tsingtao

you are witnessing the symptoms of blog withdrawal, and blog binge.

but as long as i am sitting at the computer, i might as well continue. here begins the tale of an epic warrick-journey to [what we thought to be!] my mother's ancestral home: the port city of qingdao 青岛, in shandong 山东 province. for all of you beer drinkers out there, the germans occupied qingdao for a period beginning in the 1890s and founded the brewery there. their romanization is "tsingtao," hence the title :)

on friday morning, after discussing who would bring toothpaste and debating where to hide dad's laptop for the weekend, the three of us caught a cab to beijing south train station. we successfully passed through security with no less than three genuine swiss army knives (shout out and many thanks to the kaech family), then had a picnic lunch with sandwiches and baked goods from tous les jours (i think of geena and the identical chinese 'paris baguette' bakery in cerritos). we then boarded our super-modern bullet train for the 6 hour ride to the coast. as is his habit, dad spouted "shandong fun facts" all the way there. tallest people in china, third richest province, large producer of wheat and wine, tsingtao beer accounted for 98% of china's exports in the 1960s-70s....


when we arrived in qingdao at 7 pm, mom's cousin yi huang, and his brother-in-law, shui li, met us at the train station. of course, my reservation for a family suite at qingdao's hostelling international proved a faux pas... sometime in our six hours on the train, yi huang had cancelled our reservation and re-booked us at the 4 star 红日酒店 (Red Day Inn) in the scenic badaguan hills area. mom had met yi huang for the first time just two weeks before, while he was on a business trip in california. however, he has been in touch with my aunt and other family members for a while. we had never met shui li, or "jiefu" (his kinship title, literally sister-husband), because he has never been to america. from the start, they were both incredibly enthusiastic, humorous, and gracious hosts. we immediately felt so lucky to have them.

we had a sort of welcoming banquet that night at the hotel. dad received a crash course in chinese toasting customs. of course, we imbibed in tsingtao beer. to quote yi huang's relatively well-spoken english: "i am host. you are guest. i am master!!! when i say we drink, you drink! when i finish drink, you must drink more!" luckily, yi huang didn't actually hold daddy to it. this could be because he and jiefu were appeased by the speed at which i 干杯 (literally "dry the glass"). thank you alpha phi?

never mind all the toasting, these boys were down to business. the next morning, we met at 8:30 to make our visit to yi huang's 84 year old mother... my mom's aunt. the purpose of our visit was to pay respects, and learn more about our own family (i think most people would be shocked regarding how little we actually know). over tea and moon cakes (moon festival is tomorrow!), we learned that my grandmother and her siblings were actually all born in yantai 烟台, which is also in shandong province. we also got what seemed to be a more accurate timeline of my grandma's life before coming to america. in the end, all the info is still quite blurry, but we were most happy connect with some of our remaining family members here, and welcome a relationship with my generation... yi huang and jiefu's daughters, who are 20 and 27, studying and working in australia. another blessing was to see my great aunt growing old comfortably, thanks to yi huang and jiefu's success supporting their family. because my grandma left around 1955, she was absent for periods of extreme turmoil here. disparity and misunderstandings may have strained our family relationships before, but it seems as if it won't have to be that way in the future.



after visiting, we hopped back in the car with jiefu and yi huang to begin our comprehensive tour of the beautiful port city. this included: the german governor's mansion, the catholic church, the lutheran church and famous old clock, the beach, a seaside buffet, xinhaoshan park and pagoda with scenic views of the city and ocean, the badaguan boardwalk, and the olympic sailing complex. from a few of the pictures, i'm sure you will deduce why qingdao is nicknamed "the switzerland of the east." it's a surprisingly nice combination of european and chinese architecture. plus, coming from beijing, it is stunningly clean, charming, and relaxed.





after dinner with yi huang's mother, we were driven home and promptly fell into bed. i will fast forward through sunday because this is too long and i am too tired! of course, the best part was a visit to the tsingtao beer factory and museum. surprisingly, the original factory (1903) and giant modern factory continue to share the same site! father and daughter could have spent much more quality time there together, but we will save that for our next visit.



last but not least, a chuckle-worthy photo of a chinese bride chasing daddy around. perhaps due to the nice weather, and also to the approaching autumn festival, wedding couples were out in full force taking their photos. we [seriously] came upon at least 100 couples throughout the weekend, posing by churches, beaches, parks, what have you. sorry girls! this one already has a chinese wife.

the warricks go to china

this post goes out to anyone who has questioned my blogging habits while abroad. many of you have asked why i consistently write... are you bored in china? aren't you too tired? shouldn't you be studying? do you have friends?

the answer to all of the above is: no matter how busy i am, writing maintains high-priority. i believe my experiences here are meaningless if i don't take the time to reflect on them, and write them somewhere for when my memory fails me.

of course, all those "beliefs" were trashed the minute my long-awaited visitors arrived. two fridays ago, the 10th, i met andrew at the airport, spent the afternoon with him in chaoyang, and took him out to meet my classmates in sanlitun. saturday morning, i participated in a hutong tour with my alliance classmates, then jetted back to the airport to pick up mommy and daddy! we had a simple dinner in wudaokou and got them settled at their hotel. the rest... is chaos

HIGHLIGHTS

* playing tour guide with mom and dad for their first day in beijing. andrew also tagged along! i decided to hit three essential locations (which are conveniently proximate to each other): tiananmen square, the gate of heavenly peace (where mao declared the foundation of the PRC in 1949), and the forbidden city (home of ming and qing emperors). hopefully my tour participants learned more than just how exhausting it is to get around this mammoth city!



* afternoon tea at the peninsula in wangfujing. not nearly as glamourous as the hong kong version, but certainly enjoyable and necessary relaxation for mom and dad after their visit to the temple of heaven in the beating beijing sun. the wangfujing bookstore also proved highly entertaining, mom and i were absorbed with a chinese zodiac book ("the winter-born sheep will have a difficult life, because of the lack of grass to eat in the cold months and the propensity of humans to kill and eat the sheep"). dad picked up a trotsky biography...

* taking mom and dad to restaurants that seem so sketchy to them, but to me, have to come to represent delicious and cheap fare. nevermind the obnoxious fluorescent lights, screeching waitresses, or guys at the next table with their shirts off, taking shots of baijiu and spitting fish bones on the floor. i also brought them to experience the madness that is the BLCU cafeteria at mealtime. no wonder they have begun to frequent western chains such as kfc, mcdonalds, and pizza hut.

* i didn't get to participate in this one, but dad mom and andrew went to the military museum! of course... dad said it was awesome, mom said they were there FOREVER, and andrew said "your dad is a nerd." ok, maybe not in so few words. but that was the gist. hahaaa

* taking andrew out with my alliance classmates. apparently we are a rowdy bunch. also, nomm'ing korean BBQ for the first time at a well-known place down the street from my school. just like fudan, wudaokou's universities are chock-full of students from korea and japan. andrew is a friend to koreans all over the world, so obviously it went well.

so that's last week! pictures will be added later, if i can hijack a few from dad's computer (haven't been able to juggle tour guide AND photographer). the above are from andrew's nikon. needless to say, i was also keeping my routine of 3 hours of chinese, 3 hours of chinese film/economics/sociology a day, plus the according homework. this week's english classes debated mao's political and social legacy, discussed the economy that deng xiaoping had to work with when he came to power in 1978, and introduced us to the ideal socialist man through propaganda films of the 1960s. obviously, all music to this china-geek's ears.

so even if i have stretched myself in a few too many directions, it has been highly rewarding. andrew was safely off to HK on friday, and mom + dad and i made our pilgrimage to my ancestral province, shandong 山东, this weekend (next post!) i am so happy to have mom and dad staying in wudaokou, just across the street from me. they are really getting the experience. perhaps i will post a concluding interview with them at the end of the week ;) i know they have lots to share!

friends and family

hello hellooo. i am exhausted, but writing this evening because a whirlwind of activity is approaching, and i know i won't be touching my computer until at least monday! in the next 48 hours, it appears that america is coming to me :) andrew pazdon arrives at peking international airport from vietnam at 3 pm, friday. after morning class, i'll go meet him there, we'll ditch his stuff at his hotel, and get started on conquering beijing! he'll be here till tuesday (see www.yankeesojourn.com ... aren't we just a bunch of little bloggers?) then, 4 pm saturday, MAMIE AND DAVE WARRICK arrive at the very same airport and come to stay with me in wudaokou for the next 12 days! ahhhh i am far too excited. winter clothes, chocolate, tide to-go, and pepto-bismol will also be in tow. score.

some tentative plans with andrew include:

1. eating. what else would we do.
2. taking him to get a qipao (traditional chinese dress) tailored for someone special at home!
3. meeting up with friends from my program at the bars in sanlitun 'expat town'
4. hearing about vietnam and being really jealous

with mommy and daddy:

1. showing them around wudaokou's universities, restaurants, shopping centers, and parks, which together form the world's sweetest student ghetto
2. walmart
3. a little orientation into the city (tiananmen, forbidden city, etc) on sunday, before i must return to classroom confines on monday. pressure is on for tour-guide grace :(
4. high tea at the peninsula because it's mommy's bday and i'm a princess muahaha. sorry dad.
5. the capital museum and military museum, among beijing's other obvious tourist attractions
6. a weekend trip to qingdao (shandong province) to visit relatives we have never met and see an ancestral home we have never seen!
7. visiting an orphanage for mentally disabled children that we are connected to through a friend at home
8. meeting various friends of mommy's, because obviously she has guanxi 关系 even in beijing :)

ah yes, clearly my mind is set on the week ahead. as far as the week past, it's quite a blur. adding our english-taught major classes into the afternoons (understanding china through film, contemporary china's sociology, china's economy since 1970) + gym routine/pick up soccer with BLCU students + coincidentally hanging out with a high school friend that discovered i was in beijing + going out in wudaokou (let's classify that constructively under group bonding) + tons of chinese homework = no time to breathe! i would love to write more but i have a test tomorrow and i'm falling asleep on the keyboard. i will try to detail my courses, professors, and some of wudaokou's drink deals in the next edition ;)

beijing week #1

ah, 11:48 on a sunday morning. woke up at 10 (admittedly a little dazed), skyped with the fam back at the ranch (glorious!), lazily wrote out plans for the rest of the week, and now homework and errands loom. what to do? blog.

the main points of this week were 1) getting into the swing of our chinese classes, 2) settling in at BLCU and getting to know wudaokou better, 3) planning for my mummy and daddy's imminent visit!!!

chinese classes: ouch. back to 3 hours of intense instruction a week. but in this case, i am a lucky one. over the summer, i was baptized in the fire of the alliance teaching style, so i more or less know what to expect. my new classmates in 中文 301 at BLCU seem to be sharing my reaction from those first few weeks... feeling completely lost, like expectations are sky-high, and wanting to cry. two students actually dropped down to 201 so now our class is just 4 people (me, namgyel from bhutan, and two native cantonese speakers: jen my roommate and alex my hallmate).

this week, we will begin our afternoon classes. for everyone, that includes "contemporary chinese society" from 2-5 on tuesdays. for me, that also includes "chinese economy since 1970" from 2-5 on wednesdays.

finally, we also met with our language partners... meetings are 1 hour, 3 times a week. my partner is named liu jing 刘婧。she is a 25 year old graduate student earning a degree to teach english from BLCU. at first glance, you might wonder why she needs to acquire this degree, because she already looks like a teacher! that expression.. the glasses.. slightly cold demeanor...to my relief, our conversations are actually quite lively and enjoyable :) i'm just bummed that our relationship will be limited to "teacher-student," given that other alliance kids are already planning shopping dates and weekend trips with their language partners. plus, i miss sue and our ordinary friend-roommate-relationship immensely. nothing improved my chinese more than that!

BLCU: this week, my classmates and i spent our precious few free afternoons exploring the neighborhood and scoping out the places we will eat, drink, shop, bank, and meet our various other daily needs this semester. activities included: shopping for ridiculously cheap high heels at the nearest mall, waiting 50 minutes in line at the bank of china AND witnessing a fight there, interviewing a group of cheerful italians over lunch on what they like to do in beijing, making a little excursion to the nearby great bell temple, and participating in a local scavenger hunt put together by han bing.

here's your own little introduction to the campus! the international student building, the view from my room, our lovely abode (complete with tibetan prayer flags from my trip and piles of jen's phillies paraphenalia), and the BLCU cafeteria at lunchtime.





ah, and of course, witnessing my classmates' first encounters with chinese nightlife... priceless. like all american college students abroad, myself included, they are stunned by the (1) legality (2) dirt cheap prices of alcoholic beverages in china. our first night out had catastrophic consequences for some :P wudaokou's bars are truly student paradise though. packed with other internationals, inexpensive, and easy to get to (literally around the corner). last night, a few of us girls also ventured across town to the expat bar area, sanlitun. i'm happy because chinese people are actually much more present in the nightlife here than in SH.

i will spare you the details of preparing for my parent's visit, but basically they concern train tickets, hotel reservations in beijing and qingdao, cell phones, trying to contact "long lost relatives" in shandong province, etc. more interesting... our scavenger hunt ended at the beautiful qing dyansty summer palace last night. i was so happy for a second chance to return here on a cool, not-too-crowded day. over the summer when we visited, it was 100+ degrees, 80% humidity, with no room to breathe and chinese guides screaming into megaphones in every direction. last night was perfect! :)

beijing begins

is the party over? or is it just beginning...

in shanghai, it was an intensive summer language program. so we only had chinese class, and it was concentrated in 3-hour morning doses, with an easier conversational class thrown in during the afternoon. our afternoon class had no homework and our morning class was pretty light, minus hardcore preparation for the next day's lesson. we had chinese roommates our age, so we weren't required to meet with language partners for tutoring. most afternoons, we played in the city, went to the gym, or relaxed.

... then i was galavanting around western china for three weeks!

NOW, i am settled at BLCU and digging in my heels for a real semester. morning classes are tough, chinese homework is heavy, and we have to meet with graduate student language partners for one hour, three times a week. AND we haven't even started our two english-taught courses on modern chinese history (1979-present) and economy! those will be in the afternoon. it's gonna be a heavy, heeeavy semester.

on the other hand, we have a great group of about 20 students that has already clicked really well. we live in a dorm chock-full of other international students studying chinese, on a gorgeous campus in northwest beijing. we have an amazing director that has already planned a sick trip later this fall to qinghai [in my case, BACK to qinghai, so happy], and a trip outside beijing where we hike back to the city... ON the great wall! so is the party over? or is it just getting beginning?

we shall see. anyways, we've been in beijing for nearly a week. it's been a whirlwind of getting settled, meeting each other, trudging through orientation programming, and fun outings to get to know the city. the main points i take away from this week are:

1) i love my new surroundings, but i can't help but compare to shanghai. BLCU's campus is super open and green, which is great for my running habit and general mental health. but the nearby food options are not as extensive as in shanghai (cry) and i miss my chinese roommate immensely.

2) i LOVE my program-mates. right now i feel slightly isolated from them, because i am the awkward exception that has been here for 3 months already and kind of knows how to get around/can speak chinese in daily settings like restaurants, stores, etc. but that gap will melt away so quickly! and we have already bonded quite well as a group (group karaoke outing saturday night was key, ha)

3) i love my director. han bing is quite impossible to describe, so i won't try too hard. but he is basically an amazing chinese man who has traveled the world, speaks english like an american, married an american woman! and has "connections" EVERYWHERE. he is constantly jacked up on caffeine (ten cups of coffee a day... at least. no lie.) and he says everything in superlatives. a SUPER AMAZING professor, or THE MOST INTERESTING guy ever, or THE BEST chocolate chip pancakes of life. he wrote us a 15 page manual outlining all the food available around our campus.

so lastly, here are a few of this week's highlights:

finally, a picture of in front of the gate of heavenly peace! tiananmen 天安门, which of course represents the entrance to the forbidden city, and opens onto the infamous tiananmen square.


all the girlies on top of tiananmen, overlooking the square :)


a street food vendor at wangfujing proudly displaying the bbq-roasted sheep testicles that four of our boys were about to eat...


and the boys eating them!!! aiiii yaaaaaa

two days in chang'an

chang'an... the old name for xi'an. china's capital for thousands of years, including some the most prosperous ones (think zhou,qin,hang, tang dynasties; cosmopolitan times; terminus of the silk road). at its peak, xian was the largest city in the world, with 4 million people. at any given time, a quarter of that population were foreigner traders. i suppose xian's archaeological sights and museums are the best places in the world to experience, first-hand, china's pride in its ancient glory days. even though it poured rain all 72 hours i was in xian, i managed to see some of the sights... i spent monday at the tomb of han jingdi and had another amazing dinner in the muslim quarter. tuesday, i went to the shaanxi museum and big goose pagoda with a new friend from guangdong.

i woke up on monday without a game plan. but my roomates, ricky (adorable australian backpacker of cantonese descent) and sibelle (quirky but endearing stanford student), had signed up for a ride out to the tomb of han jingdi. on a whim, i decided to join them, because i had read that jingdi was the most underrated sight in xian. this turned out to be true. it turned out to be an underground museum where you literally get to look into the pits, and we practically had the place to ourselves! it's really hard to express how rarely that happens in china. so, ricky sibelle and i bopped around in our funny blue booties, oohing and ahhing at the astonishingly expressive little statues of people and animals, pottery, bones, chariots, etc.

in the afternoon, we came back to the hostel and enjoyed our complimentary coffees in the "traveler cafe." although the rain persisted, i went out for dinner because i refused to leave xian without trying the yangrou paomo. first, they give you a giant bowl and a few slices of yummy flatbread. you break the bread into tiny pieces, return the bowlfull to the server, and they add noodles, stewed lamb, cilantro and all kinds of nummy broth. i enjoyed my paomo while chatting with one of the cute hostesses at this tiny muslim restaurant, who was about my age, and her dad, the chef, who suggested we go on a date after i finished my soup.

in the evening, i chilled with chinese friends i had made at the hostel sunday night. one was visiting from guangdong, another from hubei, and two were local university students who liked to chill at the hostel and basement bar just for the heck of it. hanging around with them was great because it totally surrounded me in the laid-back vibe of xian, plus they helped me make a QQ account! i was in desperate need... since facebook is blocked here, everyone uses a chinese version of AIM or MSN, called QQ to keep in touch. now i am virtually reunited with all the friends i made on my trip and had to leave in shanghai! ... but i have to chat in chinese characters. oy.

on tuesday, my guangdong friend "jesse" (we had chosen his english name at the bar on monday night) took me to the world-renowned shaanxi museum. this place was louder than a chinese restaurant, due to the continuing bad weather and the general nature of chinese museums during the summer. nevertheless, it was an amazing and engaging museum, we stayed for about 3 hours! my favorite exhibits were those displaying items that moved back and forth on the silk road (camel sculptures galore) and the most desirable figures of tang dynasty court women (...fat). in all seriousness, the amount of history and artifacts that the museum contains is truly humbling.

in the afternoon we had lunch at a restaurant with typical xian specialties. i was lucky enough to try roasted cow lungs on skewers... mmm... no... sweet of jesse to treat me though. then we went to the big goose pagoda, xian's most famous architectural landmark. both of us were slightly disappointed by the high entrance fee, cheesy surroundings, and restriction of climbing to the top. but we made up for that with an amazing dinner of hei mi zhou (black sesame rice porridge with sugar) and roujiamo (flatbread with seasoned pulled pork inside). in the evening, jesse and i rushed to the train station to catch my overnight to beijing. we pushed through lines together, he snuck into the station with an old train ticket, and we chatted until we finally had to say goodbye when i boarded the train. sigh... so many amazing new friends on this trip!

the train was a warzone, because the conductors had added some extra cars to accommodate everyone. so there was a car 16, and a car 16+1! highly confusing, people running everywhere, screaming and arguing. but when i finally got settled, i was sitting across from an engaged israeli couple and next to a british chemical engineer. they made great company for the ride; we all talked some and laughed a lot about our experiences in china (and other places) so far. come 1 am, we all passed out on jackets scrunched up on our center table. then poof, at 7:30 am we arrived at beijing west train station, said goodbye, and foggily moved on to our next destinations.

for me, that was BLCU! beijing language and culture university, or beijing yu yan daxue 北京语言大学。luckily for me, the train from xian was packed with other students that had to get to haidian district to start school too. i followed the masses and befriended one particular student, mengyuan, for the bus/subway journey north. 7:30 am is obviously rush hour, so we really had to exert ourselves moving from train to train! but we made it to our respective stops, and even exchanged QQ numbers in between :)

i was enchanted from the moment i walked onto the BLCU campus. i can't wait to post pictures soon. i can already feel myself loving it here... even though i miss my shanghai classmates and ESPECIALLY sue :( :( :( anyway i literally screamed with delight when i saw my clean little apartment, luggage delivered safely from shanghai, shower, and washing machine. from 9 am to noon i blissfully unpacked, settled, showered, and did my laundry (i had been wearing my carefully calculated LAST clean shirt on the train). around noon, my classmates began to arrive, and the rest is ancient history!

xian, finally

i'm eating breakfast at my hostel in xian and realizing that this trip only has 48 more hours of adventure in store!

as usual, i sit down to write and have no idea where to start. i suppose the last 3 days can be summed up in a variety of UPs and DOWNs.

UP: thursday, my last day in lhasa. antonio came along with me and dikri to the drepung monastery and neighboring nechung monastery (she brought another guide friend so we could all go together.. angel!) drepung was magical, tucked into the mountains rising up around lhasa. the guides loved antonio and fed him fed him outrageous amounts of delicious tibetan noodles at the little monastery restaurant for lunch.



in the afternoon, i split off and went to the tibet museum, which is free (yay), has amazing tibetan thankgas (yay), and tons of CCP propaganda (ouch). in the evening, antonio and i had dinner on the roof of one of the buildings on the barkhor, which was an excellent way to commemorate the ending of our trip. then, i went SHOPPING in the world's most amazing marketplace...barkhor square. i had been saving my cash till my last day to make sure i'd have a reasonable amount for the rest of the trip, but scarves, prayer flags, jewelry, and GIFTS (ahem, readers) are finally mine :)

DOWN: leaving lhasa on friday morning at 7:45 am and waiting in the rain through 2 PLA check points. ok... this isn't really a down, because i was pumped to finally ride the legendary qinghai-tibet railway. my hard sleeper was comfy-cozy, i loved the families that i shared my cabin with. they treated me like their own... in 24 hours i was never hungry, thirsty, bored, or confused by the quickly-spoken announcements. the way that chinese people will randomly take you in is completely unique.



DOWWWWWN: arriving in xining and finding no tickets to continue to xian. i was about to cry, when...

UP: a couple who lives in xining, that antonio and i met on the beach at nam-sto lake, swooped in, picked me up at the train station, and promised me a day of fun in xining and a ticket to xian by the evening (through a "connection" at the train station, obviously). it seemed to good to be true, but just like that, we were off! we had a sumptuous breakfast of fresh soymilk, jiaozi, and chinese donuts at a place near their house, then dropped off my stuff and went out to the famous kumbum monastery, 30 km outside xining. i was overjoyed to be back at a monastery...the sounds and sights made me feel like i hadn't even left lhasa. because i was american and spoke chinese, one monk took us to see some private chapels that hong and liu hadn't even been to before! chinese people are really into the idea of fate... at this point we were all convinced that fate had brought me to xining, brought us to the chapels, and of course allowed us to see each other again!



in the afternoon, we had lunch at KFC (a weekend treat), and then went to xining people's park (basically their version of disneyland). we spent the whole afternoon playing on bumper cars, carrousels, peddle boats, etc. some of their friends met up and joined us too. finally, we had dinner in the muslim quarter of xining. the best roast lamb skewers and mian pian soup i have ever eaten... plus i tried lamb feet for the first time! aiya.


DOWN: getting on the overnight train to xian at 9 pm that night (13 hours, hard seat ticket. bleh!). i cried when i said goodbye to hong and liu, no joke. we have a connection! i don't know how else to explain. liu says it's because qingdao (shandong province) is both of our ancestral homes. who knows, but i regard meeting them as one of the luckiest, most wonderful things that has ever happened to me.

DOWN: spending the majority of my first day in xian (1) dehabilitated by exhaustion (2) on the phone with the unbelievably unhelpful bank of america trying to get my ATM card back. refer to chengdu entry... this matter is still not resolved and driving me crazy.

UP: visiting the great mosque in the evening, when i had finally regained my strength. a really cool mixture of middle eastern and chinese influences... plus i was around at 5 pm when everyone was gathering to pray. excellent. also ate in the muslim quarter for dinner... the famous xian "xiaochi" or snacks! mutton breaded in fried wheat and butter, sesame and chili cold noodles, and peanut cakes for dessert... all street side. amazing.


a free carlsberg draught from the hotel (1 per night!) when i finally got off the phone with BOA was also a welcome treat. comraderie with various chinese and european travelers also put a positive cap on the night :)



must run to the tombs now! woooo! for now... certainly on the up