Ni, Hao, June 23rd!

Today we said zài jiàn to Shanghai and boarded our flight to Beijing. The flight its self was short--only an hour--but led way to a small crisis. I left my laptop on the plane. I know, I know, that was really stupid, but in my defense, I'm an absent-minded person, and they tell us to stow our possessions underneath the seats during takeoff! Fortunately,

We were able to relax after arriving in Beijing and explore the little street by our hotel, finding a cheap mini-mart with some... questionable items. And a really cute dog.



That evening, we went for a rickshaw ride down the streets of Old Beijing. The rickshaw was pulled by a man on a bicycle and we were able to slip into ancient cobbled lanes, places too narrow for cars to fit. As Max and I rode together in our rickshaw, we noted how different Beijing was from Shanghai. Shanghai was a modern city, built up less than 200 years ago, full of skyscrapers and lights and apartment buildings. Beijing felt much older, ancient, with a history written into its flat-roofed, tiled houses and oriental street corners.








































The rickshaw delivered us at an ancient, family-owned home in the Hutong. The family ushered us in and showed us around the house. In traditional Chinese style, the building was built with four sides facing the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west), all surrounding a central courtyard. Within the courtyard was a well for pumping water. It was extremely interesting to explore the house, to look into actual bedrooms that had existed for hundreds of years, where people still resided today. The house would have situated an extended family, with all the girls sleeping on one side and the boys on another. I was startled to find out that there was no bathroom in the whole house- family members would have to walk down the street to the public out-house to bathe and use the toilet! For someone used to a bathroom just down the hallway, this was hard to believe.

As we walked around the small courtyard, the men of the house watched us, smoking cigarettes. I wondered what it was like for the family, to have intruders in their personal home walking around and snapping pictures, marveling at something that had been ordinary all their lives. If the family had chosen to, they could have sold the house for a small fortune to some sort of historical commission. However, the family refused to give up their ancestral home and its strong ties with the deceased, instead choosing to live poorly but traditionally.

Jason Eats A Fish Eye

Birthday Party!

I have to say, my birthday in China was amazing. The group surprised me and Tara (whose birthday had been the day before) with a delicious birthday cake at dinner that night. Thank you everyone!

Tea Tasting

During the afternoon, we visited the Long Jing Tea plantation in Hangzhou. As a tea obsessive, someone who always likes a nice cup of tea at night, I loved this. Hangzhou is famous for its "Dragon Well" tea, which is the national tea of China. Long Jing tea is made from young leaves on tea plants, giving it a richer flavor that is preserved, along with its natural antioxidants, when the tea is pan-dried immediately after picking. At the plantation, we saw huge slopes of tea bushes climbing up into the mountain on terraces, green hills disappearing into the mist.
We had a tea-tasting session instructed by a man called "Dr. Tea," who taught us all the secrets of green tea as well as its importance to the Chinese. As he spoke, we learned the proper way to receive and drink tea according to ancient Chinese customs. The tea we were drinking was in the form of "loose tea," or tea without a tea-bag. We learned to snub our noses at tea bags, for they destroy all of the natural vitamins and antioxidants within tea. The Chinese do not "drink" a cup of tea, rather, they "eat" a cup of tea, for all of the loose tea leaves are left to swirl about in the cup and can be eaten.

The loose tea was delicious--rich in flavor and especially good for the health, from what I was told. I had never drank tea that way before, but I couldn't wait to bring the custom home to my family, and so I purchased a couple of cans of the Dragon Well tea.

The West Lake

We went for a boat ride that afternoon on the famous West Lake, known as one of the most picturesque lakes in the world. It was absolutely beautiful.





middle (left to right) Melissa, Me, Rishika, Brooke, Tarun, Krishna

Global Citizen's Scavenger Hunt

Over lunch, we had about two hours to separate off into groups of four and embark on a Global Citizen's Scavenger Hunt. The activity was extremely fun and allowed us to test our real world survival skills/limited knowledge of Chinese by interacting with strangers. We each got to stretch our teamwork skills, leadership skills, and street smarts as we raced against the clock to find all the items on our list.

My group was composed of myself, Max, Tarun, and Devika, and here's what we had to find.
Find:
-a restaurant menu (this proved to be the most difficult for our team; for some reason every restaurant we went into had no take-out menu, no matter how many times we mimed and pointed)
-a pair of chopsticks
-something written in English
-a city map
-a Chinese newspaper
-a local bus schedule (involved me going up to a disgrunted bus-driver and asking about a "che zhan." He had no idea what I was saying.)
-a business card
-some foreign currency (not Indian, American, or Chinese
-Chinese candy (we ended up spending 20 yuan on something the judges claimed was "Japanese" candy)
-Chinese loose tea (Devika showed us all the ropes by asking to "smell" a pinch of the tea in a tea store and then simply leaving with it)

Take Photos of the Following:
-A team member in a rickshaw (we stumbled upon this in a moment of chance and it proved our crown jewel with the judges)

-the Chinese characters for bathroom
-a team member with a taxi driver

-Someone doing tai chi

Okay, so maybe he wasn't doing tai chi so much as we found a random stranger on the street to teach tai chi to, but it still counts. Right?

-a Buddha
-Confucius
-An animal
-A team member with a local student

He looks so shocked!

-a bicycle
-Traditional Chinese clothing
-An American company (Pizza Hut)
-A wedding (Okay, this we never found)
-A dragon
-A small red book

Okay, so maybe it's not the small red book of Communism, but close enough, right?

-A passport (not U.S. or Indian) (Never found this one either--who's going to show their passport to a random stranger on the street?)
-A boat
-A sign in English with incorrect grammar

um....?



My team was proud to say that we found everything except the wedding, passport, and foreign currency. However, we didn't win (grrr...) because teams were given bonus points for every additional pair of chopsticks they could find. But it was still tons of fun.

Happy Birthday!

I have to say, my birthday in China (June 22) was one of the most memorable birthdays I've ever had. On that day we all took a one-and-a-half hour drive to the city of Hangzhou, a city regarded as one of the greenest and most beautiful places in China, nestled on the banks of the gorgeous West Lake.

Our first stop in Hangzhou was at an ancient pagoda, where our tour guide explained to us the legend behind it. The story told that there was once a scholar in Hangzhou who fell in love with a beautiful woman who was actually a white snake. For their love, the gods cast the White Snake Lady into a well buried deep beneath the pagoda.