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.