried off at the end of the qing dynasty and ended up in the minneapolis institute of arts. the reason that one was carried off is because it is a lot smaller than the other two.

okay, i figured out a way i can give you an idea of how big the place is. here's the map of the forbidden city that was on my audio walking tour thingamabob.

see the two rectangles surrounded by white in the center? the lower (southern) one is the hall of supreme harmony. it was under construction, but you can get an idea of the size of the building and the size of the square in front of it from the picture below. comparing this picture to the map above might give you an idea of how gigantic the place is. you could easily spend a day there exploring.

this is the starbucks in the forbidden city. a STARBUCKS. seriously. in the forbidden city. its presence here is kind of controversial. there's a chinese media figure who is making a big deal about it being a sign of american cultural and economic imperialism, and the fact that this starbucks is located in the traditional center of chinese imperial power.

this is a detail of the jade mountain above. look at that chain detail!


this is the other jade mountain.


okay, really quick. then we went to a huge manmade hill/garden just north of the forbidden city which offered amazing views of the city. below is the forbidden city.


we went to a bar that night. our profs came too! it was a good time.

one of the squat bathrooms in the bar.

well, we're here!

okay, so i'm dead tired and am not going to really try to make this readable or funny or organized in any way except chronologically.

i didn't get all that much sleep monday night because i was packing and cleaning. i think i went to bed at 3:30 am (technically tuesday), got up at 8, went back to bed at like 9:30 and got up at 11, or something. maybe i took an afternoon nap on tuesday, too. and on tuesday night i didn't sleep at all because i had to move all the stuff i brought from home into suitcases. plus, i was supposed to be at the airport at 5 am on wednesday, and i wasn't going to risk oversleeping that one.

here's a pic of what our overall flight schedule for the trip was supposed to be (note that all times are local):



so anyway, we (me and my classmates) got to the airport at 5 am only to learn that our flight to denver was delayed. this meant we would be missing our connecting flight from denver to san francisco. since neither of our professors were there, we weren't really sure what to do. luckily, united had it covered, although it took forever to get things straightened out. adding stress to the situation was that our group of fifteen students was split in two, with half getting to san fran one way and half another. my group was put on a 9:30 am (central) plane to san francisco that would stop in denver to let passengers off and on. this plane was delayed, too, because of strong winds or low visibility or something in san fran. what i enjoyed about these two flights was the fact that they played one episode each of the office and 30 rock in flight. both were episodes that i'd seen already, and the episodes they played on the way to denver were the same ones they played on the way to san fran. but of all the tv shows they could have played, that was about as good as it could get. what kind of surprised me was that, since the san fran flight was longer and they started playing another show after the office and 30 rock to fill the time, the show they chose was desperate housewives, and the episode they chose was the series premiere, in the first few minutes of which a woman shoots herself. i was hoping there were no kids on the plane seeing that. also, the flight to san fran allowed me maybe a little bit of sleep. i don't remember if i really slept or if i was just dozing (which is the case for much of this trip), but i think i can say i got at least 20 minutes in, and at that point i hadn't slept in about 24 hours. i also enjoyed these flights because they allow me to say that i've been to denver and san fran (and CO and CA), even though i never left the airports.

we ended up arriving in san francisco around 1:20 pm (pacific, 3:20 central), where the other group was waiting for us. by the time we switched to the international terminal, checked in with air china, and went through security again, it was almost 2:00, and our flight was supposed to leave at 2:20.

(one quick note about security - at the san fran airport, i was put in one of those full body blow tester things. i'm pretty sure i was chosen at random to do this, but it was an interesting little experience. the machine blows air on you and then analyzes the material that comes off of you to test it for any suspicious substances. i'm pretty sure i was chosen at random to be subjected to that test, and insert a joke i'm too tired to write about how i totally look like a terrorist.)

anyway, this would have been a tight rush, but we found out that our beijing flight was delayed, too! you have to realize that at 2:00 pm pacific, it was 4:00 central. we had arrived at the airport in mpls at 5:00 am central. we had already been traveling for 11 hours. the reason for our beijing delay is actually pretty interesting. apparently a volcano in eastern russia was erupting, and for that reason, we had to change our flight path, and changing our flight path meant getting approval from countries whose airspace we would now be using and approval from beijing as well. for hours we had no idea when we were leaving. air china eventually announced at 5:00 pm (7 pm central) that they would begin the boarding procedure. the wait was annoying, but it allowed me time to eat delicious, overpriced airport restaurant potstickers, a whole bunch of snacks my mom sent with me, and most importantly, the time to meet all of my classmates and talk with/kinda get to know some of them, which was fun. it was also at this point that i had the following interesting conversation with collin when he called me back after i left him a message telling him to look up this volcano business. my approximate memory of the conversation:

collin: volcano, eh?
me: yeah, isn't that crazy!?
collin: yeah, i can't find any news on it. dan says there was an earthquake in laos, though. 6.3 on the richter scale. and isn't laos the capital of south korea or something?

i then questioned collin's geography skills, since not only is laos a country, not a city, but it isn't near south korea at all, and in any event, an earthquake in either of those places would not affect our ability to get to beijing.

here is a really sloppy copy i made of my memory of our final flight plan from san fran to beijing as it was shown to us. it was interesting because we flew south over japan and south korea and then back north to beijing. and it looked like the flight was angled to avoid flying over north korea and north korean waters.



if i remember correctly, the flight from san francisco finally left at 6:20 (8:20 central) or so - the plane took a long time to fill because it was HUGE and crowded with people. getting on that plane was when i really realized that i was for real going to china. it was the last flight of the trip there, and not only were the staff of the airplane all mandarin speakers (although they knew some english), but so where many of the passengers. i didn't sit next to anyone i knew, but i was on an aisle, which was a plus. it was a long flight, but i didn't get as much done as i would have liked because i was in a zombie-like state of tiredness by then, but i couldn't sleep well because sleeping in airplane chairs sucks. i can kind of recap when i might have slept by recalling (or being unable to recall) the in-flight movies.

the first was a french movie called le papillon. i was hoping it would actually be in french, but it was dubbed over in chinese and had chinese and english subtitles. it seemed like it was on crack, but maybe that's because i wasn't paying attention and was half asleep and maybe for real asleep during parts of it. no, wait. i know i slept during part of it because we were fed at some point during the movie, and i had been for real in deep sleep right before we ate. i was way out of it when i ate, too. by this time, it was probably around 8 or 9 pacific, so 10 or 11 central.

then, i think, came rocky balboa. my memory of the situation goes like this: i see the studio intro come up and prepare to play the game of "who can name the movie first" with myself. anna and i used to play this game after watching shows on tbs. i remember seeing the beginning few minutes, realizing it was rocky balboa, and promptly deciding to go to sleep. i slept through the entire thing. then, i think came dreamgirls. blah. i slept/read/zombied through that one, too. i remember waking up after one doze and squinting, since my glasses were off, to see (since you couldn't hear unless you had earphones on) jennifer hudson mouth the phrase, "and i am telling you..." good timing, self. i watched, but didn't listen to, that song and then went back to sleep. then there was a cute chinese, i think, movie about a woman with breast cancer. it was cheesy and i really liked it. then there was happy feet. i think that's everything. we finally got to beijing on thursday at 10:30 pm beijing time, which would be 8:30 am or 9:30 am thursday in minnesota, i can't remember exactly which. we were supposed to get to beijing at 5:00 pm beijing time. by this point, we had been traveling for about 27 or 28 hours. it both does and doesn't seem like it took that long. due to all the time zone changes and lack of sleep my sense of time is way off.

i didn't have window seats on any of our flights, but the san fran-beijing one had the best stolen views - of the mountains in ca as we took off and of the lights of beijing as we landed. from what i saw, beijing looks to be pretty big/spread out. we met up with our profs w/o a hitch and got on a bus where they gave us water and snickers bars, which we all greatly appreciated. here are a few pics i took of the airport from the bus.


the above is yao ming and jackie chan showing off their visas in ads that mention/promote the '08 beijing olympics.


we got to our sweet hotel at a little after midnight, when i was very happy to do several things: 1.) wash my face, 2.) brush my teeth, 3.) change my clothes, 4.) eat sweet food (oreos), 5.) plug in my laptop and get on the internet which totally made it worth the trouble of carting it around in my backpack through four airports and going through security with it twice, and 6.) climb into bed for a couple hours of real sleep, which is what i will do as soon as i hit submit on this post.

it is now 3:51 am. it either 1:51 or 2:51 pm in minneapolis right now. you'll be able to tell which is correct by the timestamp on this entry. shift mpls time forward 13 or 14 hours and you get beijing time. we're getting up tomorrow to go to the forbidden city. if i remember, i'll post the itinerary of our trip, a map of beijing and shanghai, and maybe i'll make one of those sweet new google maps you can make. my alarm is set for 7:30. i need to go to bed. i'll close with a few pics i took of our hotel room. after posting these, i will have posted all the pics i've taken so far - a surprisingly low number.

I'm leaving for the airport in about 10 minutes

exciting! i'll update when i get there.