Spiders and Trust Issues

I am approximately halfway done with my 800 character essay about China's unprecedented and unthinkable change over ther past 30 years in the areas of clothing, food, housing, and transportation, and I feel like now is a good time to switch my brain back to English for a few minutes and update. It is Sunday night here, and unfortunately the Sunday night dread and the impending doom of Monday morning also exists in China...however, I am really in no position to complain because our Chinese roommates had to go to classes on Saturday and Sunday because in China when you have a holiday that gets you out of school you must make that time up on the weekend. I am appalled by this, but all of our roommates seem pretty resigned to it, that's just the way it is here.
This past week was unbearably hot until about Friday. I spent way too much time inside air conditioned classrooms and in my air conditioned dorm room beacuse it felt like walking into an oven every time I walked outside. Knowing the word for air conditioning in Chinese has become fundamental for survival. But this weekend the weather has finally reached that lovely cool autumn feel, when you are still able to wear shorts but the sun feels nice shining on your face.
On Saturday I went with a few American friends to a mountain called Moganshan that is about an hour outside of the city. It was beautiful, and a great adventure of a day, but it was also a pretty weird place. Everything felt like it had been built in the past 5 years, the architecture resembled a European village, and it had the feel of being pretty abandoned, or atleast underused. It was beautiful, but in a very landscaped way.
One of my most memorable moments was at lunch when the waitress offered to go outside and slaughter a chicken for us. Another was when the man who drove us up the mountain magically appeared in the "woods" near us (leading us to wonder if he had been stalking us all day) and was very concerned because there was no way that we could make it back to the place that he had dropped us off (leading us to wonder what the problem was if he was right here and we were also right here). After a confusing conversation in Chinese it was established that his car was at the top of the hill (a 5 minute walk away) and that we would meet him there in half an hour. Overall it was lovely to be out of the city and the view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. There were also a lot of huge spiders. (see below)

The one thing that I struggled with during the day was trust. When traveling it is all about maintaining a good balance between being suspicious of every person that might rip you off because you are a foreigner and don't tend to know any better, and figuring out who seems like a trustworthy person whose intentions don't go beyond earning a decent living. My friends were all making fun of me because the vehicle that we agreed to get into to take us to the top of the mountain was somewhat questionable, to which I responded, "I trust this guy with my life." But I really felt like that this guy was trustworthy, and as we were climbing into the back of his little box like three wheeled taxi I was trying to justify to myself why it was that I literally just trusted this guy with my life. Was it that he was nicely dressed? that he was smoking a cigarette which I have seen exchanged between men as a symbol of guanxi (interpersonal relations)? or was it that his explanation for how we were going to get to our destination was just whiny enough to sound genuine? I really think for me it comes down to feeling like I am not being lied to or taking advantage of. Speaking a moderate level of Chinese helps. Feeling like I am a relatively good judge of character also helps. But really when it comes down to, it is very hard to explain why my gut instincts tell me to trust some and run away from others.

Being Here

I have been thinking a lot lately about being here. What this means to me, what this means to the people I come into contact with while I am here, what I want to get out of this experience, how I want to behave here, and really thinking about who I am in this place. Because, when you take a person out of their habitat, away from all of the people that you know and feel comfortable around, and most importantly, take away the ability to speak a language in which you are able to freely express yourself, I think that you are given an unique opportunity to take a moment and think about who you are outside of any reasonable and logical context.
It is a very exciting time to be in this country, for a variety of reasons that the U.S. media discusses on a daily basis. But really, being here, it is more of a feeling than anything else. Because I like to be as ambiguous and say things that can be interpreted in a number of ways. Also, because some things are difficult to describe in words, English, Chinese, or otherwise. I am taking a One on One class that involves a professor and I sitting for an hour and a half twice a week and discussing how much China has changed over the past 30 years. It is really beyond my ability to comprehend what China looked like 30 years ago, and before. I would certainly not be here studying if it were thirty years ago. I would not be fumbling about with the hardest language in the world spewing from my mouth, trying to discuss philosophical and cultural differences, as well as favorite American T.V. shows and movies with endlessly patient Chinese people (they are not all endlessly patient, but the ones that are I am very grateful for).
Sometimes it is too easy to lose these feelings of awe and bewilderment in the face of endless hours of homework that involves infinite and monotonous character writing. I am actively trying to remember as often as possible. Everytime I am understood, and everytime I am written off because I cannot understand, and everytime I walk down the street.
I am here, I am small, confused, sometimes frustrated, often misunderstood, and always completely and utterly fascinated by a life that overwhelms me everyday.

Look at me!

Some more pictures to drool over:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2025812&l=83340&id=19402752

My Crazy Chinese Life

It has been over a week since I last wrote, and people are beginning to whine to me about how their lives lack meaning when they can't read my blog and how they get depressed everytime they press the refresh button on the browser only to find that there are no new tales of adventure to brighten their day. To all of these people, I am very sorry, I will try to be better.
The last week or so has been very interesting. I feel like I have reached a certain comfort level in Chinese. This does not mean that I am good at speaking or that my vocabulary has grown greatly, only that I don't think about it so much anymore, I just speak, and continue speaking until I am somewhat confident that what I am saying has been at least partially understood. (although there are those times when you try and try and understanding does not seem like a possibility and at those times you can pull out such life saving phrases as "suan le" (forget it) and "mei guanxi" (don't worry about it.) For those of you who enjoy playing charades, I think you would like China a lot.
Last weekend I ended up getting the best of both worlds. I traveled with 3 other American friends to a beautiful lake not far from Hangzhou and had the perfect mix of getting to know these American strangers and going off by myself and exploring. It was great to get away from all (ALL) of the school work for a couple of days and see some of China. The lake was nestled in between beautiful green rolling hills and there were not too many tourists around. Last Sunday was Zhong Qiu Jie (Jong Chee-o Jee-eh) which is the Mid-autumn festival, when you are supposed to eat moon cakes and look at the moon. I discovered a new favorite food, red bean (often put inside a moon cake) , which if you have not tried, you must because it is delicious.
This week has been good as well. Classes are pretty intense, but all of the teachers are helpful and it is really just a lot of work and memorizing and there is no way around that. However I did seem to find some time to go to West Lake with a friend one afternoon to stroll around, as well as attend my gongfu class, which is a blast.
The last 24 hours have been kind of challenging and emotionally draining because my roommate decided to move out yesterday. There are a variety of reasons behind her decision, (none of them being that I am a smelly/creatively clean person) and in the end she has to do what she thinks is best for her, but I am very sad to see her go. The resident director Su Aimei is in the process of finding me a new Chinese roommate, but in the meantime I am enjoying my single and looking forward to exploring Hangzhou with some friends this weekend.
Love you and Miss you all...please contact me by comment, email, facebook, actual mail, etc and tell me what is going on out there in your world.

China China China China

Right now I should be studying for the two tests that I have tomorrow morning, or perhaps writing some of the many hundreds of characters that I need to write for next week. But, I need a break, so this feels like a relatively good use of my time. The pictures that I posted last week are from my weekend trip with my roommate to her home town of yongkang. It was a very nice trip, it was great to meet her family, and we went on a beautiful hike up to an temple in the mountains. The one slight problem with this location was that they did not speak Mandarin, but a completely different dialect, so I spent a fair amount of time being quiet, listening but not understanding, asking my roommate vital questions like "where are we going?" and "what did those people who just pointed at me say?" Apparently, according to my roommate, they thought I was either Russian or Malaysian. When I asked her if this was better than being an American, she said no, it's about the same. This week classes have been pretty intense. I am taking four Chinese courses, which means that I am expected to memorize about 3,000,000 characters a day, write several 400-800 character essays (by hand, no computers allowed) and then there are the tests. I am pretty sure my country of origin did nothing to encourage me to develop the work ethic that is expected here.
It is also difficult to study when there are so many places I want to go out and explore. However, I also really need to step up my Chinese a notch so that when I go places I can communicate with people in a more meaningful way. This week I have tried to find time to just got off campus and walk around. I also went swimming in our school's pool for the first time (it was very crowded), and started taking a gonfu (kunfu) class that meets twice a week. I will be beating people up in no time....just kidding, it is really difficult.
This weekend my plan is to go travel to Qiandao Hu, also known as the Thousand Island Lake (apparently the first episode of Survivor in 2007 was filmed here, or so Time.com told me). The program that I am on really encourages us to go traveling alone so that we can learn to figure stuff out for ourselves. It should be beautiful and I am both excited and nervous. Wish me luck!

Photos

A link to some photos for those of you that do not have facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid
=2025427&l=8071e&id=19402752

Climbing Hills

What to say, What to say. Life has truly been a rollercoaster. I keep saying this, but I can't think of a better metaphor, since it has been a week (yes only a week) of amazing highs followed by pretty intense lows. I don't think it is a coincidence that the lows usually coincide with me having to go to class, for these are the times when I realize how little I know, and how steep of a hill I still have to climb, and how quickly they want me to climb it.
On the other hand, the most well spent afternoon that I have had was yesterday when I spontaneously ended up going hiking near West Lake with an american friend. It was incredibly beautiful (whoever says China's environment sucks should see this place). We hiked around and explored and got attacked by mosquitos and miraculously found our way back to the correct bus stop. We spoke Chinese the whole time and both realized how ridiculous we must have sounded to all the people we passed; two sweaty american girls, wandering in the woods, speaking Chinese to eachother as if this is a perfectly normal thing to do.
Tonight my roommate and I went to Tesco (le gou), which is basically a British version of Walmart, and spent an incredibly long time wandering through the isles. The main objective was to buy some snack foods to eat for lunch on the train tomorrow, since we are going away for the weekend to my roommates home in the southern part of zhejiang province...but ofcourse we got sidetracked. I ended up buying a lot of mysterious food (meaing the labels are mostly in Chinese.) I also laughed out loud many times at the English that is written on clothing, notebooks, food packages, etc. It is really difficult to explain to a Chinese person that these are not "normal" (meaning American) advertising strategies. For example, my roommate often wears a T-shirt that says in large letters:
TOOL. Not the band. I am just a tool.
The notebook that I bought declares:
This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time.
My golden fibre candied dates assure me that:
When it is severed, its fiber will still be connected, It features fresh flesh, delicious taste... and richly many kinds of trace elements which needs including the human body, actually old and young all suitable leisure food.
With advertising like that, how can you resist?
I love translation, and I also love how pretty much every T-shirt in China declares its love for me. How can I be unhappy when so many inanimate objects love me?