It's That Time Again

I bet you're all wondering why it is that I didn't post a blog yesterday. I mean, I always post at least every Monday and then either Wednesday or Thursday, right? Apparently that answer is wrong, and I blame it on the Internets. The computer lab here lost it for the afternoon and I didn't want to go to the sketchy internet cafe.

Anyway, now that I'm done blaming other people, I'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.

This weekend our destination of choice was Xi'an. It was definitely bigger and more urban than we imagined, as all of us had come in thinking it was going to be more of a small, spread out, rural city. If anything, it seemed even more urban than Tianjin, as everything seemed to be more condensed and we were staying only a couple blocks from the center of the city. In some ways it still seems old fashioned. The old city wall is still standing and wraps around the innermost part of the city and the city is still centered on the old bell tower that was used to tell people to get up to go to work and to come back from work. Oh yeah, and we got to see a blue sky again.

The biggest tourist attraction in Xi'an is definitely the terra cotta army. First thing Saturday morning we went to see a factory where they make replica soldiers in the same method the originals were produced in. However, it seemed to be less of a factory than a huge overpriced warehouse containing everything from full sized versions of the soldiers (including ones costing almost $20,000) to copies of The Last Supper (apparently Da Vinci was secretly Chinese). Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the painting.

Next we went on to the location of the real terra cotta army. One thing I never knew before is that apparently every single one of the soldiers had been broken. Any one that is fully assembled had to be pieced back together by archaeologists. Seeing all of them arranged in the dig site was pretty amazing, as there are tons upon tons of them.

This is what I want guarding my grave when I die.

Later that night we went to what we were told was a fountain show at a Buddhist temple. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, "Boooring." That's what we all thought, but half of us went anyway. The description given above was the biggest understatement imaginable. It was absolutely insane. By "fountains" they meant "an area of a couple acres of sidewalk filled with fountains" and by "Buddhist temple" they meant "an awesome park that happens to have a pagoda in it." When we pulled up we could see people and neon lights everywhere, and that's when we knew that this was more than we were told. They even had spotlights!

There were so many fountains everywhere with people running around in them. The best was the angled fountains. They rarely went off, but you could always count on somebody getting it in the face or back of the head when they did. The surprising part, they do this every night. In you're ever in Xi'an, hunt this place down.

What happened to Buddhism being about enlightenment? Apparently awesomeness is more important now.

All this leads me to conclude that Xi'an is in fact the Chinese version of Epcot. At the terra cotta soldiers place, they had one of those 360 degree movies. Other than a Ford F-150 factory, the only other place I've ever seen those is Epcot. It's actually exactly what the China attraction at Epcot is. Then there was the fountain. The entire thing just gave an air of Disney World and Epcot, between the huge fountains, the openness of the area, and the music they played. The large crowd of people all leaving simply had the air of the crowds that leave Epcot after the huge fireworks show every night. There is no other way to describe it.

Needless to say, Xi'an has been everybody's favorite city so far (although we didn't really spend much time in Beijing).

8/8/08

So, for those of you who don't know the significance of that date, it's when the Olympics are going to start. While it might just seem like a cool date because the numbers are all eight, it actually has a bit more significance than that. The word for "eight" in Chinese (ba) is really similar to the word for "wealth" (fa). Similarly, I also discovered that Chinese hotels have neither a floor 4, 13, or 14. This is because the word for "four" (si) is the same as the word for "to die", just they have different tones.

So, one thing that's completely everywhere now is the five mascots they came up with for the olympics. You literally cannot walk down the road without seeing them. Especially on campus, since there's a huge mural of them directly across from the gate. They're on literally anything you can think of, car seat covers, t-shirts, stickers in store windows, they even have their own cartoon show! They're at such a severe degree of everywhere I go that I swear they're stalking me.

Today I finally went to that mural and took a picture of each of the five mascots (called the Fuwa, which means "good-luck dolls"). I figure I'll give you a brief introduction of them, especially my favorite.

Beibei

Jingjing. And no, I didn't frame that guy in his crotch on purpose.

Huanhuan

Yingying

Nini

One thing that's interesting is how they named the characters. If you remove the repeated syllable from each of their names and stick them together it becomes "Beijing huanying ni." Translated to English, that means "Beijing welcomes you." It's definitely quite a clever little thing added in there so covertly. I mean, I even know those words yet I didn't notice that's what it spelled until somebody pointed it out for me.

Now, I'm gonna be honest here, I have a clear favorite, and that would be Jingjing. First of all, it's because he's a panda, which makes him awesome. My second (and more important) reason I had to get visual evidence for.

That's right, he's about to bust a cap.

Anyway, he's a panda with a gun. Can anybody give me a good reason that any one of the others should be my favorite? Anybody? That's what I thought.

A Meter! That's Three Feet!

So... I really wanted to put that as the title of a post, and I actually did manage to come up with some justification for it. I found it's kind of interesting how they do the pricing of fruit at the local supermarket place we go to (a post about that place will come sometime). I figured that since China works off of kilograms I'd have to do some sort of crazy price multiplying to come determine what the price would be in pounds. However, it turns out the pricing is actually per half kilogram, which is really close to a pound. So you don't really have to do any mental converting other than between the dollar and the kuai/yuan/renminbi.

Now on to the actual purpose of this post. I literally just got out of our culture class, which today was Chinese calligraphy. The guy teaching the class is a really really good calligraphist, and along with teaching us some of the fundamentals of calligraphy he drew characters for two of us and even signed and sealed them. I got really lucky and was one of the two people who drew the slips of paper that said "You" (have) instead of "Meiyou" (don't have).

The character drawn here is "Rabbit" for my year in the Chinese zodiac. Because Rabbits are awesome.

After I received the drawing we got a chance to practice doing some calligraphy of our own. I discovered my main problem is just thinking of something to write. I'll let you judge how it came out.

The right side of this sheet is practice for various strokes. The other strokes are my name (second column from the right), the words "computer student" (first column on the right), the characters for "Coke", and three characters that make no sense in Chinese but when you say them out loud they sound like "Chewbacca".

This is my haiku I wrote in Chinese characters. In English it would read "Brett Holbert. I am American. I went to China to study Chinese."

One other interesting thing to think about is that there is absolutely no similar style of art in Western culture. I suppose there are pictures that some people make with really fancy versions of words, but it is by no means it's own entire area of art like calligraphy is.

Oh, and we had an excellent example of something lost in translation the other day. We went to this restaurant called "Seaside Coffee". That is possibly the most misleading restaurant name I have ever heard. It is no means by the sea, although they do serve coffee. However, beyond that the only resemblance it bears to any conventional coffee house is that you sit on couches.

And then there's the menu. Definitely the most entertaining menu I've seen in my two weeks here. Some things are just plain hilarious and don't belong on a menu in any restaurant. Two of the appetizers you can get are popcorn (which is literally served to you in the microwave bag) and "Chutty" (a package of Doublemint gum). Then there's the things which make absolutely no sense. Probably half the menu is devoted to drinks, from various types of coffee and tea to sodas and milkshakes. As for the coffee, you can order "Mandarin Duck Coffee." We declined to find out what it was like. Then there's our favorite, the "Glaucoma Milkshake." We don't know what they meant to say, but like the coffee, we don't think we want to know. Oh, and then there was one of the ice cream sundaes, which came with pears, banana, and "Hawaii". I feel I should have gotten it just because I don't think there's any other tropical island I could buy for 35 yuan.

Then there's the actual food itself. The "Texas Wings" meal appears to be more what the chefs believe that Americans eat rather than things that mix well together for a meal. Fortunately there were wings with the meal, but the other things that came with it were a fried egg and spagetti (complete with tomato sauce). All I can really say is that I'm thankful that wasn't my meal, so I was able to have a laugh without feeling like it was at my own expense.

Anyway, I still have tons more to say on Beijing, I just felt more in the mood to write about other things. Perhaps tomorrow I'll finally get around to talking about the Olympics.