A Life Less Ordinary

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.