First Day Impressions of Beijing (+ Free Stuff!)

Last week, Melissa and I more survived Beijing than visited it. There are many words that come to mind when I think of Beijing, but ‘volume’ is by far the most meaningful. This is a city where most city blocks are or seem to be over a half mile long, and all the while you are walking, these massive and imposing hero-sized buildings mock your pathetic efforts to get to the next intersection. So yeah, I think that Beijing may be a little bit too big. 

Volume aside, Beijing offers many sights, and prompts you to visit ALL of them. Beijing has one of the largest sections in the Lonely Planet guide, and it makes every last place seem like a must-see. Considering this added pressure, we laced up our most comfortable shoes and took to the streets.

We only had half of a day for our first day in Beijing, but it turned out to be one of the most memorable days thanks to a few friends of ours. We rode into Beijing with our friend Kelly, and once we were settled into our hostel rooms, we met up with our friend, JB. We were walking around a park when JB’s dad called to invite us to the Beijing Symphony. What a guy! 

So, we scrambled around trying to get ready and by the time we got there, the performance was almost half over! Luckily, we were able to sheepishly enter the performance hall during intermission. 

The performance was great, but the National Centre for the Performing Arts was the real show stopper. It looks like a futuristic, giant half-egg that landed in the middle of a man-made lake. 

The entrance is before the water, and it has you walk underneath so that you are able to see the water through a glass ceiling. The inside of the actual building is so enormous that it resembles an airport, but it is also one of the most beautiful buildings in which I have ever set foot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos of the main building. Boo!

Afterwards, the generosity continued from JB’s father, as he took us out to a late dinner at the Lan Club. This is where we had our first taste of Beijing Duck, and man, was it good! 

Thus ended our first day (and free food/entertainment) in Beijing…

Zwischel: in Beijing

Guess what? Melissa and I don't have class until the 16th, so we're taking full advantage of the situation by travelling to Beijing for five or so days! We leave tonight on an overnight train, which will be our second attempt at such transportation trip to Yangshuo, being the first), so our fingers are crossed...

We arrive in Beijing on the afternoon of the 5th, and we look forward to seeing things like the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, among the potpourri of other things to do in that gigantic city. One thing that is bothering me about our trip though is the timing... Today is the twentieth anniversary of a certain little incident that happened at TS.

I didn't really know why China's censors were kicking into overdrive these past few months, but considering the momentous anniversary at hand, it's all starting to make sense. Of the sites that don't work anymore in China, I believe this list now includes Youtube, Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr, Livejournal, Xanga, Wordpress, Friendfeed, Flickr and Live.com. I guess I should feel lucky that Gmail still works! All of these social networking sites could be used to disseminate information about the Western view of what happened twenty years ago in Beijing, so the government shut it all down.

So, why would the Chinese government shut down sites that relay information about an event that everybody already knows about? Well, it turns out that most Chinese don't know about it, or have been convinced that it wasn't that big of a deal. It is not taught or referred to by anyone in Chinese society, and when it was happening twenty years ago, the entirely state-owned media spun it so it looked like a bunch of unruly hippies disturbing the peace.

Some people in China do, however, recognize the significance of this anniversary, and they have decided to wear white today as a form of protest. You see, white is the traditional Chinese color for mourning. Even our field director sent us an email last night warning us not to wear white today. Therefore, it came to our surprise that so many students and teachers were wearing white today. Were they silently protesting? Nope. They were just wearing what they always wear! It seems that Yueyang doesn't recognize this day like the rest of the world does, which makes sense considering the control on information. 

As I was saying before, the timing of our trip is pretty bad because I fear that things might be a little bit more restricted than usual in Beijing. Tourist sites that may be open to the public may be closed, etc. Also, the weather's supposed to suck... Yeah, that too.

In any case, we will bring our camera and attempt to document the whole experience for you guys, so look out for us in about a week! 

Zwischel is Moving to Suzhou

Hi all,

Right on the heels of Rock's big news comes more big news: we're officially teaching English in Suzhou this coming school year! A few days ago, we received the fully-signed contracts via email, and we were just told by the Vice Dean that we should arrive in early September. It only seems like yesterday that we were entering China for the first time... Exciting!

Geographically, Suzhou is right next to Shanghai and is very close to both Hangzhou and Nanjing, which makes it seem like a really good location, culture-wise. Suzhou's beautiful gardens and water features are mentioned by all of the travel guides, so we are pretty happy with the result. However, according to one of our students, it's not such a great place because it's, "like a delicate woman." Maybe it's a little boring? 

In any case, we'll keep you all informed via blogging through this year and into the next! We hope you will keep reading!