Frolicking in Formosa

I'm in Taiwan right now, and I've been wanting to blog, so I'm just gonna use the same blog I used when I was in Qingdao a few years ago.  I'm still frolicking in the Far East, so there's no reason not to.  I'm gonna be taking a very different approach this time, though. Right now, my interests aren't so much showing everyone my happy-go-lucky adventures in the magical fairyland of Taiwan, but rather in getting my personal thoughts out and sharing them with anyone who cares to read about them.  Yes, it's going to be a very self-centered, personal, and not always happy blog, but so it goes.  Feel free to add your own input in the comments.  I'll follow this up soon with a longer post.

Bye for now.

More Traveling

It's been a while, folks.  My internet does not always treat me kindly, so I haven't been able to give an update for a while.  Don't worry, I'll punish it accordingly.  The little misbehaving brat...  Anyway, a lot has happened sinced the last update.  Last week, we took a trip across China, initially flying out to Xinjiang province in west China and then working our way back east by train and bus.  Xinjiang is an incredibly interesting region.  The biggest minority group there is the Uyghur people, who are Muslim and perhaps have more in common with Central Asians than with the Han Chinese.  The cities in Xinjiang that we went to, Urumqi and Turpan, were both incredibly interesting, largely due to the mix of Uyghurs and Han people.  The street food was also fantastic.  One of the things Xinjiang is known for is kebabs, and they do a fantastic job with them.  They are usually lamb, and they must be spiced with some sort of witchcraft.  There's no other way they would be so good.  There was plenty of other street food too.

Of course, being me, I also loved that signs were in both Chinese and Uyghur.  Uyghur script is based on the Arabic script, with some differences, kind of like how, say, English and French have very similar, but not identical, scripts. 



While in Turpan, we also got to see two guys giving a performance with some Uyghur musical instruments.

Also, my A&M friends will definitely appreciate this...While at the marketplace in Turpan, I found something pretty amazing.



We went to a few other places, such as Dunhuang, which is known for an extensive system of caves that was unearthed there with many murals and historical relics inside.  It also had the nicest night market I have seen in China.  At the end of the trip, we visited Xi'an, which is of course known for the Terracotta Army.  Unfortunately, my camera was once again out of commission then and I didn't get to take pictures.  You've all seen pictures of the Terracotta Army before though, so it's no big deal, eh?  Instead, I'll give you this picture from outside Dunhuang. 

Yes, I did ride one.

Since getting back to Qingdao, I've been doing an internship in my university's translation office.  Basically that means I've been correcting Chinglish.  I even got to go around and help correct public signs one day.  It's a pretty cool internship, and my boss is a really nice guy.  On Friday, he took my co-workers and me out for kebabs, and afterwards we went to karaoke.

That's about all for now.  There will be quite a bit more traveling in the next few weeks, though, so stay tuned!  We'll be right back after this commercial break!

Voyaging through Shandong...and beyond!!!

We spent the whole last week traveling, mostly by bus, through Shandong province and then into Henan province.  We stayed in a different city every night, so we covered a lot of ground.  The places we went include Jinan, Qufu (Confucius's hometown), Kaifeng, Zhengzhou, Luoyang,and Heze, and we went to Confucius's tomb, the Iron Pagoda, and the Shaolin Temple, among others.  Most of these were in Henan Province, which is an adjacent province to Shandong, where Qingdao is.  'Twas a merry time indeed, although it was pretty tiring being on the move so much.  I also would have preferred to go to fewer places and stay in each of them longer, but I had a really good time nonetheless.

As far as highlights go, there were definitely a couple.  Qufu was really cool.  In the old part of the city, they kept the old style of architecture but put modern stores in the buildings.  It was a really neat contrast. Besides that, I really enjoyed the White Horse Temple, which was more of a functioning temple than a huge tourist attraction.  It looks like this. 

 

The Shaolin Temple wasn't like that at all.  Of course, it was worth going to once.  We watched a martial arts demonstration that was pretty awesome and included this guy throwing a dart through a big plastic square and popping a balloon on the other side of it.  The temple itself was extremely touristy, though, and that kind of ruined it.  However, near the temple there are a bunch of what are basically kung fu boarding schools, so we got to watch a bunch of kids doing really intense training.   

Also, the Longmen Caves near Luoyang were very cool, despite being quite touristy.  It was probably the greatest concentration of Western tourists I've seen since Beijing.  There were some pretty impressive Buddha statues there, including some earlier ones that look quite different from what you normally see.

Now we're back in Qingdao, and it's back to studying and exploring Qingdao for the time being.  But soon we're off again, this time going to a number of stops along the Silk Road.  I'll keep you peoples posted.  And don't forget, it's duty of us that obligation the cultural relic.

Climbin' Up a Mountain

Yesterday a couple friends and I climbed up a mountain by campus called Fushan (this campus is also called Fushan, named after the mountain near campus, which is called Fushan, after which the campus is named {"shan" means mountain}).  It's not a very big mountain, but it's a reasonably strenuous hike up.  It only took 30 to 45 minutes to get to the top, and the view from up there is pretty incredible.  The city is all around you, and it pretty much feels like you're floating.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, so as of the present moment, I cannot present you with photographic evidence of my journey.  We may go again tonight, though, and if that happens I'll be sure to bring along Mr. Canon.  Poor little guy...he's been out of batteries for the past few days, and he's been feeling left out.

Hopefully we got all the ants out of our room.

Luv,
罗素

Qingdaooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

At this point, I've been settled in Qingdao for quite a while. Things are awesome here.  Every single day for the first week or so was absurdly foggy.  It looked something like this:

I really do think the fog is pretty, but I wouldn't want it every single day.  Fortunately, it's cleared up a lot now, and the scenery around campus is really pretty.  It looks more like this as of now:

Classes have started, and the class I'm taking is a pretty intense 8 AM to noon Chinese marathon.  It's definitely a bit of work to keep up.  On top of that, one of our classes is with Chinese students, and we also now have conversation partners, so now we have Chinese friends to hang out with.  I'm really glad for this, as before I was hanging out exclusively with my American friends who came with me on the program.  This also means I get more opportunities to practice my Chinese, which is of course one of my main objectives here in China.  

Besides class, we've basically been out and about exploring Qingdao.  There's a big shopping area called Taidong that we've been to several times; the night market there is a lot of fun and full of awesome Chinglish shirts.  I will undoubtedly buy one of them before the end of the trip.  Speaking of Chinglish, it runs rampant throughout China.  I've started taking photos of it wherever I see it.

There has also been an abundance of beer, seeing as how this is Qingdao, and I've definitely been drinking a couple from time to time.  There are actually a bunch of varieties of Qingdao beer here in, well, Qingdao, as opposed to just the standard type you see everywhere.  We went to Beer Street where the brewery is and looked around, although we actually didn't drink any beer there.  There are some pretty cool things to see there, though.

There are many more adventures to be had, and I'll keep you fellows and fellowettes posted.

Beijing and such things

It's been a long time since I've written in here...Things have been pretty chaotic, and I haven't had all that much internet access.  I was in Beijing for four days or so, and now I've been in Qingdao for about a week.  Today is the first day we have internet in the dorms, so it will be a lot easier to get on here.

There's a lot to say, of course.  Since I haven't gotten to write for so long, I'm going to have to just go over the big things unless I want this post to spiral out of control into the realm of unreadably lengthy.

Upon arriving in Beijing, I realized how much I missed China.  As always, though, there were setbacks.  My luggage got left behind in New York, and I had to deal with some airport people to get it back.  They said it would be delivered to my hotel the following day and that I could pick it up at the front desk.  However, this is China, so nothing is actually going to work that smoothly.  They did deliver it to me, but instead of delivering it to the front desk, they delivered it into my room...at 4 in the morning.  Of course, I was sleeping at the time, so the guy decided to keep ringing our doorbell (all the hotel rooms had doorbells) for 5 minutes or so until my roommate and I got up and answered.  Way to go, China.  But at least I got my luggage back.

Beijing was pretty awesome besides that.  I just got to explore some and get to know the other people on the program.  Most of it was planned activities, going to various place around Beijing.  Some of these I had been to before, like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. However, the best thing I did was on my own, without the rest of the group.  On the one day we had without any planned activities, I took the subway over to Minzu University, the school where I studied, and walked around for a while before I met up with them.  It was very bizarre, almost haunting, to see it again.  I have a lot of memories of that place, and it made me feel really nostalgic to be there.  It was mostly the same as I remembered it, but it was just a strange feeling to be there without the friends I spent my time there with.  I walked around the area for probably two hours, and I took pictures of most things that I remembered from two years ago.  There's a huge area with a bunch of shops and restaurants around the campus, many of which had changed, but a lot of them were the same too.  It was just a very surreal morning.  After that, I met up with my host family at noon to get lunch.  When I studied at Minzu in 2009, I stayed with a host family, and I had emailed them to tell them I was going to be in Beijing.  We decided to meet up that day and get lunch.  It was really, really great to see them.  We took a bunch of pictures and then they took me out to eat.  I also got to see pictures from my host brother's wedding, which took place very recently.  Meeting up with them is definitely one of the highlights of my time in China so far.

The day after that, we took the bullet train (awesome!!!) to Qingdao, but I'll get a post in about Qingdao later today or tomorrow.  We have arrived at the end of this post, my friends.  I wish you well in all your endeavors and hope that fate smiles kindly upon thee.

My Summer in China

I'm currently sitting at home in Austin, Texas, but in four days, I will be flying to China and staying there for around ten weeks.  I'm flying into Beijing, where I'll be spending the first few days, and then it's off to Qingdao, where I'll be studying for the majority of my time in China.  There will also be a fair amount of travel to other places, but the majority of the time will be in Qingdao.

Qingdao (also spelled Tsingtao) is a city on the east coast of the country.  It is a moderately-sized Chinese city with a measly 8 million or so people (that's China for you).  It went through a period of German colonization, and thus there is extensive German influence.  The city is known, among other things, for its beer, which you can find in stores here in the United States.  In the next few months, I will discover much more about the city, and I'll be sure to let all you lovely people know more details.

As for myself, if you're reading this, I would assume you at least somewhat know me.  I have been learning Chinese for about four years, taking classes starting my senior year of high school. This means that my Chinese is currently at a fairly decent level.  Two years ago, I studied in Beijing for nine weeks, which was a great experience and worked wonders for my Chinese skills.  I've managed to maintain my reading and writing skills pretty well, but I don't have quite as much confidence in my speaking and listening abilities, which have definitely deteriorated since my last stay in China.  This time around in China, I'm going to  work on my Chinese as much as I possibly can.  I would like to seize every opportunity I can to talk to locals, both to gain greater insight into life in China and to work on my Chinese skills as much as possible.  Of course, these goals are related, since having a better command of the language means that I will be more able to communicate with locals and therefore understand them better.  Besides this, I just want to see and do as much as I have time for.

I could go on with other details, but I think I'll leave them for other posts.  Later, my children.