Now that I've started the actual program, most things are going pretty
smoothly. I don't work with any of the other Purdue students so I
have no idea what they are up to. Also, my Chinese is definitely not
good enough to conduct research with. Luckily research papers are
just about all published in English so I can still do something while
I'm in the lab. Speaking of which, I was clearly unprepared for the
amount of time I would have to be here on the first day. 8:30 to 6 is
their average day with a lunch break, but yesterday was their weekly
meeting at 7pm as well. On top of that it poured right after the
meeting, so I couldn't ride my bike back until around 9:30. All the
people here are extremely friendly, in fact, one of them is taking me
to the gym today. I get all sorts of questions about the US, so
hopefully I don't misrepresent you guys.
Other observations. The air quality in Beijing is what I would
consider to be poor at best. During the day, when the sun is out, if
you were to look out your window, the smog is so bad that nothing in
the distance is visible. When I first arrived, I just thought that it
was always really foggy here. Via my typical ineptitude, it took a
few days for it to dawn on me that the air pollution is worse than any
other place I've ever been.
More notes. Hot water in the dorms only runs for three intervals
throughout the day: 7-9am, 3-5pm, and 8pm-12am. I'll probably forget
about that at least once while I'm here. Finally, air conditioning
still does not work. Currently looking for alternative solutions.
Took the overnight train back to Beijing on Friday. When I arrived at
Tsinghua again on Saturday morning, I was told to take the shuttle bus
to the registration area. Since the driver had a bit of an accent, I
couldn't make out everything he was saying. Thus, I was petrified
that he was going to drop me off in some sort of place where the take
all the people who don't speak Chinese. Though, I guess that would
have been the international students' dorm so maybe it would have been
okay either way. Anyways, I did get to the right spot and I was met
by my exchange student partner. I also met up with some of the other
Purdue students who had arrived. Now, let me tell you about some of
the places where I had to register. I already registered at the
school on my previous trip to Tsinghua, this time I registered for my
dorm (which is a single with a bathroom, chaching!), my laundry card,
my dining card, and a bicycle. Now, at each of the places I had to
present my letter of acceptance as well as my passport. But, here
comes the good part. Even though my given name is in English, as it
appears on all legal documents, they exclusively use my Chinese name
here. In fact, they pretty much have a strict, no non-Chinese names
policy when registering. Therefore, when one of the students (who is
Indian) went to get his dining card, the man at the desk asked him if
he had a Chinese name. When the student said no and asked if he could
use his English name, the employee said what would translate roughly
to, "absolutely not." So, the Chinese students in a pinch, thought
him up a Chinese name on the spot, and that was what he used. What's
even better is the name he was given had the same surname as the one
that was given to another student so we inadvertently made them
brothers. Also, my air conditioning does not get activated until June
first. It's extremely hot here.
Finally. I've been meaning to write about this for a few days now,
but all of my posts seem to devolve into something entirely unrelated.
The 2010 Shanghai World Expo, like all the other constructions in
China is gigantic. The complex itself has several bus routes within
it (though I think only one was operational). Knowing that the event
would be polluted with other tourists like ourselves, we decided to
wake at 5:30 in order to be at the gate slightly before 8. In order
to put this in perspective, they don't even allow people to enter the
park through any of the gates (there are quite a few, but I don't
recall exactly how many) before 9. However, by 9 o'clock the sea of
people behind stretched farther than you could see. I believe Linda
captured this image in one of her photos, and I'll try to link that up
in the future. Now here's where things got a bit hairy. At 9, when
they opened the security checkpoint, all of the people at the front of
the line ran through the gates/security point and into the park.
Despite the wishes of the police officers, they literally ran into
Expo. Being in public in China still catches me a little off guard
sometimes because there's really no such thing as personal space. In
the States, when I'm walking around people tend to keep their distance
with a crowded bus or train being a possible exception. Heck, I don't
want to touch anybody if I can help it. On this side of the Pacific,
however, no one cares. As a matter of fact, if you're in a busy place
and don't do a little pushing and shoving yourself, you'll people will
walk right over you, or you'll never make it on the subway. That last
one's from experience, by the way. In the end this is all somewhat
understandable. I suppose if there were four times as many people in
the U.S., I might be inclined to do the same thing.
But more about the Expo. Since we were at the front of the line we
made it to the Chinese pavilion with ease. For those of you who may
not have known, the Chinese pavilion is the place to be at the expo,
and for good reason. More on that later. The Chinese pavilion is far
and away the largest of all countries present. Not that there aren't
other big ones, but China's size is unequaled at the Expo. So after
waiting in line at the Expo gate, we quickly got in line for the
Chinese pavilion, once we were let in, we rode the escalator/moving
walkway up to what we thought was going to be the inside of the
building. What we really did was get in line to ride the elevator up
to the third floor. Once we finally made it into the fairly artistic
reception area, we opted out of the line to watch the introductory
movie. This was all so we could stand in the other line to see some
original Chinese historical artifacts. After that, we seemed to move
through the floors at our own pace. If you couldn't tell, going to
the World Expo is pretty much an exercise in patience. Now, there are
some cool things to see, but overall, I felt like it just kind of sets
you up for disappointment. After waiting in line for a few hours, in
your mind your expectations start to climb no matter what you tell
yourself. So, by the time you walk into a country's exhibit, even if
it would normally be considered an engaging showcase, you can't help
but think, "Gee, I waited two hours just for this?" As I alluded to
before, the Chinese pavilion may have been one of the few that
deserved a long wait. Unfortunately I didn't make it to some of the
other bigger countries, so I'm really just assuming that since the
Chinese one was the biggest it was naturally the best. That's how
things work, right? Now, I'm not hating on the Expo, I thought it was
pretty entertaining that most of the world had a presence there. I
think we actually took advantage of that by going to visit a lot of
small countries where we didn't have to wait to get in. Albeit some
of those countries I probably couldn't find on a map. I will say that
not all hope is lost though, in fact, it rained the next day, and I
heard that the lines were only around 20 minutes for some of the
bigger countries. So, at the end of the day, if you can take one
thing away from my experience, it should be this: go visit the Expo
because it's a good experience, but only when it's raining.
At the end of my little day trip to Tsinghua, Linda and I took the
overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai. It was just a trip getting
to the train station since we decided to take the subway, so we had to
figure that whole deal as well. Anyways, we made it to the train
station and we made it Shanghai where we were fetched by her uncle.
Riding on a train overnight was kind of cool if not hard to sleep. As
always, we got weird looks when we spoke English. Shanghai is another
enormous city. I actually like it, perhaps more than Beijing, the
only major difficulty is that everyone here speaks Shanghainese. It's
hard enough for me to understand Mandarin, so I can barely catch a few
words when the locals speak. Luckily, most of them will speak
Mandarin if you ask.
Staying with people is always a bit taxing for both sides. Staying
with relatives of your girlfriends can also be awkward as well as
taxing. Staying with relatives of your girlfriends who don't speak
English can be awkward, taxing, and plain difficult. That being said,
their family is just like any other, and after a day, I got to be
pretty comfortable around most of them. The one thing that still
catches me a little off guard is how much beer they give me drink at
meals. Apparently Linda's uncle likes to drink beer (ok, who
doesn't?). However, before I came, characteristically well
intentioned Linda told them that I like to drink stouts, which is true
because I do enjoy a good stout every once in a while. What I didn't
know was that the stouts here have twice as much alcohol as the more
common lagers. Since Linda's uncle doesn't normally have anyone to
drink with, when I came, he pretty much went to town. He is clearly a
champion drinker because he drinks about three times as fast as I do.
So every dinner is at least three stouts, and by the end, let's just
say chopsticks get a little difficult to use. Not only that, but it
also gets harder and harder for me to make coherent Chinese sentences.
Oh well, life could be worse, I suppose.
So last Monday, my family left me to finally fend for myself in China.
Linda thought it was strange that they didn't seem all too worried
about leaving me in a foreign country for a few weeks when I barely
speak the language and am pretty helpless by myself. I figured it was
better than them clinging to me until the last second, and I suppose I
have to learn to be a big boy sometime. I guess I get my
nonchalantness from my parents, and I'm not sure whether that's a good
thing or not. After my folks and sis hopped a taxi to the airport,
Linda and I also took a taxi to Tsinghua University where I was picked
up by my exchange student partner. I'm still a bit astonished that we
made to the right place via my broken Chinese and poor sense of
direction. After all, he did tell me to meet him at the "east gate"
of campus, so imagine my surprise when the taxi driver told me there
where two different east gates. I just did the kind of "uhh...." -_-
face. Well, in the end all turned out ok, and Changqing along with
another exchange student in the program met me at the "real" east
gate. The first thing that we did was go to meet the professor who's
lab I would be working in for the first part of the summer. I wasn't
surprised that he spoke English well, but the encounter was still
closer to the awkward side of conversation than I would have liked. I
think I expected more of a structured plan for what I would be doing
this summer rather than a informal interview session. Looking back, I
don't know why I didn't see this coming, after all we had never spoken
nor did he know anything about me. At the end of the day, I'm not too
worried about it, but I just have one small, nagging reservation which
basically boils down to the notion that I don't want to embarrass my
self. To be blunt, I am a little nervous about presenting myself as a
representative from Purdue at this premier institution since I don't
really speak the language, this is my first formal research
experience, and I don't think I'm really qualified to be here. I
mean, I'm not really worried about it, but I'm a little worried about
it. You know what I mean? You know what I mean.
Apart from that, Tsinghua has a beautiful campus. The food in the
cafeteria is cheap and awesome. I just hope I can find a gym
somewhere.
Beijing is massive. At the risk of sounding like some lowbrow country
pleb who's largest metropolitan experience is West Lafeyette, IN, I
must confess that I am utterly overwhelmed by the sheer size of
Beijing. I haven't looked up the "technical specs" on Beijing (i.e.
area, population, etc), but I can say that I have never been in a city
this large, or at least one that feels this large. I do know that the
layout of the roads is roughly the following: there are six concentric
rings that make up the major infrastructure of the city with many
connecting streets. After hours of wading through literally millions
of cars, people, bicycles, buses, mopeds, you name it, I noticed that
the majority of the streets are all four lanes in each direction.
Crossing the street is reminiscent of Frogger, and as such, it doesn't
really matter where you cross since it seems people just do whatever
they please and it's up to you to not die in the aftermath. No one
here seems to subscribe to the school of defensive driving. In fact,
if you're not an offensive, downright dangerous, driver, you'll never
make it out of the parking lot. Street signs, lanes, and lights are
more of guidelines than anything else, and as long as no one gets
hurt, no one seems to mind what you do.
Driving aside, there are a few interesting places that I have had a
chance to visit. Everyone's heard of famous Chinese landmarks such as
Tiananmen, the Forbidden Palace, the Great Wall, and as you can
probably guess, no description or picture could ever do these places
justice. As I was walking through the Forbidden Palace, I couldn't
help but think about what it must have been like to live here as the
emperor or any of his subjects. Life in total seclusion from the rest
of the world along with centuries of history and customs surrounding
you is just unfathomable to me. Today, it would be doubly strange
because as you look around the palace, the walls no longer block out
the rest of the world from entering. Above the palace looms the
characteristic Beijing skyline where skyscrapers can be seen in every
direction. So even as one stands in the centuries old forbidden
palace, constant reminders of the ever advancing Chinese society are
present. Speaking of which, all of the buildings in downtown Beijing
are enormous. Cities like New York and Chicago hardly compare to the
megastructures that seem to go on forever. An hour and a half of
driving later (albeit through horrendous traffic) there seemed to be
no end to the rows of skyscrapers that lined the streets. I know a
lot of this may sound pretty superficial, but I'll try to get some
pictures up later that may or may not be worth several thousand words.
First and foremost, I apologize for being gone for not publishing any
content over the past week. Even though I was relatively gung-ho
about regularly posting with updates from my trip, a certain country's
internet censorship had other plans. However, hopefully all has been
squared away by now, and the content should be flowing. It may still
be difficult to upload photos for the time being, though; however,
I'll eventually drop a link to my Picassa account.
Housekeeping aside, I'll give you a guys an abbreviated version on the
very first part of this excursion: the journey. Originally, when I
had booked his flight, I thought that I had been undeservingly lucky
with my flight. I was to leave on May 18 out of Chicago, and a
certain airline was to start offering direct flights from Chicago to
Beijing starting April 26. I have never had anything even close to a
direct flight to Asia before, and as those of you who have flown at
any length before understand, a direct flight is worth its weight in
gold (What? Well you know what I mean.). Unfortunately, all was
indeed too good to be true. Apparently, China had not granted
permission for this airline to land in Beijing, thus I was to be
rerouted first to New York, then to Frankfurt, then to somewhere else
in some distant land, etc, before landing in my destination. Since I
had no desire to spend the rest of my days on an airplane (in coach,
no less) with a little wheeling and dealing, as well as some generous
help from my father, I got an itinerary starting in Chicago, to LA, to
Tokyo, and finally to Beijing. Since my original airline had not
received the grace of Chinese authorities to land in China yet, my
final leg was flown on another partner airline from Japan. The one
thing that I immediately noticed which distinguished these two flights
was how much more pleasant the Asian leg was. Even after some
consideration, the reason remains nebulous to me, but suffice it to
say that I would fly an Asian airline over a domestic one any day.
The flight attendants were downright friendly in Asia, which I find
tends to be the exception rather than the rule stateside. It also
didn't hurt that they are much cuter in Asia (and thinner). I almost
took some pictures, solely for the purpose of thorough documentation
mind you, but I figured that might have been in bad taste.
Woot, first post. I'm about to leave in a few hours. I'll try to update this as I go. I promise things will get more interesting once I get to China. Stay tuned.
