POST 1 OF 3 – (this one’s a couple weeks behind—I’ve been very busy.)
One more week down. Last Sunday I went with a bunch of friends up to the Old Summer Palace to play Capture the Flag. For any of you who don’t know how the game works, you basically split up into two teams, divide the playing area into two parts (one for each team), give each team a flag, and then each team individually hides their flag, sets up a prison area, and goes to work trying to both protect their own flag and capture the other team’s flag. If a member of the opposite team crosses into your team’s territory, you can tag them and then bring them to your jail, until they’re set free by a fellow team member. The Old Summer Palace area extends in the Northwest of Beijing as a series of archaeological parks and lakes. In the back, however, the main site of the Old Summer Palace is contained within a fence, probably slightly larger than a football field and has many pits, pillars, crumbling ruins, trees, and Chinese tourists. You can image, therefore, how amazing it would be to play capture the flag there. Besides the extensive hiding areas and the natural obstacles, the Chinese tourists just made things all the more fun, whether it was trying to blend into their groups to sneak over to enemy territory, or chasing the other team through a large group of them, and seeing the fear and surprise on their faces as two big white people lunged past. Anyway, after a few rounds, we decided it was time to pack it in, so we headed over to the Kro’s Nest for some pizza.
On Tuesday night, I sat and watched my friends play Mahjong for a while, until I picked up the rules, and then tried my hand at it. Having played gin rummy growing up, I took to it naturally, and really enjoy playing. On Wednesday, I was woken up by my RA at 11:30am, telling me that we were leaving in 10 minutes for Houhai to film their Chinese class project, which I had forgotten I’d promised I’d help them with. So, we spent the day at Houhai. They were required for their fifth year Chinese class to make a 30-45 minute movie on any topic. The basis of their movie was an ancient Chinese philosopher named Zhuangzi, who was famously quoted having the following discussion (roughly):
Zhuangzi says to his friend by a lake, “Look at those fish, they are truly happy.” His friend replies, “You’re not a fish, how do you know what makes fish happy?” Zhuangzi replies, “You’re not me. How do you know I don’t know what makes fish happy?” And so on.
Anyway, their idea was to have Zhuangzi at Houhai (a fairly touristy area), searching for happiness. So, naturally when they thought about who to have play Zhuangzi, I was their first choice (?). We basically spent the entire day walking around asking people in Chinese if they knew what happiness is, and if they were truly happy. Once Emily, my RA, put it together, it was really an amusing and impressive film, and if I manage to get a copy, I’ll put it up. On Friday, they screened it in their class. So, I skipped part of my class’s activity to go watch. Later that day, I tried to do some work. The weather was nice, so I went outside with my computer to sit by the small store near our dorm. It might have been very nice, but a little boy came running over as soon as I’d turned on my computer, and sat next to me, randomly pressing my keyboard. He also took the liberty of pulling out my headphones to see what I was listening to, which he said in Chinese was “bad to listen to”. While he was very cute, I did have to get my work done, so I apologized to him and headed into a café. After a few hours I went with a few friends to eat hotpot down the road. I don’t remember if I’ve given a description of hotpot, though I did mention going to an all-you-can-eat hotpot restaurant earlier in the semester. Anyway, hotpot is a Chinese specialty in several different regions, including Beijing. The basic functioning of the meal is that there is a big pot of water and seasonings in the middle of the table on a built-in stove. The water boils and they bring you raw meat and vegetables to your specifications, which you then put in the water to cook. They also give you sauces on the side, which you can use for dipping. We got a big pot, with half regular water and half spicy water, and ordered a bunch of meats and vegetables. (Definitely much better than all-you-can-eat hotpot.) Then, we headed to an all-you-can-snack/drink tea house to play Mahjong. We played for a couple hours, until they came over to us telling us that we weren’t allowed to play Mahjong out in the open, because they assumed we were gambling, and if the authorities came in, they’d be fined. So, we switched to Chinese poker before heading back to campus.
On Saturday, I went on a trip to the Great Wall at Jiankou. Jiankou is not the usual touristy Great Wall experience, and in fact, it is off limits to tourists (we had special permissions). There has been very little efforts to preserve the Great Wall in this area, so rather than a nice walk or hike, the trip becomes a brisk hike and climb, and can be fairly dangerous-going at times. (I accidentally displaced a rock while descending one portion of the wall, which jettisoned down towards another group and almost took out a man’s leg before shooting through one of the look-out windows—fortunately, it just missed him.) We got back to Beijing just in time for me to get dressed up and head to Chaoyang for the first night of Passover and a Seder with the Beijing Chabad. The seder was held in a nice hotel just north of the embassy district, and the guests managed to fill the ballroom. I sat at a table with a friend of mine who’d gone with me, two men from America who were in town for the International World Wide Web Conference, and an Israeli expat who was working in Beijing. It was nice to be among so many Jewish people, and only a little disconcerting to hear them all speaking English. Since it was a Lubavitch service, it was long and traditional (besides the additional reading of the Four Questions in Chinese). While I didn’t feel that I would be able to keep to the Passover kashrut laws as closely as I would at home, I devised my own system that would have me make an effort without starving me. I also ordered some food from Chabad, which helped to hold me over.
The next morning, I woke up early for a badminton tournament. The tournament, which was held at the Beijing Normal Studies University, was an all-IES Beijing doubles double-elimination tournament. I partnered up with my Chinese teacher, Zhang Laoshi, and we won our first match and lost our second. We were on our way to winning our third game (two more wins after that would have put us in the finals), when we looked over and so Xiao Zhao, the head Chinese teacher, with whom I went to Yunnan, on the floor. Evidently, she and her partner had collided, and her ankle at twisted the wrong way. One person went to get ice, while someone else looked for a taxi to go to the hospital, and the older calligraphy teacher (who is a very interesting man), Fang Laoshi, used Chinese pressure points to keep her from fainting in shock. When the taxi finally arrived, Fang Laoshi carried her over, and I followed, realizing that no one would be at the hospital to help her when they arrived. So, while the others went back to the tournament, I rode with her and our other teacher, Lu Laoshi to the hospital. Chinese hospitals are not like American hospitals. The nurses do not take care of you like they do in America—family and friends are expected to attend to the sick (even during long-term stays). We spent a couple hours there, having her leg inspected then carrying her back to the waiting room, then over to the radiology room for X-Rays. It turned out that her bone was fine, but that the surround tissue had been torn. The doctor said she shouldn’t walk at all for a day or so, but that she would be back on her feet in about a week. So, we hopped another taxi, and helped her up to her apartment before returning to school.
***MORE POSTS COMING VERY SOON***
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