Not in China anymore

May or may not of noticed but I have left China.

Xi'An

The next large trip I took was to Xi'An. We left on the May Day holiday and took a night train from Nanjing to Xi'An. After arriving in Xi'An we checked into our 4 star hotel, which we paid $20 a night. Then we headed to downtown Xi'An where we saw an old Bell Tower and Drum Tower. At the Drum Tower we also were able to see drum performance. After visiting the two towers we went to the Muslim district for dinner. Xi'An is interesting because it has a very large Muslim population. West and northwest China has a large Muslim population. Being the last large city before reaching these minority areas many minorities travel to Xi'An.

The next day in Xi'An we went to see the Terracotta Army. The Terracotta Army is a set of life size statues located in the first emperor's tomb from about 200 B.C.. There are over 8,000 of these statues, with no two of them being the same. This was very cool to see and one of the sites I had most anticipated before coming to China.

After the Terracotta Warriors John and I went to see a Buddhist Temple. This temple is probably the best one I have seen because it was less commercial. Several monks obviously lived there as I saw them doing laundry and other household chores.

After seeing the temple we went to dinner and prepared to travel to Luoyang.

Hainan

After Beijing several of us went to an island called Hainan. Hainan is a large island located south of mainland China. We arrived during the night and found the weather to be very hot and humid. For our first night we went to eat fresh seafood along the beach. We had may oysters and fish. With the fish we were able to select our fish from a tank which was then placed in a plastic bag a beat to death against the sidewalk. That was an interesting experience to see. After dinner we went to the beach where we purchased fireworks and launched them over the ocean. It was a very cool experience.

We spent the next couple of days on the beach where I and the other white kids in our group received horrible sunburns and turned into "lobsters". It was interesting to experience south China. The people on this island seem very different from their mainland counterparts. The people here have darker complexion and seem to stay up very late. It is not uncommon to see a lot of people eating dinner well after midnight.

After a couple of days of laying on the beach we returned to Nanjing.

Post for Benjamin

I've decided to update my live journal, mostly for Benjamin's benefit. Since it has been two years I do not remember as many details but I will do my best to summerize the rest of my trip.

Beijing

I guess it's about time I give another update. What follows are a couple separate posts on my most recent travels. First is Beijing.

In late April we went to Beijing for a class field trip. We left on the train at about 10 pm and arrived in Beijing at about 9am. We first went to Tiananmen square which a large open space directly in front of the Forbidden City. At Tiananmen square is also Mao Zedong's Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is a large square building. It's not particularly ornate and it was a more modern in architecture. When you first enter there is a large statue of Mao and then some tables for placing flowers. We then went around the statue to another room where Mao's body was located. Mao was a large sealed glass case with his head sticking out of the coffin and a "hammer and sickle" flag draped over his body. After the room with Mao's body we went to a third small room in the back of the Mausoleum where they had a gift shop. China has apparently whole hearted accepted capitalism and now even the Mausoleum of the founding father is not to sacred to set up shops.

After seeing Mao we headed to the Forbidden City, which was the massive palace for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1407 - 1911). Folklore says the Forbidden City has 9999 rooms because only "heaven" has 10,000. The palace very interesting with many large traditional Chinese buildings most of which were painted red and had gold roofs. I was slightly disappointed in the fact we were not allowed to go into any of the buildings. Instead we had to stand at the front door and look jostle for position to look inside. Another point of interest was the Starbucks located in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was very interesting but wasn't quite as spectacular as I had built it up in my own mind. The buildings seemed all the same and were of the same style I had seen many times before and since we couldn't go inside it became very repetitive.

The next day we went to see the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall was created in 220 B.C. then later in the Ming dynasty it was renovated. The renovated part is the part we see now. The original wall was made of dirt or rocks or stone or whatever wa s available where as the new part is made of most the large stone we see today. The Wall is about 30 feet tall and 15 feet wide at the top with towers every couple hundred yards. The We took a bus to about an hour north of Beijing. But to get to the wall we first had to climb 1000 steps us the side of a mountain/hill. The Wall Once on the wall we had a wonderful view. The Great wall appears to have been built from one mountain top to the next. I assume so that fires at the warning towers could be seen from greater distances. This design led to dramatic views of the Wall climbing up and down the mountain sides. Also surprising to me was how many branches the Wall had. We normally think of the Great Wall as being one continuous wall where in reality it's several separate walls that were joined together. Because of this, at parts the Wall split into 2 or 3 branches. While at the Wall me and the guys decided to climb out the window and go see a part of the Wall that branched off and had not been restored. That was the best part because we new we were seeing the original wall and not some recreation. This section of the wall was in surprisingly good condition. At some parts the wall had deteriorated so that only the outer skin and not the center which had been mad of dirt remained. But all along the section we traveled the Wall was continuous and never completely disintegrated. After reaching the first tower on the original wall section we took a break and some pictures before heading back.

After the Great Wall we saw "Temple of Heaven" which was where the Emperor went every year to pray to Heaven. This temple was basically like every other temple we have been to with traditional style buildings. One thing that set this one apart from other was the large round temple. Most temple are square but because the circle is associated with heaven they decided to make this temple round. Another point of interest was the large empty platform that looks as though it was made of marble. The emperor used stand at the center of this platform and it is here he would talk to heaven.

While in Beijing we also saw a Daoist temple and the "Dali Llama Temple" but these temples were basically the same as any other r temple in China.

Also while in Beijing we had roast Beijing Duck which is extremely famous in China. With Beijing duck they give you a tortilla looking thing. Then you place the duck skin in the tortilla with a little duck sauce and onions and eat up. The interesting thing is they don't give you much meat they only give you the skin and a little meat that hangs off the skin. With your duck they also give you the head of the duck because the brain and meat in the head are supposed to be good. But a couple of guys in our group convinced John that real men in China eat the head whole. And wanting to impress us John actually ate one and a half heads whole including the bones and the beak. I was a little surprised our teacher didn't say anything. Afterwards John seemed very proud of himself.

That pretty much covers Beijing.

That's all for now. I'll right about Hainan soon.

~Aaron Yates

The Last Month

All right I would first like to apologize for not posting in so long. What follows is a brief overview of what I have done the last month. Hopefully after this post I will get back into the habit of consistently posting.

After my last post I went to Suzhou and then on to Shanghai. We arrived in Suzhou Thursday afternoon. Suzhou is a smaller city (by Chinese standards) that is famous for it's many gardens. When we first arrived to Suzhou we went to Tiger Hill, which is a beautiful garden with many winding paths, traditional buildings and creeks. The highlight of Tiger Hill is a 1000 year old pagoda made out of bricks that due to age has begun to lean, somewhat like the leaning tower of Pisa I assume. After Tiger Hill we went back to our hotel where I saw my first western toilet since arriving in China. The next day we went to see another garden which basically seemed like the first. While each garden is definitely different one still gets the feeling once they have seen one you have seen them all. After this garden we got on the train and headed to Shanghai.

After arriving in Shanghai we went to see the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai which is the 3rd tallest building in the world. From the observation deck we had a good view of the of Shanghai. One thing odd about Jinmao Tower was the small shrine to Yao Ming the basketball player on the observation deck. Yao Ming is apparently from Shanghai and Shanghai is obviously very proud of that fact. After Jinmao tower we took a ferry across the river (Yangtze or Chang Jiang) back to our hotel. On Saturday we went to the old part of town which has basically turned into several city blocks of souvenir shops. Some people bought souvenirs but being the cheap son of an accountant I didn't buy anything. After shopping we went to see the Shanghai museum which is basically an art museum with all of the traditional arts of China such as jade, bronze, calligraphy, landscape painting, porcelain, silk and furniture. It was somewhat interesting. The one thing that stood out was the jade body suit. During the Han dynasty (approx. 200B.C - 220 A.D.) the extremely wealthy where placed in jade body suits after their death to keep their spirits from floating away. After the museum we headed back home and then later that night headed to the bars. Sunday was our free day. I basically spent the whole day walking around people's square getting lunch and then going to the river to look at the water front. The water front was somewhat interesting. I was amazed by the number of barges on the river. There were at least 10 barges in sight at all times. Even in St. Louis you can usually only see one or two barges on the river at any one time. The waterfront in Shanghai also has 5 or 6 western style buildings left over from the 1800's when the western world was looking to force trade upon the Chinese. Sunday afternoon we left Shanghai to return to Nanjing. On our way back I surprised by the number of large cities. It seemed like every few miles we came upon a large city with skyscrapers. I guess in a country of 1.4 billion people you can expect to see a lot of big cities.

Since going to Shanghai not a whole lot has happened. The week after Shanghai we went to the Nanjing Museum which was almost exactly the same as the Shanghai museum.

We also went to Sun Yatsen's presidential office/garden/presidential palace. The presidential palace was the former throne of the Taiping rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion was a rebellion that occurred in the mid 1800's. It was started by some peasants the leader of which claimed to be the brother of Jesus and he also claimed to talk to God. The rebellion was eventually overthrown. This palace later became the office of Sun Yatsen. We were able to see the old thrown which more ornate than I expected considering the length of the Rebellion and the limited time the rebellion had any power. It also had a section on the history from the Taiping rebellion on to the overthrow of the Guomindang. The Guomindang was the Nationalist party the Communist overthrew to gain power.

I also went to see another pagoda on the western part of town. The pagoda wasn't anything great but it offered a good view of the western part of town, especially where the Chang Jiang river and city wall run along side eachother.

Right now I'm working on a couple of trips. Next week we spend half the week in Beijing. Victor, Peng, Liz, Kerry, Amanda and I plan on spending the second half of the week on the tropical island of Hainan sunbatheing. Then the week after that is May Day holiday, a one week holiday here in China. John and I are trying to get train tickets to go see Xian, home of the terracotta warriors and then to Luoyang which has Shaolin temple, home of famous marshal arts and Longmen caves, a Buddhist temple built in a cave with huge statues of differant Buddhas. I'm also trying to schedule a trip down the Chang Jiang River through the three gorges in my extra week after school ends.

I guess those are all of the sights I've been to. As far as school goes, school has been pretty easy with very little homework. In history class we had our first quiz. I got a 70% on it which sounds bad but it was the highest grade in the class so I'm not to concerned about it. It looks like I'm going to have a couple 10 page papers due at the end of the semester and couple of tests, but that's about it. This may be the easiest semester I've had which is quite differant from what I expected.

I also may have found a summer job for me and Amanda. Kerry says she can get us a job in New Jersey working at a blind camp. It would pay $1800 and I would be able to live and eat at the camp so my expenses would be relatively low assuming we didn't take to many trips to New York City.

~ Aaron Yates

People in My Group

Here is a brief description of the people in my group.

Blake- Blake goes to school at The College of New Jersey. He is a very talkative individual that likes to drink and have fun. At first I was on his "shit list" for making him wait at the airport when I arrived a day late but now we get along pretty well.

Kerry- Kerry is a member of tri Sigma at The College of New Jersey. She currently has a boyfriend but that hasn't kept her from making out with an older individual. But other than her indescrtion after drinking she's a lot of fun to hang out with.

John- John also goes to The College of New Jersey. John is an individual that thinks he knows everything but in reality has only slightly above average intelligence. He gets on everybody's nerves and everybody in the group spends a lot of energy trying to avoid him.

Liz= Liz is, or atleast was, a very quiete girl from Massachusetts. She apparantly really likes piercings and tatoos. She told us she has 10 tattoos and about 13 piercings including not one but two in her mouth. But she is a very nice girl and very easy to talk to. If we were at school she is probably the one I would be most likely to become friends.

Peng- Peng is the son of Chinese immigrants and is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Mandarin is the official language of China based off of the Beijing dialect. Cantonese is a Chinese language very popular in southern China, especially Hong Kong. Peng seems like a cool guy, although I haven't hung out with him as much.

Victor- First off Victor is my roomate. He is also the son of Chinese immigrants but he seems to have less of an interest in China than anybody else in the group. I think he would prefer to be in the US but his parents are working in Nanjing so he joined our program. Victor's parents are also very wealthy and give him everything. Victor and I don't get along great but we get along well enough not to bother each other.

Amanda- Amanda is half Chinese and currently spending her second semester here. She can get annoying if you hang out with her too long but in short spurts she is fine. She has a tendecy to hang on other people's arms which has become annoying to some. Overall, I would say we get along alright.

Sean- Sean is a cool guy. He is very into Judo and Sanda. He trains for his martial arts 4 or 5 times a week and lifts weights almost everyday. I think he competes for the US national team, but I'm not sure. Sean and I get along pretty well though I don't see him a whole lot because he is a very busy individual.
Looking at the group as a whole I would say I get along fine with almost everybody. John is the only one I have any real problems with. I would say right now I am closes to Sean, Blake, Liz and Kerry.

Week in Review

First I want to appolagize for not posting pictures like I said I would. I'm having difficulty with the computers in the computer lab. They aren't exactly newest computers in the world.

This has been a pretty quite week. About the only thing exciting from class was the discussion on polotics in my culture class. I basically learned the Communist Party initialy helped farmers by redistruting land and that Deng Xiaoping is the man. I also learned that the Communist Party of China has democratic ideals. The government works in the best interest of the people and listens to the people. I'm not sure how true that is but it's what the government believes.

On Wednesday we took a field trip to see a festival. We were guests of the festival and recieved front row seats. It was interesting for the first five minutes but then became very repetative. The first group was a group of drummers/dancers they were somewhat entertaining. Then the next ten groups were dancers of some sort. One thing interesting was the differance in age of the performers compared to the US. In the US it is usually the young that perform for crowds. Here it is the old people that put on performances.

One Friday and Saturday night we went back to Scarlet, the local club. It was a lot fun again though again several people got sick from drinking too much.

On Saturday morning we went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. For those who don't know, the Nanjing Massacre occured in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China. Nanjing was the capitol at the time so after conquering Nanjing the Japanese raped and pillaged the Nanjing area. It is estimated that the Japanese killed 300,000 people including 200,000 citizens in the 6 weeks of the massacre and over 20,000 incidents of rape were recorded. The Museum is located at a mass grave sight. Part of the museum includes a cross section of the mass grave where there are human bones stacked four feet deep. The grave measured maybe 50 yards by 50 yards. The people of Nanjing are still very bitter about the massacre, in part because the Japanese government largly denies it ever happened.

That's basically all I've been up to this week. Talk to you all later.

~Aaron Yates

P.S. - Happy birthday grandma.

The Weekend

Friday night Blake, Sean, Liz, Kerry, Victor and I went to a local bar/club named Scarlet. Scarlet was a much nicer club than the one we went to last weekend. It was larger, had a better atmosphere and had better music than Castle. We had a lot of fun dancing and hanging out there. We also managed to avoid the problems of the previous week.

On Saturday most of the group paid for their drinking Friday night. We got up at 8:30am to go see Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum and the tomb of the first Ming Emperor. Kerry and Liz both ended up puking at least once during the morning and the other guys moved very slowly. At Scarlet we received free drinks because we are foreigners and everybody else in the group seemed to think if the drinks are free you have to keep drinking. Other than certain members of the group being sick the tombs were very cool.

In China most major tombs have a similar design. First is a gate that marks the entrance to the tomb area. This is followed by a long path that is allows the individual to think about and honor their ancestor. Then you usually come up to a building that explains the history or life of the ancestor. This is followed by another path and then finally the actual tomb. Sun Yat-Sen's tomb had traditional architecture except the roof was blue, representing the sky. In China red or yellow are much more common for the roofs and tombs.

The Ming tomb was designed basically the same way except the where the Emperor had been buried was in the middle of a giant hill. They have not yet opened up his tomb because they are afraid if they did many artifacts inside could be ruined. They apparently are waiting for technology to develop to allow them to enter without causing damage.

On Sunday, Blake, Kerry, Roy and I got up early to go climb the Mt. Zijin. It took us a little over an hour to reach the top. Near the top of the mountain was a giant Buddha probably over 20 feet tall. We saw some people bow to the Buddha and others leave food as a sacrifice. After reaching the top we had a great view of Nanjing because the mountain lies more or less inside the city .

After returning home I took a nap then went out and bought a DVD player so I could watch my movies both now and when I return home. It only cost about $30 which isn't to bad. I'm also using it for class because my literature class is going to assign movies to watch for homework.

That's all I have for now I'll try to post some actual pictures later today.

~Aaron

The Start of Classes

I have now had all of my classes at least once. Chinese language still looks like it will be extremely easy. My literature professor seems very interesting. She is very into classroom discussions instead of lectures which I guess is good. She also asks a lot of abstract questions which definitely are not my forte, but I'll survive. History class was pretty boring. The professor wasn't always clear as to what time period we were discussing. The class also focuses on modern history too much for my taste. Chinese culture looks like it could be interesting except it is three hours long and I tend to get restless after about an hour.

On Monday, me, Victor and Peng went to a more upscale Cantonese restaurant in the west part of town. I tried some Dim Sum which I had heard was very good but I was disappointed in it. The outside is covered in a gooey rice thing. However, the meat on the inside was very good. They also had a Cantonese version of bao zi with meat wrapped in a fluffy bread made out of rice. It was even better than the bao zi I've had near campus. After dinner we got in a cab and headed back to campus.

Last night I was invited to go to dinner with one of our language partners. It was a very good experience because I got to see how a typical Chinese citizen lives. My friend, Huang, lives in the basement of the building my classes are in. As far as I could tell they lived in one room about 2/3 the size of my dorm room. They had a separate public kitchen down the hall and used the public restroom upstairs. The food was good I had sated fish some beef and some chicken. As I was eating my host kept piling food into my bowl. I guess in China the host wants to make sure the guest has plenty to eat. They also apparently drink their beverages from a bowl. I however drank my beer straight from the bottle which they said was also fine. I'm very glad I was invited to this meal. I feel I learned a lot from the experience.