A Life Less Ordinary

Hong Kong is wonderful. My daily routine has been firmly established. For example, today, I woke at 10 and moved slowly into our hotel bathroom, much to the chagrin of our floor maid who was unusually eager to clean the bathroom today. I had three classes today, from 2-4, 4-6 and 6:30-8:30. I had quizzes in two of them, Chinese and Money & Banking, so I spent much of the morning logically watching old clips of the Olympics. I mean when you have quizzes, YouTube and Wikipedia truly are the anti-homework. I’m waiting for the IOC to decide the 2016 host. My lunch of an apple and peanut butter & crackers was not unusual, but tasty nonetheless. Crunchy peanut butter feels like home. It takes us about a half hour to get from room door to classroom door, but I like to leave a few minutes early to go down to the classroom by myself so I can rock out to music on the way. I like Asian people looking at me when I’m listening to my music.

I broke down today after reading my friend Kate’s blog. She’s in Tanzania and really desires a true fall. I mean I wasn’t crying. I just wanted to wear a hoodie and jeans for Christ’s sake. I really desire a true winter…like now. So I listened to two Christmas songs on the way to class: I Listen to the Bells (Luther Vandross) and It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Andy Williams). After I had my fix, I left the Kowloon Tong station and headed into Festival Walk, the mall that serves as our meet and greet once leaving the metro. Honest to God, every MTR exit is to a mall. Our classrooms are located in either (Nope, not the school) the Hong Kong Productivity Council or the Jockey Club Environmental Buildings. Such beacons of education.

My lessons today were a mix of horrible and fascinating. My Chinese quiz was a joke. Ditto for Money & Banking. I did spend 2 hours learning about the Silk Road, which is a surprisingly awesome subject. I want to learn about it more, but alas, I went back to Yau Ma Tei and Nathan Road where we live. The same man in a wheelchair was begging for money, except he was motionless and was just holding a hat whilst sleeping, like always. The street was crowded. Not unusal. The aromas from my favorite Vietnamese restaurant were calling me. I eventually ate there for dinner. I love Sri Racha. I spend most nights in various peoples rooms, avoiding the work that I don’t really need to do. I think we students take our classes more seriously than our professors.

A M&B Quiz Question:
A bank is an example of an

A) Financial Instrument

B) A Coffee House

C) A Financial Institution

D) An Insurance Company

I almost put B, but realized sarcasm doesn’t translate well on tests. Tonight I was at any one point laughing about accents with Mango and PomPom, playing Sporcle with Marshall and Kim or begging for dinner company with Alice and Billy. Either way, I’ve decided that while I won’t be long term friends with many of these people, I just like people, so I’d rather spend time getting to know them than wandering the streets alone. Solitary tourism can suck it…until I go to Vietnam.

Note: This is a fairly long entry and only covers some of my time in Beijing. I am attempting to do what I promised on this blog, share both thoughts, but also experiences in a journal type setting. I’ve bolded important sites for those that simply want my opinions of major ones, but as a forewarning, China is not a place to be described in a few short paragraphs. With that, happy reading. Additionally, I’ve posted my China pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/evanjdoran

It often seems to me that some of the worst days in life are followed closely by some of the best, and in China that seemed especially true. After numerous days of culture shock and exhaustion, our group seemed to bounce back on a lot of occasions where catty fights should have otherwise broken out. Many members of our group were at wits end, including murmurs of a desire to go home, back to an easier life at Syracuse. Luckily, everyone made it to that glorious Thursday. After a quick quiz, to make this traveling class at least appear legitimate, we headed on our hour bus ride to the Mu Tian Yu section of the Great Wall of China. We couldn’t have asked for a better day, as Prof. Bruce explained to us, this was the first time in 10 years that he’d be visited the wall on a bright blue sunny day. Pulling up to the small town at the base of the climb, you could never fully appreciate the grandiosity or scale of the wall. It was a great team building exercise to climb up the steps, with everyone cheering and helping each other along. No one had an easy task of that, for sure. Once atop the hundreds of steps, the reality of the moment sank in, that we had arrived at the moment that most of us had been waiting for the duration of the seminar.

The Great Wall was one of those rare edifices that actually exceeds your expectation when you see it. You immediately forgot about the over eager vendors and the rancid smells of much of China and simply took in the enormity of the moment. The serpentine wall curved around mountains and rode along ridgebacks. It seemed intact enough to be used as a strong line of defense even today. There was hardly a soul on the wall besides our rag tag and sweaty bunch of students, but we populated the wall well. Splitting up, we found ourselves among new groups, making new bonds among the jovial atmosphere. Nothing could go wrong, because we were on one of the Seven Wonders of the World, though we struggled to come up with an accurate list of the rest. I even forgot that I had lost my Kindle the day before. We spent a few hours atop the wall and after racing in one direction and back the other, we came to our final spot, the beginning of the alpine slide that would take most of us down individually. As much momentary independence as we may have wanted, we eventually all bunched up behind a slow riding Chinese family, who suffered the shouts of many irritated college students. We all came off the slide smiling though, happy at just the few hours we spent atop the Great Wall.

On our way back to the hotel, a portion of our group convinced our tour guide Jin Jing to take us back to the Pearl Market. I went, saw, and yet again exited the market empty handed. There really isn’t a lot of need in my life for badly made fake Polo or Abercrombie shirts. However, nothing could dampen my mood after the Great Wall. Just as we were pulling into the hotel, Jin Jing made a wonderful announcement, “Did someone lose a small computer in the classroom?” At first I didn’t really comprehend what she was saying, I almost yelled “sucks” because I thought someone had left their laptop. It took until Sarah asked “Evan, did you ever get your Kindle back?” that I realized Jin Jing was talking about my Kindle. She graciously accompanied me to the classroom building and I was soon after happily reunited with my Kindle. I could finally finish Roma, the fictional story of Rome I was so immersed in.

Happily engaged, we eventually got to the train station for our night train to Shanghai. We had all developed expectations of scenes out of Darjeeling Limited or Slumdog Millionaire, and our program chaperones didn’t do much to quell them. However, once aboard the train we realized that the beds, four to a chamber, were more comfortable than our beds at our Hong Kong residence. My precautionary measure of imaging myself on the Hogwarts Express went out the window as I climbed up to my bed. Next thing I knew, our train was announcing its arrival in Shanghai. The last few days of the seminar were going to fly by as fast as the train ride did.

Shanghai was truly an odd city, a picture perfect postcard of consumerism, the Big Apple with Chinese characters. Our shoddy hotel was located on the bustling Nanjing Road, China’s Champs-Elysses or 5^th Avenue. A small walk west brought us to a large pedestrian street lined with huge flagship stores for the likes of Guess, Zara, & Gap. Shanghai also had a much different vibe than Beijing and Xi’an, with more cosmopolitan people. As was the pattern with the Syracuse program, it clearly seemed all the planning had been last minute and much of the emphasis seemed to have been on the front end of the trip. Our first few days in Shanghai were spent at museums and a few landmarks, the irony being that Shanghai has few landmarks because the city is so utterly new. The Pudong, Shanghai’s large financial district with buildings reaching the clouds was farmland as recently as 1995. We visited the urban planning museum, an oxymoron in a city known for tearing down cultural heritage to build the next tallest building. We also visited a traditional Chinese water village, full of canals and black and white painted buildings, with characteristic red arches and lanterns. It was unique for its setting and traditional way of life, but it seemed staged, as if built almost exclusively for tourists. Shanghai had a lot great restaurants and bars, but beyond that the city was hardly impressive. My recollection may seem narrow and superficial, but if nothing else my memory of Shanghai will match the general attitude of the city I saw.

Thus ends the story of our journey, though I have one last piece of actual reflection to add.

Note: This is a fairly long entry and only covers some of my time in Beijing. I am attempting to do what I promised on this blog, share both thoughts, but also experiences in a journal type setting. I’ve bolded important sites for those that simply want my opinions of major ones, but as a forewarning, China is not a place to be described in a few short paragraphs. With that, happy reading. Additionally, I’ve posted my China pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/evanjdoran.

Everyone has that annoying person who travels everywhere and tells unbearable stories of their travels and I’ve got more than a few who’ve told me about the smogginess and pollution of China. They weren’t kidding, and no, I didn’t overlook the irony of writing that first sentence on a blog dedicated to travel story-telling. I liked the circularity of being that annoying person though. Seriously, I sympathize with the Olympic sprinters who were complaining about air quality because while I didn’t immediately develop a harsh cough, I know people who are still coughing up black bits. Exaggeration? Maybe, but I can say it because I’m in Hong Kong, not the mainland. Akin to torture, our tour included in the same day an 8:00 AM flight and then a full afternoon tour through Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City. Tian An Men Square is one of those places around the world where a greatly watched historical event occurred but because of CNN’s or NBC’s use of Chinese inspired montage shots as introductions into their “Terror at Tian An Men” stories, I’d developed an opinion that Tian An Men was a gorgeous cultural heart of Beijing.  In reality, the square is a gray behemoth, crowded with children grasping at parents fingers and tour guides touting flags and brightly colored umbrellas. It’s as if the US’s National Mall was covered in cement and thrown into the middle of Beijing. There was no anticipation of arriving upon the Forbidden City because one can see the entrance gate from a mile away. The recently repainted fire engine red gate beckons visitors to leave the limbo state created by Tian An Men, where grey is both under your feet and above your head.

The Forbidden City, being not very Forbidden anymore, hardly strikes up the imagery of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, much less Mulan. Eddy Murphy would have been a nice respite from the constant Chinglish being used by tour guides for American, British and even German groups. Feeling quite like cattle, 39 of us made our way through the giant Chinese style gates of the great city. Once through and quite confused, we collectively turned our heads back. “Didn’t we just pass through the gate?” someone asked. Apparently we had entered the city, but not yet experienced its vibrancy because we had yet another gate to travel through, this one called the Gate of Supreme Harmony. Kim, a hilariously opinionated Villanova Wildcat at once uttered, “What the fuck are you doing. I’m over it.” Having finally enunciated the exhaustion we were all feeling, we continued on towards hopeful Harmony. Once passing through, it became clear how Harmony could be momentarily attained by gazing at the sights ahead. Roof after roof of yellow glazed tile lied before us, culminating in the apex of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Without being able to enter any of the buildings, it was hard to get a real sense of the life of a resident of the ancient Forbidden City, but I could at least imagine what a blue skied day might have been like before the advent of the modern factory. Nearing the exit, we all became aware that one of our classmates was missing. As the city was closing, two of our chaperones were sent to do the impossible: find Crissy in the mess of thousands of exiting Chinese. Luckily, Crissy had run into a helpful British fellow who helped her find our hotel in this still unfamiliar city; she boarded the bus just as we were leaving for another group dinner.

The next morning, continuing in shades of gray, we heading towards a traditional Chinese Hutong, which are old villages kept in a decent state of repair that offer insights into what old Beijing was like. Upon arriving, one could either conclude that the Hutong had seen some changes or that Beijing residents were hardcore alcoholics, given the number of watering holes that used old houses as residences. We had rickshaw’s escort us around and eventually made our way to lunch with a local Chinese family, who fed us a feast, with countless delicious dishes. After visiting a tea shop and the ancient bell and drum towers that signaled the beginning and end of days in the ancient capital, we headed back to our hotel. This was one of the first days that irritation was clearly visible, and not from constant touring. Personalities were starting to mesh and clash, as there was a clear delineation of peoples when we split up for family lunch.

The next day saw even great clarity among groups, as we arrive at the famed Bird’s Nest Stadium and the rest of the main Beijing Olympic grounds. The sound of the thousand drummers from the Opening Ceremonies long gone, the only sounds left in the vast paved grounds were the theme song piped from every metal orifice and sweaty vendors selling banana ice pops. Fittingly, that night many of our group ventured to a local hotspot called Coco Banana. Amid the pounding western beats we made quick work of clearing ourselves a spot on the dance floor. Glances and glares from our Asian hosts confirmed our success. The night ended on a high night for some, myself included, having watched with mixed dread and humor some of our Orange crew getting awfully close to one another. We knew drama was about to occur on a scale as yet unseen within our fluid forty-member team, especially as those less in control would have to deal with harsh hangovers during the full day of lectures slated for the next day.

The anticipated drama was short lived, to be replaced by drooping eyes and light snoozes during our unbearable day of lectures. The day turned out to be my worst in China, and not necessarily because of lectures. After learning about China’s ethnic headaches from the Beijing correspondent of Reuters we listened to a lecture on China-Africa relations by a South African native with a great accent. After a quick Sichuan lunch of spicy noodles and beef we returned for yet more lectures on China’s loss of urban heritage and ethnic struggles to the west. Once back at the hotel, Alice, Rachel and I decided to return to the Pearl Market to attempt to do the unthinkable: return a pearl necklace Rachel had come to regret. Chinese consumerism dictates that there is virtually no acceptance on returns, but for some miracle Rachel was able to convince the proprietor to accept the return under the guide of a badly chosen birthday present.

It was only when we returned; exhausted from the lectures, arm-grabbing t-shirt vendors, and unyielding pearl sellers that I realized I had lost my Kindle. I came near to having my “China moment,” that time we were warned we would all have when the cultural changes caused us to snap. Only mine would have been a stupid moment, with only myself to blame. I raced back to our classroom building, but with my nonexistent Chinese I was only able to reenter the classroom. No luck. Fortuna must have been smiling on me though, because my future roommate Mo was in the lobby when I returned, exasperated. I begged him to accompany me back to the building to use his native Mandarin. We went back and despite our best attempts, my Kindle was nowhere to be found; lost forever in the black markets of China. Could any Chinese really want English only Kindle with no charging ability and no way to put any more books on? I prayed not, but slept poorly that night nonetheless.

To be continued…

Note: This is a fairly long entry and only covers my time in Xi’an. I am attempting to do what I promised on this blog, share both thoughts, but also experiences in a journal type setting. I’ve bolded important sites for those that simply want my opinions of major ones, but as a forewarning, China is not a place to be described in a few short paragraphs. With that, happy reading. Additionally, I’ve posted my China pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/evanjdoran.

We departed Hong Kong in the mid afternoon of a muggy Thursday afternoon. All thirty-nine of us waited eagerly for our flight to Xi’an to be called to board, waiting to experience what each of has had heard stories about: Syracuse’s famed China Seminar. We knew what was in store but only through images from Wikipedia and tales from well traveled aunts or cousins. The Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terra Cotta Army and the other relics of an ancient China that still only lingered in the memories of the generation prior to ours. The Orangemen and those of us not associated with Syracuse boarded our bus after landing and were disappointed to realize that our bus ride to our hotel was going to include pitch black images of night and a long winded brief on Xi’an from our local tour guide, Tony.

Hesitating to get out of our comfortable beds, we met and headed to the first of the many attractions that were waiting for us: The Museum of the Terra Cotta Warriors. I say attractions because unfortunately it is the most fitting word, thousands of spectators milling through crowds of eager vendors and subtle pick-pockets. The pure imagery of thousands of terra cotta soldiers staring blankly ahead was awe-inspiring for sure, but the onlooker was left with a sense of bewilderment when the sky was blocked by a giant airport hangar.   The craftsmanship should not go unnoticed, both for the original workers as well as the rebuilders who pieced together each unique man from millions of fragments of Terra Cotta left after harsh conditions and harsher villagers left their mark. What should possibly go unmentioned is the traditional custom of rearing a child in China which includes clothes with no coverings for private areas. Streets are used as children’s toilets and Dad’s hands are supports for little ones who can’t yet stand to pee. I only wish I was kidding. I’m talking about full frontal child nudity here.

We next headed to our second and not yet final stop, the Forest of Stone Tablets.  As the name doesn’t describe, this was a traditional Chinese complex which enshrined a collection of large flat stones onto which ancient Chinese philosophy, laws, and customs have been engraved. It was not a popular destination for our exhausted group and there were more than a few attempts at nap taking on damp benches. This was one of the first times that our group began to really interact on a more than superficial level. Questions became “Why are you in China?” and “What are some of your goals?” instead of “Where do you go to school?” We moved from freshman to sophomore year in a matter of days. This was at first glance a quick group, but I wasn’t ready to make a full conclusion. Our last stop took us through the streets of old Xi’an, past markets where vendors hawked lychee and green teas, flying toys and whirling strobe lights. The smell of the meat was enough to look, the sight enough to pass on. Our seminar professor, British ex-pat Philip Bruce was eager to guide us through the muddy alleys and small construction projects on the way to Xi’an’s famed Great Mosque. The Mosque is interesting in that the building keeps many of the traditional Islamic functions while similarly maintaining a completely Chinese architectural style. After the mosque we headed back through the maze of the ancient city towards a “famous” (Read: touristy) Chinese dumpling restaurant. Marshall and I roused our table into an eating contest in which we had no clear opponents, but the seven of us managed to eat every single piece of dim sum placed on our table. I nearly spat out the mushroom stuffed steamed bun, but held it together in sacrifice for the good of the table. We were victorious.

By the second day, after we raced around the 20 mile City Wall of Xi’an on bikes and each lost half our body weights in sweat; I could clearly notice certain groups forming within our larger Orange Crew. Though I never abandoned my GW pride, I couldn’t help at least creating alliances with the Orangemen if only for social enjoyment during my time here. Matt and Rachel, my GW compatriots biked along the wall and pointed out bits of China’s cultural legacies together through the mass of dilapidated high rises. We next had a delicious traditional Chinese lunch with our guide Tony and Prof. Bruce explaining the intricacies of “hot pot,” a traditional Chinese eating method similar to fondue. I very nearly printed the application for Top Chef back at the hotel after creating some truly awesome sauces. Our afternoon was spent at a rural village outside of Xi’an which was called something along the lines of Dong Yang. It was a very eye-opening experience to see both the poverty that had been in the village for centuries and the newly built cinder block multi-story homes being built back from the roads. The village children split evenly between swarming those of us who brought candy and pencils and those too shy to ask. With the help of Mo and Wyatt, our ‘Putonghua’ or Mandarin speakers, we coaxed the kids out of hiding. The local tour guide took us through muddy trails and paved walkways, rusted kitchens and lighted living rooms complete with TV’s. The variation in living just within one village was astounding, though nearly all the citizens had roughly the same income. The day at the village was the glue that held our group together, bursting at the seams for some separation and air. The next morning’s 5 AM wakeup call did nothing to calm our nerves or quench our exhaustion; we had to make our 8:00 flight to Beijing.  Having not yet grown accustomed to spending nearly 24/7 with the same 39 kids, I realized were going to have to learn fast or regret it. Hopefully Beijing meant bonding, delineation, and at the very least, more comfortable beds.

To be continued…